CARJ 40th Anniversary Event on 25th May at Amigo Hall: Details of the Day

CARJ 40th Anniversary Celebration, Saturday 25th May, Amigo Hall, Southwark Cathedral

Some speakers at the event

The Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ) is an independent charity, established in 1984, working to support people from diverse backgrounds. CARJ works for the support and empowerment of black and minority ethnic Catholics to give them an effective voice in the Church and in wider society, and it supports people from diverse backgrounds in the struggle for a more just and cohesive society, in which all of God’s children can truly belong and be sisters and brothers in Christ.

In 2023, CARJ organised a series of seminars in the lead-up to its 40th anniversary which resulted in a decision to issue and campaign around a ‘Racial Justice Agenda for Change’. This Agenda, building on the association’s experiences over the last 40 years, is intended to guide the efforts of CARJ, and all those of goodwill, to promote greater equality and to create a more racially just society.

The CARJ 40th Anniversary Celebration brought together more than 80 activists to plan how to move forward on this Agenda for Change. Among the areas considered were the Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) Community, the question of black vocations, the issue of caste discrimination in the UK, interactions with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and the attitudes of the domestic church and the stance of the hierarchy on issues of racial justice.

After opening prayers by Bishop Paul McAleenan (the Lead Bishop for Racial Justice for the Catholic Church in England and Wales) the Chair of CARJ, Yogi Sutton, told the meeting the day was “an opportunity to reflect on our past and explore where the Spirit might be calling us in future.” The meeting then began with an address by Fr Dan Mason on the Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) Community in which Fr Dan was assisted by a member of the GRT community, Charlie Doherty, Young Engagement and Development Officer of the Traveller Movement.

Fr Dan Mason on the Gypsy, Roma Traveller (GRT) Community

Fr Dan was the first national chaplain to the GRT community, a role given to him in 2016 as a result of the experience he gained after he was appointed to be parish priest in 2010 to a parish in Essex which was home to Dale Farm, the largest Traveller community in the country. At its height more than 1,000 were people living there.

Many of the homes there had been built without planning permission and Basildon Council, after an increasingly bitter decade-long planning dispute, called in police in riot gear who forcibly removed 86 families from their homes. In the event the eviction cost Basildon Council £5m and the site, far from being restored to green belt land, remains a terrible eyesore to this day. This had a devastating effect on the families, many of whom had young children who had to witness their own homes being destroyed.

But there were a few positives which came out of the eviction. The eviction was so expensive, and the publicity surrounding it was so damaging to the council, that no other local authority is ever likely to attempt an eviction on this scale again. Moreover it encouraged statutory authorities to work more closely with those families who were still resident on the site. Fr Dan is part of a working group set up after the eviction with representatives from the fire service, police, Essex county-wide Traveller Unit, Basildon Council and the local health authority. He’s also a governor at Crays Hill school which has an intake which is almost all Irish Traveller children. Throughout the eviction the school remained open providing a sense of normality for the children. Since the eviction the school has been inspected by Ofsted twice and has achieved good ratings because inspectors have been able to look beyond the attendance figures to see the incredible work that the teachers do, often without knowing from day-to-day how many children they have in their classrooms. Now, where most Travellers were once unable to read, most can do so thanks to the work of these schools.

Fr Dan became national chaplain to the GRT community in 2016 and, with the support of Bishop Paul McAleenan and Bishop Tom Williams from Liverpool Diocese, made contact with priests across the country to exchange ideas and share good practice on how the Church can work with Traveller communities. In this, he said, he was greatly supported by CARJ, and in particular with its Traveller Interest Working Group facilitated by Richard Zipfel, which meets four times a year.

Things have since become more difficult for the GRT community. Many members were disproportionately affected by the Covid pandemic because of the nature of work like scrap metal collecting or laying block paving. And the approach of the Government towards Gypsies, Roma and Travellers has become increasingly more hostile. The Police Crime and Sentencing Act (2022) which made trespass a criminal offence specifically targeted Travelling Communities though recently a High Court Judge concluded that part of the Act was in breach of human rights law, in particular the ability it gave to the Police to ban Gypsies and Travellers from an area for three to twelve months, along with the power to fine, arrest and imprison people living on roadside camps, and to seize their homes. This runs counter to the obligation placed on local authorities in the Caravan Sites Act 1968 to provide accommodation for Gypsies.

The problems of the GRT community are a particular concern to the Catholic Church because of the deep faith of many Irish Travellers and the love and respect that they have for the Church. They are also generous in their concern for others. Travellers

are often the first to respond to appeals for CAFOD or the local food bank, and they have an instinctive compassion for communities which experience discrimination. Paul VI, the first pope to celebrate Mass in a Traveller Community told the GRT community: “You are at the heart of the church”.

Charlie Doherty, Youth Engagement and Development Officer of the Traveller Movement

Charlie told CARJ that he left school at 11 and worked with his father doing groundwork till he was 18 when, having caught Covid several times, he resolved to switch away from manual work. Fr Dan told him the Traveller Movement, which works with Irish Travellers, Romany Gypsies and Roman people in the UK, was looking for interns. Fr Dan gave him a reference and Charlie got a position and simultaneously did a business course after which he was offered the job of Youth Engagement and Development Officer. After being involved with multiple projects he is currently working on a campaign called Operation Traveller Vote which aims to increase political education and political participation amongst the Traveller community. It will be launched online on June 18th.

Travellers do not have enough of a public voice and are often scapegoated by politicians making it harder for them to get planning permission for sites to be developed. They are still routinely denied entry or refused service at various establishments. Discrimination can decrease the likelihood of finding work. He hopes Operation Traveller Vote will go some way to countering this and to make the GRT community more politically aware.

Charlie told the meeting he is now about to attend St Mary’s University to read philosophy and theology. It was an inspiring talk which was received with loud applause.

Deacon Alfred Banya on Black Vocations

The Rev Dr Alfred Banya, the Head of Chaplaincy at Kings College Hospital,

noted that it was the fourth anniversary of the death of George Floyd which had ignited a lot of debate about race which in the Southwark diocese resulted in Archbishop John Wilson setting up the Commission for Promoting Race and Cultural Inclusion. Over its 40 years CARJ has repeatedly raised the issue of black representation in the church, attimes in challenging terms which may have made some people uncomfortable. Back in 2000 the CARJ director Stephen Corriette noted that there were fewer than 13/30 black parish priests out of 5,600 in the 22 dioceses for England and Wales – and that only 6 of these were British- born. There were very few black altar servers and no black bishops. Black Catholics were being frozen out of positions of responsibility in Catholic parishes. How has that changed two decades

on? In 2020 Yogi Sutton told The Tablet: “We have many people from black and ethnic minority communities in our Catholic parishes yet we have no black or ethnic minority bishops in the Latin Rite Roman Catholic church in England and Wales and most of our black priests are from abroad.” No Catholic establishment should be monochrome. So why should these observations continue to be made in a Church which is meant to be universal?

You might say: Why does the skin colour of bishop, priest or sister matter if they bring us the message of God? Because we live in the real world with all its human weaknesses and flaws. Social scientists and psychologists tell us that people feel more connected, and find a greater sense of belonging, to a group when they see someone like them represented, especially at leadership level. Fr Paschal Uche, the first black British-born priest in Brentwood diocese, has spoken in 2020 of how his own vocation was inspired partly by seeing a vibrant black priest in Westminster diocese who made me open to the reality that God might be calling me. But he went on to say that the Catholic Church haemorrhages young black people to other churches, or to no church at all, because of the lack of representation.

So representation matters to black vocations and where there are barriers to that, intentionally or unintentionally, there is the risk of institutional racism: the collective failure of an institution to provide an appropriate service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. On his own journey to the diaconate Rev Banya discovered that a deacon needed the resources to support himself and his family to allow the flexibility to cope with the practicalities of the academic formation. He could do this because of his well-paid job as a doctor but others who felt called had jobs with unsocial hours or lack of understanding from their employers who would have made good deacons but who were excluded.

When Stephen Corriette raised the issue of representation he was told there was told there’s no evidence to suggest the deliberate exclusion of minorities. So why are no great numbers still coming forward? Institutional Racism isn’t about blame. But in terms of practicality we have to be aware with how that can be translated into practice. Racial inequalities are a production of power relations which are deeply entrenched in society. We need to recognise that within the Church and to create a climate where people feel confident about putting themselves forward. We need to identify what the barriers are and create an action plan to address them.

Fr Gerard Mitchell SJ on Dalits, class and hope for the future

The Jesuit Fr Gerard Mitchell, chair of Christian Network Against Caste Discrimination, spoke of how shortly after becoming parish priest of St Anselm in Southall he only slowly developed an awareness that caste discrimination was “a poison” in the community. One of the problems was that the issue raised itself in Punjabi not in English. Notices in the local hospital would go up in a language hospital administrators didn’t understand. What he called a “caste-ist” mentality

provoked dismissive remarks and occasional altercations. Interestingly when one parishioner was confronted with the effect of their remarks the person acknowledged they were at fault and was utterly ashamed. So in 2013 he set up the Christian Network Against Caste Discrimination supported by CARJ. At one of its meetings Cardinal Turkson came along and spoke very powerfully about caste-sim and the challenge of it in the life of the Church.

Fr Ged then gave the meeting a quiz on the difference between class and caste (Answer: you can change your class but not your caste), on where cast discrimination was rife (Answer: wherever South Asian communities migrate to) anywhere; does caste discrimination exist in the UK (Yes – in education, healthcare, employment, religious institutions), and the relation between casteism and racism

It’s estimated that globally 260 million suffer from caste discrimination in more than 100 countries. Much of the poverty of the global poor is caused by caste-based discrimination and Bond (the UK network for organisations working in international development) has recently drawn the attention of development agencies to the role of caste discrimination in global poverty. CNACD has recently been in communication with the Bishops Conference to get Dalit discrimination recognised by the church because, while 80% of Dalits are Christian, there are no Dalit Bishops. And the issue of Caste and Casteism has not, so far, been mentioned at the Synod in Rome. Canada and the US have passed enlightened legislation on caste but there is, sadly, resistance to such legislation in the UK.

CARJ can help by making use of educational and prayer resources of the Christian Network Against Caste Discrimination, by raising awareness of the issue, by joining the CNACD mailing list and by introducing training on caste into other organisations (contact info@cnacd.co.uk).

General discussion

In general discussion members of the audience noted that there was little on racial justice in general on the agenda for change at Synod. Sr Marguerite, a Franciscan sister, said that there persists in the Church the idea that “we are not as good as the whites” Why are there no Black or Asian superiors in religious congregations? Why are there no non-white bishops in the Catholic Church in England? Another discussant noted that in Ireland there was a generational divide among the clergy – with discrimination against gypsies among older parish priests but younger clergy being more clear and definite on the need for all to be included in the command to “love one another”. In response to a question about how to support the Traveller community who are shoved to the edges of society, Fr Dan said by encouraging parishes to make Travellers Communion ministers, readers, or altar servers. Charlie Doherty stressed that discrimination is based on a lack of knowledge; the way to dispel stereotypes was to take the time to get to know Travellers as individuals. Deacon Alfred stressed the importance of imagery, with more statues of saints of colour. A number of the speakers shared a concern that the Church’s lack of

inclusion was leading black youths, Travellers, Dalits and others to join other churches often as born-again Christians.

Jackie McLoughlin MBE on Love the Stranger – A Catholic response to Migrants and Refugees

Jackie McLoughlin, who was awarded an MBE by the Queen for her work to bring a Syrian refugee family to the UK and support their resettlement, presented a summary of the Bishops’ 2023 document Love the Stranger. She said: Every migrant has a name and a story and yet we’ve seen in our country the rise of hostility to refugees and migrants. This document is trying to bring us back on course.

It starts with the dignity of every person and sees every stranger as an opportunity for an encounter with Christ. Chapter 2 sees our neighbourhood as universal. We need what Pope Francis has called a “wider We”. “We” must not exclude others just because they were born somewhere else. We must question the nationalistic or individualistic tendencies on the rise in our country today.

Interestingly Chapter 3 starts by saying that people have the right to flourish in their own homeland. We should therefore support fairer trade, action on climate change, and tackle causes of poverty – war, violence and insecurity. We should demand control of the arms trade and support the restoration of the Aid budget.

Chapter 4 considers The Right to Migrate. Border controls are a qualified right – they do not supersede the rights of the person in need to move elsewhere if they can’t support their family at home. Immigration controls should not be used just to protect the prosperity of the host community.

Ch 5 looks at how immigration systems divide people into categories with different rights. But these cannot override the equal human dignity of all people. “Illegal” migrants must receive support and dignified treatment as the Refugee Convention requires. Safe routes are need to save lives at sea. Detention and arbitrary expulsion are to be avoided. There must be no return to unsafe countries. She skipped over Ch6.

Chapter 7 says clear routes to citizenship are required. The shift from monoculturalism to multiculturalism can be a sign of the living presence of God in history. Ephesians, 2:19: “You are no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens and members of the household of God”. Catholics should ensure that their MPs and local authorities are aware of their responsibilities. During the election campaign Catholics should ask candidates do they support the establishment of safe routes?

Richard Reddie – Migrants/citizens of colour

Richard Reddie, who coordinates Racial Justice Sunday, is the Director of Justice and Inclusion for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. He highlighted the extent to which race issues have slipped down the agenda of our Churches. He told the meeting that two years ago he edited a book called Race for Justice which charted the progress which churches have made over the last 25 years. Sadly of all the church organisations it listed – the Simon of Cyrene Institute, the Centre for Black and White Christian Partnership, MELRAW, the Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice, Evangelical Christians for Justice, The Zebra Project, The Racial Justice Network – only CARJ is still in existence. Richard Zipfel, the Secretary of CARJ, who wrote the chapter on the Catholic Church’s journey on racial justice saw that the biggest success was the establishment of the Catholic Association for Racial Justice because the bishops agreed that at a black-led independent grassroots network like CARJ should be free as a Catholic body to lobby and to work for racial justice. But racism is not on the agenda for the church today despite the increasing demonisation of migrants.

Forty years ago the only people fixated in issues of race where the National Front but now people with the legal right to be here have been threatened with deportation by the government in the Windrush scandal. In the year ending March 2023 there were 145,240 hate crimes recorded – of which two-thirds were race-related. Research by the Runnymede Trust reveals that Black, Asian and minority ethnic people still face massive disadvantages in housing, health, criminal justice, education and other public policy areas. How should the church respond?

We should be justice seekers. There are 130 references to justice in the Bible and all of them bear witness to the fact that we worship a God who is a God of Justice.

This general election is the most important election in decades. We need to tell our politicians that we’re not content with the way that refugees and asylum seekers are being scapegoated and blamed for issues that are completely outside their purview. They are low hanging fruit for politicians. They can’t vote. Their voices are stifled. Yet those who are fleeing persecution, those who are in danger, need to be treated not with hostility but with hospitality. CARJ has done excellent work over last 40 years but it still has much work to do.

Sr Kumari Fernando on Vocations

Sr Kumari Fernando, from the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, described the work of her community based in Brixton and offered it as a model for the wider church.

Christians need to respect our differences and diversity, she said. If we do that we can be a gift from God. The almost 5000 Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, from 77 nationalities, are open to universal mission, daily prayer, a life of service, and the care of creation. Like them we should commit to living in intercultural communities

which see the natural world is not a mere object of exploitation. In an increasingly secular society to stand up for our beliefs and values is challenging. However we must be open to the signs of the times, to the priorities of the Church and be ready to reach out to the most marginalised in the society. We must take any task that gives priority to human dignity. In togethernesss God makes us grow in truth and charity. We must learn from one another to be instruments of peace, justice and healing and pray to the wounded ones in our fragile world.

Discussion/Questions

Helen from Cafod pointed out that sex trafficking disproportionately affects women and women of colour. Jackie McLoughlin replied that the writing of the Santa Marta group emphasises this and that the Bishops’ Love of the Stranger document is powerful and dramatic on this. The Anglican church are doing very well on this.

Bishop Paul McAleenan told the meeting that the Bishops have had several meetings with government, most recently with the Home Secretary, to challenge the idea that the Church is baptising people merely to improve their status as asylum seeker’s status.

From the floor Paul Donovan called on the Bishops to challenge the language of Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson, which is the language of Enoch Powell gone mainstream. The church should call it out their “illegal and racist policies.”

A black woman in the meeting asked: “Where are the young black African women here today?” She added: “As a black person I feel invisible in my parish, most of the time we’re not heard, that’s why many people I know are leaving to go Pentecostal Churches”. Richard Reddie added: “This idea that other churches are better is worrying”. He said he suspected people might have the same experience in other churches also. “This issue must be on the agenda at all times. We need to be proactive not just reactive, challenging racism wherever it raises its ugly head. This conversation must not end here.”

Fr Phil Sumner – An Agenda for Change

Racism and racial injustice exist still both in society in general and in the Church. But the nature and form of racism may vary from age to age and country to country. On 21 March 2023 (the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination), Pope Francis denounced racism, likening it to “a virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting”. Racial justice is a matter of human rights, and legal safeguards, but it is also an intensely

moral issue. As Catholics, we are called actively to work for the dream of the Kingdom of Heaven, in which people of every nation and language belong. All of us must accompany those who experience racism in their struggles to address and overcome it. As Christians we are obliged by our faith to acknowledge our own racism when it occurs and call out that of others.

“B.I.A.S.” (Belonging, Information, Accompaniment, and Strategy).

1. Belonging

Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti suggests that “there is no worse form of alienation than to feel uprooted, belonging to no-one” (Fratelli tutti, par. 53). Dina Nayeri, in her 2019 book, “The Ungrateful Refugee” stated that a common complaint among refugees is that “the future brings anxiety because you don’t belong and can’t move forward. The past brings depression because you can’t go home, your memories fade and everything you know is gone.” ( p.220). “They need the dignity of becoming an essential part of a society…what they most urgently need is to be useful. To belong to a place.” (TUR p.338). To help others belong requires reciprocation. It is about allowing newcomers to change us – and our communities too.

‘Belonging’ is important for all those of ‘Global Majority Heritage’ (UK Black and minority ethnic people) who were born in this country. Elijah McCoy was a Black Canadian-born engineer who, in the second half of the 19th century, invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the steam engines of trains and ships. His oil was so good that when people bought it they would ask the shopkeeper: “Is it the real McCoy?’ was coined. Fr Phil said that a school he often visits has a statue of Eugene McCoy. It is an important role model for the school’s black pupils. If someone who looks like you, has achieved then you feel you can do likewise. It’s about knowing that you belong.

For a Church organisation, to enable this sense of belonging is not about the much criticised ‘identity politics’ but about each person finding his or her identity in Christ. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says: “Every person, family and intermediate group has something original to offer to the community” (p.187 C). That enable people to find themselves, whatever their background, in Christ, and to hear the Gospel proclaimed through the medium of different cultures. When Fr Phil arrived at his church in Oldham the congregation was mainly Irish. Now it has 55 different nationalities every Sunday with an African, Filipino and Indian choir and the whole congregation has learned to sing in all the languages. His church has Filipno and Polish stained glass windows and one which portrays a young girl in hijab. Foods from all nations are served at its summer fair. In the local Catholic school there are portraits of all the Muslim philosophers who worked with Thomas Aquinas. At interview teachers are asked how they will respond to the particular needs of the African or Asian descent children. (Teachers who say they are blind to colour need to understand that if you don’t see colour that’s a problem). Shakespeare’s sonnets (127-154) which celebrate blackness are taught. A black artist has worked with the

Year 8s on an 8 by 4 foot piece of art which speaks of an African presence to anyone who walks into that church

Everyone is encouraged to ask: ‘who is not at the table’. We must learn to ask whether – by accident, or quite unconsciously, or through established practice (“we have always done things this way”), we have excluded certain individuals or groups? We need to ask:

a. What is the make-up of the congregation in comparison to that of the local area? Do ministries tend to be exercised by a particular group almost to the exclusion of others? Do the parish activities engage people of every background? Are people of different backgrounds involved in the making of parish decisions?

b. Does the artwork in our churches or schools represent the different cultures in the community? Are there positive images of people of different ethnicities – or are there negative stereotypes? Does the music reflect the makeup of the congregation?

c. Does the curriculum, the teachers, the leadership team and the governors reflect and nurture all the various identities in the school. Do Catholic schools provide a model for racial inclusion for the wider community?

2. Information:

A Racial Justice Agenda for Change must be based on the bedrock of good information. People in positions of responsibility need to understand racism, how it is experienced by different people and groups, and how it mutates. Catholics – and priests and teachers in particular – should understand the race debates of our age. In the last fifteen years, multiculturalism has been replaced by the idea of ‘integrationism’ with newcomers to the UK now expected to accept ‘British values.’ How did this shift come about? Has it been right to reject multicultural approaches?

Different terms have been introduced into the racial debate without people necessarily understanding them. The concept of ‘Institutional Racism’ introduced by Lord Macpherson, in the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry of 1999, has been rejected by some without, perhaps, a good understanding of it. Tony Sewell, in his report for the Commission on Race and ethnic disparities (March 2020) writes: “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”. The term Institutional Racism “is now being liberally used… to describe any circumstances in which differences in outcomes between racial and ethnic groups exist in an institution, without evidence to support such claims.” But he makes no mention of the three examples of Institutional Racism given by Lord Macpherson, namely, “Colour blind”, “Stereotypical” and “Established groups in the exercise of power.” He appears to have severely restricted the definition of institutional racism – and then rejected it. Sewell’s report was significantly criticised by many, but its recommendations were accepted by the Government. Subsequently, politicians like Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman have condemned ‘critical race theory’ suggesting that it should not be taught in schools. But do they actually understand what is ‘critical race theory’ or have their just created a caricature of it – which they can then easily reject as “woke”. Such criticisms can lead to confusion and inaction in the struggle for racial justice. Being woke is simply is about being awake to the issues that face so many other people. We need to help people to be aware of the different influences involved and, hopefully, to emerge from the fog of confusion. CARJ should help Catholics and others to answer these questions.

3. Accompaniment

As a society, and particularly as a Catholic community, we need to accompany those involved in the struggle for greater racial justice. This will often mean attending public meetings in the wider community, when issues arise, to listen to the pain and anger expressed and to try to understand. To understand that the principal earner in a white British family is nine times more likely to be in the richest 20% than the principal earner from a Black British family – and eighteen times more likely than the principal earner in a Bangladeshi family. We cannot be unconcerned by such inequality. Our work for greater justice may also involve accompanying those treated unjustly, always remembering that it is the victims, and not the allies, who must be the principal actors in that struggle.

Areas where accompaniment might be requested include:

The policing and the criminal justice system which is often shown to disadvantage Black and ethnic minority communities. Documents such as Dame Louise Casey’s report on the Metropolitan police, and Sir Ian Livingstone’s on Police Scotland, spell this out. We need to help report on rises in community tension because of any unfair treatment by the police or because of policies that are creating issues. We need to have our ears to the ground and be able regularly to test the temperature within the local community.

In employment we should help people to be aware of the legislation on equality. Organisations should be encouraged to be diverse at every level. ‘Canteen cultures’ which impact negatively on particular ethnic or religious groups should be challenged. People treated unfairly, by the system or by individuals, will often need support in seeking redress or resolution. Church communities can provide training projects in areas of high unemployment . They can turn their empty buildings into managed workspaces to enable economic regeneration within communities.

In health, many authorities employ medical staff from other countries. This has many benefits, but the situation needs to be monitored. Many of these staff come from Catholic communities and attend our churches. We need to be attentive to any concerns about injustice – and provide what support we can. Do local health and care plans take account of our racially diverse communities? Are differential experiences or outcomes for different ethnic groups that need to be challenged? Do staffing, training, recruitment and retention policies, leadership roles, and service

provision ensure racially just outcomes? How can we accompany those trying actively to challenge inequality and discrimination?

In addition we may need to assist individuals through the asylum system and help them to integrate into the community. Fr Phil told the meeting of the 20 asylum seekers he has had living in his presbytery over the years.

4. Strategies

A desire to tackle racial justice is not enough. We need to build up an awareness of the problem and then develop specific strategies. This means:

a. First, consulting the people most directly affected – those directly experiencing or fearing discrimination and racism, but also those fearing a threat to their situation if they take an anti-racism stance.

b. Any effective strategy must begin with an audit or analysis of the problems to be addressed, and an exploration of the possible solutions, drawing upon this lived experience.

c. Then a plan of action can be developed with measurable goals.

d. The plan of action should have a timescale for reviewing progress.

e. The action plan should also have an agreed monitoring system to assess progress and agree modifications (in light of the mutations spoken about by Pope Francis).

Some strategies will prioritise areas on which to focus. The Church of England document, “From Lament to Action” prioritised, ‘Participation’, ‘Education’, ‘Training and mentoring’, ‘Young people’ and ‘Structures and governance’. But each diocese (for example) might decide on different priorities.

Over time, we must aim to ensure that we mainstream our thinking about racial justice into all aspects of our lives, our work, and our spiritual journeys. Individual Catholics reading this Racial Justice Agenda for Change may want to question whether their workplaces, social groups, and professional associations all have racial justice strategies in place or could be actively encouraged to do so.

CARJ recommends that seminaries should consider how to integrate this racial justice agenda for change into its programme of formation. They should encourage the skills in community organising that will help new priests develop abilities within the parish’s broader leadership teams. Every parish and diocese in the country should develop a racial justice strategy and action plan. So should every Catholic organisation.

Some practical ideas regarding implementation

The full Racial Justice Agenda for Change may appear daunting at first, but many have already engaged in these efforts to promote racial justice – see some resources listed below1. Practical ideas there include suggestions about – forming one’s examination of conscience; youth Masses with a focus on equality, inclusion and racial justice; children’s liturgy celebrations adapted to the diversity of the parish; parish events/bidding prayers/ etc. marking key dates such as Racial Justice Sunday/Black History Month etc; diversifying the church furnishings in the choice of statues or its musical or other traditions; creating a CARJ group in the parish, or integrating racial justice efforts into an already existent justice & peace group.

Concluding Remarks

Often people or organisations will claim that racial injustice is ‘merely’ a matter of ‘bad apples’ – but in that case why is the institution concerned not rooting them out and preventing the ‘virus’ spreading more widely? If the institution is not taking the necessary action against its ‘bad apples’ then it can rightly be accused of ‘institutional’ racism or ‘systemic’ racism. Racism exists on both an individual level, but also structurally and institutionally.

We should not, however, be reduced to pessimism. We live in a sin-infected world, but we live in hope of the Kingdom of God and must strive to make it present now. Catholics, and all those of good faith, should commit, in words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to uphold “the inherent dignity…of all members of the human family” – and then reflect and act upon this Racial Justice Agenda for Change.

A second anniversary meeting for CARJ 40 will be held in Oldham on 21 September.

Closing the gathering Bishop McAleenan commented: “One may think that any discussion of racism would inevitably be depressing, CARJ however has celebrated the day with enthusiasm, encouragement and joy”. The day concluded with Mass in St George’s Cathedral, the recessional hymn reinforcing the mood of hope, trust and positivity: ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’.”

Rapporteur: Paul Vallely

· 1 Rooting out Racism: https://www.cbcew.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/01/Rooting-Out-Racism.pdf This initiative started out of a homily at Our Lady of Fatima (White City parish, Westminster diocese) which encouraged parishioners to discuss their day-to-day experiences of racism – sometimes even within the parish – and their proposals for change.

· It is reported that a toolkit for a Racial Justice Strategy is already being developed in the Southwark Archdiocese

· “From Lament to Action”, Church of England strategy (2021)

· “Dwell in my love”, Chicago Archdiocese 2001