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VOICES
Spreading the Seeds of the Gospel An Interview with Gloria Purvis
Gloria Purvis, formerly the longtime host of the EWTN radio show Morning Glory, was interviewed for the Catholic Standard’s Black Catholic Voices series on Dec. 11, 2020, at the St. Ursula Chapel of the Archdiocese of Washington’s Pastoral Center in Hyattsville, Maryland. In the interview, Purvis discussed why she believes, as a Catholic, that seeking racial justice and opposing racism are pro-life issues.
Why do you consider the cause for racial justice, and the need to combat racism, as pro-life issues? GLORIA PURVIS – Well, let me just start by saying that racism is a sin and people go to hell for it. They can go to hell for it. That’s primarily why the Catholic Church is involved with issues of racism. It is not a political issue. It is a matter of people’s souls. And the reason it is a pro-life issue is because at the heart of racism is a denial of the dignity of the human person, and pro-life matters deal with the dignity of the human person. I mean, that’s a crux of the issue. It’s the same gospel imperative to defend life in the womb as it is to defend the dignity of the human person who is Black. And this country has a long history of basically embracing the demon of racism, and it has its effects. You can’t have centuries of evil embraced and naively think that it doesn’t have consequences, that it wouldn’t have a ripple effect. And the other thing that I think that people miss in the discussion on racism is the harm that has 18
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come to white people as well. For some reason people always and everywhere only think of the person that is oppressed, but never think of the harm that comes to the people who have been seduced by that kind of ideology, twisted by that kind of social conditioning. It’s so much so that we forget the harm that happens to the entire human family. God made us all of royal status, because we were made in His image and likeness. Racism says, “No, God is a liar, only some people are worthy of a royal status,” and that’s simply not true. That’s a lie from the pit of hell, and that is why we as Catholics should be involved in the racial justice movement and recognize it is very much at its heart a movement of a pro-life cause, because it deals with the dignity of the human person. Cardinal Gregory has noted that while the nation confronts the coronavirus, it must also address the virus of racism. What do you think the Catholic Church should do as an institution to combat racism, and what can and should individual Catholics do? GLORIA PURVIS – First of all, the Catholic Church needs to remind people that racism again is a sin, and it is a sin that imperils your eternity with God. It imperils your soul, and this is why we as Catholics are concerned about racism, because it is a matter of sin. Sometimes I think people think it’s merely a political issue, and we need to recognize this is about salvation. So, number one, we need to do that, address it as actually a sin. Number two, I think the Church also should have a reckoning with any place in the Church where instead of
