| U.S. News

In the document, “’Made in the Image and Likeness of God’: A Pastoral Letter on Racial Harmony,” released Dec. 15, New Orleans Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes begged forgiveness for acts the church committed that were racially insensitive or did not promote racial harmony, and committed the church to action.

The pastoral was made available in its entirety in the Dec. 16 issue of the Clarion Herald (www.clarionherald.org).

“I want to express an apology for the way in which I or other members of the church have acted or failed to act,” he said. “I want to acknowledge the past in truth, seek forgiveness and recommit myself and our church in New Orleans to realizing the gospel message in our relations with one another.”

It was released on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the issuance by New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel of the landmark and controversial pastoral, “The Morality of Racial Segregation.”

“In this 1956 ground-breaking message,” Archbishop Hughes said of his predecessor, “he announced that racial segregation was to be gradually dismantled in all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese. He stated unequivocally: ‘Racial segregation as such is morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity-solidarity of the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve.’”

The archdiocese celebrates “this courageous pioneer of racial integration,” Archbishop Hughes said, “even as we try to make a realistic assessment of the progress and the challenges that are ours today.”

About a quarter of the 41,000 students in archdiocesan Catholic schools represent ethnic minorities, with more than 7,000 are African-Americans, almost 1,500 are Hispanic, more than 1,000 are Asian-American and about 200 are multi-racial, he noted.

He cited the Ursuline Sisters welcoming of children of different races and religious backgrounds going back to 1727 and St. Katharine Drexel’s establishing of 40 schools for African-Americans in south Louisiana, including the formation of Xavier University in New Orleans, as examples of the church’s role in the city’s three centuries of “multi-racial and multi-cultural” history.

But he pointed to the presence of racism in the church in the past and its existence today that it must work to purge.

While acknowledging his own reluctance to use “the emotionally charged” term “racism,” Archbishop Hughes said that the Catholic Church “is not of hesitant to define racism as both a personal sin and a social disorder rooted in the belief that one race is superior to another.”

“Racism can be both personal and institutional,” he stressed. “Hence, it involves not only individual prejudice but also the use of religious, social, political, economic or historical power to keep one race privileged.”

Institutions, he noted, can “foster attitudes or practices that leads to unjust discrimination” in political life, in education, in housing and in establishing blockages to equal economic opportunities.

Institutional racism is also present in the Catholic Church, he said.

“When members, whether in leadership or not, treat other racial or cultural expressions as inferior or unwelcome, they contribute to an institutional form of racism within the church – for which we must continually repent and ask forgiveness,” the archbishop said.

“Unfortunately, today as in the past,” he added, “we in the church have been slow to appreciate the full depth and breadth of the meaning of divine revelation that each human person is made in the image and likeness of God.”

The archbishop admitted that the church’s response “to this unjust situation has been uneven and often half-hearted.” He pointed to the church not working hard enough to make its teaching against racism known to the Catholic community and the public at large, in not giving racism “a high priority,” and not reacting quickly enough to deal with the issue of “white flight” from parishes.

He pointed to the painful suffering in post-Katrina New Orleans, noting that “the devastating flood water has brought home the still unaddressed issues which weigh heavily upon us: the unacceptably high rate of poverty among African Americans; the limited choices in education because of the failing public schools; the disproportionate percentages without health insurance; the difficulty in finding adequate affordable housing.”

He offered the hope that “the waters of Katrina (which means cleansing) were not only to wreak devastation, but also to wash away the stain of racial prejudice and division, and enable us to rise to a new life of racial justice and harmony.”

The impact of Hurricane Katrina, the archbishop said, reinforced for him the need to address “the racial undercurrent to so many issues we face in our community.”

“The housing crunch, ...