08/05/01

When the medium is the message: tales of the Southside Catholic Conference

Once, as a young priest coming home to visit my parents, I noticed that we were no longer receiving one of the major Chicago daily newspapers. I asked my mother why not, and she replied: “I cancelled our subscription because I don’t like the way they’ve been reporting on the Cardinal.” My mother was a perceptive person.

It’s often easy, however, to blame the messengers for the news they deliver. I tend to do the same when I read some of the coverage of the Southside Catholic Conference’s travails. Unfortunately, the information reported, that has sometimes rubbed emotions raw on all sides, is not simply fabricated. It’s the result of the media listening to the loudest voices and often failing to report the efforts of those people who have been consistently and quietly working hard everyday behind the scenes to resolve the contentious issues. The tale is one of confrontation rather than a story of resolution, but reporters cannot chronicle a divisive battle without willing combatants.

The issue that has embarrassed and angered many in the last two months is a combination of sports and faith, of race relations and personal histories. In that mix, bishops and priests are to keep people together while the particular decisions are hammered out by lots of different folks.

A Catholic bishop, and ordained priests in cooperation with him, has authority from Jesus Christ, through the Church, to keep people together around Christ. The Catholic pastor is to draw attention to Christ, not to himself. He is not to exercise his authority as a governor or mayor or business executive or rock star or university president or newspaper editor or according to any other secular model. For the sake of people’s salvation, he has real authority to teach and to command, not just to persuade; but the use of authority is always tempered by the need to safeguard the unity of the Church and to respect profoundly all of Christ’s faithful.

My job as archbishop involves me directly, with the help of the auxiliary bishops, in any issue where the universal doctrines of the Church or her universal sacramental discipline are in question. In practical affairs in parishes, schools and other institutions, decisions about what to do should be left to those who have to live most immediately with the consequences, provided always those consequences don’t disrupt the unity of the Church nor weaken her teaching. The Catholic Church gives the gifts of Christ—the Gospel, God’s grace, the seven sacraments—to Christ’s people in order to free them to act. Church authority protects the integrity of the gifts and encourages people to use them well as they work to transform this world on their way to the next.

Those two dense paragraphs are background to what is happening in the Southside Catholic Conference and my relation to it. The Conference and the parish athletic organizations which make it up call themselves “Catholic”. They organize through our schools and catechetical programs and play in our facilities. They are part of the Catholic family.

My role is not to work out the details for play in a Catholic athletic organization but to set the limits for staying related. For two months, the limits have been: there are 22 athletic associations, including that of St. Sabina’s parish at 78th and Racine, in the conference; and the legitimate requirements of each parish for playing together have to be met. Those legitimate and necessary requirements mean meeting the safety demands of both white and black parents, putting in place penalties for racial taunts or incidents, and assuring that there are no unwarranted forfeitures. Since the dignity of many people, both black and white, and the unity and mission of the Church are now involved in this discussion, I have also said that no one can act unilaterally, without consultation with the other parishes and with me.

There were some things that I wish the media had explored more fully: throughout these discussions, the pastors, in the midst of summer vacations for key personnel, have been at work to guide their parish athletic associations. Many priests, with their parish athletic associations, have been devising events to welcome the St. Sabina athletes when they begin to play in the Conference. Each parish has its own internal dynamics, and pastors have to work differently in different parishes. The parish pastors are best equipped to know their people, and I trust them to guide the discussion. They are good and effective priests, and many of them are now feeling manipulated and beat up. Racism is a sin with a long history, and we cannot ignore its presence among us still; but the pastors know there are many people in their parishes committed to overcoming racial divides.

In the midst of a contentious conversation, the most important role for the bishops and priests is to bring people constantly back to the goal: the children should be able to play together. Playing together will strengthen the unity of the Church and help the children live in a world less divided than our own. This goal is shared, I would hope, by all Catholics who understand the demands of their faith and also by those responsible for the public media.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

Back to Archive 2001