What if the key question Catholics had to ask themselves on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day was not whether Black Lives Matter is a pseudo-religion, but whether Catholicism itself in its response to racism in the United States United was representative of the religion of Jesus Christ. ?

It’s a stark way to reframe the central question raised by Archbishop of Los Angeles José Gomez’s widely criticized November speech on Black Lives Matter and contemporary social movements. Gomez argued that these groups were “pseudo-religions” that strongly opposed the Christian story.

The speech was rightly criticized for channeling the wealthy and elitist worldview of the Napa Institute; grossly generalize things from Black Lives Matter to liberation theology; and be indifferent to the raw immediacy of racist injustice that has prompted the largest protests in American history. While Pope Francis praised those who protested on behalf of George Floyd as modern-day Good Samaritans, Gomez described the same people as opponents of Christianity.

Most criticism has focused on the dismissive assessment of the Black Lives Matter speech. But the speech raises another question that deserves the Church’s self-critical attention: whether Catholicism itself is fit to respond to the current challenges of racism and white supremacy.

In his speech, Gomez offered a particularly abstract and individualistic view of such Catholicism. He announces the need to announce Jesus, but his Jesus seems to float above the injustices involved.

He insists that the Church has been anti-racist since its inception, but fails to recognize that centuries of Christian belief are used to justify racial hierarchy. While he praised the sacred examples of Dorothy Day and Augustus Tolton (the first publicly known African-American priest ordained in the United States), he neither mentioned Day’s radical critique of society nor listed the vast legal regime that enslaved Tolton for the first years of his life. . It is a Catholicism of abstract doctrine and holy individuals who all effortlessly transcend the evils of their time.

As the Archbishop said in his speech, we must tell the story of salvation in a new way in the face of racism and white supremacy. But there has to be a better way than the one described by Gomez.

Remarkable theologians like Fr. Bryan Massingale and Mr. Shawn Copeland have offered visions for a Catholic Christianity that could help us meet the challenge of racism. We must continue to read and learn from their examples.

There are also examples Catholics can look to outside of our denomination, including the 20th century classic Jesus and the poor by the famous African-American Protestant theologian Howard Thurman.

Thurman was an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., and his book was also one of King’s favorites. Thurman’s brief and powerful classic allows us to relive the disquiet of African American thinkers before the rise of the civil rights movement, in which many sought a credible revival of Christianity in the aftermath of slavery and in the middle of a century. of segregation. Thurman’s arguments resonate with our times and we can learn a lot from them.

He forcefully announces the theme of the book: “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back to the Wall. It is urgent that my point be clear. The masses of men constantly live with their backs to the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion tell them?

It is useful to consider Thurman’s case for a renewed Christianity in three stages. First, he returns to the historical Jesus – not a Jesus floating above history – and compares the unstable and threatened status of Jesus as a Jew living under Roman imperial power to the unstable and threatened status of the Afro -Americans living under the destructive whims of mid-century America. Powerful.

Second, Thurman argues that Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God was an ingenious way to deliver the oppressed from the ravages of fear, duplicity, and hatred (for Thurman, the three great spiritual enemies) engendered by the systems of oppression. To us today, Thurman’s arguments in this regard may seem both righteously moral and one-sidedly domestic. But it is essential to understand that he considered deliverance from these internal spiritual enemies as an indispensable step on the way to the transformation of society.

But it is the third aspect of Thurman’s argument that is most relevant now for reimagining Catholicism: its subtle evocation of the fight against fear, duplicity and hatred on the part of the oppressed. Today, we rightly speak of systemic racism and structures of oppression. But we don’t talk so commonly about the inner spiritual and human cost of such social evil.

Thurman frames his discussion of these destructive aspects of the human spirit by insisting that for Christianity to be credible, he must understand that anyone with their backs against the wall is above all trying to survive. And it is not survival understood as enduring in an otherwise sometimes oppressive world. Rather, it is about survival in the face of pervasive fear “bred by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere”.

Moreover, it is “violence devoid of the element of contestation. This is what the rabbit dreads and in the end cannot escape the dogs. Despair can almost be seen creeping into the trembling and throbbing body of the frightened animal.”

Finally, Christianity must also credibly address the fact that this struggle for survival “isn’t just about keeping the body alive,” Thurman said, “it’s more about how not to be killed. Don’t be killed becomes the great end, and morality takes its meaning from this center.”

Certainly, the situation of racism in mid-century America is not the situation of racism in America today. But Thurman’s demand for credible Christianity points to the elemental struggles for survival evident in Floyd’s murder and in the deadly burdens carried by people of color in the pandemic.

Gomez’s speech reflects almost no sense of such deadly battles. We need a Catholicism that responds to the prophetic challenge of Thurman and many others.