PROMISING PRACTICE FOR DENOUNCING RACISM:

A Pastoral Letter on Racism by Francis Cardinal George,

Archbishop of Chicago

(This letter was reprinted as submitted with minor formatting adjustments.)

1. INTRODUCTION:

seat, the long seat that permitted us to look through the

DWELLING TOGETHER

back window of the bus as we moved forward. Although

we would not have been able to explain it, we created our

If you dwell in me, and my words dwell in you, ask

own space and had the feeling of surveying the bus and

whatever you want and you shall have it. This is how my

the street from a privileged vantage point. We struggled

Father is glorified; you are to bear fruit in plenty and so

and jostled to sit in that last seat.

be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have

Sitting in the back of the bus had a very different

loved you. Dwell in my love. If you heed my commands,

connotation in a southern state governed by  Jim Crow 

you will dwell in my love, as I have heeded my Father's

laws. When my friends and I got on the bus in Memphis,

commands and dwell in his love (John 15:7 10).

I rushed to the back of the bus, only to be told by the

In this first year of the third millennium, we are called

conductor that I could not sit there. What was worse,

again by Pope John Paul II to open wide the doors to

however, was that I could not sit with my friends

Christ and to the people of God in our midst.

anywhere on that bus. Thoroughly embarrassed, I did not

Acknowledging our sins, we continue the journey of

much enjoy that afternoon in downtown Memphis and

conversion and reconciliation, which prepared the great

never afterwards got on a bus there. That evening, the

Jubilee of the year 2000. As the Church, we are filled with

Franciscan priest, who was so kind to me and such a good

the sanctifying love of the Holy Spirit; but, at the same

pastor to my friends, explained the  social customs  in

time, we are a community, which  clasps sinners to her

Tennessee. For me, it was not so much an experience of

bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification. 

inequality as of forced separation. For my friends, it was

This pastoral letter will address one of the many sins

 the way things are. 

which affect our relationships among ourselves and infect,

When I got off the train in Union Station, arriving

as well, institutions within the Archdiocese of Chicago

home from my summer in Tennessee, my parents asked

and in our society: the sin of racism.

me many questions about my weeks away from Chicago.

To address something, to speak to it, we have to

When I talked about my experience on the Memphis bus,

recognize it. Growing up in Chicago, I first began to

they explained that  Jim Crow  laws were wrong. They

think about racism when, as a young boy, I left Chicago

treated other people as inferior, and God made us all

for a summer in Memphis and in Nashville, Tennessee.

equally valuable. When I asked why we did not have any

My parents permitted me to spend time with a Franciscan

 Negro  friends, the answer pretty much was the

priest stationed in Tennessee, a priest who was not African

equivalent of  that's the way things are.  Both my father

American but who served black Catholics as their pastor.

and my mother had African American acquaintances from

The children with whom I played that summer were

work and other circumstances. They spoke well of them,

good companions and we became friends. Within the

but we never visited each other's homes nor went to one

parish complex and the immediate neighborhood of my

another's family celebrations or wakes. Nor was it any

new friends' homes, only the priests and the sisters and I

more thinkable in Chicago than in Tennessee that we

were white. The difference that skin color makes struck

would live in the same neighborhood. The teaching in my

me forcibly, however, only when my friends took me to

home and in my parish was good; the experience just

downtown Memphis. In Chicago, when I took the bus

didn't match the teaching. That gap is called  sin, 

with my friends, we always rushed to sit in the very last

sometimes personal and social, sometimes institutional

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DENOUNCING RACISM