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Reginald Reese speaks during a listening session at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Parish, San Francisco on Nov. 14. (Photo by Dennis Callahan/Catholic San Francisco)
Nov. 16, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
The church must do more to include youth in its work to overcome racism, speakers at a listening session said.
About 20 people gathered Nov. 14 at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church for a meeting organized by the archdiocese’s racial reconciliation and justice committee. The committee’s work is part of the California Catholic bishops’ commitment to a yearlong anti-racism process, which begins with listening sessions to understand how community members have been affected by racism. The archdiocese held its first listening session Oct. 10 at St. Francis of Assisi in East Palo Alto.
Derek Gaskin, archdiocesan safety and security preparedness director, spoke about the lessons he learned running a jobs boot camp in Bayview-Hunters Point two decades ago and highlighted problems of violence and internal racism facing the community there.
Gaskin said the history of slavery and racism needs to be taught more in schools in order to bring about healing. “All the things I know now I had to teach myself. To have gone through education and never learn about this until after the fact, that’s a problem,” he said.
LyRyan Russell, a counselor and coach at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, said youth are often misunderstood and disconnected from older generations, but are a critical part of changing a community.
Russell said families and communities need to not only give children a good foundation but maintain it as they grow into adulthood. That involves adults showing leadership by exemplifying in their lives what they want to teach youth, he said.
“Some of our systems as adults are flawed and youth see that, they can see we haven’t done the work," Russell said. "I cannot be a fraud if I want them to trust me,” he said, arguing that any gap between teaching and action can be fatal to passing on values."
Stephen Staten, an adviser to the young adults organization Bay Area Catholics for Racial Justice, spoke about how police brutality and racial violence during the last year pushed him to find a Catholic response to it.
Staten acknowledged that the Black Catholic community in San Francisco is small and traced it back to a lack of evangelization and the historical involvement of the church in slavery and segregation, but said that the small number of Black Catholics means there is “even more reason to expose the church to our stories.”
Gabriela Moreno, speaking in Spanish, said children need to be taught that they are all family and need to respect each other. Teaching children to love each other and not let language, color or nationality divide them will overcome racism, she said.
Kathryn Parish Reese, chair of the archdiocese’s racial reconciliation committee, said passing on the Catholic faith to her children was made more difficult “because we don’t see people that look like us.” Her children were often the only Black students in their classes, and they met few if any Black priests, women religious or teachers.
Reginald Reese seconded the challenge the archdiocese faces in its anti-racism work because of the lack of representation of African American Catholics. “So how can we as a church move into the community and reach African American youth when we aren’t as represented as we need to be?” he asked.
Reese also brought up his experience of being shunned by some fellow Catholics at the sign of peace during Mass as an example of how the church needs to address racism among its members. “If you want to cure racism in the community you have to cure it in the churches too, or make it clear that it is not acceptable,” he said.
Christopher Major, the archdiocese’s African American ministries director, moderated the meeting and reminded everyone that Christians are called to participate in the world, in our salvation and to help others. “I hope through these listening sessions more and more people can connect with each other and learn from each other,” he said.
Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone spoke at the end of the session, responding to the themes repeatedly brought up by speakers. Family love is transformative, he said, and needs to be strengthened and protected from threats. The archbishop continued that racism can be overcome by building up intentional friendship between people. The Catholic Church is well positioned to do this because it contains the traditions and spiritual practices of many ethnicities and cultures, he said.
The archbishop said he was “horrified” by the stories Black speakers had shared of being shunned or ignored in church and said “we do have our own backyard to clean up.” If the church does that, it can do a better job of serving its local community, he said.
The archbishop said family, community and the church are important foundations for society and are necessary parts of overcoming racism.
“We need to strengthen these foundations if we want to build something that can withstand social turmoil,” he said. “