VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – Vatican media is stepping up its "non-violent" Black Lives Matter (BLM) narrative.
Law enforcement agencies, faith-based organizations and corporations are reaching out to black leaders, asking, "What must I do to be saved?" according to Bernice Albertine King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., in comments Saturday to L'Osservatore Romano and Vatican News
The Protestant minister and social justice activist who met Pope Francis twice in 2018 said she agreed with the pontiff that "violence only leads to self-destruction."
"Our means must cohere with our desired end, and if that desired end is peace, we certainly cannot achieve peace with violent methods. This is aligned with my father's beliefs as well," King claimed.
Some commentators have noted an incongruity with the words and posturing coming out of the Vatican, as compared with its actions. According to Dcn. Nick Donnelly, "If Pope Francis really cared about tackling racism he'd have publicly challenged Cdl. Kasper's racist comments in 2018 when he dismissed the right of African bishops to uphold the Church's teaching on homosexuality at the Synod."
Donnelly notes how "Cdl. Kasper called the Africans' attitudes on homosexuality 'taboo,' saying on the record, 'But they should not tell us too much what we have to do.'"
The popular English journalist and columnist submits that "Francis' current response would be more convincing if he had defended the equality of African bishops with white European bishops and not closed his eyes to the racism expressed by one of his closet advisers."
"Francis is the master of gesture politics, of virtue signaling, but the problem of racism in the Church needs more than this," Donnelly stressed.
Meanwhile, in a June 5 interview for Oprah Magazine alongside Ilyasah Shabazz (the daughter of Malcolm X), King absolved the Muslim black-rights activist for promoting violence: "I actually don't see one incident where he was violent the way people describe him to be or the way people are co-opting it."
However, Malcolm X famously said, "Nonviolence is fine as long as it works." A follower of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X was a practitioner of the Black Muslim religion, which combines Islam with black power and black nationalism.
During her Oprah Magazine discourse — an interview wholly glossed over by Vatican media — King also called for "free education" for blacks and suggested they should temporarily be exempt from paying taxes.
"Let all our income go into our pockets, because it was taken away from our ancestors, and it wasn't like thousands of years ago. It wasn't. You're talking about just 50 years ago; we were paid slave wages," King said, calling for reparations.
Accusing the police of mutating into "slave patrols," King said her father and Malcolm X would call for "a whole deconstruction and reconstruction of police in America." King called for police to be renamed "community engagement officers."
King also alleged that the "thread of white supremacy" ran through America and said that her father would rewrite his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to "white pastors, particularly those in evangelical circles who have surrounded and supported Trump." On the other hand, she told Vatican media Pope Francis and her father were "united in the same dream."
King insisted her father "would also put a demand on churches to align their professions of faith with works that create just and equitable circumstances for black and brown people, as well as for economically marginalized communities, not only in the United States, but around the world."
Vatican media asked King if the BLM movement, which "is involving the whole world" and spurring young people, will lead the world to "take a step forward in the challenge of human fraternity."
"I am hopeful that we will harness our energy to focus on the ultimate goal of building the beloved community, which is not a utopia" but a "realistic vision of an achievable society," replied King, who runs The King Center in Georgia.
Vatican media and King have so far avoided reporting on or condemning the unprecedented violence unleashed by BLM riots, furthering the mainstream media narrative of "largely peaceful protests."
Last week, Church Militant reported that Vatican News praised Black Lives Matter 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 pontiff's mouthpiece made no reference to BLM's involvement in riots, its campaign to defund the police or to the movement's goal of "disrupt[ing] the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement," as explicitly stated on the "What We Believe" page of the BLM website.
Critics have pointed to a virtual blackout of any negative news on BLM from Vatican media. Vatican News described the death of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks (shot after he stole a taser from police and turned it on them) as "murder." Vatican News also editorialized that BLM supporters in England were "provoked" with "police struggling to block them" from "right-wing activists."
Pope Francis and Vatican media have also been criticized for failing to condemn or report on the toppling of St. Junípero Serra's statue in San Francisco, even though the Spanish Franciscan friar and missionary was canonized by Francis in 2015.
BLM mobs have vandalized Catholic churches in California, Minnesota, New York, Kentucky, Texas and Colorado — including St. Peter Cathedral, the Maronite cathedral for the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon.
Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City was defaced with graffiti (splashed with profanity) stating, "No justice, no peace," "BLM" and "NYPDK." George Floyd's name was also written on the stairs outside the cathedral.
BLM thugs struck Denver cathedral on multiple nights of the BLM riots, spray painting it with contemptuous taunts, such as "Pedofiles" (sic), "God is dead" and "There is no God," along with other anti-police, anarchist and anti-religion phrases and symbols.
Meanwhile, Ms. Nestride Yumga, a senior African American airman and dental assistant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, blasted BLM in the Wall Street Journal: "I am not oppressed. I am free. African Americans need real policy reforms, not racial antagonism."
"Black Lives Matter and its supporters don't represent all black Americans. They don't represent our communities, they don't speak for us, they don't act in our best interests and they don't care about our prosperity," Yumga emphasized.
She added that "the overwhelming majority of black Americans are for peaceful, effective protests, like those led by Martin Luther King, and for real reforms that help us prosper and be free."
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