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It was October 1991 and Anita Hill was testifying against Clarence Thomas. At the judges US supreme court confirmation hearing, Hill, his former aide, claimed he had sexually harassed her. Kimberl Crenshaw was assisting Hills legal team and felt dejected and exhausted. As she left the capitol building in Washington DC that day, she saw a group of African Americans, mostly women, gathered at the bottom of the steps in a prayer circle. She let out a sigh of relief and walked towards them.

I thought: Oh, thank God, a place we can go and embrace each other, because this is a struggle, Crenshaw says. It was the day before Thomas confirmation, and she felt the future of the civil rights movement was on the line. But when she reached the group, she saw they were wearing T-shirts proclaiming their support for Thomas. She watched with dread as they sang songs of praise and called Hill a jezebel. It was like a horror film, she says. You think youre safe, but it turns out that the people youre running to are actually infected with whatever youre running from.

As she walked away from them, she thought about how the case exposed the theoretical gap in the legal profession when it came to black womens lived experience. During the explosive hearing, televised and watched across the country, Hill, then a teacher at the University of Oklahomas law school, spoke in great detail of her allegation that Thomas harassed her when he was her supervisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Yet he retained tremendous support and, in his infamous defence, called the hearings a hi-tech lynching.

What Crenshaw saw was that, with feminists supporting Hill and anti-racist activists defending Thomas, twin calls for equality were being put in opposition to each other. The groups were weakening each others movements instead of supporting each others cause and it was black women who paid a significant price.

For Crenshaw, who is now one of the most influential black feminist legal theorists in the US, Hills case cemented her idea of intersectionality, set out in a paper two years before the hearing. The idea suggests that different forms of discrimination such as sexism and racism can overlap and compound each other in just this way. At the time of Hills case, Crenshaw was writing another paper, Mapping the Margins, on the erasure of black womens history of being sexually harassed and abused. The Hill case showed the result of the fact that sexual harassment had largely only been discussed in relation to white women.

So many people were corralled by the idea that sexual harassment isnt a black womans issue, she says. So many people didnt understand that slavery was about institutionalised sexual harassment and abuse. There were 700,000 slaves in 1790; by the eve of the civil war, there were nearly 4 million. How did that happen? Its right in front of us and there are no words for it.

Her paper set out how feminism had failed to analyse that race was playing a role in making some women vulnerable to heightened patterns of sexual abuse. And it was also the case that anti-racism wasnt very good at dealing with that issue either.

Hills case, Crenshaw believes, was also a painful example of the failure of representation for representations sake. Thomas, the supreme courts only black justice, played a decisive role in gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013. The ruling struck down the system that blocked discriminatory voting policies before they harmed voters.

Crenshaws early academic work, meanwhile, was also an important building block in the development of critical race theory, which revolutionised the understanding of race in the USs legal system and is taught in law schools across the country. The heads of the University of Californias law schools explained in September how useful it was in unpicking how race has operated in our history and our present and understanding the structural racism through which racial inequality is reproduced in economic, political and educational systems even without individual racist intent. (Crenshaw is a professor at one of the schools, UCLA Law, and at Columbia Law School.)

In the 30 years since Crenshaw first wrote about intersectionality, the term has swept to the forefront of conversations about feminism and racial justice. It is used by activists, in HR training in some of the worlds largest corporations and is at the heart of the rightwing backlash against identity politics. At the end of October, the term critical race theory was spoken in the UK parliament for the first time, when Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, announced the government was unequivocally against fundamental parts of the concept.

My mom was more confrontational and my father was more Martin Luther King ... there are strains of both in my work

In some ways, Crenshaw is excited by the high profile her theories have gained, even if they are being condemned: It is far better that is circulating and being used than if only 25 law professors have read it. In September, Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop racial sensitivity training, labelling it divisive, anti-American propaganda. Crenshaw is happy to have the fight and point out how absurd this argument is. So, what are you saying American is having structural racism? If contesting it [racism] is un-American, then you are basically a witness to my side, she says. You are confirming why this work is so important.

Unsurprisingly, Crenshaw backed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election: You dont have to describe Biden and Harris as being heaven in America to oppose the hell of a Trump administration. In a statement, she described their win as a historic night, thanks to Harris becoming the highest-ranking woman in US history, as well as the first black person and the first Indian American to become vice-president. Crenshaw noted that Bidens victory speech thanked the African American community, writing: We must hold him to that promise And we must move forward intersectionally, and with an eye towards our past.

Crenshaw knew from a young age that she wanted to be a lawyer. When she was six, she was sent to church with her 14-year-old brother. It was summer and her dad told them to stay together. But her brother wanted to leave early and use their collection money to buy sweets. They took their time walking home, enjoying the goodies, not realising their parents would go to the church to pick them up. When Crenshaw got home and saw her parents were not there, it was clear there would be trouble.

But, she says, it never occurred to me in a million years that I would get in trouble, because I was following his orders. She argued to her dad that this was in a lose-lose situation for her: she was in trouble for following her brothers rules, but she would also have been in trouble if she had not gone with him. In the end, her father told everyone: Dont let her get a word in edgewise. When she starts to talk, you will not know what you were trying to say. And thats when they started calling me a lawyer.

Crenshaw was born on 5 May 1959 in Canton, Ohio, a small industrial town in the midwest. Her mothers side of the family were heavily involved with the desegregation movement (her mother helped desegregate a paddling pool at the age of three), while her fathers side had a more spiritual advocacy for racial justice. My mom was a little bit more radical and confrontational and my father was a little bit more Martin Luther King and find common ground. Which is probably why there are strains of both of those in my work.

She remembers watching the civil rights movement explode across the country on her TV as she was growing up. Seeing a big, collective effort to change black peoples trajectory in the country shaped her identity. Her parents, who were both teachers, kept her on her toes. I remember being teased by my friends because, when we got called in for dinner, we had to come to the table with something to say about what another day on the planet was, what did we learn and what happened, Crenshaw says. Inevitably, she liked to turn the tables and question her parents on their day.

If contesting racism is un-American, then you are basically a witness to my side

At one point, she was sent to a Christian fundamentalist school that had smaller classes and better grades. It was a horrible experience. One teacher told her that civil rights activists were not God-fearing and were, in fact, the people the Bible warned about in Revelation. It was like now, when people say Black Lives Matter protesters are thugs, Crenshaw says. But it also sharpened her skills in challenging authority and, to the discomfort of some teachers, the exceptionally bright Crenshaw represented the school in debating and spelling competitions.

She could handle being in conflict with her teachers, but struggled when another pupil called her the N-word and isolated her from her friends. It was the first time I had seen abject racism from a kid my age, Crenshaw says. That hurt more than any of the crazy stuff the teachers were doing. She begged her mum to pull her out; she transferred to the local school at which her mum taught.

She went on to study at Cornell University in 1981, then got a law degree at Harvard law school in 1984 and a masters in law at the University of Wisconsin the following year. It was within the critical legal studies a movement of legal scholars founded in the late 70s that dissected the idea that the law was just and neutral that Crenshaw developed her ideas of critical race theory and intersectionality.

Those ideas which she felt were obvious to everyone who had experienced racism and sexism were controversial among some leftwing legal academics. There were some folks who felt that the loose network could not survive centring a race project inside of it, she says. Crenshaws work asked people to think of the privileges they brought into a space and how, through their actions or silences, they contributed to the problem of racism.

Because of this, it is often criticised as somehow undermining the building of a multiracial working-class movement. In response, Crenshaw argues that the US will never be able to respond to the problem of class until it interrogates what she describes as the politically stabilising role of white supremacy in propping up American hierarchies. That has been the case since slavery. Why did so many white farmers who were impoverished by this economic system make themselves available, amenable, even champions of an economic system that didnt benefit them?

She points to a documentary about a white Klansman who said that, although he did not have much, he thanked God every day for being white. Why is that more important than the fact that he cant put food on the table? Crenshaw asks. When people tell me that intersectionality marginalises class, I say no, intersectionality is what we need to understand why its been so difficult to mount a fully class-centric movement.

Away from the classroom and courts, Crenshaw co-founded the African American Policy Forum, now one of the countrys leading social justice thinktanks. In 2015, it created the hashtag #SayHerName to highlight how black women were being overlooked as victims of police violence. As a longtime campaigner against police brutality against black women, Crenshaw was initially disappointed with the response to the killing of Breonna Taylor by police in March in a botched narcotics raid, which has since received nationwide attention. Her name didnt really get lifted up until after George Floyd was killed, she says. Had Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd not been killed, would we be saying the name of Breonna Taylor?

Nonetheless, Taylors death could be a turning point for the civil rights movement in the US, Crenshaw says. It could become the door through which people can see all of the other sisters whove come before her. That would be a shift in consciousness and awareness about how black women can be thought of and seen as the subject of anti-black violence, Crenshaw says.

She compares the killing of Taylor to the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. Taylors death, and the deaths of black women in general, has not mobilised an entire movement, an entire way of thinking about anti-black racism, in the way they say that Emmett Tills killing did. But, she says, what draws them together is that, as far as the legal system is concerned, its rendered judgment was that no one would be held accountable for either of these deaths.

Crenshaw sees her work as an important recalibration of how the black struggle is understood. Rosa Parks came into politics not when she sat down on a bus, but when she took up the case of Recy Taylor, a black woman who was gang-raped, and the white men who did it were not brought to justice. These are the stories that a male-centric view of anti-black racism does not consistently remember, rehearse and retell, Crenshaw says. This results in a failure to challenge the myth that black women dont face sexual and state violence, leaving women like Recy and Breonna Taylor vulnerable and isolated. For Crenshaw, this rewriting of history that centres the violence black women experience is crucial for taking the black freedom struggle forward.

With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, Crenshaw says people are finally beginning to see how intimately the issues they care about are connected to the courts. In many ways, her career started at the USs highest court. Would she accept a nomination to be on the court? She laughs. I would do it, after I take my ice skates off, having skated across hell.

Read the rest here:
Kimberl Crenshaw: the woman who revolutionised feminism and landed at the heart of the culture wars - The Guardian

Just a few months later, the President went off on football players who protested racial inequality by kneeling during the national anthem, calling them in a speech sons of bitches who should lose their jobs. (He also lamented that rule changes meant to reduce head injuries were ruining the game.)

Will the divisions stoked over the past four years remain?

That was the demarcation point, the moment when sports and politics and culture collided in a way that hadnt really happened before. Certain athletes have taken political stances, particularly on civil-rights issues, over the decades, and those had inflamed their own controversies, but the prospect of the U.S. President picking a fight with professional athletes was highly unusual. The anthem issue, which had been all but forgotten, became a new thing for some NFL players to rally around, although support was far from universal, and athletes in other sports spoke up in their defence, most notably in the NBA, where superstars, coaches and role players alike were not shy about criticizing Trumps characterization of athletes who had opted for a peaceful protest. That split, with a number of high-profile athletes on one side and Trump and many of his supporters on the other, has persisted for years. It has been a strange storyline of the sports business in the recent past, where events that had long been apolitical were suddenly a big stage in the culture wars.

Much like how Trumps presidency made a certain degree of chaos an everyday occurrence, the outsized influence he had on the sports world also quickly came to feel normal, even though it wasnt. Stories about declining television ratings for pro sports considered whether the spectacle of kneeling players had driven away viewers, or whether anti-Trump statements from athletes like LeBron James or Steph Curry had dented their sports overall popularity, even though television ratings, as traditionally measured, have been declining across all programs for many years. Trump, of course, insisted that the NFL was headed straight to irrelevance if it didnt fire players who knelt during the national anthem. The NFL has managed to avoid this fate. White House visits became radioactive, with some championship teams attending the traditional ceremony with the President of the day and earning criticism for doing so and others choosing not to go. This exercise reached the perfect level of farce in 2018, when the some of the Philadelphia Eagles were going to attend the White House but the ceremony was cancelled a day ahead of time. The reasons for the cancellation were never quite clear, although there were suggestions that the number of attending players would have been small enough to be embarrassing, and Trump took the opportunity to insist, again, that football players should always stand for the national anthem. Whatever else one might think of his political acumen, he figured out early that that particular message stand for the anthem, you ungrateful athletes plays very well with many of his supporters.

Continued here:
In the Trump era, sports became a major front in the culture wars. So are those battles now over? - National Post

While citizens across the U.S. tear down statues, I lift up local art depicting this areas first inhabitants, the Native Americans.

Among these few public works are Hector Garcias Chief Little Turtle (1976), a 10-foot bronze sculpture located in Headwaters Park. With one hand open in communication and the other closed in defiance, the figure challenges those crossing the footbridge over the St. Marys River into the Old Fort.

When I was a Brownie and a fourth grader studying Indiana history in the 1980s, I spent nights at this fort pretending to be a guard or a prisoner stuck in the pillory. The central theme of my education was that Fort Wayne began when white settlers developed Kekionga, former capital of the Miami tribe. In that context, Little Turtles statueoutside the fortpresented confusion about the good guys versus the bad guys.

Today, I live in New York City where I observe my hometown from a distance. The lessons I learned as a child reflect narratives told to Americans on a national scale from an early age. Statues are tangible evidence of sometimes skewed perspectives.

A bust of Cheif Little Turtle by Sufi Ahmad in the Flagstaff Bank Building at Wayne St. and Calhoun St.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving 2020 in an election year during a global pandemic that has exposed racial inequities, Fort Waynes few Native American sculptures are especially poignant. They exist in contrast to an army of General Mad Anthony Waynes.

Earlier this year, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage examined the culture wars brewing in Fort Wayne in a piece he wrote for Politico. He focused on Wayne Day, a new annual event honoring the citys namesake.

On one level, to grow up in Fort Wayne was to be saturated in references to Anthony Wayne and the Native Americans he fought, Savage writes. I opened my first savings account at a branch of Anthony Wayne Bank, across Anthony Boulevard from an ice cream parlor that served massive Mad Anthony sundaes.

Savage and I attended North Side High School, home of the former Redskins, recently renamed the Legends. His article revealed just how much my sense of my hometown was manipulated, right down to the visuals I absorbed every day.Garcias Little Turtle statue appeared in a photograph in Savages article, too.

Recently, I spoke to Garcia, now 86, in a series of phone conversations. He believes his sculpture of Little Turtle may be Fort Waynes first and only freestanding sculpture depicting the Miami chief.

Little Turtle was left out to dry, says Garcia, who has also created several renderings of Wayne, including a relief for Wayne High School.

A bust of Chief Little Turtle on the Main Street side of the Allen County Courthouse by Brentwood S. Tolan (1902).

Before Fort Wayne celebrated the nations bicentennial in 1976, the only sculptural reference Garcia found of the chief was a bust on the Allen County Courthouse.

Naturally, Wayne maintained a high profile in the city named for him. The most prominent works are the equestrian statue in Freiman Square and the smaller aluminum relief on Anthony Wayne Bank.

But in the summer of 1975, Garcia asked a pointed question to members of Fort Waynes American bicentennial committee: What about the other person in our history? As an answer, Garcia earned a commission to build an imposing statue honoring Little Turtle, whose real name was Mihihkinaahkwa.

Little Turtle led the Miami within a coalition of tribes that surrendered to Wayne in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. A year later, the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 resulted in the U.S. acquiring large tracts of land, including one piece six miles square, at or near the confluence of the rivers St. Mary's and St. Joseph's, where [F]fort Wayne now stands, or near it.

Knowing he could not stop the arrival of white settlers, Little Turtle encouraged his people to assimilate in order to survive. He died in the area in 1812. In 1846, U.S. troops forced approximately 300 souls out of northeastern Indiana by way of the canal boat network, according to a historic preservation officer representing the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.

The Miami people settled in Kansas until the U.S. government relocated them to Oklahoma in the 1870s. Today, the Miami population includes more than 5,800 enrolled citizens who are scattered throughout all 50 states and beyond, according to a historic preservation officer representing the Miami Tribe.A bust of John Nuckols by Hector Garcia (1985) inHanna Park at Maumee Ave. and Harmar St.

Garcia, a South Bronx native, is of Puerto Rican heritage. He wonders if growing up outside of Fort Wayne may have made him sensitive to people living on the margins. He also sculpted Jesuit Priest (1974), located near the Three Rivers Water Filtration Plant and John Nuckols (1985), a bust of Fort Waynes first African American city councilperson.

Garcias challenge with Little Turtle was to envision a likeness based on few existing images.

Through his observations of Native Americans and others who live close to the land, Garcia developed a composite sketch, an amalgam, of what Little Turtle might have looked like.

Forming the sketch model, which was about 2-feet tall, was sometimes emotional, not unlike a conversation. Garcia gave this early rendering a nickname: Turtle. Turtles prominent features included high cheekbones, a rectangular face, a strong jaw, and a proud chest.

The actual statue was more technical and required months of planning and execution. In the vacant Journal Gazette building on South Clinton Street, he first molded Chief Little Turtle with oil-based clay. A photograph from that time shows Garcia astride a ladder. His shoes are roughly the size of Little Turtles kneecaps.

Then he and his wife and children covered the massive figure with plaster to form a cast. Garcia drove the cast, divided into sections, to the foundry in Michigan. The completed work was revealed in a 1976 dedication ceremony that also honored the restored Canal House on E. Superior Street.

Over the years, Garcia has met a few Miami descendants. They thanked him for representing their history with a respectful statue.

Another sculptor, whom a few local artists describe as Garcias rival, was Sufi Ahmad. An art teacher at the University of St. Francis, Ahmad grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and died in Fort Wayne in 2011.

Lenore DeFonso holds artwork by Sufi Ahmad.

Like Garcia, Ahmad had sculpted several busts of local leaders, including Little Turtle and Wayne, that appear in the rotunda of Flagstar Bank, ironically on E. Wayne Street. But Princess Mishawaka (1987), located in Mishawaka, stands out as especially unique. Based on an early American legend, Ahmads interpretation reveals an athletic woman with a regal bearing.

Ahmads partner Lenore DeFonso remembers how Ahmad made the large sculpture in the side yard of their home on Oakdale Avenue.

Its my favorite of Sufis pieces, DeFonso says. Its her pose and the way she sits on the rocks. She is reaching back for an arrow in her quiver. She looks like shes ready to deal with whatever comes her way.

A statue of Princess Mishawaka by Sufi Ahmad (1987) at Mishawaka City Hall.

Sadly, as Charlie Savage wrote in his Politico piece, Native Americans would continue to suffer under this countrys broken oaths and unfair treaties, even though Wayne had promised the rest of the territory would remain Indian land foreverhence Indiana.

And for generations, Waynes images have dominated a city that systematically removed its earliest citizens.

Read more:
Fort Wayne's culture wars seen anew this Thanksgiving through statues - inputfortwayne.com

Spring 2020 was an extraordinary moment in time for the National Trust. We had to close for the first time in our 125-year history. I was hugely relieved when we were allowed to reopen in May, at a time when the nation was desperately in need of access to green space, fresh air and nature. Since then, we have welcomed millions of visitors. Despite the complications that come with keeping places open safely, they have been profoundly kind, co-operative, and patient.

But away from the green spaces and open skies, our national debate is anything but that breath of fresh air. At a time when we most need understanding and tolerance, some of our oldest institutions have become a battleground in the so-called culture wars.

In organisations such as the National Trust, which millions of people care about and some of our fiercest critics are those who care a great deal there will always be disagreement about how progress is to be made. We welcome debate thats part of being a membership organisation. But the polarisation of views and quality of debate right now feels different.

The Trust is custodian of so much that is great about this country art, architecture, history, landscapes, nature and wildlife. Its one of Britains greatest success stories. Other countries depend on the state to cherry-pick and protect their heritage. The Trust, as an independent charity, cares for a whole panoply of sites of national pride from where Magna Carta was sealed to the White Cliffs of Dover.

While we stay out of politics, organisations like the Trust can also be instrumental in supporting national policies. We are creating or restoring 25,000 hectares of habitat for nature by 2025, directly contributing to goals set out in the Governments 25 Year Environment Plan. When it comes to creative exports, our places have been host to some of the biggest blockbusters filmed in the UK, from Star Wars to Game of Thrones.

In recent months I have had many hundreds of letters and emails expressing all kinds of views about the many decisions we make every day from passionate support to vicious threats. Its the same on social media.

But the vast majority of our 5.6 million members have been engaged elsewhere. They are the real silent majority. When I am out and about at National Trust sites they are not arguing about the Trust. They are there to enjoy their surroundings. They are giving their volunteer hours to the conservation of our shared heritage.

Upsetting anyone is a matter of regret for me. Our founders wrote that we exist for the benefit of the nation. I take that seriously and I would never want anyone to feel at odds with an institution that is there to serve them. The Trust indeed any cultural organisation should be a place where people can find common ground. A place where debate can be had without rancour.

We damage or turn away from our shared spaces and cultural institutions at everyones peril. To recover from this oppressive pandemic we will need more than scientific genius. We will need art and culture, parks and wilderness. We will need to wonder again at the world around us. Above all we will need co-operation, calm and kindness.

Hilary McGrady is Director General of the National Trust

See more here:
The National Trust is more than a battleground for the nation's culture wars - Telegraph.co.uk

Next Monday, the U.S. bishops will begin their annual plenary meeting with a big difference: Due to COVID-19, they will not be gathering as they have in recent years at the Marriott Waterfront hotel in Baltimore, but will hold a virtual meeting spread over two days.

COVID-19 is not only changing the manner of their convocation, it should also inform the recalibration of the bishops' stance toward the culture, a recalibration that should be the central focus of this year's meeting.

Last spring, the bishops like most Americans did what was asked of them. We suspended in-person liturgies. We went without the solemn celebrations of Holy Week. We closed our schools. In many cities, bishops and other clergy developed better relations with their civic leaders as all saw the clamant necessity of combating this horrific threat to the common good. When we all started reopening our society, we did so cautiously and in concert with public health requirements.

In short, the bishops learned something about the common good, about what we owe to one another, and how, in a pluralistic society, the common good can be sought even while enormous differences on issues remain.

As the bishops prepare to welcome a new administration in Washington, they need to be guided by that concern for the common good and abandon the culture-warrior approach that has plagued their public posture for too long.

President-elect Joe Biden is now the most prominent Catholic in the country. He speaks powerfully about how important his faith is to him, usually in the context of the monstrous suffering he endured, losing his wife and daughter in a car accident, and then his adult son to brain cancer. He also ran a campaign that highlighted some of the pillars of Catholic social teaching human dignity, the common good, solidarity and he did so explicitly. He is not coming at the bishops looking for a fight.

Yes, from a Catholic perspective, the president-elect is grievously wrong in his support for liberal abortion laws. We Catholics are rightly horrified whenever any group of people, no matter how powerless, is denied legal protection. The taking of innocent human life is wrong no matter the circumstance. But how a politician approaches the issue of abortion is not the only thing to know about them.

Biden is a man of decency who is wrong, not an indecent man, and if the bishops welcome his presidency in the same nasty, combative way they welcomed that of President Barack Obama, they will live to regret it. They need to abandon the zero-sum, legalistic approach they have followed in recent years, as if the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is an arm of the Becket Fund.

They should look to lower the temperature in the culture wars and reach some accommodations with the Biden administration on the issues where they disagree with the president and work together on the many, many issues about which a Democratic administration is much closer to the teachings of the church than the outgoing administration was, starting with immigration and climate change policy. If they don't, many of the next generation of Democrats will continue to put the words religious liberty in scare quotes and prioritize abortion rights above those rights enumerated in the First Amendment.

Of course, no issue will hang over this meeting like the McCarrick report. Some of their brethren were not candid when they were consulted about Theodore McCarrick's misdeeds by the nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, in the spring of 2000. It was ridiculous to think an inquiry of McCarrick's protgs constitutes an investigation, but that does not let those bishops, now deceased, off the hook in terms of assigning moral responsibility for McCarrick's rise.

The system failure the report catalogues was comprehensive but, like all such failures, needed only one or two brave, fiercely honest bishops to stand up and say, "No." All the bishops need to pledge themselves to act responsibly in the implementation of sex abuse policies, no matter who gets ensnared in any allegations and investigations.

One of the issues that the report minimizes is money. We may never know if there were bustarellas involved in the McCarrick episode: The reason crooks use cash is because you can't trace it.

But we know that McCarrick was the principal actor at the Papal Foundation, which raises money from big donors for papal charities. The entrance fee is $100,000 to become a member, but you get to go to Rome every year and meet the pope. Before his downfall, McCarrick accompanied the group each year. You can guess whether it was the access or the charity that animated McCarrick the most. The Papal Foundation should be shut down. McCarrick may be gone, but the modus operandi remains the same.

Another aspect of the money issue is that McCarrick took large checks from people and deposited them in accounts he alone controlled. Bishops should only, repeat only, accept checks for the diocese or a legal nonprofit with a board of directors like Catholic Charities. All such boards should have laypeople as well.

McCarrick was never one to spend money on fancy food or clothes. He only craved power. The ability to spread money around Rome or Poland was surely done with an eye toward his ecclesial advancement.

The bishops might also discuss with the nuncio how we could improve the consultation process that determines whether or not a candidate is suitable to become a bishop or be promoted to a larger see.

Before 1893, there was no apostolic delegate in the U.S. to compile ternas (lists of candidates) for vacant sees. The process of naming a new bishop began with a first consultation that involved the priests of a diocese, who gathered and compiled a terna of three names that was sent to the metropolitan. He, in turn, convoked a meeting of all the bishops of the province and they also prepared a terna. Both lists were sent to the Propaganda Fide office in Rome where the final terna was crafted for presentation to the pope.

Why not bring back this process, and include a terna from the nuncio? There is no guarantee it would have prevented someone like McCarrick from being named a bishop, but it might have. Besides, wider consultation might prevent other types of disastrous appointments: McCarrick is not the only bishop to have ruined a diocese, and sexual crimes are not the only form of episcopal malfeasance.

The conference of bishops is deeply divided, as is the nation. But they also share uniquely powerful bonds upon which to draw if they get serious about rebuilding communion, a communion to which they are pledged by their oath of office and the church's theology about the office of bishop. That oath and that office, as well as the facts that they are all men of a certain age, all received similar training, all spend their days saying the same prayers and reading the same Scriptures, all these should make it somewhat easier for them to find a basis for renewed communion. They could provide a model for the rest of the country.

If the bishops sincerely wish to try to build communion one with another, they will also need a shared goal. The experiences of 2020 point toward the obvious candidate. COVID-19 has exposed the way poverty and race afflict our health care delivery system. The summer of protests highlighted the systemic racism that continues to afflict our culture and our society, denying Black Americans opportunities the rest of us take for granted. Poverty remains the greatest abortifacient in our society. The election pointed to the limits of politics at this moment of time. What can unite these different experiences?

Just last month, Fr. Michael McGivney, founder of the country's most famous mutual aid society, the Knights of Columbus, was beatified. The bishops should commit the entire church in the U.S. to addressing poverty and racism for the next few years, not only by lobbying for certain policies from the government, although that is essential. Not only through statements that invite reflection and conversion, although those can help.

No, the bishops need to start by examining our own institutions, from parishes to schools to hospitals, to see how they can be used to provide a hand up to those on the margins of society, using the 19th-century mutual aid societies as a model. Such an effort would not only align the church in the U.S. more closely with the Gospel, but it might help bishops, the church and the society overcome the divisions that plague us.

[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

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Originally posted here:
US bishops need to recalibrate their stance toward the culture - National Catholic Reporter