The bishop of Lafayette, Indiana, has suspended a priest from public ministry for penning an essay saying that Black Lives Matter had betrayed the civil rights legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass.
Last week, Lafayette Bishop Timothy Doherty suspended Father Theodore Rothrock, the pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic parish “in the wake of Father Rothrock’s June 28 bulletin article” noting that even if he is eventually allowed to continue in priestly ministry “he will no longer be assigned as Pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel” for his next mission.
In his article, Father Rothrock acknowledged that the “brutal murder of a black man in police custody has sparked a landslide of reaction to the alleged systemic racism in America” but the anger has been coopted by violent Antifa groups that have no real interest in the black community.
“Anyone currently doing business with Amazon could not help but notice the prominent banner headline from the internet giant touting their proud support for ‘Black Lives Matter,’” he said. “But do those black lives really matter to the community organizers promoting their agenda? Is ‘Antifa’ concerned with the defeat of fascist right-wing nationalism or more interested in the establishment of left-wing global socialism?”
“On the heels of the Covid sequestration, the bottled-up tension of an isolated population has exploded into riots and demonstrations that we have not seen the like in fifty years,” he continued.
“What would the great visionary leaders of the past be contributing to the discussion at this point in time?” he asked. “Would men like Fredrick Douglas and the Reverend King, both men of deep faith, be throwing bombs or even marching in the streets?”
The priest went on to issue a stinging indictment of the bands of looters and violent demonstrators, organized and egged on by professional Antifa protesters.
“Who are the real racists and the purveyors of hate? You shall know them by their works. The only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own,” he said.
“They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others,” he declared. “They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace any current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment.”
A growing number of black leaders are distancing themselves from the Black Lives Matter movement for its radicalized stands and attacks on the traditional family unit, whose breakdown has been at the heart of black poverty and crime.
As just one example, last week former NFL player Marcellus Wiley criticized the NBA’s decision to paint Black Lives Matter on court sidelines, saying it was a “bad idea.”
“I don’t know how many people really look into the mission statement of Black Lives Matter, but I did,” Wiley said during a recent broadcast of FS1’s Speak For Yourself. And when you look into it, there’s a couple of things that jump out to me.
The Black Lives Matter mission statement declares that the movement wants to “dismantle the patriarchal practice,” and “disrupt the western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,” Wiley noted, adding that the integrity of families are “vitally important” to him.
Citing statistics, Wiley said that children from the single-parent homes are “five times more likely to commit suicide, six times more likely to be in poverty, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, ten times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.”
“So, when I see that as a mission statement for Black Lives Matter, it makes me scratch my head,” he said.
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