THE Catholic Association for Racial Justice has called on the bishops’ conference to reverse its decision to stop the Racial Justice Sunday collection from going directly to the organisation.
Carj received the collection for three decades until, three years ago, it ceased to be an agency of the conference.
It still receives some support for projects from these funds, but at an online AGM last weekend members described the move as a “wound”, and asked if it might be reversed in light of recent global action for racial justice.
Around 40 participants, including Bishop Paul McAleenan, auxiliary in Westminster and lead bishop on migration, heard how Carj’s work has increased exponentially this year, with the publication of a number of reports on disadvantaged and marginalised groups, including Traveller and inner-city communities.
Bishop McAleenan told The Tablet he found Carj’s offer to run workshops for seminaries “admirable”. Carj’s chair, Yogi Sutton, said that “the very obvious need for pro-racial justice work within the Church calls on all of us for even greater efforts and much more funds”.
In addition, Mrs Sutton felt Black Catholics “should be part of the decision-making, holding positions of responsibility” in the Church.
The AGM also heard from the Revd Azariah France-Williams, author of Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England, who encouraged Catholics to reflect on institutional racism within Catholic structures.
He encouraged Catholics to reflect on institutional racism within Catholic structures. “So many words said, but the deeds haven’t followed,” he suggested of his own Church of England.
He spoke movingly about his own, “I can’t breathe moments”, during torment from racist bullies as a schoolboy in a Catholic school. Teachers were aware of it yet saw the tormentors as “cheeky but harmless”, so the school was “inactive”.
He quoted the late Malawian Bishop Patrick Kalilombe, a former Director of the Ecumenical Centre for Black and White Christian Partnership at Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, who used to talk about the lack of confidence a black person can have about speaking up about injustice, “that a black person is expected to behave as a guest and in no position to dictate terms”.
Bishop McAleenan acknowledged that “strategies, efforts and attitudes need to convey to all comers a sense of belonging, that the Church is their home”.
Fr Paschal Uche, a young Black priest in Brentwood diocese, said: “Mostly people don’t stick around and they go to other denominations to be themselves. We lost the diversity we are supposed to have.”
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