Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Archbishop José Gomez Invokes "Cancel Culture" and "Wokeness" in his Battle Against Joe Biden and Black Lives Matter
Archbishop Jose Gomez, formerly of San Antonio, with then Texas Governor Rick Perry. (Office of Governor Rick Perry)
December 23, 2021
By Bill Berkowitz
“I believe the best way for the Church to understand the new social justice movements, is to understand them as pseudo-religions, and even replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs.” -- Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Unless you are a practicing Catholic, and perhaps even if you are, you might not know that Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). And, you might not be aware that Gomez has become a leading Catholic culture warrior. Gomez was an early critic of President Joe Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president. Toward the end of the year he delivered a “speech denigrating social and racial justice movements that do the work of the Gospel,” the National Catholic Reporter recently editorialized.
In naming Archbishop Gomez as NCR’s Newsmaker of 2021, the independent Catholic news organization’s editorial board maintained that “Gomez has squandered his presidency fighting dead-end culture wars.”
In 2019, Gomez became the first Latino to hold the post of president of the U.S. bishops' conference. Many were optimistic that he, with a reputation of being more pastoral than a culture warrior, would be a voice of reason in the battle against COVID-19 and its variants, and a leader of racial reconciliation and the fight against environmental racism..
“But,” the editorial notes,” rather than build upon his history of supporting immigrants' rights, Gomez has instead squandered the majority of his presidency fighting culture war battles, such as the ones this year about politicians and ‘eucharistic coherence’ and against racial and other social justice movements.”
Before Biden was inaugurated, conservative Catholics formed a working group that appeared to specifically be aimed at denouncing Biden for being pro-choice and a supporter of LGBTQ rights. Controversy raged over whether Biden should be denied communion. NCR noted that “The controversy over the ‘wafer wars’ continued to simmer throughout the spring — even as the Vatican tried to send signals to the bishops to back off — and erupted into a full boil at the U.S. bishops' meeting in June. Held virtually because of the pandemic, the meeting included discussion and a vote on plans to move ahead with the document on so-called ‘eucharistic coherence.’
“After two hours of divisive debate, during which some bishops insisted the document wasn't about pro-choice politicians, while others repeatedly brought up the names of Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others, the conference voted to move forward with the drafting of the document.”
Later in the year, the debate shifted to the Black Lives Matter movement. In several November speeches, Gomez, seeming to embody the 1950s red baiting of the late Cardinal Spellman, “attacked what he called ‘America's new religions,’ claiming that some modern social justice movements, including anti-racism ones, were Marxist-inspired, anti-Christian ‘pseudo-religions.’"
Gomez adopted the “cancel culture” meme into his rhetoric, making “an apparent nod to conservative anger over ‘wokeness’ and critical race theory when he said that ‘even public schools are actively promoting and teaching this vision.’"
"The new social movements and ideologies that we are talking about today, were being seeded and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions," said Gomez, who also attributed the COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation and the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd with causing those movements to be ‘fully unleashed in our society.’"
Gomez said that “for most of our history, the story that gave meaning to our lives was rooted in a biblical worldview and the values of our Judeo-Christian heritage. It was the story of the human person created in God’s image and invested with an earthly vocation to build a society where people could live in freedom, with equality and dignity.”
“What we see all around us now, are signs that this narrative may be breaking down,” he said. “This is one of the consequences of living in a secular society. We all need God to help us to make sense of our lives, so when we try to live without God, we can become confused.” He said that what people need is “to hear the true story — the beautiful story of Christ’s love for us, his dying and rising from the dead for us, and the hope he brings to our lives.”
Black Catholics and others immediately responded to Gomez: Fr. Bryan Massingale, a leading Catholic theologian in the U.S., said he read the speech with "dismay and disbelief." Tia Noelle Pratt, director of mission engagement and strategic initiatives and a sociology professor at Villanova University, said: "This is beyond disappointing because the president of the [conference] should, in fact, do more than stand in solidarity. He should be an anti-racism activist in his own right,"
According to a February Pew Research Center survey, 77 percent of Black Catholics consider opposing racism essential to their faith. Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and an MSNBC Opinion Columnist wrote: (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/black-catholics-have-right-be-frustrated-church-ignores-racism-n1284598) “The National Black Sisters' Conference, a group of Black nuns in religious orders across the United States, in a statement also called on the archbishop to apologize and reiterated the role of Catholics in the civil rights movement: ‘When African-American lives are systematically devalued in this country and in the Catholic Church, we must speak out. BLM is not a pseudo-religion; nor is it a ‘dangerous substitute for true religion.’ It is a movement very much in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.’”
Butler concludes: “For Black Catholics who have endured racism in the pews, in Catholic schools and from priests and bishops, it is becoming clear that statements about opposing racism are not enough. If the American Catholic church does not want to lose an important, vibrant part of Catholicism in America, it would behoove the head of the bishops’ conference to apologize for his ill-advised remarks, which threaten to make the Catholic church in America just another pseudo political movement.”
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