Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.
FAITH FEEDS GUIDE RACE AND CATHOLICISM: VOICES
CONTENTS
• Introduction to FAITH FEEDS 3
• FAQ 4
• Ready to Get Started 5
• Conversation Starters 6
• How Long, O Lord? by Mario Powell, S.J. 7
Conversation Starters 9
• Discerning Justice by A. Taiga Guterres 10
Conversation Starters 11
• That We May Be One by Fr. Joshua Johnson 12
Conversation Starters 13
• Gathering Prayer: Lectio Divina 14
The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation about faith.
The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.
The cover of today’s Faith Feeds is a photo of Fr. Joshua Johnson, a priest and contributor to Ascension Presents. The photo directly left is by of Jesus and Mother Mary from St. Mary’s Chapel at Boston College. The marginal photo throughout the guide is of Martin Luther King Jr. at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Washington D.C., courtesy of Johnathon Kelso.
The C21 Center Presents
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?
Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.
Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?
You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10-12 people.
What is the host’s commitment?
The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.
What is the guest’s commitment?
Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.
Still have more questions?
No problem! Email karen.kiefer@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.
READY TO GET STARTED?
STEP ONE
Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.
STEP TWO
Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.
STEP THREE
Review the selected readings from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/ FAITHFEEDS.
STEP FOUR
Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the discussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!
STEP FIVE
Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Here are two articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. In addition to the scriptural passages, you will find a relevant quotation, reflection, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go wherever the Holy Ghost leads. Conversations should ensure confidentiality.
This guide’s theme is Race and Catholicism: Voices.
HOW LONG, O LORD?
by Mario Powell, S.J.
“How long, o Lord?” When injustice prevails, and the poor are ground into despair.
George Floyd.
Ahmaud Arbery.
Breonna Taylor Oscar Grant.
“How long, O Lord?” Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
Eric Garner.
Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Emmett Till.
These are names we know, and these are the words of Psalm 13. After the death of yet another Black man they are my words as well. The psalmist is angry, questioning why God has not acted. The stench of sin filled the nostrils of God. God smelled it, tasted it. As of old, it is again today.
As a 38-year-old Black Jesuit priest, this is a familiar smell for me. It stinks. Its smell and the reactions it provokes in Black Americans is impossible to avoid. The video of the murder of George Floyd stinks as well. I have undergone periods of paralysis, disbelief, anger, numbness, fear, and despair since watching those agonizing nine minutes.
I am in disbelief that George Floyd’s death is yet another Black male body that has been brutalized and murdered right in front of my eyes. I am angry at the banal and vanilla statements put out by many, includ-
ing Catholic leaders. I have become numb by the sheer number of these events.
But there is something new to me in this experience. It is the fear I feel not just for myself or for Black Americans in general, but for the 80 young Black children who are students at the middle school I have been asked to lead: Brooklyn Jesuit Prep. I fear what... [is] in store for them and other Black children of central Brooklyn. I fear that without summer jobs or camps, and faced with over-policing, more black youths will have encounters with police — encounters that often do not end well for people who look like them.
There have been times that I have found it difficult to hold despair at bay. In the face of [the video], words telling these Black and brown children how much I love them seem to fall flat. But these children are already loved; they already know they are loved as children of God. [I]n the face of those nine minutes, it is not they who need a message but our world, our country and our collaborators. Perhaps you do as well.
As a Black Jesuit priest, I mainly live in a white world, which means it is my burden, responsibility, and task to talk about events like this with my white brothers and sisters. These conversations happen after every sensationalized Black death. Sometimes my friends and collaborators just want to talk. Sometimes they call to listen. Usually, these conversations include a desire to better understand or to participate in some way. But I must admit that I often avoid these conversations — and not because these people are unimportant to me or because these issues do not need to be discussed. I avoid them because they are exhausting. [W]hile white people can engage these issues at their leisure, discuss them in person or on social media and then withdraw again to their daily concerns, I cannot do that. The students for whom I am responsible cannot do that. Black America cannot do that. I am exhausted because we cannot withdraw from this painful cycle.
Psalm 13 is the cry of black Americans. We have been crying out this question for centuries. But we cannot cry it alone anymore.
I am tired of it. Change requires change.
Of course, this means making changes to our unjust system: We have to change the structures that prevent Black people from voting. Substandard education must be improved. We need to change unjust laws that produce economic inequality. The criminal justice system must be reformed.
But how does such change happen? Simply put, these structures will not change until individual white Americans get close to Black and brown people. Until you can smell the stench of sin that we smell; until you can see in those nine minutes a Black man as a brother and not withdraw from his suffering; until you can feel the pain of that knee on your own neck; until then nothing will change. These structures will not change until that body has a name and relationship to you.
Let me be clear: This is Christianity. This is what it is to be one body in Christ. Here are Pope Francis’ words: “Christian doctrine... is alive,” he insists. “[It] knows being unsettled, enlivened.” This means Christianity has flesh, breath, a face. In the pope’s words, Christianity “has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: It is called Jesus Christ.”
It is also called George Floyd and Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin.
It is the soft flesh of these Black bodies that America must grow close to. It is Jesus in the soft flesh of the Black and brown children all across this land that this country must come to know.
How long O Lord?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Psalm 13 is the cry of Black Americans. We have been crying out this question for centuries. But we cannot cry it alone anymore. Until you grow close to our suffering, until it fills your eyes and ears, your minds and hearts, until you jump up on the cross with black Americans, there can be no Easter for America.
Mario Powell, S.J., is the president of Brooklyn Jesuit Prep. At Regis High School in Manhattan, he directed the REACH Program for four years, which helps disadvantaged students earn scholarships in order to attend elite schools. He is a 2003 alumnus of Boston College.
This article appeared, under the headline “‘How long, O Lord?’ Psalm 13 is the cry of black Americans,” in the July 2020, issue of America Magazine. Published in C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2021.
HOW LONG, O LORD?
Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven. The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land.
— Psalm 85
Summary
Mario Powell, S.J., presents Psalm 13 as a lament for Black Americans who continue to experience the violence of racism, longing for the day when “justice and peace shall kiss.” Fr. Mario is the president of Brooklyn Jesuit Prep. His many Black and brown students who live in over-policed neighborhoods reminds him of the urgency of conversion. Not only must economic, social, educational, and judicial structures change, hearts must convert. White Americans in particular must see their Black neighbors as brothers and sisters whose suffering is an affront to the human family’s solidarity.
Questions for Conversation
• Perfect justice and peace will not be achieved on earth. Yet how could our society change by pursuing perfect justice and peace regarding racial injustice and division?
• What does Fr. Mario mean when he says that there is no Easter unless white Christians jump on the cross of Black Americans? What would it look like to jump on the cross?
• Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov that true brotherhood will not appear on earth until everyone sees themself as responsible for other people’s sins. How might this idea be relevant to racial injustice in the U.S.?
DISCERNING JUSTICE
by A. Taiga Guterres
When I was about 8 years old, I moved to a neighborhood with a high concentration of Japanese people. My mother, being from Japan, finally had somewhat of a community where she could speak her native language and have a felt sense of home. But sometime in middle school, I found out that nearby in the neighborhood had been a site for a Japanese internment camp at the height of World War II. That was why my mom had other people to talk to in her native language. Once I became aware of this, there was no unseeing it for me.
Anytime I saw the town or met another Japanese family, there was always that ghost of what had happened to those who looked like me almost 80 years ago. The consciousness of this history forever changed how I saw and related to my neighborhood and home.
About 5 months ago, I happened to be in Minneapolis when George Floyd was murdered, and the third precinct was burning. The anxieties of quarantine fatigue and the unsettled cries for justice continued as I came back to Boston. Out of the signs that many were holding, there was one in particular that haunted me for weeks. It simply said, “60 years later.” And while I am not African American, and have not experienced police brutality, it was clear to me that here too, there was a haunting and scratching of open wounds that started long ago.
It stirred in me this question—What does it mean to heal from these historical and embodied wounds? What am I looking for when I call for justice and how am I to think of this as a person of faith?
For some, the murder of George Floyd has ingrained the reality of racialized traumas into their
visceral memory. Yet, for others, this was an event that has cut into a wound that has always been there. In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, there is an emphasis on both memory and imagination. But in my discernment for justice, whose memory do I include and whose imagination?
As a Catholic, I’m called to draw from the sacred Scriptures, but I’m also called to draw from the richness of the tradition. Catholic Social Teaching challenges me to discern justice in light of things such as the common good, the option for the poor, and solidarity. Saint Oscar Romero, S.J. pushes this even more concretely in his notion of epistemological privilege. This notion is that those who are experiencing the injustices—the marginalized and crucified peoples—have a certain privileged knowledge of what is wrong and of what is needed. This is whose memory and imagination I must faithfully incorporate into my discernment of justice. In my own community here in Boston and in my parish, I am continuing to be more conscious of the haunting of racialized violence towards Black and brown bodies and the lamentations of their open wounds. My faith calls me to formulate a moral imagination that is informed by their epistemological privilege in order to authentically discern justice towards the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Antonio Taiga Guterres, is the Assistant Director for the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. He is also a candidate for a Master of Arts in Theology & Ministry and Master of Social Work through the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College. Published in C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2021.
Photo by Dennis Schrader on Unsplash
DISCERNING JUSTICE
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” — Matthew 25:35-36
Summary
A. Taiga Guterres reflects on his own experience with a historical and embodied wound. Growing up as a Japanese American in a neighborhood near a WWII internment camp, Taiga had privileged knowledge of injustice against people who looked like him, and he carried that knowledge in himself. So, when George Floyd was murdered, Taiga could see the historical, embodied wounds afflicting the bodies of Black Americans. He desires to more truly incorporate the privileged knowledge of Black and brown people into his own spirituality, just as Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercises instructs readers to prayerfully use their memories and imaginations to discern God’s will.
Questions for Conversation
• Do you have any experience with an “embodied, historical” wound? Have you had a vulnerable conversation with someone who does?
• Such wounds are sometimes centuries old and yet remain fresh. What is the spiritual responsibility of the descendants of those who wounded others? How can all Christians participate in the healing of those suffering with historical wounds?
• What is the role of imagination in healing, whether the healing is yours or another’s?
THAT WE MAY BE ONE
by Fr. Joshua Johnson
My mother is Catholic and white, and my father is Methodist and black. They raised our family in the Catholic Church, but I never really felt connected to the Church and didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. I lived a lifestyle that was not conducive to becoming a saint.
My mom made us go to religious education classes, and one of my friends was a white girl who recognized that there were only a few black kids in our class and never any black kids in youth group. She was intentional about making us feel seen and welcome. The summer before my senior year, she invited me to a Catholic youth conference. I didn’t want to go, but for some reason I said, “Yes, I would love to.”
On Saturday night during the conference, Bishop Sam Jacobs processed the Blessed Sacrament through the crowd of thousands of teenagers. For the first time in my life, I perceived that the Eucharist was in fact the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. The first words I perceived from him were, “I love you,” and from that moment, I knew I wanted to be in a relationship with Jesus—specifically in the Eucharist—for the rest of my life.
I then perceived an invitation to discern the priesthood. I initially said no, but over time I began to desire to become a priest. After eight years of formation, I was ordained on May 31, 2014.
Photo by Dennis Schrader on Unsplash
We Are One Body
My greatest desire is to console the heart of Jesus; and in John 17, Jesus reveals his heart’s desire for us. He prays to the Father that there may be unity—that we may be one as he and the Father are one.
I think this is a unique time in history, and God has created us to bring about unity and renew and restore the body of Christ.
For years I have been speaking as a biracial man about healing the racial divide in this country; it’s in my DNA. In recent days, I’ve been so inspired by the number of Catholics who have shared with me that for the first time in their lives they feel inspired by God to pray, fast, and work with others to really bring about racial reconciliation.
St. Paul says that we must make up for what is lacking in the suffering of the body of Christ (cf. Col 1:24). Every Catholic is responsible for every member of the body. If any member is suffering, whether they’re white, black, or brown, we are all responsible for that member. I must offer up penances and sacrifices in spiritual reparation, to bring about reconciliation with the entire community.
It’s a biblical spiritual practice to repent not only of our sins, but for the sins of others. I encourage people who have never said the N-word or have never participated in an institution that discriminated against people of color to repent on behalf of other Christians who have never said “I’m sorry” to God. I encourage people to pray the rosary for this specific intention, as well as for the souls of our ancestors who have not repented.
A Seat at the Table
We need to start with silence and prayer—listening and spending time with the Lord. We must also spend time with, listen to, and learn from our brothers and sisters in Christ who have been hurting. We need to fast from speaking so that we can hear their stories about how they’ve been impacted by unjust policies and practices and by racial prejudice and discrimination.
One of the stories I love to share is about Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans [a West Roxbury, Massachusetts, native and former auxiliary bishop of Boston]. He noticed that a lot of faithful black Catholics were leaving the Church, so he invited them to sit at his table. He heard something that shocked him: Catholic churches and organizations were hosting gatherings at a local country club that would not allow black membership. This wasn’t the ’70s; this was the 2000s.
Archbishop Hughes responded by writing a pastoral letter against racism. Then a lot of Catholics began to stand up against it and began to pull their money out of that country club, which eventually changed its practice.
There are a lot of practical ways to make things right in the body of Christ today. Support Catholic schools in your diocese that primarily serve minority communities and are struggling financially. Look at handbook policies and see if there is anything there that might be discriminating against people of color. Add more artwork depicting saints who were black and brown, Asian and indigenous—not just European saints, whom I love.
I believe that we have to take seriously the commandment of Jesus, “Go out and make disciples of all nations.” The word “nations” is actually translated from Greek ethnos, which is where we get the word ethnicity. When St. John had a vision of heaven in the book of Revelation, he said, “Behold, I see people of different races, nations and tongues” (cf. Rev 7:9). Our goal as Catholics should be this: I want my Church on earth to look like the Church in heaven. This is how I want my parish community, my Knights of Columbus council, my Bible study group, my diocese, and my nation to look—with every member abiding in personal, intentional, consistent relationship with each other. And until my earth is like heaven, I have a lot of work to do.
Fr. Josh Johnson is the pastor of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Louisiana and is the Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Baton Rouge. He hosts the Ascension programs Altaration, YOU: Life, Love, and the Theology of the Body, and Ask Father Josh.
This article appeared in the July 2020 issue of Columbia magazine and is reprinted with permission of the Knights of Columbus, New Haven, Conn.
THAT WE MAY BE ONE
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” — John 17:20-21
Summary
Fr. Joshua Johnson sees our Lord’s prayer in John 17 to include the pursuit of racial reconciliation and unity. Jesus expressly says that the world will know that He is the divine Son of the Father by the way we love one another and preserve unity. True Christian unity strictly excludes racism and its consequences. Fr. Josh recommends a number of practices that can help believers become more aware of racial disunity and help become a more unified family of God. The hope is that the Church will be an icon of the future heavenly reality of many races and ethnicities gathering around one throne to glorify the one true God!
Questions for Conversation
• Do you pray for unity in the Church? Do you trust that prayer is supernaturally powerful and that the Lord will fulfill His promise to answer our prayers more generously than we could imagine?
• Do you like any of Fr. Johshua’s recommendations for pursuing racial unity? What other practices might be fruitful?
• Fr. Josh says we must listen to God and to Black folks. How can you listen to the experiences of Black friends without making them feel like specimens?
GATHERING PRAYER
Lectio Divina on 1 Corinthians 12
In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
For more information about Faith Feeds, visit bc.edu/c21faithfeeds This program is sponsored by Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center, a catalyst and a resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church.
