Institutional Racism - What's a Catholic to do?

The Old Testament and even the New Testament tell the story of groups and peoples who are destined for destruction. Why?

Once again, Deacon Michael shows his love of history as he looks at the world around him.  He always loved history and our house was filled with history books, both about the world in general and the Church.  Beside the bed he always had a pile of books he was reading, and he always was reading at least one history book,

He takes us from a historical look at the conquering attitude of the Romans of Jesus' time, and how it affected the fate of the Jews both before and after His Passion and Death. Then he looks at the scripture readings, applying them to the history of the Church and the attitude of society towards Catholics.

Then he gets personal.  He asks us to look at ourselves and ask ourselves important questions, and thus prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ into history and into our own lives.



IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

Ancient Rome was really a bunch of nasty people and in the reading that we have in Revelation, Babylon is referred to as Rome.  And Babylon itself was not a really nice people. 

The Babylonians, the Romans, they would conquer people, and the one I always remember is when Rome fought Carthage and they beat Carthage.  They destroyed every single building in the place and salted the entire area so it would never, ever come back.

Pax Romana was simply, "If you get out of line, we kill you."  It's real simple, it's, you know, think of the Pax Romana in the context of the Passion and Death of Christ.  He got out of line; they killed him.

So we are also in the Revelation reading we refer to today, we see this being extrapolated into other times.  The Roman Church has been called the whore of Babylon.  Many times in the Revelation readings about Babylon and the fall of Babylon, the horribleness of Babylon, which, again, equated to Rome, has been applied to the Church.  It has happened throughout history.  The United States has been called the whore of Babylon.

And then we see in the gospel reading the destruction, the coming destruction of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was destroyed.  We have the temple wall in Jerusalem, that's all that remains after the Romans finished conquering Jerusalem, because they were sick and tired of the Jewish people and in 70AD they destroyed it.  It was gone.

This raises a very interesting question as we are preparing ourselves for Advent.  Punishment.  The looking at our sins.  Asking for mercy.

And it's the issue of, we know that in the Old Testament we see many examples where the Jewish people have been punished because the Jewish people didn't do what God wanted them to do. 

The Babylonian captivity is probably the best illustration.  He warned them with the prophets:  "Do this!"  "Stop doing this!"  "Don't do this!"  They did it and everything fell apart and they went into the Babylonian captivity.

There is a recurrence of those events.  But we are looking at a situation that I am going to refer to as corporate guilt.  A guilt of an activity taken by a group of people who are identified by a classification.  We see this. There is an inclination to do this: "All men are bad!"  There is a corporate identity that is given and to that corporate identity there is a guilt imputed. Again, this is very much of an Old Testament concept of punishment.

Now, in the Old Testament we also deal on the level of "Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people," and how do you figure out what is going on.  And that is the book of Job.  So we have the individual responsibility and the corporate responsibility.

In the Gospel reading we see a transformation that has occurred with the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  First, we see the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem for its sins.  But we also see a major transformation in how we approach it.  "But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect, raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”

One of the things that Jesus did that was transformative is that he basically removes corporate guilt and makes it individual.  Jesus did not come and say, "Israel, as a people you have to do this..."  He didn't say, "United States, you have to do this..."  But he put it on the individual basis of loving God and loving neighbor.  Those are individualistic things.

However, He makes it very clear that there are consequences that come from the activities of the corporate entity that have ramifications on the individual.

Which leads us to the question that we deal with.  We are looking forward to Advent and to examine ourselves.  It is comparatively easy to say, "Do I love my neighbor if I slap my neighbor up the side of the head."  No, you're not going around knocking the heads of people you don't like.  They're your neighbors.  You're called to love them.

But, as far as the responsibility of loving thy neighbor, are there consequences that when you live in a society where the entity itself is so imbued with wrong activities?  The Jewish people, for example, really were doing some bad things.  The Romans were truly immoral.  Other entities, again, people point to the United States and the horrible things.

On the level of Christianity, of our responsibility as members of the Catholic Church and followers of Christ, how does that have the effect on us?  We can go, "Oh, I'm not in the government. Oh, I'm not doing all those things. Those people are simply doing it in my name. What can I do?"

A nice Roman citizen sitting in Rome, getting free bread, living a nice life says, "I know the horrible things the Roman emperor does.  I know the horrible things that the army does.  But they are necessary to preserve my way of life and, I'm not doing it myself."

Is that an articulation of loving God and loving neighbor if that person in Rome happened to be Christian?  Is it following loving God and loving neighbor to be a citizen of a country or a state or a city, whatever you want to do, and that corporate entity is doing something wrong that we are not challenging.  That we know that on an individual basis, were I do do it, I would be violating the commandment of loving God and loving neighbor.

If the consequences that come from those sins that are being done on a corporate level come to me on an individual basis, which they do, in fact, is there not, commensurately, an obligation on our part, as a member of a corporate entity that is doing something wrong, to comply with the commandments of loving God and loving neighbor, of trying to do something about it?  To do something about it so that the entity through which we interact with the world is not a source of evil.

And I think that part is something that we need to explore in the Advent season.

Yes, Mayve is sweet, wonderful person, loves her grandson, loves her husband, nice, but she works for the evil empire of the government of Farmers Branch.  If Farmers Branch is doing something that violates the commandment of loving neighbor, which it did a few years ago, what is her obligation as an employee of the evil empire and what are our obligations as citizens of the evil empire, to change the policies of the corporate entity?  And if we do not, if the punishment, if the wages of sin is death, if there is a punishment and in fact, by not acting we are violating the second great commandment, what are the consequences?

And I think that in this Advent season, it's certainly something I'm going to be thinking about is, what are our obligations?  What are we called to do?  What are we mandated to do by the command of love thy neighbor?

November 29, 2018