Depiction of repentant slave trader John Newton, author of the hymn Amazing Grace
To His Excellency, the Most Reverend Bishop, Ordinary of Recovering Modern's Diocese,
I greet you in filial love, obedience, and humility. Pax tecum (I'm sorry I can't resist).
Recent events have forced all of us to confront both the past and ongoing horrors of racism and related inequity in our country, and across the world. I know that fighting racial inequity and making reparation for our nation and our Church's past sins in this area are deeply felt by you and your brother bishops. In fact, I see right now on the USCCB's website two headline links mentioning respect for the dignity of migrant families and encouraging support for pastoral ministry in Africa.
It is equally encouraging and heartbreaking to know that Holy Mother Church intervened early and forcefully to prevent and then to stop the roots of modern racial injustice. In 1435, Pope Eugene IV in Sicut Dudum excommunicated all who did not, within 15 days, restore to liberty all whom they had taken captive as slaves from the Canary Islands. Likewise in 1537, a few years before the Council of Trent, Pope Paul III in Sublimis Dei commanded, in language similar to that used to confirm infallible teaching, that Native Americans be left at liberty to enjoy their property and that they be brought into the faith through the preaching of the word of God and by holy living. After many similar interventions, Pope Gregory XVI condemned the slave trade and demanded that it cease with In Supremo Apostolatus in 1839.
And yet today we feel the deep shame and pain of centuries of injustice and victimization because those demands were not met. Over and over, Catholics ignored Church teaching, used legalism to undermine and water down its demands, made excuses about modern economics and necessities, twisted and cherry picked Scripture to justify their misdeeds, framed slavery as the only way to avoid the greater evil of civil war, hid behind a relativism that forbade anyone from telling slave owners what to do with their "property", and continued abusing their fellow man for their own personal comfort and enrichment. Bishops, priests, and laity largely allowed or even encouraged this behavior and did little to hold slave traders and slave owners accountable.
If we only we had a chance to stand in their shoes, make better choices, prevent those atrocities, and spare millions from the pain and division that resulted.
Yet we do have that choice. But like Elijah, we must confess that we are no better than our fathers.
Popes have condemned, early and often, abortion and the contraceptive culture that produces it in Casti Connubii (Pius XI, 1930), Humane Vitae (Paul VI, 1968), Veritatis Splendor (John Paul II, 1993), and in Pope Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body.
Yet we live in a society where abortion, like slavery, is tolerated, excused, and promoted by Catholics globally. It is especially damaging to people of color. And all of the same excuses and techniques have appeared: relativism (My body, my choice), cherry picking and twisting of Scripture (Judas received Communion!), hairsplitting legalism (It's not infallible teaching!), the economic hardship of single mothers, and false "lesser of two evils" scenarios.
History teaches us that nothing, not even tolerance for a particular grave sin, lasts forever. Should we continue down our current path, the Church of future generations will suffer for its tolerance of abortion as the present Church does for its tolerance and promotion of the western slave trade and racism. Those who come after us may leave the Church, reject our nation and its heritage, and hold us in contempt for our refusal to hold the abortion industry and its enablers accountable.
I pray earnestly that we make a different choice, and remove Christ's promised millstone from our necks. I pray that you, as successor to the Apostles, will hold each and every one of us, particularly me and any chief magistrates of the US federal government whom you may meet in the course of your business, accountable for doing so.
Christus vincit,
Recovering Modern
11th Sunday after Pentecost
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