The United States of America is arguably the most ethnically and culturally diverse society on the planet. This diversity of native and immigrant cultures and ethnicities gives energy and identity to both our country and our Church.

In the United States the diversity of Catholics that gathers for Eucharist every Sunday truly resembles the diversity of the Church throughout the world. However, we cannot talk about the gift of life and vibrancy that results from the diversity embraced by the universal nature of the Catholic Church without acknowledging the fact that there are Christians who have not always embraced and treated all their Christian brothers and sisters with equal dignity.

---I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body. I treat everyone alike. Isn't it time to stop living in the past?

---Why do we have to include Spanish and Vietnamese in our Easter services, anyway? Shouldn't they all learn English like our ancestors did?

--- I can't believe that Father took away my English Mass and gave it to Mexicans.

These and similar sentiments are sometimes voiced in our parishes. No one can suggest that people of color are the only people who have experienced discrimination, prejudice and poverty here in the United States. Many immigrant families from Europe can recount their own struggles to be accepted and find a place in North American society, discriminated against not because of their skin color, but because they were Catholic. Nevertheless, we might benefit by reviewing Catholic moral teaching on three topics that bear directly on the evil of racism.

Slavery
Let's be clear from the outset: slavery is condemned absolutely as among the worst of all evils by the Catholic Church. Slavery is denounced as an intrinsice malum (intrinsic evil) both by Vatican II in its document Gaudium et Spes and by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Intrinsic evils are understood as evils that can never be justified under any circumstances or by any intention.

In other words, slavery is wrong --- end of discussion. No human being can be owned by another person, for any reason. What was legal and tolerated in the United States was evil, pure and simple. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us:

The Seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason --- selfish or ideological, commercial or totalitarian --- lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his slave "no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, as a beloved brother …both in the flesh and in the Lord" (CCC, n. 2414).

Racial Discrimination
The truth is, we would expect almost every Christian alive today to agree with the Church's absolute condemnation of slavery, even though slavery was tolerated by some Christian societies and governments and even the Catholic Church up to the 19th century. However, the larger moral question is: Can the sinful legacy of slavery in Western society be overcome simply by such a pronouncement? After 1,900 years of tolerating slavery, is "Christian society" really as prejudice-free as it would like itself to believe?

In many states, discrimination based on race was legal less than 50 years ago. Have we really come so far in such a short time? Less than 10 years ago, in June 1998 a disabled 49-year-old black man, James Byrd, was chained to the back of pickup in Jasper County, Texas, and dragged to death along a dirt road by three white men, two of whom displayed white supremacist tattoos. Similarly, ugly comments made recently by major entertainers and politicians give comparable proof that racism, unfortunately, is alive and well in the United States.

More than 40 years ago, Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes) taught us:

Every form of social or cultural discrimination in fundamental personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language or religion must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God's design (GS 29.2).

The fact is, apart from the tragic reality that human slavery and human trafficking still occur in the world today, there remain many sad and evil legacies from the institution of slavery in countries like the United States where it is no longer legal and among the greatest are those of racial prejudice and discrimination.

Catholics recognize a wonderful pro-life moral foundation in the Divine revelation that every human being is created in the same image, the "image of God." (Gen 1: 27). This wonderful truth should spur every Christian to purge him or herself of any traces of the sin of racial or ethnic discrimination. It is impossible for any authentic Christian disciple to embrace any form of "white supremacy, white power or apartheid vision" like that espoused by the infamous Klu Klux Klan or other such groups.

Catholic morality challenges us clearly to eschew all forms of political, social and personal discrimination based on race or ethnicity and to work for a society where every human being is treated equally:

Their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer and more human conditions. Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace (GS 29.3).

Racial Caricatures and Profiling
What remains perhaps even more insidious than overt acts of racial hatred are forms of unconscious discrimination. In 1996 Thomas Cahill published a text with an interesting title: "How the Irish Saved Civilization." The title is an example of a kind of Eurocentric bias that is both pervasive yet subtle in Western society.

What Cahill means when he uses the world "civilization" is Western or European civilization. While Cahill more than adequately describes the development of Irish culture and its interaction with Europe, he never attends to the fact that there were other civilizations in Africa, Asia and North and South America. The fact is that many of these non-Western civilizations were equal to and even surpassed some aspects of European civilization during these ancient times but certainly were not "saved" by the Irish. In fact what Cahill means and is really describing in his text is "a" civilization, not "civilization."

What are the images of other cultures and peoples and ethnic groups that are in our imaginations? Images that are often far from accurate but have been created by oft repeated caricatures of minority groups and other cultures on television and in movies. Do you remember "Amos and Andy," 'Step-and-fetchit," "Tonto"? These images can make us significantly less 'colorblind' than we would like to believe. Sadly, such caricatures can move from the media to our computer screens via ethnic jokes that are widely shared and disseminated even among Christians. The willingness of folks to even tolerate such so-called humor is evidence of the reality of prejudice that still lurks in many of our hearts.

Racial and ethnic caricatures also participate in building sinful social structures. The genocide we have witnessed in the Balkans, in Rwanda and now in Darfur are examples of the evils that result from racial and ethnic caricatures. The unjust and immoral incarceration of the Japanese-American population in the U.S. during WWII is another example, as is the large number of unlawfully incarcerated folks of middle-Eastern descent after 9/11.

It would be hard to deny that racial profiling, a direct result of racial caricature, is still a sinful reality in our society and even among the people of God. Our families, our schools, our society, and especially our hearts need to be cleansed of any and all forms of prejudice.

As Catholics, we must work for a world in which all are equal, not only in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of every other human being. The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has recently written:

Despite the widespread aspiration to build an authentic international community, the unity of the human family is not yet becoming a reality. This is due to obstacles originating in materialistic and nationalistic ideologies that contradict the values of the person integrally considered in all his various dimensions, material and spiritual, individual and community. In particular, any theory or form whatsoever of racism and racial discrimination is morally unacceptable (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n. 433).

Conclusion
In the end, Catholic morality speaks clearly and prophetically. To embrace white supremacy, to engage in racial profiling, to encourage white privilege, to participate in any form of prejudice or discrimination is contrary to authentic Christian discipleship.

In the words of St. Paul:
"Each of you is a child of God because of your faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with him. There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or free man, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26-29).

Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings.