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U.S. Catholics divided by #BlackLivesMatter strategies as 2020 elections loom ahead

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The video of 75-year-old activist Martin Gugino being pushed to the ground earlier this month by police in riot gear highlighted the divide between protesters seeking criminal justice reforms and the very officers tasked with ensuring the safety of all citizens.

Gugino suffered a fractured skull in the June 4 incident in Buffalo, a city in upstate New York. He quickly became an example of officers using excessive force, one of many captured on video during protests that arose following the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. Gugino is described by friends as a devout Roman Catholic and a lifelong advocate for the poor.

“I think it's very unnecessary to focus on me. There are plenty of other things to think about besides me,” Gugino said in a statement.

Gugino’s activism and the Black Lives Matter protests have not only drawn attention to deep fissures in American society on the issue of race, but have further polarized American Catholics. This intra-Catholic doctrinal debate, which began in the 1960s with the Second Vatican Council, remains relevant regarding the relationship between faith and politics.

Progressive Catholics, dating back to Dorothy Day and her social activism of the 1930s, see it as their role to help the United States achieve racial equality.

Traditional Catholics, however, see Black Lives Matter — the actual organization with a detailed policy platform, as opposed to the #BlackLivesMatter cause — as part of a sinister force that wants to spread Marxist ideology. Journalists need to investigate the differences between Black Lives Matter the cause, with many peaceful protests across the nation, often with strong support from churches, and the actual political organization.

While Catholics agree that racism is an issue in American society, the proposed remedies for those ills differ wildly. Again, there are fierce debates here worthy of news coverage.

For example, many Catholics, particularly Latinos, were angered when protesters toppled a statue of Catholic missionary St. Junipero Serra in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco this past weekend. The same was done to Serra’s statue in Los Angeles. Some have accused the Spanish-born Serra, an 18th century Franciscan friar who is credited with bringing Roman Catholicism to California, of brutalizing Native Americans and forcing them to convert.

The events of recent weeks and the looming presidential election continues to fuel the divide among Catholics across the political spectrum.


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Journalists should focus more coverage on Catholic police chaplains and less on 'cancel culture'

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I have covered my share of police funerals over the years. With some regularity over the course of two decades working in journalism, police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty.

What follows — in print and on television — is a funeral, a mourning widow, crying family members and hundreds of officers gathered at a church. Even hardened reporters can tell you that covering these events can be heartbreaking.

There was no greater pain to hit New York City, and indeed the country, than the loses suffered with the 9/11 attacks. Of the 2,977 people killed in the attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, 412 were emergency workers who responded that day. They included:

* 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics) of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)

* 37 police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD)

* 23 police officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD)

* 8 emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private emergency medical services

* 1 patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol

That list keeps growing as more die each year from cancer and other health-related issues associated with the attacks.

While the death of these brave men and women is something Americans will never forget, one has to wonder about that legacy now that there is a movement to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder while in police custody in Minneapolis.

I was there on 9/11. As a reporter for the New York Post at the time, I was only blocks away when the second tower collapsed. I spent the next few months covering the tragedy and the many lives it impacted. One of the deaths I remember most was that of Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar who served as an FDNY chaplain. I had spoken with Judge just a few weeks prior to his death after he officiated the funeral Mass of Michael Gorumba, a rookie firefighter who died in August 2001. Gorumba suffered a heart attack shortly after battling a giant fire.

On 9/11, Judge was the first certified fatality.


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Plug-in: Seven pop-quiz questions about Donald Trump's photo op with a Bible

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What’s left to say about the week’s biggest religion story?

President Donald Trump’s now-famous walk from the White House to the nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church literally broke the internet. Or at least it overloaded the Religion News Service servers. Credit an explosive report by national correspondent Jack Jenkins for that.

Rather than rehash the details from all the stories about Trump’s photo op, let’s see who was paying close attention.

That’s right — it’s time for a pop quiz. I’ll share the answers at the bottom of this column:

1. Did police really use tear gas to break up a peaceful protest so Trump could cross the street and pose with a Bible?

2. Who did authorities expel from the church’s patio before the president’s arrival?

3. What version of the Bible did Trump hold up?

4. Did the Bible belong to Trump?

5. When did the tradition of St. John’s Episcopal Church as the “church of the presidents” begin?

6. What well-known religion writer, in analyzing the president’s visit, wrote that Trump brandished “a Bible like a salesman in a bad infomercial?”

7. Did Trump emerge from the photo op looking like a thug or a hero?

Bonus question: What religious site did Trump visit the day after the church photo op?

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Trump pushes churches to reopen, but black pastors in hard-hit St. Louis preach caution: Hey, remember when the coronavirus pandemic was all we were talking about?


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Weekend thinking about this complex reality: More and more Americans hate each other

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It’s impossible, at the moment, to follow political and religious threads on social media without running into lots and lots of hate. This is not something that started in the past two weeks or even during the 2016 race for the White House.

With that sobering thought in mind, I offer a Damon Linker essay at The Week as our weekend think piece. The headline: “Don't willfully ignore the complexity of what's happening in America right now.”

However, before we go there, let me share some sobering observations from an “On Religion” column I wrote in 2004 about the work of political scientists Gerald De Maio, a Catholic, and Louis Bolce, an Episcopalian, who teach at Baruch College in the City University of New York. The headline: “Stalking the anti-fundamentalist voter.”

This was one of the first times when I realized that “hate” was becoming a strong factor in public life — especially when driven by a loaded religious term like “fundamentalist.”

First we need some background. Bolce and De Maio:

… have focused much of their work on the "thermometer scale" used in the 2000 American National Election Study and those that preceded it. Low temperatures indicate distrust or hatred while high numbers show trust and respect. Thus, "anti-fundamentalist voters" are those who gave fundamentalists a rating of 25 degrees or colder. By contrast, the rating that "strong liberals" gave to "strong conservatives" was a moderate 47 degrees.

Yet 89 percent of white delegates to the 1992 Democratic National Convention qualified as "anti-fundamentalist voters," along with 57 percent of Jewish voters, 51 percent of "moral liberals," 48 percent of school-prayer opponents, 44 percent of secularists and 31 percent of "pro-choice" voters. In 1992, 53 percent of those white Democratic delegates gave Christian fundamentalists a thermometer rating of zero.

"Anti-fundamentalist voter" patterns are not seen among black voters, noted De Maio. Researchers are now paying closer attention to trends among Hispanics.

What about the prejudices of the fundamentalists? Their average thermometer rating toward Catholics was a friendly 62 degrees, toward blacks 66 degrees and Jews 68 degrees.

This brings us to a complex set of remarks by Linker. Here is the overture:


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Podcast: Looking for progress after George Floyd killing? Look in pews, not political fights

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In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, news consumers have been reading all kinds of reaction quotes from all kinds of important people, including religious leaders, on the left and right sides of American public life.

During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), host Todd Wilken and I tried to look past the recent headlines and focus on where coverage of this national tragedy could be going in the weeks ahead, especially in terms of religion-beat news.

With that in mind, let me start with the following question. Who said this, in reaction to the hellish video and subsequent revelations about Floyd’s death?

This makes me sick to my stomach. … To watch a police officer kill an unarmed black man — with no concern on his face, his hand in his pocket, indifferent to the bystanders begging for something to be done to help the man — is so disturbing. He and the other officers on the scene refused to listen and refused to respond. I hope they have deep regret and remorse for their actions. Police are not the judge and jury. These officers will have to stand before God and the authorities on this earth for what they have done.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson? The Rev. Martin Luther King III? That final line about divine judgment is strong enough for both of those preachers.

Actually, the answer is the Rev. Franklin Graham.

Yes, I also saw Graham’s statement bashing liberal clergy for their harsh reactions to President Donald Trump’s photo op with the Bible. But let’s try, try, try to stay focused on the racism discussions, for a moment. Graham’s Floyd statement could have been endorsed by others.

I asked Wilken some questions about America’s discussions of institutional racism and the potential for reform in police departments.

I asked if Wilken expected progress in talks between:

(1) Trump and Democrat Joe Biden? The answer is obviously “no,” said Wilken. I agreed.

(2) Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill? Wilken gave the same answer. Me too.

(3) African-American and white cops and the organizations in which they are involved?


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When covering riots and flames, it's wise to seek veteran voices from black churches

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It was impossible to continue business as usual in a seminary classroom in the spring of 1992, as flames and violence spread through parts of Los Angeles.

This was especially true while team-teaching a seminar blending studies of the Old Testament prophets with moral and spiritual signals drawn from contemporary news and entertainment media. In this particular seminar at Denver Seminary, half of the future pastors were black and half were white.

Old Testament prophets? Hear a few words from Jeremiah 22:

Hear the word of the Lord, O King of Judah sitting on the throne of David — you, and your servants, and your people who enter these gates. Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place. … (If) you will not heed these words, I swear by myself, says the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.

Our leader, the late Haddon Robinson — one of the greatest homiletics professors ever — approved the following assignment, as we approached the first Sunday during the riots. We asked each white student to contact a black pastor, seeking insights into the sermon preached that Sunday. We asked black students to contact white pastors with the same goal.

I thought of that assignment while reading waves of news coverage of the protests and riots — note that the distinction — after the death of George Floyd, his neck under a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee. I also remembered that seminar in 2015, standing in my front yard watching smoke and flames in the night sky over Baltimore.

It’s impossible to do justice to the many religious themes and images in the events — peaceful and violent — linked to Floyd’s death, from the many protestors kneeling in prayer (sometimes with police) to rioters painting obscene curses on historic sanctuaries.

But we can see one constant that journalists should remember under these circumstances: The voices of the black church will be there — somewhere — and if you seek them out, you will find words, images and ideas that are crucial to those building coalitions seeking justice and change. And when it’s time to heal and clean up, look for religious folks of all kinds — black, white, whatever. They will be there, day after day.


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Haunted by holy ghosts: 'Devout Christian' cop is so 'blessed,' but questions remain

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Dallas-area police officer Eric Fieilo definitely considers himself "blessed."

That much is made clear in a recent front-page profile of Fieilo by the Dallas Morning News.

What that whole "blessed" word means, precisely, is another matter.

EULESS — Officer Eric Fieilo's patrol shifts usually begin and end in the area where he grew up.
The run-down apartment complex where he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and four siblings. The pistachio green house where Fieilo and his friends often hung out after school. And Euless Trinity High School, where he played football and helped his team win the state championship in 2007.
Around this time eight years ago, Fieilo became known as the kid who assaulted an official during a playoff game against Allen High School. It was his last game as a senior, and the one he's most ashamed of.
But Fieilo, now 25 years old and a devout Christian, says his most embarrassing moment on the football field turned out to be his biggest blessing.
"You know that saying that you take one forward and three steps back?" he said. "It was the opposite for me: I took one step back and five steps forward."

In fact, the word "blessing" appears three times in the story -- twice in direct quotes by the officer. "God," too, is mentioned three times -- once again, twice in direct quotes by Fieilo. And as you noticed, the newspaper describes Fieilo as a "devout Christian."

So how dare I write a GetReligion post suggesting that the story is haunted by holy ghosts? 


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New adventures in 'scare quotes,' in which New York Post has doubts about prayer

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Every now and then, GetReligion readers see something online -- several weeks after the item actually appeared in a mainstream newsroom -- and send it to us. That time delay matters, if there is a strong time element in the piece.

That isn't a problem with this recent piece at The New York Post. This is another one of those strange updates on one of your GetReligionistas favorite topics -- "scare quotes." No this isn't another "religious liberty" case.

This is totally new territory, so hang on. First you have to know the context for this strange issue in journalism style. Here is how the story begins:

A nearly six-hour standoff in Columbus Circle ended Thursday morning when a suicidal man wearing a red helmet suspected of tossing a hoax bomb into a police vehicle was taken into custody without incident.
The man, identified by police as Hector Meneses of Queens, was taken into custody on a stretcher at around 8 a.m. after cops were forced to pepper spray him, police said. Dozens of officers, their guns drawn, had surrounded the car and SWAT team members had cleared the circle, as they brought in equipment to deal with Meneses.
“I have a bomb strapped to me, and I want to die,” he’d told cops, according to police officials.

Now the two cops inside the patrol car where Officer Peter Cybulski and Sgt. Hameed Armani.

Now, if you were in that patrol van, in the current atmosphere surrounding police in America, and some unknown person tossed a strange package into the vehicle, package making a strange noise, what would you think?

Next question: What would you do? The odds are that you would do several things at once, including a rather predictable religious behavior. Read carefully.


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Yes, reporters ignored that Gospel of John flub in President Obama's speech in Dallas

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Clearly, President Barack Obama knew that if he was going to speak during a public memorial service in Dallas, it would be wise -- metaphorically speaking -- to bring a Bible and to quote it early and often. Obama did precisely that.

After all, former President George W. Bush was also going to be speaking during this event and, since he is a native who speaks Texan, you just knew that he would be quoting scripture. Sure enough, he did.

But if you are looking for news reports that explored the biblical elements of this important Obama address you will need to do some digging. In fact, there are fewer biblical references in the relevant news reports than there were in the early hours after that speech, for a very interesting reason. Hold that thought.

At the top of the news media food chain, the current version of the New York Times report on the speech at least mentions, vaguely, that the Bible played a role in this interfaith memorial rite:

DALLAS -- President Obama said on Tuesday that the nation mourned with Dallas for five police officers gunned down by a black Army veteran, but he implored Americans not to give in to despair or the fear that “the center might not hold.”
“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem,” Mr. Obama said at a memorial service for the officers in Dallas, where he quoted Scripture, alluded to Yeats and at times expressed a sense of powerlessness to stop the racial violence that has marked his presidency. But Mr. Obama also spoke hard truths to both sides.

Now, after reading that, I expected to see some biblical quotations in the news coverage. However, they didn't make the cut into the final version of the Times story. Yes, there is a reason for that -- as noted by one M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway.

Here's a hint, in the report at NBC News:

Invoking scripture and the nation's long civil rights struggle, Obama urged all of them to remember their shared goals of justice and peace.
He quoted from the Gospel of John: "Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."


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