Christian and racist? What the Catholic Church has been saying about this perverse confusion

Racism is an attack on human dignity that has inspired terrible crimes throughout history, including the Holocaust.

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Unfortunately, in the past some have perversely used Christianity as a disguise for their racist ideology. National Socialism, the criminal movement founded by Adolf Hitler in Germany, did so, and today others are doing it again with the same aim as before: to deceive their followers into believing that it is possible to be both Christian and racist. And no, it is not. In his 1937 encyclical "Mit brennender sorge" (With Burning Concern) on the situation of the Church in Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XI was very clear about racism:

"Only superficial minds can fall prey to the heresy of speaking of a national God, of a national religion; they can undertake the illusory attempt to imprison God, the creator of the whole world, the king and legislator of all peoples, before whose greatness nations are as small as drops in a bucket of water, within the confines of a single people, within the narrow bonds of blood of a single race."

In line with those words, the pastoral constitution "Gaudium et spes" of 1965, Pope Paul VI recalled:

"It is evident that not all men are equal in terms of physical capacity and intellectual and moral qualities. However, all forms of discrimination in fundamental human rights, whether social or cultural, based on sex, race, color, social condition, language, or religion, must be overcome and eliminated because they are contrary to the divine plan."

In 1980, on his first apostolic journey to Africa, Pope Saint John Paul II reaffirmed what his predecessors had said:

"Must we evoke the problems linked to racism, which so many voices have denounced throughout the world, and which the Catholic Church, for its part, condemns in the strongest possible terms? My predecessors in the See of the Apostle Peter, the Second Vatican Council, and the bishops directly affected have had countless opportunities to proclaim the anti-Gospel nature of this practice."

In 1984, the Polish Pope insisted on this issue:

"In the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ, the Church sees a new basis for the rights and duties of the human person. Therefore, any form of discrimination on the grounds of race, whether practiced occasionally or systematically, and whether it affects certain individuals or entire groups, is absolutely unacceptable."

In October 2002, Saint John Paul II insisted on this: "I urge parents and teachers to combat racism and xenophobia, instilling positive attitudes based on Catholic social doctrine". In December 2004, just a few months before his death, the Polish Pope reiterated: "I earnestly pray to God that men and women may work together to eradicate all forms of racism, so as to build a society that promotes truth, justice, love, and peace."

Therefore, those who promote racism by invoking God or Christianity, as some openly racist and anti-Semitic anti-establishment groups are now doing again, are promoting a perverse confusion that is an offense against God and incompatible with Christian values. We Christians must stand firm against this kind of deception.

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Photo: AFP. Saint John Paul II holding an African baby in Mindelo, Cape Verde, on January 26, 1990.