Ignatius Press, a pretty good Catholic publisher, recently released a new book that deals, we are to believe, with a besetting sin, and you don’t need a doctorate in theology to know what that sin is: racism. It’s called Building a Civilization of Love: A Catholic Response to Racism, by Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers. One would like to think a deacon somewhere someday will write Keeping a Civilization We Love: A Catholic Response to the Great Replacement. Alas and alack, that one will have to wait.
Burke-Sivers looks like a nice fellow. I’m quite sure he’s sincere and well-meaning. Problem is, as the book promo material shows, the book’s premise is false:
A worldly, political response to racism is not enough. This book is a Catholic Christian response to the epidemic of racism, firmly rooted in the Scriptures, the natural law, the Church’s Tradition, and our identity as children of God.
But what is racism? Is it just “prejudice”? Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers carefully distinguishes the sin of racism from the kind of instinctive bias that marks all fallen mankind, in order to help us find a path to deeper unity.
Building a Civilization of Love takes an honest look at Critical Race Theory, Liberation Theology, and the Black Lives Matter Movement, weighing their merits. Burke-Sivers asks in each case whether there might be anything contained in them that Catholics can use to facilitate the healing and reconciliation of racial division.
A truly Catholic response to racism must begin locally, in our own parishes, towns, and homes, in the here and now. Ameliorating racism will require hard work, humility, vulnerability, sacrifice, and love. But by admitting our own weaknesses and opening ourselves to God’s mercy, we can bring Christ’s healing grace to our world.
Of course, “racism” is not an “epidemic” … unless one is speaking of the anti-white racism that is indeed rampant and everywhere around us, from non-violent hate hoaxes, Critical Race Theory, and the openly anti-white Biden Regime to very violent polar bear hunting, black-on-white murder, and the officially approved advocacy of white genocide.
As I wrote in 2019 about the Catholic bishops’ stupid letter on “racism,” even if racism is a sin, others are at least more pressing and a greater peril to Western society, not least those committed at our southwest border and all across Europe.
Some of us, again, await either a deacon’s book or bishops’ letter about those sins, some of them mortal:
