What Comes After “HeresyLetter Gate?”*

Alright, everybody: let’s take all the energy and outrage we have felt about this issue, multiply it by one thousand, and add it to the Black Lives Matter Movement.

This kerfuffle has certainly revealed and perhaps even sharpened the ways in which U.S.-American Catholics differ, but it has also highlighted at least one thing we hold in common: black lives do not matter to the overwhelming majority of us, at least not that much.

I wish “liberal” Catholics felt as much anger about the routine, state-sanctioned assaults on black life in this country as we have about the slurs and conspiracy theories of an editorialist.  (Really, we should care about the former much more than we do about the latter.)  I wish “conservative” Catholics spilt as much ink airing their ire against the racialized regime of freedom-denying mass incarceration as they have about the suggestion that a certain writer might not be that good at his job.  (Really, they should care about the former much more than they do about the latter).

Let us rally around the racial prophets of the Black Lives Matter Movement as we have rallied around this Synod. Let us build a church in which black lives truly matter and to whom white supremacy appears anathema.

*I gratefully borrow this term from the brilliant Kaya Oakes.