Racial Justice

Celebrating “Juneteenth” History
Outdoor Pancake Breakfast, Activities & Music
On June 19, 1865, union troops arrived in Texas, the westernmost of the confederate states.  They announced that enslaved people in the state were ‘freed’ by the Emancipation Proclamation decree which was signed two years earlier by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863.  And, that the Civil War was officially over.                                                                            
Sponsored by:  Hilltop Ministries (United Methodist, Abiding Mission, and Mary, Queen of Peace)                                            
Date:  Saturday, June 19, 2021                                                          
Time:  9:00-10:30am Pancakes; 10:30am-2:00pm Music & Activities                                                              
Location:  Hilltop United Methodist Church, 631 E. Warrington Ave. 15210

ABOUT JUNETEENTH
June 19, 1865 --- The day ALL enslaved black people living in the United States were MADE AWARE of the Emancipation Proclamation.
On January 1, 1863, ahead of the third year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION that declared all enslaved people in Confederate States free.
But not everyone in Confederate territory would be set free immediately.  It was not begun in places still under Confederate control.  As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later.  Their freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas.  The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were ‘free’ by executive decree and that the Civil War was officially over.
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, takes place annually on June 19^th.  The holiday is a combination of the words “June” and “nineteenth”. Although it has been celebrated in the African American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to most Americans. Juneteenth is not yet recognized as a national holiday. However, Washington, D.C. & some 48 states have passed legislation to recognize Juneteenth.
It was only through the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT did emancipation end slavery throughout the United States. It was passed by Congress January 31, 1865. It stated: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”.
The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, founded in 1994, recognized JUNETEENTH with a flag using the same colors as the U.S. flag.  It features red and blue stripe sections separated by an arc that signifies New Horizons and Opportunity.  In the middle is a large “star of Texas”.

You will also see people honoring Juneteenth with red, black & green flags.  These are the colors of the Pan-African flag, created in 1920.  This flag honors people of the African Diaspora (those peoples forced from their Africa homelands during the Transatlantic Slave Trades) and symbolizes Black Liberation and Freedom.

Some have wondered why a Catholic parish would focus on racial justice, wondering if we're veering "out of our lane" of the "spiritual" and inappropriately inserting ourselves into the realm of the political. It's a good question, and deserves a serious answer.

To put it simply, our parish (and our Catholic Church as a whole) must concern ourselves with racial justice because justice is something we are always called to by God, through our whole Judeo-Christian tradition, up to the present day. This extends from injunctions from the Biblical prophets ("And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God"), to Church leaders of every political persuasion (from Archbishop Chaput to Fr. Bryan Massingale, both of whom count racism as "America's original sin"), all the way through to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which calls racism an "intrinsic evil." The mandate to make racial justice a central focus came from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2018, when their ad hoc committee on racism manifested itself in a document for all the faithful, called Open Wide Our Hearts (see below, in "resources"). The murder of George Floyd this past May made the bishops' plea all the more tragically urgent.

Beyond the need to honor our Church's teaching on the dignity of all persons, we must focus on racial justice because real people within the Body of Christ are hurting, and we have no right to ignore their cry. In the Body of Christ, truly there is no "them" and "us." There is one "us" in the Body of Christ, and as Saint Paul proclaims to the Corinthians, "Whenever one member suffers, we all suffer with it; when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Cor 12:26). We bear witness to the suffering of our own members within the Body of Christ. We have no choice but to work to bind up Christ's broken body.

But how will we do that? Our parish strives to be a genuinely welcoming and diverse community, a place where people of all races and ethnicities can truly find welcome. We also acknowledge that this is not yet always the case.

 Our racial justice work right now is threefold:

1. Listen to the voices of people of color in our parish and surrounding community, lifting up their voices and experiences wherever possible
2. Educate ourselves and our people concerning Church teaching on racial justice and human dignity
3. Understand and acknowledge our own complicity in systemic and individual racism, working toward policy change (systemic) as well as conversion and repentance (individual).

We invite you to use this page as a place to get involved with our parish's efforts toward racial justice, learn about upcoming events in the larger Pittsburgh community, and grow in your understanding of the Catholic Church's place and teaching within it all.  

Parishioner Mary Pakutinskas is helping us remember the contributions of some important saints:

Saint Martin de Porres: the patron saint of persons of mixed race and those who suffer discrimination. Saint Martin de Porres was born the illegitimate son of a Spanish soldier and a freed slave. He was mocked because of his illegitimacy, race, and was even unacknowledged by his father for many years. To those who degraded him, he responded with kindness. Since Peruvian law prohibited people of color to enter the religious life, Martin worked as a servant to the Dominicans. He swept floors and answered the door. He became a lay brother after years of good works and miraculous cures. He founded orphanages and cared for African slaves who had been forced to come to Lima, Peru.

Saint Josephine Bakhita: patron saint of the Sudan. Saint Josephine Bakhita was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She was sold five times before she was purchased by the Italian consul to the Sudan. Her owner brought her to Italy to act as a nanny. When her owners wanted to take her back to the Sudan, she refused to go. An Italian court ruled her free since slavery was prohibited in Italy. In 1890, she was baptized, and three years later joined the Canossian Order. She was assigned to the convent in Schio. For the next fifty years, she served by cooking, sewing, and attending to the door.

Richard Neave: British expert in facial reconstruction and expert in anatomical art. He, with the assistance of Israeli archaeologists, recreated what they believe to be an image of Jesus. Neave's team acquired skulls from near Jerusalem, where Jesus lived and preached. They used three well-preserved specimens from the time of Jesus to create a 3D image. A first century CE Judean would have dark hair, brown skin, brown eyes, and a face that would be weathered from a career of physical labor outside. If so, that would make Jesus a person of color. 

Augustus Tolton: born into slavery in 1854 in Missouri. The Civil War and its chaos enabled him to escape to freedom. Having discerned a vocation to the priesthood, his attempts to go to seminary were thwarted, for he was rejected by every American seminary. He found acceptance in a seminary in Rome which trained priests for missionary service. There he studied for priesthood and was ordained in 1886. Hoping for a mission to Africa, he was assigned to Quincy, IL. He became the first African American Roman Catholic priest.

Saint Maurice of Aganaum: patron saint of the Swiss Guard. Saint Maurice was born near Egypt fewer than 250 years after Jesus. He joined the Roman army as a young man. He rose through the ranks and eventually became a general. He commanded a legion of 6,000 African soldiers. When given orders to stamp out a rebellion, they refused to take up arms against fellow Christians. Their disobedience brought martyrdom, to which they went without resistance. 

Learn More About Black Catholic Saints, Blesseds, and Holy People:

• The National Black Catholic Congress: Black Saints and Martyrs (nbccongress.org)
• Archdiocese of Chicago: News Media - Augustus Tolton (archchicago.org)
• Sister Thea Bowman | Cause for Canonization
• Black History Month events at Saint Benedict the Moor Church: St. Benedict the Moor Church - Pittsburgh, PA (sbtmparishpgh.com)
• PIP INFO FINAL.pdf

• St. Benedict the Moore - https://sbtmparishpgh.com
• Bro. Mickey McGrath "Thursday Thoughts at 3" Presented by NPM, honoring Black Catholic saints and spiritual leaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO4euSj5lXE
• Penn State Greater Allegheny: The Crossing Bridges Summit, Socioeconomic and Environmental Perspectives on Black Women's Health: https://www.watch.psu.edu/crossingbridges/
• Facing our Church's History of Slaveholding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ifKFhLzGA&feature=youtu.be
• I long for a Catholic Church that is unafraid to welcome Black people | America Magazine
• Stations of the Cross for Racial Justice: https://www.usccb.org/resources/stations-of-the-cross-overcoming-racism.pdf
• https://www.futurechurch.org/celebrating-women-witnesses-for-racial-justice-prayers-and-presentations#Form
• https://ignatiansolidarity.net/resources/faith-in-action-responding-to-racial-injustice/?utm_source=igsol.net&utm_medium=urlshortener
• Novena for Racial Justice: https://ignatiansolidarity.net/novena-for-racial-justice/?utm_source=igsol.net&utm_medium=urlshortener
• "The Art of Women Witnesses for Racial Justice with Chloe Becker," presented by FutureChurch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKimJJ7tO4Q
• For education on systemic injustices within our healthcare system: Mayo Clinic Race and Health.pdf

For information on our Haiti mission, Partners in Progress - Click here

Small Discipleship Groups for Racial Justice Are Back!
This Easter season, we re-visit and deepen our work of listening, praying and acting for racial justice within small faith communities. Beginning the week of April 12, we will meet for six weeks over Zoom. As with our other small discipleship groups, this is a way to “make Big Church small.” Small Discipleship groups invite us into deeper relationship with Christ and one another through reflections on Scripture, honest discussion, and courageous action.

Small discipleship groups for racial justice maintain this emphasis, while focusing on racial justice in a special way. In these groups, our Scripture will focus on justice, hope and lamentation. Our discussions aim to challenge, awaken, and at times, to comfort. Our action will be aimed at raising consciousness (for ourselves and our communities) and working for a more racially just world.

All are welcome. While these groups will in some ways pick up where we left off in the first Small Discipleship Groups for Racial Justice, experience with the first group is not necessary.

Materials needed: a copy of Olga Segura’s book: Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church and a Bible

Available groups:
Monday evenings from 7-8:30pm (led by Holly Mohr): April 12, April 19, April 26, May 3, May 10, May 17
Tuesday evenings from 7-8:30pm (led by Vicki Sheridan): April 13, April 20, April 27, May 4, May 11, May 18
Wednesday mornings from7-8:30am (led by Andy Benchek): April 14, April 21, April 28, May 5, May 12, May 19

To register, please contact Holly Mohr at hmohr@maryqueenofpeacepgh.org

For more information please - Click here

One of the ways we will be preparing for the celebration of Christ’s coming this Christmas, is a Zoom book discussion on the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson.  Advent is a time when we turn our attention to Christ’s second coming.  We look for ways to open our hearts to make ready the path of the Lord in our lives and in our society.  This year we have heard the voice of God in the people who have asked us to look at racism in America. We will actively wait together as we invite the Spirit of Truth to enlighten us and lead us to act from the truths that we will face and embrace. 

“Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author Isabel Wilkerson” explores racism “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, as a key illustration of the way that, beyond the specific categorizations of race or class, this process of creating artificial hierarchies can work to subjugate people in any culture.” (The Guardian)

Six Sessions Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. held virtually over Zoom

• December 1st, 8th, and 15th
• January 12th, 19th, 26th 

Please register:
Please email Jo Ann at jparadise@smomp.org .  A Zoom Link will be sent to all registrants the day of the discussion.  

June 29th, July 6th, July  13th  2020

In the wake of recent violence against people of color, many in our faith communities want to learn more: more about how we got to this place as a nation, more about our own biases, more about how to take positive action as members of the Body of Christ. Please join Dr. Jane Schuchert Walsh, parishioner and professor of sociology at Clarion University, as she leads us through safe and constructive discussion on these very topics. To register for this course, or for more information, please contact Holly Mohr at hmohr@smomp.org.

• Monday, June 29, 7:00 p.m. Segment One:  "The Difference Between Us"
• Monday, July 6, 7:00 p.m. Segment Two:  "The Story We Tell"
• Monday, July 13, 7:00 p.m. Segment Three:  "The House We Live It"

To view the Flyer - Click Here 

Toward a Catholic Understanding of "Black Lives Matter" - Fr. Matthew Hawkins - Click here

On African-American Spirituality-Fr. Matthew Hawkins: https://pittsburghcatholic.org/2021/02/12/fr-hawkins-african-american-spirituality-enriches-catholics/

United States Conference of Cathoic Bishops Statement of U.S. Bishop Chairmen in Wake of Death of George Floyd and National Protests- For the Join Committees' statement - Click here 

Bishop Zubik Calls for Calm and Addressing Racism -For his Bishop Zubik's statement - Click Here
Bishop Zubik Calls for Racial Healing - Click Here

For USCCB Document Open Wide our Hearts Summary and Call to Action - The Call to Address Racism in Our Hearts and Communities- Click here 

America Magazine - To fight racism, Catholics must hunger for Justice like we do for the Eucharist - Click Here

Pax Christi Anti-Racism Resources - Click Here