Texas Bishop: BLM ‘Dangerous’

You are not signed in as a Premium user; you are viewing the free version of this program. Premium users have access to full-length programs with limited commercials and receive a 10% discount in the store! Sign up for only one day for the low cost of $1.99. Click the button below.

See All Plans

TYLER, Texas (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Texas prelate is warning Catholics about the dangers of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, urging the faithful to educate themselves about its anti-Catholic agenda.

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler is directing Catholics to read the actual BLM statement to understand its real aims, underscoring the radical bent of BLM's ideology.

Branding the leftist group's agenda "dangerous," Strickland points to two disturbing points in particular.

Anti-Family, Pro-Depravity

First, BLM seeks to "disrupt" the "Western-prescribed nuclear family structure," recommending instead for people to support "each other as extended families and 'villages' that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable."

Notably absent from this tenet are "fathers," as Bishop Strickland remarks: "Where is dad?"

Catholic tradition places great emphasis on the family, extolling the Holy Family — Jesus, Mary and Joseph — as the crowning example.

Pope St. John Paul II said the Holy Family is "the prototype and example for all Christian families."

And Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 cautioned families to "resist the disintegrating forces of a certain contemporary culture which undermines the very foundations of the family institution," already noting the leftist forces pushing back against traditional family life.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) declares matrimony as a "sacrament," describing it as "the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life [and] is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring."

Second, the BLM creed states: "We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise)."

The CCC makes this clear about "queer-affirming," LGBT behavior: "Under no circumstances can they be approved."

According to the the CCC,

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.

BLM was founded in 2013 by three black feminists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and Opal Tometi — two of the three identifying as lesbians — in the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

While media focus on the racial component of BLM, the group is also devoted to the dissemination of LGBT ideology. Another BLM tenet states: "We are committed to ... doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift black trans folk."

What began for the three founders as a simple Twitter hashtag — #BlackLivesMatter — has exploded into a global movement with satellites throughout the world — that seeks to upend traditional family life, the Catholic faith and belief in God.

Corruption of the Gospel

The BLM movement also bears connection to Liberation Theology. Its website explains that its "network centers on those who have been marginalized within black liberation movements."

As Christine Niles pointed out in a recent Church Militant special report: "These black liberation movements are founded in black liberation theology ... which itself finds its roots in neo-Marxist Liberation Theology .... a corruption of the gospel that turns Christian teaching into a social gospel based on class warfare and economic justice.

Noting BLM's intent to incite racial divisions, Niles continued: "But in the case of black Liberation Theology ... the war is not so much between classes as between races ... black and white."

Church Support for BLM

Despite BLM's radical, atheistic agenda, many prominent Catholic laity and clergy — even the pope himself — support it.

Catholic Charities' CEO of Eastern Washington Rob McCann stressed support for BLM, overlooking its clear opposition to Catholic teaching. In a video, he said: "Catholic Charities supports Black Lives Matter ... In its purest, non-violent form, it is a Christ-like movement that honors the Church's teaching that we must give a preferential option to those who are marginalized."

Another Texas Bishop, Mark Seitz, attended a BLM rally with parishioners and other clergy El Paso, Texas on June 1, holding a sign that read, "Black Lives Matter."

Two days later Seitz received a phone call from Pope Francis commending him for his gesture. According to Seitz, the pope thanked him and said that "whenever we celebrate Mass, we are praying together, he where he is and me at the border."

The Vatican News recently touted BLM as a "movement dedicated to non-violent civil disobedience through protests against police violence directed at black persons as well as all forms of racism."

"The fact that so many otherwise well-informed Americans remain unaware of Black Lives Matter's goal to revolutionize the structure of society proves the media consistently fails to report the entirety of BLM's goals and agenda," wrote the Hill in 2016, a failure not to be ascribed to Bp. Strickland.

Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.

We rely on you to support our news reporting. Please donate today.