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Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers has an apparently unpopular answer to the scourge of racism—imitating Jesus. Our society refuses this path, preferring a culture of constant critique and revolution. It is time that the revolutionaries heard the hard truth—their cure is no cure at all. Real healing requires us to take up the Gospel with courage and humility.
Cy Kellett:
Can the Catholic faith cure racism? Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers is next.
Cy Kellett:
For a long time, but especially since the death of George Floyd, the conversation about race in the United States and around the world has been at a heightened level. We’ve done a little bit of broadcasting about what the Catholic church has to say about that, but probably not enough. And so we invited deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, known around the world as the Dynamic Deacon, to talk with us about a Catholic approach to understanding, and even more than understanding, finally curing and overcoming the racism that is rampant here in the United States and around the world.
Cy Kellett:
The racism that is sometimes within us and is all around us. How do we fight it? And not in just a way that makes us feel better or feel that we’re on the right side, but in a way that actually has a hope of moving us to a world where whatever the color of a person’s skin, whatever the particular texture of their hair, everyone is treated as a beloved child of God. And each one knows that they have an important place and that they are valued within civic society. How do we do that? Well, here’s what Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers had to say about what the Catholic church has to say about racism.
Cy Kellett:
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, thank you so much for being with us.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
It’s great to be back with you, Cy, thanks for having me.
Cy Kellett:
You’ve been doing presentations on racism. You call it A Civilization of Love. So, I want to talk to you a bit about that.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. So that’s the kingdom that Christ asked us to help him build here on earth, right? A civilization of love. And John [inaudible 00:01:54] says it in his first letter, first John 4:16, very beautifully, “God is love. And he who lives in love, lives in God and God lives in him.” And this was beautifully articulated actually by the great Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who once said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that humanity has to evolve for itself a method that rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. That sound familiar? That seems the pattern that we’re following today. So Martin Luther King said the foundation of such a method is love, right? But it’s not that weak kind of love or was it what? Phil Collins, that groovy kind of love or Van Halen, right? It ain’t talking about love, not that kind of love.
Cy Kellett:
Or, as you like to say, Barney-type of love, it’s not Barney.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Right, right, right. Or that Barney… God, I love you, you love me. Nothing like that, we’re talking about, right, that Agape, right? It’s a love that that breaks itself open and pours itself out in sacrifice and service to others. That’s the kind of love that we’re talking about. And that’s the foundation upon which Christ wants to help us to build his kingdom here on earth.
Cy Kellett:
So, would you say that the… I mean, I guess I know the answer to this, but maybe what is the Catholic contribution to the current kind of turmoil over race, the various theories of how we’re going to overcome racism, whether it’s being anti-racist or woke or opposing those things or the Martin Luther king way, what’s the Catholic contribution to this conversation? I guess you could call it a conversation, this argument, I guess we’re having over race right now?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. Well, it’s rooted in the scriptures actually. So we have to follow what the word of God says, not what the culture says, right? The culture has answers, so-called answers, to all this, what’s the answers look like? Being woke and the cancel culture and trying to rewrite history and all these kinds of things. But if you look in the Book of Numbers, for example, Book of Numbers, chapter 12, the opening verses there. We see that Miriam and Aaron, Aaron was the high priest and Miriam was his wife. And they spoke out against Moses because Moses married a Cushite woman.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And Cush today would be Ethiopia. And so they were basically upset because he married a Black woman, that’s basically what was going on.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So when Moses came out from worshiping God in the temple, which was a series of tents at that time, he came out and God made Miriam leprous, okay? And in fact, the word of God says, Miriam was leprous as white as snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam and behold, she was leprous, and Aaron said to Moses, “Oh my Lord do not punish us because we have done foolishly and sinned.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So the first thing we have to recognize as Catholics is that racism is a sin. Very, very clear teaching rooted in the word of God. And so, in order for us to formulate a response, we have to differentiate racism from prejudice, okay. So, prejudice-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
With regard to race is a preconceived notion about someone that’s not based on any factual or objective experience, but just based on just what you think. And racism is that same thing, prejudice and discrimination, rooted in the belief that my race is superior to your race.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So let me give you an example, quick example, Cy. Back before COVID, when I was speaking, someone found out that I did my undergraduate degree at Notre Dame. And so they looked at me, they said, “Oh, you went to Notre Dame, what position did you play?” You see? Because here’s the calculus in their mind, big Black guy plus Notre Dame equals football.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
You see?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Now, that was a prejudiced statement because it was based-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
On not any factor experience, he just saw. Now that wasn’t racist, why?
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
In order for that statement to be racist, he would have to set it with the thinking that I’m saying this because I believe that my race is superior to your race.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, yeah. Right, right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
See?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s racism.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
But that was a prejudice. Then what he should’ve said was, “Oh, you went to Notre Dame, what did you study?” Because that’s what he would have asked anybody else, you see? So that’s [inaudible 00:06:33] Catholics.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So, well, let me ask you this, then. When you put it that way, you can imagine, and I feel like young people don’t believe this. You can’t overcome all prejudice, but you could overcome all racism. Now you want to overcome all prejudice, but you’re always going to have some blind spots where you’re not seeing things properly, or you’re judging someone based on something you don’t even realize in yourself that you assume about that group’s… That person’s group or whatnot. But it does sound like if you distinguished between prejudice and racism, you can… Racism is a thing you can end. You can’t end human beings being prejudiced against one another.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s an excellent point, Cy. And I’ll tell you why.
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t even go to Notre Dame.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Because racism is learned.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And if you can learn something, you can unlearn it. What do I mean? You ever see little kids playing together. Three-year-olds, four-year-olds, five-year-olds, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian. They don’t care, they’re just kids playing, they could care less. But as they get older and they begin to consume images and sound bites from television and movies and social medias and jokes that they hear their dad saying to another friend, they see we’re inundated with these caricatures of various races that are sometimes belittling and derisive. And even if only subliminally, they start to plant seeds of half-truths in our minds and our hearts and the people viewing and consuming these images. And then we start to, “Well, if I’m seeing this so often it must be true.” But it’s not based on any truth.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And that’s exactly what’s happening in our culture today. People are watching social media and watching television, and they’re believing everything that they see and hear without stopping and saying, “Wait a minute, fact-check here, let me…” Or even the fact-check people are not even factual.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Well, that’s true. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. So, it’s not about truth. And that’s what we are as Catholics. Why? Because Jesus Christ himself is truth.
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I am the way, the truth, and the life. Not a philosophy, not a system of thinking. Ultimately truth is a person, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. And so when we pursue truth, we pursue Christ. And the truth is that racism is a learned behavior and once we understand that, we begin the hard work of unlearning and emptying ourselves of that sin, so God can fill us with His truth and His love.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So I love that you start with Abraham. I mean, excuse me, Moses marrying a Black woman, because I think most people don’t even know that that’s in the Bible. We don’t even know that that’s in our own Bible. So right away… Also, is it a little ironic that he turns her extra White? Like, “Okay, fine. You want to be a racist, I’ll make you super White with leprosy.” But so right from the very first books, I mean, that’s the second book of… No, what’s that? The third book of the Bible. We’ve got this anti-racism. God’s saying that’s sinful. They kind of knew in their hearts that it was sinful already, though. They didn’t… If they said, “God’s done this to us because we sinned.” They had to know already. So, we know that it’s wrong, what we’re doing when we do this.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. And sadly it’s due to concupiscence, right?
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Yeah. Right, right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
The desire to choose that which is not God. And sometimes we have this herd mentality, right? We follow what everybody else is saying. We follow what everybody else is doing. But we have to be counter-culturals as Christians. Cy, I grew up in the hood, back in Jersey, in Newark, New Jersey area. But now that I’ve been out in Oregon for almost 25 years now, I can appreciate nature. And one thing I noticed about rivers, rivers they flow downstream, especially during the spring time when the mountains are… The snow’s melting and the rivers are really rushing, it’s very powerful, but I noticed, Cy, dead things flow downstream. Dead things go with the flow.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Tree trunks, dead animals, things like that. It’s the salmon, they fight upstream. They fight against the current to come up and lay their eggs. And we have… When it comes to this issue, Cy, of racism, we have to, as Catholics, we have to be the salmon. We have to fight against the culture. We have to fight against the stream that’s just carrying everybody with it, even Catholics down the stream. No, we have to be the salmon and fight upstream, fight against this ideology, fight against this way of thinking so that the truth of Christ can prevail.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So we’re in a situation, however, where, I mean, it just seems like such a total mess. The way that we think about race. I think, myself, that there are a lot of people who resist acknowledging racism because the people who are on TV talking about racism are themselves kind of racist. I hate to say it that way, but they’re proposing a way of thinking about race that actually says… I mean, as a White person, right? Okay. So, there’s something wrong with White people, white privilege, white this, white that. And so you go, well, there’s a kind of emotional reaction to that, that we have, that actually, I think makes a lot of White people just stupid about race. I don’t want to think about that, I don’t want to talk about that because what they’re really doing is attacking me. Do you see what I’m saying, Deacon? And so-
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah, yeah. It’s like-
Cy Kellett:
Go ahead.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I call that emotional racism.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Tell me about that.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Which is not a response at all. Here’s the thing, I mean, what we want is someone to look at us and to see us the way God sees us. It’s based in the book of Genesis chapter two, the very last side of Genesis chapter two says, “The man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed.” Why? Because they were seeing each other the way God sees them. They were looking at each other through God’s eyes. And that’s the way that God created us to see each other. But, this racism and prejudice creeped in. So now what happens is, we try to see everything through those glasses and through the lenses. Race is the issue that’s driving it forward. I mean, that’s the whole critical race theory, for example. It’s looking at everything through the lens of race, instead of looking at everything through the heart of Jesus Christ and what that does.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
In fact, it actually causes the vision-
Cy Kellett:
That’s what I’m getting at.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Between people of different colors to widen. It makes it worse, not better.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s the ironic part, it actually makes things worse, not better because you’re still looking at it through… And look at the lens you’re looking at through, Cy. Sin. If racism is the sin, and you’re looking at it through the lens of race, then you’re not going to get anywhere. That’s the point. So we know we need to take those glasses off and start seeing each other the way God sees us. And the other thing is this, we have to be careful again, with our language, for example, the same people that you’re talking about, Cy, use terms like systemic racism.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Yeah. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Let’s talk about that for a second, okay. So we have to make a distinction between systemic racism and individuals in systems who are racist. Let me give you an example. So we talk about systemic racism, this is when racist attitudes infiltrate institutions and organizations and government. So for example, slavery. I mean, it was legal, it was woven into the fabric of American art and culture, that is systemic racism. The Jim Crow laws that followed after it and the postbellum era, that was systemic racism, because they were written into the laws of the country. Apartheid in South Africa. The Dred Scott versus John F. Sanford Supreme Court decision that said that Black people, literally, Black people were property and not human beings.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s systemic racism. So, that’s very clear examples, okay. And let’s be honest, in the history of the church, there were people within the church who were racists. I remember my own parish, my parish was German and Irish back in the day, but then a lot of Black people came up during World War II from the South, from places like Louisiana and Alabama. And they came to work in the shipyards. In fact, on a clear day, you can see the top of the ship yard from my parish. And that was the closest parish to the shipyard, so they came. And there are still people there, they remember their grandparents coming to the parish, had to sit in the back of the church, right? Because they… Or they’d sit in the [crosstalk 00:15:44] couldn’t sit with everybody else, that kind of thing.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So we have to distinguish institutional racism from individuals within systems who are racist. So for example, Cy, Holy Mother Church. The church was founded by Jesus Christ. Therefore the church herself can’t be racist. It’s impossible for the church to be racist. However, there are people in the church, both clergy and lady who are racist, who have racist attitudes, you see?
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So even the government today. The government today is not racist. Now they used to be, right? So we talked about systemic racism, but now-
Cy Kellett:
Right, it’s illegal for the government to be racist now.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Exactly. There are anti-discrimination laws and civil rights laws in place to prevent that from ever happening again. So you can’t say the government is racist. But there are people within the government who are racist and we fail to make those distinctions. And when we fail to make those distinctions, everything gets blurred and therefore everything is seen through the lens of racism.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. But this is… When you have… It is heartbreaking to think of Black people coming up from Louisiana or somewhere, and having to sit in the back of the church because what? That’s so internalized in the White population that’s been there or something. Okay, but that’s in a certain sense to my mind… That is in a certain sense, and I want you to correct me if I’m wrong, systematic in the sense that everyone’s brought into a system of thinking, even if it’s not the rule at the church, do you know what I’m saying? Even if it’s not… Maybe it was the rule at the church. So I mean, it seems… I can see how you’re saying there’s systematic racism and then there’s personal racism, but there seems this middle area of our cultural habits and we got to fix that.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Well, and that’s exactly right. That’s why we can’t follow the culture. We have to be counter-cultural.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
We have to swim against the stream. For example, every Pope during the time of slavery has spoken out against slavery. In fact, there are popes that said that if you own slaves, you are excommunicated from the church. Very strong language from the Vatican. But in this country, there were bishops and priests, and of course lay people.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And even religious orders like the Jesuits, they owned slaves.
Cy Kellett:
Yep.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I mean, it was flying in the face of what the Pope had said, and the magistrate from Rome had said, they didn’t care. They were going to do what they were going to do.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And the same thing happened during the Jim Crow era, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
There was no church law that said, put the Black people in the back. They were just following the law that everybody else was doing. But the church can’t follow what everybody else is doing.
Cy Kellett:
No. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s the point.
Cy Kellett:
Absolutely.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
We have to follow Jesus Christ.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. And there was a kind of American attitude, well, they don’t really understand us over in Rome. Like, “Well, okay, we get what you’re saying that you don’t understand the situation here.” And-
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Exactly. Augustus Tolton-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Who is on his way to sainthood right now was rejected from every single seminary in the United States because he was Black.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Every single one. Solely because he was Black, but it was the Vatican that took him and trained to be a priest at their seminary in Rome.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Okay. So, here’s, I guess, the nub of the question then is that kind of not systemic, but ingrained racism it’s in us. It is there. What’s the Catholic answer to that? What’s the Catholic approach to that?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
All right. So, here’s what I would say. The first thing we need to do is see past stereotypes and see people. So I talked about before how sometimes these impressions, again, racism is learned and we consume images that stereotype people. And so what we have to do is do like Mother Teresa did, when she saw someone, she saw Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And so, you know what I would love, Cy? If someone came to me, say a White person, and said, “You know what, Deacon, for some reason, every time I’m around Black people I get scared. I don’t know why I don’t want to be and there’s no reason for me to be, but I don’t know why I get nervous. And can we talk about that?” I would love that. That’s an honest response to something you are dealing with internally. Let’s have a discussion about it, let’s talk about it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And as you get to know me and I get to know you, the eye glasses come off, we begin to see each other the way God sees us.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So, that’s what we have to do. We have to start seeing individuals and seeing people and not seeing stereotypes. And it’s maybe difficult to do that, but just honestly acknowledging it, and then working toward a solution, I think is the first thing we have to do. And I think also in the church, we need to appreciate the gifts of cultural diversity.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
For example, one guy described this church to me, he said, it was… How did he phrase it again? It was a country club White, was his parish, but yet they’re surrounded by African Americans and Hispanics and people from Africa and other countries, agents. But how come they’re not coming to our parish? What can we do? I said, “Look, if you go to a church and all you have images of White saints and stuff like that, do some things differently.”
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
For example, our parish is very culturally diverse. And so we acknowledge our German and Irish past. So at the high… It’s Immaculate Heart of Mary in Portland, Oregon. So we have the blessed Mother of course, above the high altar, and then on either side is St. Boniface and St. Patrick that shows the Irish and German patrimony of the parish, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Great. We now also have, because half the parish is now Vietnamese, so we have a beautiful statue of Our Lady of La Vang in the church. Absolutely gorgeous statue. We also have a number of African-Americans. So we have Saint Martin de Porres in the church. We have Saint Kateri Tekakwitha in the church, we have icon screens with Moses the Black, so now the images in the church look like the people in the church.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, how wonderful. What a great idea. Yeah, because often a church is like it was decorated in 1950 or something, and the parish doesn’t look like that at all anymore. It’s completely different now.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Right, right.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Another simple thing, Cy, having a potluck and forming a discussion. For example, what we noticed in the parish when I first got there, was that we had the Vietnamese community, we had the African community, we had the Filipino community, and it was great, but we weren’t really interacting very much together.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So we decided to have a potluck. And during that potluck people brought their different foods and their traditions, they wore their traditional clothes, and then everybody loves food and parties, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So everybody’s trying to different foods. And then we had people get up and share their story and their experience. Here’s what it’s like coming from another country and trying to be Catholic in the United States. Here’s what it’s been like in his parish, trying to keep my kids Catholic in this culture.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
It was beautiful.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And it really opened us up to accept and to say, “Wow, even though they’re from another country, their experience is just like mine.” You see, now you begin to humanize people and not caricature them. Those are two very simple things, a little study group. There’s been a number of wonderful documents put out by the church United States over the years on the issue of race. Having a study group, maybe inviting… If your parish is all White or whatever, invite the Hispanic parish down the street, or the African parish down the street, or the Asian parish down the street, invite them to come. And maybe have a vibrant, dynamic discussion in the parish over one of those documents, like What We Have Seen and Heard put out by the US bishops back in the seventies or the most recent document put out by US bishops just a couple of years ago called Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love. The latest document on racism and just have a study group and talk about that and share their experience. That’s how we begin to overcome this thing.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, that’s right. Knowing one another is really a key and this… Okay. So, I feel however, I’ll just throw this out to you. It does feel like we’re in a terrible box where it’s almost as if it’s inhuman the way we talk about race. And I know people are trying to do good when they say critical race theory or being woke and all of that. But I also know that, you quoted Martin Luther King, many people today who would call themselves anti-racists are really rejecting Martin Luther King.
Cy Kellett:
They don’t want anything to do with that. That’s too… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just not… For some, I’m sure it’s not Marxist enough for them, but I’m sure there’s other reasons. So, before… I do want you to give me some kind of way of embracing this idea that there is this cultural fact of racism. I have an absolute obligation as a Christian to be against it and not just to be passively against it, to be actively against it, but how do I fit that into a very, very heated kind of atmosphere.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. So, so here’s why I think the culture is responding the way that it does and why it’s rejected Martin Luther King. Because back in the day, there was strong leadership in this area of race. So Martin Luther King was… Because what Martin Luther King did, and what made him so great, was that he cut through the politics. Liberal versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican. He cut through White versus Black. He cut through all of that. And he was a voice of reason. He was a voice that people can rally around and say, “Yes, this guy gets it. Here’s someone that understands how we need to move forward.” And so people Black and White and all races rallied around him, right? Same thing in South Africa with Nelson Mandela. Here is someone who understands how we need to move forward. Cy, today, there is no voice like that in our culture.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
There’s a leadership void and a leadership vacuum with regard to race. So because that vacuum exists, you have all these other voices trying to fill in that space, but they’re not filling it in with truth. They’re filling it in with their own agendas and often their own agendas have nothing to do with race. See, the idea of that, we have to overcome race. It’s a veneer. It’s just a veneer on the top. They really have this agenda that’s underneath, which has nothing at all to do with solving the problem of racism, but they’re using it, race, as a launching point to… And what they’re really trying to do is push this underlying agenda. That’s why we’re seeing the problems that we’re seeing. And so we Catholics cannot buy into that. We have to reject the Black Lives Matter movement.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
We have to reject liberation theology. We have to reject critical race theory. We have to look at this issue through the lens of Jesus Christ and our Catholic faith. And that’s how we ultimately… I think the church can take a leadership position and with all these other voices coming in, and we’re not hearing the voice of Christ, the church is uniquely positioned to allow us to hear the voice of Christ. And quite frankly, to be honest, I don’t think the bishops are the ones that can lead this thing because they’re still reeling from the sex abuse scandal. And so they’re often playing it safe, right? They’re talking about my grand sin, the environment, which are important things, and those are good things, but people aren’t leaving the church because of those issues. And they can’t even agree whether… They have to have a vote or a discussion to talk about whether they should have a discussion about drafting a document about the Eucharist.
Cy Kellett:
That’s the thing-
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Are you kidding me?
Cy Kellett:
If you asked them to do something on race-
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
The Eucharist is the source and the summit of our faith, we’re just coming out of COVID, people aren’t coming to church. A Eucharistic Renaissance is in order, but there are… Look, forget… I think the church, the people, be the ones that come up… And quite frankly, I think the Deacons could be the ones to help people, to raise people up, to lead this initiative, to really work at overcoming, to recognize yes, we have these attitudes within us.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
But we have to work, just as Jesus did the work for us on the cross. We need to do that hard work, pick up that cross and follow Jesus, because the work of overcoming racism will help lead more people to the fullness of truth and to eternal life with God forever in heaven.
Cy Kellett:
Praise God, thank you so much. I’m so happy to hear what you said about the bishops, because we do have to do it. We got to do it at the ground level. We’ve got to get this done. And what you described is a very simple thing. Someone could go to their pastor after listening to this and say, “Let’s try this potluck idea.” And just describe just exactly what you described, and you’ll be making far more progress than you’d be making if you wrote a letter to the US bishops and said, “Why don’t you guys write another letter?” Because they’ll form a committee to decide whether to have a vote about whether to make another committee and have another vote and the world will end before we get something good on racism from there. But I do feel as a Catholic, this double thing, and I want to run this by you before we end.
Cy Kellett:
On the one hand, I feel like the Catholic church has this magnificent tradition of being for every one. Of seeing itself as being for everyone. I mean, it was in Africa before the apostles were dead. It was all the way to India before the apostles were dead, went all the way to Spain before the apostles were dead, it’s a universal message. But then on the… I’m also an American Catholic and American Catholicism was out of touch with that greater history for a long time. We have to get back… We have to be less American, I’m sorry to say it, and more Catholic. Do you think that’s fair?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
You know what, Cy, I’ll even go further than you, brother. When I stand before God at the end of my life, he’s not going to say, “Okay, Deacon, how Black were you?” Or how Hispanic were you, how Asian were you? That doesn’t… “Did you follow the teachings of my son Jesus Christ?” That’s the standard.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I’m not saying that race doesn’t matter. I think the gift of race, the different races in church is a great gift, because we all bring something unique and special and different to the table. That’s wonderful, but at the end, God is not going to judge us on how racial we were. He’s going to judge on how we lived the gospel of his son, Jesus Christ. And I think that the big takeaway from all this, Cy, can be rooted in the parable, the Good Samaritan. The guy was on the road, the Jewish guy was beat up, left to the side of the road to die.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
The priest walked by and left him. Levite, who was the Deacon, walked by and left him. And then the Samaritan, who they’re supposed to hate, the Jews and Samaritans did not have any love for each other at all. But it was a Samaritan who looked mercifully and lovingly upon this person who was injured, who took him to the hotel and said, “I’m going to pay for this and I’ll give you the rest on the way back.” See, that’s counter-cultural. That’s the kind of thinking I’ve been talking about.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
And so why do I bring that? I mean, it’s easy to say in retrospect, what would you have done in that situation? Everybody would say, “I would have helped the guy.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Really? When the norm of the day was, like you said, the Jim Crow laws, you said the Catholic church followed the Jim Crow instead of following the church. So you’re going to tell me that you would have done the same thing, if that was the cultural milieu at the time? No.
Cy Kellett:
Everybody thinks I would have been brave back then. It’s doing it now that’s the hard part.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. Yeah. I’d also help the guy. But hold on, what if that guy at the side of the road, Cy, was the guy who raped you, was the guy who molested you as a child? What if that was the guy who drove drunk and killed your father?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Now, oh, wait a minute. Because why? The anger and the hatred we feel will burn like a fire in our hearts. And we want that person to suffer greatly. But Jesus says… Right, we say you deserve it, but Jesus says, “No, we must be the good Samaritan.” So, what Jesus does, he calls us to look beyond hatred, to beyond animosity, and to extend mercy to everyone in need and not to exclude anyone on the grounds of prejudice. So if we are to defeat the evil of racial injustice, we have to lead with love. We must be the Samaritan.
Cy Kellett:
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, the Dynamic Deacon, our guest building a civilization of love. A Catholic response to racism are the workshops he’s been doing. You can find out all about Deacon Harold and the workshops at DeaconHarold.com. And you’ve got a book coming out, probably be out early next year, on just this topic?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yes, that’s correct.
Cy Kellett:
From Ignatius Press.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
By Ignatius Press.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Look for it. Deacon Harold, as always, thank you. God bless you. Thank you so much.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Thank you, Cy, great to be with you as always.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, no, I can’t do… You have to give us your blessing before you go. I forgot. I’m sorry. People will be mad at me if I don’t get that. So go ahead, please give us your blessing, Deacon.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Almighty God bless you and keep you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Cy Kellett:
It’s hard not to love Deacon Harold, a man on fire with love of God and love of his fellow human beings. And it is only by being lit on fire with love that we’re going to overcome the fire, the smoldering, the constant smoke and the ugliness of racism in the world. There is no other way. It’s going to have to be burned out by love. There’s no other way to get rid of it. If you disagree, we’d love to hear from you. Send us an email radio@catholic.com is our email address. If you agree, you can send something in there, too. If you have an idea for a future guest or a future topic radio@catholic.com. You can support us financially and we would really appreciate your support. We’d like to keep doing this. We’d like to keep producing these episodes, go to givecatholic.com, give whatever amount from five to 5 million, nothing over 5 million, please.
Cy Kellett:
We’re going to settle in it there from five to $5 million and leave a little note says, this is for Catholic Answers Focus, that way the money will get where it’s supposed to go. If you’re listening, if you’re watching on YouTube or listening on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe. That helps us grow on YouTube, where we are growing. And we’re very happy with the growth. Thanks for your support in that regard. And if you’re listening, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever else you might be listening to your podcast, if you subscribe, then you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. And if you give us that five-star review you too, will be helping us to grow. Thanks very much for listening I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing right here on Catholic Answers Focus.