The thrust of the letter, titled "What We Have Seen and Heard," was evangelization, Steib told the Sept. 12 gathering in Philadelphia:
"The Catholic Church is universal, there is room in the sanctuary for everybody, and it is our responsibility to work within our community and lead others to our faith which we believe in," he said. "That's what evangelization is all about."Steib also had some interesting, even provocative, things to say about race matters in the church and the nation, as well as about President Barack Obama.
The bishops felt "the time had indeed come to share with the church, in our own language, the experience, the history, the insights, the understanding of the past," he said ... . "We decided it was time to shape the hopes for the future."
The relative dearth of black Catholic leadership in the church at the time the pastoral was released was due to "subtle racism," Bishop Steib charged in his remarks at the symposium....
Some racism still exists, he said, and cited the furor in Catholic circles in May over the honorary degree awarded by the University of Notre Dame to Obama, who supports legal abortion. The president also was the commencement speaker at the Indiana university.
Critics of Obama, who included about 70 bishops, said it was Obama's stand on abortion that made him an inappropriate choice to receive an honorary degree and/or be the commencement speaker at a Catholic university.
At the symposium, Bishop Steib said other presidents have had disagreements with the positions of the Catholic Church, for example, on war policies and capital punishment, but have received honorary degrees without similar objection.
It is the subtle racism that still exists which contributes to the lack of priestly vocations among young black men because "it leads to a mistrust of the church among young black men and women," he said. "Let's acknowledge that."
Steib also put in a word for the Memphis diocese's Jubilee Schools, inner-city Catholic schools that were reopened after decades to serve a mostly poor, black and non-Catholic population. He said education was a powerful tool for the evangelization the black bishops urged 25 years ago:
"Our mission, because of our baptism, is to teach our children the good news about Jesus Christ. What better way to go about it than through the Jubilee Schools?" he said. "We don't maintain the Jubilee Schools because the children are Catholic; we maintain the Jubilee Schools because we are Catholic."UPDATE: In response to a commenter who had concerns about this post, I did a little more digging and found another blog post that had similar questions about whether the original source correctly quoted Bishop Steib.
The blogger, Daniel Burke from Religion News Service, contacted Steib's office in Memphis for clarification. While waiting for a copy of the remarks, he also contacted the writer I linked to -- Lou Baldwin, a Catholic freelance writer whose piece was picked up for syndication by Catholic News Service. Baldwin provided Burke with a transcription of Steib's remarks, which I will copy in part below (these are Bishop Steib's actual words as transcribed by a reporter present for the address):
"I ... know there is a subtle racism that still exists within our Church that leads to a mistrust of the Church among our young African American men and women. (snip)
Slowly we are moving away from that mistrust to trust in our Church and thereby trust in the Universal Church. You may ask, "What do you mean by subtle racism? Well, recently and particularly because of the awarding of a degree to President Obama at the University of Notre Dame, the question racism among the bishops of the country has been raised. I am only raising it because Archbishop Quinn in an article in the America Magazine said that continuing confrontation with President Obama and his administration sends the message that the bishops are insensitive to the heritage and continued existence of racism in America. Archbishop Quinn said that.
Please check out the rest of the remarks in the RNS post, as well as the comments there. Steib clearly pushed a few buttons.
UPDATE: Opinionated Catholic comments on how Catholic leadership's criticism of Democratic politicians is now amplified due to the power of the Internet.
Rocco Palmo, the "Church whisperer" who has served as a church analyst for media like the BBC, NPR and The New York Times, also remarks on Steib's speech. His blog post is structured similarly to mine, which might help blunt criticism that my original post was the "sloppy" work of a "young" journalist (I have been in this business for 13 years, after all).
Honestly, this is one reason so many people in Memphis have trouble reading (and believing) the Commercial Appeal. To read the post above (and I have, several times), one might assume that the young author of this post was quoting Bishop Steib directly in the comments attributed to him. However, upon a closer reading, I note that there are no quotation marks around the most potentially explosive comments cited above. Add to that the fact that this item appears above the fold on the second page of today's paper, and incomplete at that, and you have a formula for stirring up controversy.
Why, one might ask, would a young reporter go to such trouble? I will be charitable and attribute it to hurried composition and a lack of a sense of anything problematic about what was written. But let's reflect more deeply, shall we?
This article is written about an African-American Catholic bishop in the Deep South, in a diocese with strong conservative leanings in some matters. It was excerpted in such a way in print as to make it sound as if the bishop was criticizing as racist the legitimate concerns of Catholics around the country over Notre Dame's decision; it sounds as if he was opining that only racism would account for opposition to President Obama receiving that honor. And it was written for an audience ready, perhaps, to think the worst automatically.
So I ask: what news purpose is served by this blog post being featured so prominently? And what news purpose is served by the reporter's failure to quote the bishop directly on something so controversial? Was the reporter present when the comments were made? Does he have access to a recording of Bishop Steib's comments? If so, then a more responsible way to report this would have been to use the man's own words, in quotes, with the recording as backup evidence of what was said.
If this is an accurate representation of Bishop Steib's comments, then the bishop is fully capable of defending his own opinions. However, if this is (as I suspect) a sloppy rendition of his statement, then a correction is in order. *Some* readers of the Commercial Appeal actually respect the office of Catholic Bishop more than they respect the occupation of blogger; without either a correction (if warranted) or an expansion of the reporting (to include direct quotes from the bishop's remarks), my status as a reader of the CA is cast into doubt. I can get poor reporting for free from blogs on the Internet.
Mr. Jones,
Thanks for commenting. I can grant you that the way this post was excerpted on A2 in today's newspaper -- with double quotes and single quotes -- could be confusing. For print purposes, I should have added an attribution to the original source, which was the Catholic News Service.
However, on this blog post itself, it is quite clear that the excerpted portions are not direct quotes (the actual quotes from the bishop have quotation marks), but are excerpts from the original source. However, there is nothing wrong with indirect quotations, as long as they are accurate. I HIGHLY doubt that a reporter for CNS -- that's who provides content for the West Tennessee Catholic and many other Catholic publications -- would try to stir the pot about a bishop's remarks. And I doubt even more highly that the story would be cleared for syndication if it weren't accurate. What he said was in fact controversial. Race and religion are newsworthy in Memphis, for better or worse. In fact, they are points of emphasis in our overall coverage strategy.
I doubt the bishop would have said what he said in front of a 98% white congregation at the Cathedral, for instance, but that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
Best,
Mark Richens
Mr. Richens,
Almost...but not quite.
Given that this is the Internet, unless that transcript of the bishop's remarks was emailed to you as a private communication, it would have been helpful to this skeptical heart to be able to read the bishop's commetns in their entirety. *I* was able to parse which comment cited were direct quotations, and which were indirect; the issue isn't my command of written English, but rather my inherent distrust of print media explications of others' comments#especially when it comes to controversial attributions and people I respect and admire#. I assure you, I understood what was written.
So. Is that transcript available to link to? I'd actually like to interview the bishop myself, to gain some clarity on his comments. As an African-American cradle Catholic who vehemently *and vocally* disagreed with Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama, racism played *no part* in my feelings. Therefore, I find it difficult to believe that the bishop meant his comments as they were attributed.
Please, link to the transcript #if it's available#. Allow me/us to read the bishop's comments in their entirety. It won't take away from your post.
And as an aside...there will come a day when you *miss* being described as a "young journalist". Thirteen years ain't that long in reporter years (see Daniel Shore).
Thanks.
Below is the link to the transcripted paragraphs. This whole episode has been fairly widely reported. I promise you I didn't make it up. I'm sorry the bishop said something you didn't agree with. Thank you for reading!
mr
http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnsblog/comments/racism_in_the_catholic_church/
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