Introduction

This whole area of analysis need not be hijacked by nihilistic relativist ideologues and it is our job as faith-bearing people to prevent this onslaught upon academic integrity and indeed that of civil society politics by standing our ground against this new breed of so-called woke ideological bullying and essentially take back the territory they have tried to hijack. We then need to turn this territory into a level playing field of constructive dialogue and healthy debate that takes both a critical edge and a stance that is affirmative of the moral truths ingrained in natural law.

Hence my argument that critical race theory is not all bad. There are elements of truth in it and truth at that that’s mightily consistent with the Gospel message. And we must be prepared to take these elements of truth and work with them, and these only, discarding the rest, the untrue stuffing as incompatible filler, as dross. It’s like sifting the wheat from the chaff. You need to know how to do this so that the voice of the Gospel does not get siphoned out to the sidelines but remains anchored firmly in the centre where it truly belongs.

From one angle, critical race theory is attempting to be all about trying to unblinker our view on historical events. It’s essentially asking us to think & contemplate these events reflexively, seeing things from the experiential perspectives of all parties affected. And if we claim to be objective instead of bigoted, then we need to listen to the stories of all parties involved.

One poignant example of the need to discern our interpretation of events correctly and in light of making ourselves aware of all the different and oftentimes competing interests in these events concerns the fairly recent controversy which emerged just prior to the pandemic, over Junipero Serra’s expedition to the New World. It is fact that Junipero Serra was authentically charitable and robustly kind-hearted in the way he sought to make connections of genuine friendship with the local communities he encountered on his journey throughout the U.S. and Mexico in the days when first contact between the Spanish & the local population occurred. That said, it is equally true and a tragic after-fact that very few others taking on the roles and responsibilities after Serra left the scene ever followed in his footsteps of simple dialogue & positive relational connection. Besides, secularist colleagues accompanying him on voyage had markedly different beliefs about the locals and often advocated agendas opposed to those of Serra. This mixed bag of conflictual realities is what characterizes the many scenarios playing out at that time thereby making a “one-side fits all” approach to its analysis unrealistic.

However, not everyone promoting the field dubbed “critical race theory” desires to operate along the noble lines of constructing fair-play opportunities for all. Not everyone in this game is interested in making the voices of all parties to a dispute known as to their respective sides of the story. In fact, there are way too many within the current playing field of the critical race theory platform who want to cancel out those voices which are liberation-oriented from the standpoint of objective moral truth, all the while pretending that they themselves are the only ones who speak rightly and boldly for freedom, for the liberation of “the other”. And this cancelling-out amounts to a poisonous sentiment of reactionary anti-solidarity effectively being promoted in place of a movement that ought to advocate for the equal dignity of all peoples, all races, all cultures born from the natural cycles of human social evolution. Genuine critical race theory, as an anthropological aide would not do this, would not seek to alienate whole groups of people from one another along racial lines, whether white, black, brown etc. Rather, as a countercultural movement (that is a movement which runs counter to secular or popular culture) it would seek to try and unite and galvanize them in a collaborative unity of mutual brother/sisterhood with one another against oppressions that seek to devour the dignity of all. And these oppressions need to be seen for what they are, and not for what they are not. They are spiritual tactics of oppression sent from the enemy frontlines of spiritual battle in the invisible world, and they are sent into the visible realm, manifested in different tangibly experienced ways.

Therefore, objectively speaking critical race theory need not be seen as adversely controversial but for many, and more particularly those in the “fundamentalist” camps of the intellectual frontier whether materialist or faith-centered, just about anything is controversial that ruffles their feathers. I do think that journalist Gloria Purvis’ use of the term “controversial” harkens to the fact that more fundamentalist elements tend to push for alot more air time, and particularly when it comes to these issues within Church politics; and just perhaps like myself, she has had to put up with alot of flack from their side, just perhaps. (1)

Common to the side of many who call themselves Christians in this debate on critical race theory seems to be this albeit mistaken notion that God somehow meant for all humanity to take on this glib dronal uniformity without diversity in character, physiognomic make-up or purpose. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Take this example from one such contributor to a reader’s comments discussion in America magazine on the thematics of critical race theory:

 I accept the doctrinal truths relevant to this debate. There is only one human race, this race is common to all persons on the face of the earth past and present and future and is indeed blighted by inheritance. It is a mystery of religion that the sin of our first ancestors damaged their innocence and that all their descendants bear this burden. No human effort alone is capable of making the slightest difference to this blight. The incarnation, suffering, death and resurrection of the second person of the Holy Trinity has been revealed as offering those who accept it, reconciliation with God Almighty. Critical race theory is an absurd caricature of this notion of inherited blame and deserves the same sort of outright rejection as the superiority of males over females or that might is right. (2)

May I point out that God never meant for there to be only one single human race that was not comprised of creative variety properly reflective of the unlimited vastness of His own unfathomable dimensions of creativity. If this were not so, God would have allowed rebellious humanity to continue to build the Tower of Babel in the name of an indomitable uniformity. But that indomitable uniformity was a gross affront to God’s desire for the infusion of boundless variety in the created order of the universe. And, sure, sin blighted the sacred image of God’s likeness in man but I think we would be selling ourselves short, and into the Devil’s very plans, if we were to concede to a defeatist position when it comes to the question of our ability to at least try, with the help of God’s grace, to put things right.

And for sure, in terms of caricaturization, as cited in the above quotation, critical race theory is, in some senses exactly that – a “caricature” alright but one that can serve an important purpose of reproofing and correcting the sin that has tainted our past in all it’s many and varied forms. We could go so far as to call this theory’s potential that of a morality play in narrative, literary or textual form. Racism is just one of many sins and vices subjecting the human condition and extended on from that, the condition of the wider creation, to slavery to the spirit of death and decay, to evil, for racism is inherently a sin that refuses to accept and celebrate the God-given diversity of colour in the natural order and in its most grotesque forms is a rejection of the Creator’s right to express His love through His creation in the many and varied ways He wishes to do so. From this standpoint, being critical of negative racially motivated actions is not “absurd”, for taking no stand against such evils is akin to committing another sin, the sin of omission where we turn a blind eye to the sufferings of others as did the Levite for instance in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What I am emphasizing is the fact that critical race theory has the potential to be used for the good of rooting out such sin, not that it necessarily always does so in the current context, in the here and now, but it certainly has the potential to be used mightily in this way if applied correctly and with discernment.

 

 The Main Arena

And so what of this thing called critical race theory?

Think of it a tool pretty much like psychology. You don’t have to buy into the tenets of pop-psychology in order to understand that psychology itself can be a useful analytical tool. Likewise, with critical race theory, you don’t have to don the vestiges of ‘political-correctness’ to be able to appreciate and harness it as a tool that essentially ought to propose the discernment and study of the variegated nature of our inherited human condition with a view to its redemptive reconciliation with God’s original holy blueprint and within this is the undeniable necessity of our reconciliation with each other.

I’m going to uphold the concept of an objective, analytical critical race theory from a Catholic perspective, and one that as a neutral academic discipline also ought to be contrary to that populist stance which posits a similar position relative to critical race theory as radical feminists do to feminism.

If feminism as such can be neutral ground, so can the exploration of the intersections of race and history, society, and so forth. So, I’m going to propose that critical race theory can be understood as a positive tool, like that of psychology, and can be therefore seen not as exclusively opposed to but in fact a welcome complementarity to understanding and appreciating on a deeper level the various tenets of Catholic Social Teaching relative to combating racism. I also maintain that critical race theory need not be placed exclusively on par with the ideological value sets enshrined in other related extremist positions such as radical feminism. And for the purposes of stating my case, I will be analysing the material from the EWTN Live episode with Fr Mitch Pacwa and Dr Edward Feser. You may refer to the above link to the program which is available on YouTube via the EWTN channel. Therefore, while there is no obligation, it would be immensely helpful for readers to actually view the episode from EWTN Live so that the various contexts of what I am saying here at particular junctures throughout this discussion can be understood more clearly.

Here, I attempt to explore, unpack, critique, and offer some nuanced insights which I have been able to glean from my own contemplative immersion within and exploration of, the quintessential and overlapping themes within Catholic Social Teaching on a broad range of issues, which when looked at relationally, we can glimpse a perspective that takes a valiant stand against those forces which drive division and conflict, and thereby offers a redemptive solution to those tensions, and one at that which need not clash with the concept of an academically balanced critical race theory but instead one that contains within it a truly liberating alternative to the vindictiveness and mire of the recidivistic hatred promoted by some of the more extreme factions currently active in this field.

So, to begin our unpacking of the themes that interlock within critical race theory’s paradigm, let’s begin with a brief but concerted look at the issue of slavery. Insofar as concerns the continent of Europe, Fr Mitch expressly describes slavery there as having been outlawed by the bishops in England and in Italy around the 8th century. These bishops persuaded the then political leaders of those places to effectively abolish it. But where it remained entrenched as a social institution was in Africa itself! When the European swash bucklers and mutineers, mercenaries, and merchants went to Africa in search of new trading partnerships, they didn’t actually go into these partnerships by first invading and marauding the plains of Africa as is often erroneously taught by ‘politically-correct’ ideologues. What they did do was in league with a rather stock-standard trading expedition. Sure, they fought each other high and dry on the buffeting swells of the Atlantic as this was also an age where because of the robustness and normative stature of maritime trade, piracy was rife and so the unruly competitive nature of this maritime economy meant that those who ruled the seas and the booming markets, had the upper hand with regards to how things panned out within the market and these were not the most morally conscious of people you must remember. We are dealing with professional opportunistic extortionists who made a living out of daylight robbery made to look legit. That said, even though they fought each other on the high seas, they still obeyed the rudimentary import/export and diplomatic protocols of the day when it came to dealing with inland trade on African shores and this was primarily due to the fact that there were far more exact and detailed legislative measures covering land-based operations of trading than there were for the various things that dominated the outworked dynamics of social relations on the high seas. The African economy at the time of the slave trade getting started in the New World was booming with its own local slave trade that had basically been operative from ancient times, the classical period onwards. Unlike in Europe, slavery in Africa had continued throughout the dark ages and medieval period right up until European merchants arrived on its shores asking to trade. In fact, many of the local chieftains, kings, and queens ruling the various African provinces eagerly offered these newcomers slaves as a “commodity” they highly recommended as profitable. So the Europeans bought into the idea as African political interests were willing to supply them this trade because the price they demanded was high and satisfying to their corrupted agendas and because the European merchants were willing to pay this high price to their African suppliers out of desperation to get in on an act which these greedy profiteers thought would open up new avenues of financial revenue, and stability in that revenue in the New World. And that was all there was to this evil trade – the greed of the piracy in the oceans where trading economies thrived corrupted the hearts of these Europeans to such an extent that they were easily lulled into accepting human-trafficking offers from African politico-economic interests. Why is Africa still so poor today? Because of the same problem with their local rulership elites as there was back in the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade.

If you can have these general concepts which critically frame and examine different social justice thematics in Catholic Social Teaching and that also reflect and affirm basic underlying principles existent in both social and clinical psychology, or vice versa, why then can you not accept that some of these very same values and concepts are also extant in and do not conflict with critical race theory? Likewise, there are many foundational principles, assumptions, and concepts inherent in an authentic version of critical race theory stemming from the earlier civil rights movement that also happen to comprise some of the major foundational principles within Catholic social teaching. Take the following quote on the inalienable right to equality of all races as an example:

Dr Feser’s foundation upon which his quote rests ought not to clash with the basic principles of critical race theory provided these principles seek to:

1. abolish racial injustice through the extollation of the virtues of all races accompanied by strident efforts towards peace-making and reconciliation between different races and cultures and between all their respective members and

2. uphold the inherent and inalienable dignity of everyone, black, white, brown, and every other hue in between all of these.

Fr Mitch says that it was Charles Darwin who made the statement that “Africans are a species in between the human and the ape and that they need to be eliminated in the same way you would eliminate an inferior breed of cattle.” There you have it! Eugenics is written in to the materialist scientific view of nature!! Darwin actually promoted racism based on a flimsy biological or scientific theory about the evolution of man. You can legitimately use morally sound biological premises to refute the shonky charlatanism of Darwin’s theory. And contrary to the ricketty pseudo-science of Darwinian eugenics, sound scientific arguments can be used in favour of racial diversity and the natural beauty inherent in that diversity as they relate to other kinds of diversities in the natural world such as the existance of the biological sex differentials male and female. (3) Scientific substantiation and modelling of these differences in no way diminishes the God-breathed beauty in any of these diversities but only helps to emphasize the need to honour this beauty all the more and in view of this, to preserve it at a time when the world is at a critical juncture not only of collective forgetfulness regarding these intrinsic truths about our existence but one of a neo-colonial assimilationist ideology that threatens to submerge all forms of heritage and rootedness in the crass mediocrity of melting-pot secularism.

Can I just add here too btw, that St Paul was not advocating or condoning the doing away with cultural or biological diversity in the core makeup of our identities when he said “there is neither Greek nor Jew, woman or man, slave or free but we are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Rather, he was speaking out against becoming parochial, partisan and factionalistic on these accounts. He knew as well as anyone of good will and sound faith at that time, that of course God intended that there be a biological diversity of races, of peoples, nations, languages, cultures because of how He established this through Noah. Paul was also aware of the fact that the biological differences between men and women were necessary so that procreation could be honoured and outworked continually in view of God’s commandment to Adam and Eve for them to go forth, as with the whole of creation, and multiply, filling the earth. So it was not those natural differences we had inherited from our genealogical descendance that were intended upon being negated through this statement by St Paul. On the other hand, when it came to the man-made one of these criterional dualities, that of slave or free, this duality unlike the other two of race and gender, was not God made. St Paul therefore would have been more opposed to the upholding of a man-made duality or distinction between people on the basis of classes that assigned unnatural positions of inequality than he would have been towards the upholding of natural or God-assigned diversities such as those inherent in race or gender. And because the composite of slave or free was man-made and subsequently caused division and friction within the other two God-given composites, in that slavery automatically put the moral law of God under the foot of man by inferiorizing the dignity of one man beneath another, be that inferiorization contextualized through the rubric of race or gender, this negative duality of slave vs free which saw to it that division and conflict abounded between people on account of such a Godless dichotomy therefore needed to be overturned, rendered null and void, and levelled out so that no conflictual divisions between Jews or Greeks, or between woman and man would ultimately prevail. Hence the in-a nutshell one-liner from Galatians 3:28

It’s not so much that racism is inherent in all institutions – actually, it doesn’t need to be inherent, and shouldn’t be inherent in them at all. Rather, what has caused a permeation of racism and other similar bigotries to invade and flourish in civil society is the lack of personal moral accountability or self-examination on these fronts on the part of many people and this includes those, I might add, whom Fr Mitch cited on EWTN Live in his comments about the gross injustice of the co-option of slavery by some who supposedly aligned themselves with the faith and the Church but who at one and the same time were habitually ignoring the Church’s moral teachings on these issues and instead chose to act in a manner contrary to that core Catholic moral conviction. This cumulative effect of the irresponsibility and ethical grievances caused by the decisions, actions, and indecisions of such people in positions of responsibility both within the Church and outside thereof, has caused this systemic problem. The same can be said of the clerical abuse crises. To look at this, be critical of it, and assess it accordingly is something which I think is a great necessity in our time and in no way goes against Catholic Social Teaching but rather, serves to harken people towards taking it far more seriously both on very personal as well as public levels.

The other thing is that it’s very important to discern and contextualize what is happening in any given situation so that it is not misinterpreted to be “micro-aggression” when it is simply a case of a neutral encounter in a relatively public and impersonal context or misinterpreted to be something other than micro-aggression when it actually is. Now here we also enter the domain of spiritual warfare. The Devil can use situations like those which encompass micro-aggression to foster hostility between people. And God can permit such situations to happen. Let me give you an example, the other day I was with Aunty Fay, Joyce, Marleen & Uncle Seng Wai. We met up with another woman around their age who was a good friend of Aunty Fay’s. This woman, named Helen, took an instant & irrational dislike to me. I proceeded to introduce myself in my usual friendly unassuming manner to which she flusteredly, hurriedly and curtly retorted “Please don’t bother me, I’m trying to look up my tram timetable!” And of course this caught me off guard and I felt heart-broken to be treated so disdainfully by someone I had never met before in my life. And when I tried to draw Aunty Fay’s attention to the fact of this woman’s rudeness, Aunty Fay smugly shrugged off my concern as irrelevant and unfounded just because she was not on the receiving end nor did she happen to notice. In fact, the real fact of the matter was that she simply turned a blind eye to the negativity of my encounter which btw happened more or less right under her nose. The whole day with this woman Helen was hellish since she was selectively nice to everyone except me. She took it to task to ostracize me and somehow managed to cover for it in front of the others so that they didn’t notice how badly I was being treated by this stupid woman. The fact is, no matter how I tried too to make this woman see that she was behaving badly, it never resulted in overturning the evil spirit’s involvement in hijacking the situation. Basically a demon was allowed to control this woman so that my subjective experience was locked into a demonic bubble where I experienced the worst side of this woman’s personality whilst I was still allowed to be an observer to the fact that everyone else in our collective company only ever experienced the best side of that woman. After committing this situation to intensive prayer, I received a word of knowledge from the Lord that this woman Helen has a problem with a spirit of control. She is subject to the Curse of Eve* because she wants to control anything and everything in certain interrelational areas of her life. While that explanation sat quite reasonably with me, my heart was still perplexed though about the fact that upon observing her interactive relations with the others in the group, while it was clear that she wanted to be the centre of attention instead of just allowing God to direct the flow of attention to whomever and whatever scenario He liked to direct it towards, she still spoke rather enthusiastically to everyone else but strangely, whenever it came to her wanting to know how I felt about something or what I thought about something, she refused to ask me directly but instead asked Aunty Fay to tell her what I thought of this or that, even though I was sitting only a few feet away from where she was sitting and conversing with Aunty Fay. I couldn’t help but overhear the fact she asked Aunty Fay what I thought about this or that. Frustrated at the fact that she was so rude in not having the decency to ask me directly about how I was finding the outing’s experiences, I struck up against her verbally in front of everyone sitting on the tram and said: “If you want to find out how I am feeling about this or that, just ask me directly instead of asking Aunty Fay. After all, I am sitting right here. It’s not like I am physically absent and you have to therefore ask someone else about what I thought of the afternoon’s experiences!”  ….at which she retorted by telling me to shut up…..Such a vile reaction from her confirmed to me the evil in my midst. The fact she could after that retort strike up a friendly conversation with some guy sitting opposite and learn from him that he goes to some nearby church where her son also happened to be a youth group leader only angered me all the more because of the vile hypocrisy she demonstrated towards me and yet no one else cared either which only made the whole encounter all the harder to bear. So here is an example of micro-aggression which is in part facilitated by Satanic forces using the egotism of other people against me. It takes a great deal of discernment and spiritual awareness to make the distinction between those things that are misrenderings of a particular situation and those that are accurate accounts of the various influences operative within any given context.

The problem with the normative politically-correct take on micro-aggression is that it can tend towards relying too much on pop-psychology and misappropriation of the theory of unconscious motivation. While for someone to not consciously realize they are manifesting racist attitudes or tendencies can be a real problem ingrained in the person’s internal reflexes of response or reaction as can be the case with other undealt-with vices or inordinate behaviours or thought patterns which we need to bring under our control as part and parcel of mortifying the flesh and mastering self-control, there are other situations however where there was clearly no intention (whether conscious or subconscious) to cause harm to another on the part of one person conversing with another but rather the ego of one party in the conversation became so offended that it has to go on the defensive and accuse the other person of being offensive, where clearly no offence was intended. A great example is the following scenario:

BBC News – Ngozi Fulani: Lady Susan Hussey’s race comments were abuse, says charity boss
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63819482

I’m sorry, but it’s rubbish! Getting ‘offended’ about an innocent question is literally “thru the roof” if you ask me! If you are so proud of your African heritage, then why get offended when someone asks you engagingly and enthusiastically about it??! Frankly, it doesn’t make one bit of sense, the self-righteous trajectory Ngozi Fulani takes in this article. I personally have been asked questions like that many times and I’m of a mixed-race background but I don’t get offended. In fact, I think of it as an instance of innocent curiosity if someone asks me about my heritage. This Ngozi Fulani is as fickle as silly Grace Tame getting ‘offended’ when PM Scott Morrison extended a friendly gesture of common courtesy towards her. It’s like this whole world is just becoming nastier for the sake of winning “popularity votes”! Since when have nastiness and ego-pomp become the “heroes of the day”? It’s looking unfortunately very much like they are becoming enshrined as ‘cool values’ of ‘ideal role-modelling’ to be ’emulated’. And this is nothing short of tragic as good-will gestures are being sidelined in favour of ego-pomp in order to win popularity contests in ‘influencer status’. What a load of! The world has gone beyond insane to upside-down and inverted in its’ perception of interrelational ethics and moral accountability. Also hardly surprising when you consider the sore statistics from the 2021 census data concerning faith-centred leanings in Britain. Something like a whopping 37% now identify as being of “no religion”, this is massively up from the 2011 stat of 26% in the same category. And this discussion right here btw, is coming from a Millennial, not a Boomer. And I am aware that the article on the census data also states that most of those who professed faith are in my parents’ generation while the opposite is true for all too many in my own generation. It’s a tragedy that so many from professing Christian backgrounds in the younger generations were not nurtured properly in the faith of their parents and consequently have left their faith behind, unlike their peers who have hailed from Muslim or Hindu faith backgrounds. This trend has nothing to do with the substance of the faith in question but more about how dedicated the family was in cultivating a positive sense of love and endearment, appreciation for their faith-heritage. And there are a number of key factors that stand out prominently to me insofar as the trajectory of this trend goes. In a nut-shell, its hugely about how all too many who hail from a Christian background have become far more secularized and this has way more to do with the nominality of their faith identity than it does with the objective substance of their faith. And nominality is a big pre-cursor of faith lapsation. By nominality I mean, in those scenarios where there are chronic situations of spiritual apathy or tepidity within the family setting. These families identify as Catholic or Anglican, or Methodist whatever denomination but they do not zealously practice the spiritual devotions or disciplines of the faith nor do they think or act normatively along the lines of Gospel teaching. They may go to church occasionally or even regularly out of habit more than anything else but the application of the values enshrined in religion and spirituality on the whole do not feature prominently in the contexts of family life, everyday encounters or decision-making. And in these scenarios, religion or spirituality is conveniently siphoned off to the Sunday Mass-time corner of those families’ universe.

And besides, as to effectively countering racism or xenophobia either in society at large or within the context of our own personal lives, I don’t think being colour-blind is the best way to go either or even what the original civil rights movement was on about. I do think there is however a good way to be colour-conscious and a couple of bad ways to be colour-conscious. The good way and the most healthy way is to appreciate every difference in race or the God-given diversity as being a wonderful thing, something to be grateful for because God commanded through His demolition of the Tower of Babel that everybody needs to become not so much unintelligible and therefore conflictual on the basis of this newfound mutual linguistic unintelligibility but become different to each other so that variety can exist and prevail as testament to God’s awesome creative power. And now to the fact that there are actually two bad ways to become colour-conscious. One is to be discriminatory on the basis of race or some other God-breathed differences or even adverse circumstantial differences like class discrimination. The other way is to approach perception of differences in a pseudo-positive way all-the-while expecting everyone to invert the scale or direction of racial discrimination in absolute favour of coloured identity over that of so-called white or European, in a similar pattern to the way radical feminism tries to level out the perceived social, political and economic inequalities between males and females by promoting man-hatred, which in fact only serves to amplify inequalities and resentments, albeit from another direction. And as such, such inverse approaches to ‘rectifying’ power-play by inverting the direction of the power-play instead of cancelling it out only end up reinstating the power-play problem rather than levelling out the inequalities altogether. We must not forget that where the power-play concerns God-given differences such as race or sex, this power-play ought to be levelled out rather than simply inverted. Where on the other hand, the power-play concerns a man-made duality such as slavery, it is the system of slavery or class inequality which needs to be eradicated and here it is important to remeber that systems of inequality or oppression aren’t people but deceptions & agendas which co-opt people into being oppressed by them in one way or another, either as oppressor or as oppressed. What we need to aim for and exact out of this process of undoing the systemic oppression is a free-spirited conversion of minds, wills, and hearts, pre-empted first and foremost by the Holy Spirit.

And it is vital to remember, that there is a subjectivism that is legitimate just as there is an objectivity that stands to reason upon the infalible premise of natural law. But if we fall into the trap of plastering over the relevance of the subjective experience in favour of a so-called rational objectivity mandate at all costs, then we risk becoming cold, quantitatively analytical materialists who deny the validity of the personal and even the sacred in the midst of the personal, that is, subjective experience. We could risk missing God’s word and wisdom just by choosing to ignore the testimony and witness of personal experience exclusively in favour of some cold, rational objectivity that has lost most of the sense of what it means to be human, to be alive amidst a marvellously sentient order within the universe, one that has been lovingly put there and sustained by the will of the Almighty. That said, where I am in agreement with Edward Feser is in the need to uphold a universal standard of common human decency because the sacredness of life is way too important to be compromised by subjection of these universal standards to the falsity of moral-coupled-with a crude cultural relativism.

According to this crude cultural relativism there is not one universal truth but merely a vast collection of multiple different truths and pundits of this theory claim that if there does exist a universal truth, then it cannot be known! How absurd is this assertion that such a universal truth cannot be known! The myriad of subjective realities is objectively real because as we said earlier, God toppled the Tower of Babel to make humanity go forth and multiply not only in their numbers but in the great diversity of their comport or God-given genetic make-up. The universal truth lies in the fact that God instigated this diversity and that the subjectivity of lived experience is part and parcel of the objectivity of universal reality that we are all a part of and share equally in but in vastly different ways. So these politically correct pundits have lost the argument because they only acknowledge one part of the whole experience as though that part was the entire breadth and depth of all there is to know about this whole experience. In actual fact, there is a whole lot more. And that is one of the most exciting things about this Great Adventure which is our sojourn through life on earth as pilgrims heading towards our eternal homeland in Heaven. The fact that within the creation that God has so lovingly wrought, there is always something new to discover about it, to learn about how marvellously He designed and patterned it out to be and to become.

Feser talks about Kendi emphasizing the importance of power over being acquired as a necessity in order for institutionalized racism to be toppled, and as the only means by which the structural changes within institutions can be wrought. (4) And this makes me think of the way fascism sees power…..”the will to power”. Fascism sees power as the main player, just like Kendi does. The racial equivalent to radical feminism is black power – which is just another variant of fascism that replaces “white supremacy” with “coloured” or “black supremacy”. At the end of the day, it don’t matter what “colour” fascism is. Fascism will always be fascism regardless of what “colour” is in vogue. And Feser agrees. He says that the similarity between the current trend in this new apprehension of race-relations and the most recent historical example of racial ideology in the form of National Socialism (Nazism) is crystal clear from the fact that both these racial ideologies believe that races are inherently (by some perversity of human nature) in conflict or opposed to one another. This also smacks of 18th century so-called enlightenment ideology put forward by theorists like Thomas Hobbes who believed that life was brutish and short. That is the real danger with the extremism behind this Ibram X Kendi’s ideology. And if you come out and publically say that you can just see ‘em in “black shirts”, some of their roguish supporters will take you down on that one and say “what you said ought to be cancelled” – another form of censorship. These black-power types would love nothing more than to dress up in “black shirts” and get their boots on to terrorize the rest of the populace who does not have that skin colour they are all so up in arms about! They just don’t want anyone to call them “black shirts” who aint part of their “black group”. But hey, they are allowed to call themselves thus coz they are, guess what, “black”, and if you aint black, then you aint allowed to call a spade a spade. And that also goes for those of us who are some other colour in between black and white I suppose, does it now…..??? So even we have no freedom to use language creatively for fear of offending the highly charged racial sensibilities of others? Frankly, God created everyone and we all need to learn to love each other whether we are black, white, or a mix of those or another colour or a mix of that “other colour in between” and white etc. We need to overcome the fallen tendency to dislike one another irrationally. And I mean regardless of whether we care to own up to our irrational dislike of others or persist in some kind of self-righteous denial about being so perversely inclined. So much for the mortificationary duties white people are bound to exercise with regards to their relations with black people which Kendi says are “a must” – because this double-standard or one-sided expectation that only whites have to cleanse themselves of their ‘inherently’ racist faults is seriously blinkered and devoid of balance and does another grave injustice by failing to recognize that blacks are just as imperfect and prone to irrational hatreds as much as are white people or others of other races or colour. It strikes me as an instance of trying to pedestalize and self-aggrandize blackness over others and this is grossly unfair, unjust and will never properly bring true and lasting redress to the inequalities and frictions that cause so much harm to our social cohesion. Everyone from every nation, tribe, and tongue is just as guilty insofar as wrongs of any sort go. St Paul says there is not one righteous, before God, not one – all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Another contradictory thing this Ibram Kendi says is that he wants a Christ that is Christ the liberator but rejects a Christ that is Christ the Saviour! Get real I say to you because Christ the Liberator and Christ the Saviour are one & the same. To liberate is to save and vice versa.

And I agree with Fr Mitch when he says that the Church’s position has always been one of reconciliation – to seek for the conversion of the racists from the quagmire of their racism into the liberation of embracing those they once oppressed as brothers and sisters and for the oppressed peoples to see the human dignity of those who oppress in the hope that these oppressors can convert and be reconciled to God and to those they once unjustly hated – in a way like St Paul. But I do not see though how this view could be in conflict with Liberation Theology.

And Edward Feser is spot-on when he says that these black power ideologues are so bitter and unforgiving and its this kind of extremely negative backdrop that constantly informs their non-reconciliatory stance on matters of race relations and which plummets their whole agenda into a repetition of a National Socialist discourse but with an African face. There’s no shortage of fascist regimes in modern-day Africa, which btw is one of the main reasons why there are still so many civil wars erupting and rupturing the socio-political and economic fabric of that continent. The face of Africa today is saturated with fascist or quasi-fascist regimes.

To say that all critical race theory just boils down to an ideology touted by the likes of Kendi is just like writing the entire academic or clinical discipline of psychology off as ‘all about Freud’ and his set of theories when in actual fact both of these areas of intellectual enquiry and social criticism are far more diverse than either Kendi or Freud. You can have an intelligent critiquing school within the discipline of critical race theory that throws the venomous vindictiveness of Kendi and Co. right out the window. If you can’t be open to the multifaceted necessity of creating awareness and thereby positively change hearts and minds alongside empathetically empowering people within the context of a solidarity framework then you may as well forget ever taking to task the mission of changing the world for the better. No amount of vindictiveness will ever supplant the truth that works and transforms within the slipstream of reconciliatory activism, dialogue, exchange, and encounter.

The vindictive pundits within critical race theory are pushing the view that there are no standards beyond that of race, through which we can establish an all-round, clear-sighted worldview on how to tackle the various problems in society, in the world around us. And thus, we have a situation where race is being used as a yardstick, a measuring-stick with which to gauge good or bad behaviour rather than just simply seeing race as, like the genders male and female, an inherent and beautiful part of the way God made the world. To distort the God-given purpose of race into a political tool of manipulation is actually a sin, it is evil, no matter who is pulling the strings. That is not to say we should not proactively articulate our case against racism but we need to be aware that there are constructive, bridge-building ways to do this. At the same time, there are, as we have seen with the rise of this new-wave extremism that uses the question of race divisively, destructive ways of articulating opposition to racism that in the end only serve to do more harm to the legitimate cause of fighting against oppression in the name of liberation and life by subverting this legitimate cause for ulterior motives that seek to place death and power-over tactics above and beyond the great goal of reconciliation and restoration of harmony between peoples and cultures.

One of the major disagreements I have with Edward Feser on the subject of critical race theory is that he all-too slap-dashedly dismisses Michel Foucault as though his brilliant contribution was nothing more than part of the problem. You see, Feser has now confused the issue to write-off Foucault as well, just because, like Søren Kierkegaard, the latter hails from the Protestant tradition philosophically and theologically speaking. And unlike Feser, I can well appreciate Foucault’s enlightening contribution to the area of critical race theory from a totally different, refreshing, and even Gospel-centred angle which by stark contrast to the nihilism of Kendi, frees the enquirer from the destructive temptation to analyze the field from a vantage point of cynicism and revenge. Feser is trying to cite Foucault as holding to an unhealthy emphasis on power but no! Foucault, to clarify, unlike Kendi, was critiquing rather than trying to accommodate the will to power objective within institutional relations. Foucault had the inverse view of the role of power to that which Kendi has and endorses in that Michel Foucault saw the institutional abuse of power as the real problem which needs confronting with the view to eradicating this abuse. Hence Foucault’s harsh criticism of the philosophy behind fascism because of its idolatry of power since an idolatry of power is essentially an abuse of power.

And further, contrary to what many, including Feser may think, you cannot anymore equate Foucault with Camus than u can rightly equate Kendi with Foucault. For Kendi and Foucault are as much like chalk and cheese as are Foucault and Camus.

Actually, Edward Feser talks about the fact that the academic discipline of critical race theory emerged from within the Faculty of Law and digressed out to become a much broader discipline than one which exclusively hinged itself upon the intersection of race relations and the legal system.

Feser stated that the vast majority of rhetoric he has encountered within critical race theory is incredibly judgemental and legalistic. It is based upon an uncompromising position of seeing the world through the lens of a huge polarity where on one side there are those who side with this position of seeing the world exclusively through the prism of negative race relations while on the polar opposite are all the rest. To sum it up he said that such a view claims:

“Our position is just, your position is evil, you must simply submit to our demands.”

And this is stridently totalitarian. This is also what consumed the worldviews of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain during the late 1400s hence why the convivencia**was brutally ended and the enforced state-orchestrated mass ‘conversions’ instigated. The ribald sectarianism of the Soviet regime was also premised on this kind of rhetoric.

Fr Mitch talks about this whole thing being fuelled by intellectual bullies who intimidate people even children into listening to their rhetoric but hey, authoritarianism is authoritarianism regardless of who’s shouting from the soapbox or the pulpit. My poor mother used to recite this story about her brother being scared stiff by the bully in the pulpit of a Sunday – so scared that as soon as they got home from Mass he would cower and hide under the bed or somewhere for fear that the bogeyman of the Devil was going to drag him off to Hell. She really said he was so frightened that he hated the whole thing of going to Mass on account of these ordeals. It don’t matter who’s shouting about how ‘right’ they supposedly are and how ‘opposed’ to them everyone else supposedly is only because this everyone else does not agree with everything which those that are shouting are saying! Totalitarianism of any kind is completely unjustifiable. To bully someone into accepting a certain line of belief or doctrine or theory or whatever, no matter how right or legitimate the cause may be, tragically only serves to bring ill-repute to that cause, if such unsacrosanct bullying is persisted in long enough. Here is a really awesome video on this subject of being balanced and redemptive rather than obstinately condemnatory in your prayer life and witness, courtesy of Fr Mark Goring on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/GxMXLd3D2S0

I couldn’t agree more though with Fr Mitch when he said on EWTN Live that it is imperative for parents to stand up to these bullies who seek to use the critical race theory platform for illegitimate ends and it is therefore important that they teach their children that all races are created by God with an inherent, inalienable dignity and that to believe in the capacity of all peoples to build bonds of love & accord with one another is given equally to all races and this in and of itself is not being racist but is rather being in solidarity with understanding and accepting everyone as God intended them to be – loved and appreciated by all as dignified and valid. For racism itself would never ascribe to the belief in the dignity and equality of all races. No! Of course not. It would instead try which ever way, to bolster division and discord between them.

---

Keywords: Critical Race Theory, Catholic Social Teaching, Tower of Babel, Will to Power, Nihilism, Fascism, Micro-aggression, Liberation Theology, Convivencia, EWTN Live

---

Additional References:

(1) Purvis, G., ‘Catholics: Don’t be afraid to engage with controversial ideas (even Critical Race Theory)’ in America, June 2021, digital citation from: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/06/29/gloria-purvis-podcast-vincent-rougeau-critical-race-theory-catholics-240948

(2) Ibid, Comments Section

(3) Barnett, L., The Universe and Dr Einstein, 2005, Dover Publications, Garden City, NY

(4) Kendi, I., How to Be an Antiracist, 2019, One World Publications, Vintage Digital, NY.

* See Fr Chad Ripperger’s conference talk “Demonology – Function and Psychology” from his Voices in Virtue Lectures series available at https://youtu.be/A4Aq7WGIhzA

** A unique social cohesion of private, public, intellectual, religious, social, economic, and political life in Spain during the pre-1492 expulsion era. See: May, Gerald G., The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, 2004, Harper Collins, Broadway, NY, pp. 15-16