An Open Letter to Archbishop Aymond

13th October 2014   ·   0 Comments

His Eminence:

Thank you for your October 31, 2013 response to my October 24, 2013 e-mail responding to your request for us (as Catholics) to “Stand Up to Racism” wherever we see it. After carefully considering your response and realizing after one year since your response, Sister Rooney (from the Office of Racial Harmony) is holding sessions beginning October 1 through 15 entitled, “Made in the Image of God,” the Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Hughes, for open discussion within the church. Watching your leadership on the issue, I want to be very clear about my objectives, reasons and rationale as a Catholic, is to leave the New Orleans Archdiocese of New Orleans more Godly than it was the day my parents brought me into the church to be christened.

After12 months of considering your pronouncements and response to my e-mail, I have not seen a direct address to any of my concerns. It is true, your response has favored prayers and praying, but Archbishop Aymond, the bible teaches us that “faith without works is dead.” In your gestures to invoke prayer as one possible method of addressing the given situation, we cannot overlook the COURAGE you assigned to Archbishop Hughes and the COURAGE Archbishop Hughes assigned to Archbishop Rummel.

In that vein, you have frequently referred to Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes, S.T.D.’s December 16, 2006 Pastoral Letter with admiration and high esteem

Many of my fellow Catholics, associates, friends and neighbors see racism and segregation openly, personally, and from the vantage point of being oppressed by the sins of racism and segregation established in the 2006 Pastoral Letter. The Pastoral Letter objectively appears to be a subjective oppression the Catholic Church has participated in throughout the church’s inception. In Archbishop Hughes’ Pastoral Letter he refers to Archbishop Joseph Rummel issuing a landmark Pastoral Letter entitled, “The Morality of Racial Segregation.” “In this 1956 ground-breaking message, Archbishop Rummel announced that segregation was to be gradually dismantled in all Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese.” Archbishop Rummel stated unequivocally: “Racial segregation as such is morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity-solidarity of the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve.”

Archbishop Hughes attempted to appear vigilant in his leadership, Hughes wrote of speaking to a group of parishioners of different races and cultures as they shared their experiences with him. Archbishop Hughes used this exercise as his authority for keeping historically Black parishes Black. Clearly this is ordering and directing segregation through separation in Catholic churches. This is cleverly establishing reverse segregation by giving rationale for keeping churches traditionally intact as they were designed during the years of racial segregation. This clearly gives the Archdiocese the best of both worlds with little room for controversy. My community finds it interesting, after having many Black groups addressing the racism (segregation) question, it may be time to have white groups address the racism (segregation) problem since the genesis of the problem originated with white groups.

Archbishop Hughes and the late Pastor Michael Jacques continued the racial segregation posture by requesting from FEMA, the redirection of $8 million approved for the Black Catholic Epiphany Parish, to be identified and made available for two white schools in faraway parishes, leaving the Black Catholic Parish of Epiphany with zero dollars. This, mind you, at a 25 percent penalty or loss of $2 million to the Catholic Church which now becomes $6 million. Essentially, this is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul — a sin by any standard. But to rob the Black Parish of Epiphany that has already received the approval of FEMA, by diverting the money to Our Lady of Prompt Succor School in Chalmette and Mary, Queen of Peace School in Mandeville, is racism as well as racial segregation. These are the “Privileged Parishioners” Archbishop Hughes referred to in his December 16, 2006 Pastoral Letter. Whereas, the Black parishioners of Epiphany Parish were being looted of $8 million to the wealthier (privileged) parishes of Chalmette (St. Bernard Parish) and Mandeville (St. Tammany Parish).

The Black community should not be surprised at these attempts, Archbishop Hughes masterminded the 2008 church mergers that maintained segregation in New Orleans. Archbishop Hughes ordered the merger of the Blessed Sacrament and Saint Joan of Arc, two Black church parishes 47 blocks apart with four white churches in closer proximity than the Black church.

What are you doing to correct the wrongs that others before have created? Are we to believe the old wives’ tale that “Black people, especially Black Catholics are most gullible and most gluttonous for punishment.”

The Archdiocese merged Black churches without affecting white churches. As pointed out in Archbishop Hughes’ Pastoral Letter under “Recommendations for All Catholics” No. 7, “we must support church- and community-based initiatives and efforts to correct discriminatory injustices in order to empower and lift up the poor.” This is not present or practiced within the 2008 merger of Catholic parishes, which continues the same separate position of the Catholic Church throughout the Archdiocese.

Are Black Catholics to look at the Catholic Church as many Blacks look upon the National Association for the Adv­ancement of Colored People (NAACP) by measuring their worth by their words as opposed to their deeds?

Therefore, after 58 years, we need for you to become the next COURAGEOUS Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans. Write the next landmark Pastoral Letter with maps showing the boundaries of every Catholic church in New Orleans’ Catholic Archdiocese and direct all Catholics to belong to the church within the boundaries in which he or she resides, or go to the church of his or her choice. Anything short of this request is to inform the public that the New Orleans Catholic Archdiocese shall maintain de-facto segregation.

Let the opposite side of your Sunday’s ‘Our Family Prayer” card read: The New Battle of New Orleans: Violence, Murder, Racism, Segregation. God wants you to do this.

– Andy Washington

This article originally published in the October 13, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.