This piece in Bill Cork's Blog which rants about why anyone should have to pay reparations to descendants of slaves is the kind of thinking that is prevalent among Catholics that makes many people of African descent unhappy with the Church.

The argument that Blacks in the U.S. are of different stripes and are not all of slave descent is so weak that it is an embarrassment that Catholics and Christians would cite it. The question of how one would go about such reparations does not precede the question of if there should be reparations.

Fortunately, the U.S. Catholic Bishops are going to have to address the issue and hopefully they would take some leadership on this issue. I just marvel that Catholics are always slow to adopt moral positions. For instance, it was not until the Bishops finally got around to writing Brothers and Sisters to Us, a pastoral letter on racism in 1983, where they called racism a sin, that many Catholics then acknowledged racism as a sin and would confess it as a sin in confessionals. Do we need the Bishops to tell us that reparations are just and necessary before we do the right thing, or can't we act as competent moral agents, without any hand holding?

And let's be honest, the dignity of African Americans was not high on the agenda of the north pre and post civil war, as is apparent in the Jim Crow laws. And for Mr Cork to say basically that the people responsible are not alive today and it would be unfair to place the burden on others who may not even have been here then is flat out wrong. A history professor I had once remarked about how during the WWII, as far as everyone could tell, Germany was overrun by the Nazis and then after the war, no one could find these nazis. All of a sudden no one was a Nazi, or had ever seen one, rather, everyone had been an underground militant against them. How can such an evil have taken place on American soil and then all of a sudden, "sorry, but the evil people are all dead and no one is responsible now."

No individual is ever going to take responsibility for such actions, but that shouldn't be the issue. The state has to take responsibility because it was the state's structures that permitted and profitted from slavery and the dehumanization of black people.

On the issue of Africans who assisted with the slave trade. First of all, it does not make it then acceptable nor does it relieve the slavers of the responsibility. The Africans who assisted were a very small fraction. Secondly, that argument ignores the gunboat diplomacy of the Europeans who showed up with canons pointed at the coastal regions and then smiled at the people and wanted to discuss on a "level palying field." I'm not interested in exonorating Africans who sacrificed their brothers and sisters , that should be looked into and openely acknowledged. But that's not at issue here. The issue is should the U.S., which legalized and structurally supported and profited from slavery attempt to make amends?

Slavery is not new in human history, but the New World slavery raised the art of slaving to a whole new level. Slaves in antiquity were still human, in the trans-Saharan slave trade which preceeded the New World slave trade, slaves were still human. In New World slavery, slaves were no longer people and were treated as bad if not worse than animals.

I don't imagine Mr Cork has taken time to reflect on how evil slavery was. It has to rank up with the worst moments in human history: the inhumane conditions of the middle passage, slaves packed so tightly that they could not move, slaves sitting for weeks in their waste, being bought and sold and treated as a pure commodity, mothers became breeding creatures as owners sold their children for profit, and women, who raised their masters ON THEIR OWN BREAST MILK, were put out in the forests to die when they outlived thier usefulness. How evil is this? Generations of families were robbed of the opportunity to build stable families and communities and to accumulate wealth, which is how communities grow strong and stable. And it was not until 1965 that Blacks could vote!!! 1965 is not too long ago, lest we forget. How can we then say that this community is not entitled to some form of reparation.

The reparations battle is a battle that will be won by the pro-reparations crowd. The question for me would be on what side of the aisle will the U.S. Catholic Church be when the verdict is proclaimed.

On a quick ending note, it is a shame that the abortion issue has become the sole moral issue for the Church right now. Abortion is a social justice issue not an isolated moral issue. We fight for the unborn because they can't, we fight for them to protect the dignity of human life and the reign of justice in society, our fight is against oppression, it is for the restoration of human dignity and the respect of justice in our soceity. To be pro-life and not be pro-justice is hollow and lacks moral force. We need to reflect, as a Church, on our pro-life stance so that we understand that it is not simply a political position or a flash point for orhtodoxy but our stances reflects our values as Christians.