OPINION: Racial Tension in America is a Result of Spiritual Disobedience

(CHRISM NEWS/ SUZANNE CARL) Racism is apparently rampant in our country. Black men and boys are being gunned down by white police officers at an alarming rate. Any Catholic worthy of the name is appalled at the thought of white people killing black people with no consequences. But is that what is really happening?

If we are going to confront the stereotyping that is fundamental to racist attitudes we have to know what is really going on in our cities. I say cities because this is an urban problem. Smaller communities have deeper connections to their neighbors. Criminals are known to the person down the block as much as they are known to the local sheriff.

At the same time, stereotypes are not without foundation. What we do know is that most people are killed by those who know them best. These are the so-called crimes of passion. The statistics from the Bureau of Justice look like this:

Notice that the highest murder rate is black on black with white on white murders a close second. The black on white and white on black murder rates are relatively stagnant.

So what is a Catholic to do when asked about racist behavior by police officers against people of color? Is it racist to say that more blacks commit murder than whites? The facts bear this out, but are facts enough? Certainly, there must be underlying factors. The leaders of today’s racial tensions no longer advocate civil disobedience, but just plain disobedience.

In July of 2004, Gallup conducted a poll of attitudes and practices regarding religion. One thing that the poll showed was that across the board fewer men attend church services weekly or almost weekly. More Blacks attend regularly than any other segment of the population. Church attendance is down overall, what is interesting is that Gallup finds that 57% of Americans believe that religion can answer all or most of today’s problems, while only 30% believe religion is outdated and old fashioned. It’s no surprise that the more people attend church, the more they believe the church has the answer to problems.

Catholics who follow the pro-life movement are also aware that African-American women are 5 times more likely to have an abortion than white women. Religious affiliation and church attendance does not seem to affect this rate.

I once had an African American student, who on the last day of class said she was proudest of the fact that she was the first woman in her family to graduate from high school without getting pregnant.

So where are the men responsible for these pregnancies? Chances are that more of them are unemployed than their white counterparts. The following graph from the Pew Research Center shows that black or African-American unemployment is consistently twice that of whites.

A devaluation of life, unemployed parents, these things may be enough to explain why religious affiliation and church attendance aren’t enough to stop the train wreck of crime that seems to be a constant in poor, black communities. But one of the problems may be overlooked: Obedience.

On the Feast of the Holy Family, my Pastor, Father Damien Cook, spoke about the need for us all to understand the importance of obedience. The first four Commandments all deal with obedience. Specifically, being obedient to our parents is fundamental to navigating the hard teen years where a moment of experimentation, or a disregard for something we have learned from adults, or adolescent rebellion can impact the choices we have in the future.

The current racial climate is being stirred by those who want their followers to be disobedient. Don’t obey police officers. Fight, shoot, and kill them. For a segment of society to be that rebellious, the disobedience has to begin in the home, proceed throughout every cultural contact, and probably be multigenerational.

The aging leaders of the Civil Rights movement, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, along with President Obama and the entire on-air staff at MSNBC and most of CNN, want to continue the divisions they began with civil disobedience. They have moved on. Disobedience is enough.

In the traditional family, the father is the disciplinarian. In a matriarchal society, the father is mocked, discounted, divorced and removed. The black community has lost its fathers. They haven’t had them for decades.

Some Catholics feel the same way about our priests. When priests refuse to talk about the discipline necessary to be a Catholic in good standing, then they abdicate one of the essential roles of a father. It may be a stretch to compare the desolation of the African-American family to the loss of souls in the pews of Catholic churches, but the two events have at the very least been concurrent.

My conclusion is that issues regarding race in American stem from the destruction of the family. If Catholics want to put an end to this cultural divide, we must remember the virtue of obedience, particularly to fathers, both familial and spiritual.

#opinion