Archbishop Gomez on the non-Saving Power of Wokeness

I'm a natural contrarian, so when a number of people erupted in rage over Archbishop Gomez's address on "wokeness" last week, I pulled it up in a browser tab, determined to read it for myself.  It's been a long couple weeks, so it was only today that I finally got around to reading it.

It's a very short address, and as such it's necessarily very brief in its argument.  This necessarily means that one must read it on the assumption that it is brief and is not treating everything mentioned in the maximum possible depth.  I read, for instance, people who were outraged that in one sentence it mentioned Pelagianism, and in one sentence Gnosticism, and yet it did not provide an in depth analysis of the precise teachings of each of these heresies.  Well, of course not.  That's not what people do when they make one sentence mentions of a thing. But I did think that, as an overall outline of thought, it made some interesting and cogent points.  So I'll outline briefly here was struck me.

He breaks his talk down into three sections. The first speaks of secularization. He notes that the US has been secularizing for some time, but he argues here that the events of the last two years have hastened that move. He says that COVID and recent political/cultural turmoils have proved a turning point, but he says that this is not a sharp turning but rather an acceleration of trends that were already in motion. 

I think history will look back and see that this pandemic did not change our societies as much as it accelerated trends and directions that were already at work. Social changes that might have taken decades to play out, are now moving more rapidly in the wake of this disease and our societies’ responses.

...

he new social movements and ideologies that we are talking about today, were being seeded and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions. But with the tension and fear caused by the pandemic and social isolation, and with the killing of an unarmed black man by a white policeman and the protests that followed in our cities, these movements were fully unleashed in our society.

This context is important in understanding our situation in the United States. The name George Floyd is now known worldwide. But that is because for many people in my country, myself included, his tragedy became a stark reminder that racial and economic inequality are still deeply embedded in our society.

We need to keep this reality of inequality in mind. Because these movements that we are talking about are part of a wider discussion — a discussion that is absolutely essential — about how to build an American society that expands opportunities for everyone, no matter what color their skin is or where they came from, or their economic status.

The latter part of this is something which I think is essential to keep in mind when evaluating what Archbishop Gomez is saying. He clearly states that he believes that there is racial and economic inequality still deeply embedded in our society and that these factors led to the killing of George Floyd. This is, thus, not a "nothing to see here!" argument as some have portrayed it. What, then, is he critiquing?

Enter the second part, which is entitled "America's new political religions". Here Archbishop Gomez lays out in brief what he sees as two competing stories, that is, two explanations for our purpose and how we are to find meaning in the world we face.  Here is his brief summary of the Christian story:

We are created in the image of God and called to a blessed life in union with him and with our neighbors. Human life has a God-given “telos,” an intention and direction. Through our sin, we are alienated from God and from one another, and we live in the shadow of our own death.

By the mercy of God and his love for each of us, we are saved through the dying and rising of Jesus Christ. Jesus reconciles us to God and our neighbors, gives us the grace to be transformed in his image, and calls us to follow him in faith, loving God and our neighbor, working to build his Kingdom on earth, all in confident hope that we will have eternal life with him in the world to come.

In contrast to this, he summarizes what he describes as a rival salvation narrative which is presented under the guise of social justice.

We cannot know where we came from, but we are aware that we have interests in common with those who share our skin color or our position in society. We are also painfully aware that our group is suffering and alienated, through no fault of our own. The cause of our unhappiness is that we are victims of oppression by other groups in society. We are liberated and find redemption through our constant struggle against our oppressors, by waging a battle for political and cultural power in the name of creating a society of equity.

Clearly, this is a powerful and attractive narrative for millions of people in American society and in societies across the West. In fact, many of America’s leading corporations, universities, and even public schools are actively promoting and teaching this vision.

This story draws its strength from the simplicity of its explanations — the world is divided into innocents and victims, allies and adversaries.

But this narrative is also attractive because, as I said earlier, it responds to real human needs and suffering. People are hurting, they do feel discriminated against and excluded from opportunities in society.

We should never forget this. Many of those who subscribe to these new movements and belief systems are motivated by noble intentions. They want to change conditions in society that deny men and women their rights and opportunities for a good life.

Of course, we all want to build a society that provides equality, freedom, and dignity for every person. But we can only build a just society on the foundation of the truth about God and human nature.

Some people reacted oddly to the opening phrase of this section, "we cannot know where we are from" but I think it clearly indicates a view in which it is not clear how the world was created or what the meaning of the human person is. He is saying that according to the modern story, we do not know what the purpose of the human person is, but we know our identity and thus with whom we must ally during racial and class conflict.

I think it's also important to note that he says here that the attraction of this view is that it is correct about both the existence of injustice and the need for each person to be treated with justice and dignity. What, then, does he say is wrong? The key phrase, I think, is "find redemption through our constant struggle against our oppressors, by waging a battle for political and cultural power" and also "the world is divided into innocents and victims, allies and adversaries."

Indeed, I would expand this out and say that this has become the key story of both the Trumpy right and the woke left in our country. Both ideologies seem to define themselves increasingly by identifying enemies whom they claim to be utterly depraved. The only solution is to wage all out cultural, political, and sometimes literal in-the-streets warfare against the other side and to defeat them utterly because they are perceived as irredeemable.

And what corrective does he provide from a Christian perspective? He says later:

Our Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI warned that the eclipse of God leads to the eclipse of the human person. Again and again he told us: when we forget God, we no longer see the image of God in our neighbor.

Pope Francis makes the same point powerfully in Fratelli Tutti: unless we believe that God is our Father, there is no reason for us to treat others as our brothers and sisters.

That is precisely the problem here.

I think this is the key critique which Gomez is leveling at the 'woke' left. Like it's opposite movement on the Trumpy right, it is often focused on the destruction of its opponents as an end unto itself. The entire point of "cancellation" is to render someone unemployable permanently. Whether it's a right wing congressman running an animation showing AOC being killed, or protesters chanting "kill the pigs", the problem with these movements is both that they do not value the humanity of (and wish the good for) their opponents, and that they are willing to engage in wrong and destructive acts (the storming of the Capitol, the looting and burning of neighborhoods, the threatening of violence against their opponents) and justify those acts as somehow being all right because of the cause in whose name they are done.

What does Gomez propose instead? 

My answer is simple. We need to proclaim Jesus Christ. Boldly, creatively. We need to tell our story of salvation in a new way. With charity and confidence, without fear. This is the Church’s mission in every age and every cultural moment.

We should not be intimidated by these new religions of social justice and political identity. The Gospel remains the most powerful force for social change that the world has ever seen. And the Church has been “antiracist” from the beginning. All are included in her message of salvation.

Jesus Christ came to announce the new creation, the new man and the new woman, given power to become children of God, renewed in the image of their Creator.

Jesus taught us to know and love God as our Father, and he called his Church to carry that good news to the ends of the earth — to gather, from every race and tribe and people, the one worldwide family of God.

That was the meaning of Pentecost, when men and women from every nation under heaven heard the Gospel in their own native language. That is what St. Paul meant when he said that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. 

Of course, in the Church we have not always lived up to our beautiful principles, or carried out the mission entrusted to us by Christ.

But the world does not need a new secular religion to replace Christianity. It needs you and me to be better witnesses. Better Christians. Let us begin by forgiving, loving, sacrificing for others, putting away spiritual poisons like resentment and envy.

One critique I've heard of this is that Gomez is saying that Christians do not need to do anything different, that they can complacently ignore injustice in our country because they are already assured that as Christians they are good people. It seems to me, however, that this not at all what he is saying. He says that the Church has been "antiracist" from the beginning, in that all are included in her message of salvation. But he also notes that the Church has not always lived up to its principles and its mission. Indeed, one might go so far as to conclude that the reason why there has been injustice which has created the conditions in which the secular 'woke' movement has sprung up is that too often Christians have failed to follow the teachings of Christ. Thus, he sees the solution to racial injustice not in ignoring it but in calling Christians to actually act as Christians.

Does this mean that, as another critique I've seen claims, he is simply coopting the 'woke' message but refusing to acknowledge the movement from which he has stolen it? No, I think this is also clearly not correct either. He says earlier that while the secular social justice militants of the moment have correctly identified that there are injustices in our society which need to be remedied, that the actions they advocate are often wrong. The goal of justice is right, but the means are wrong. Justice will not be achieved by the destruction of others, but rather by their conversion and redemption. 

Yet another approach combines these two objections, and holds that the secular 'woke' social justice movement is simply an acting out of basic Christian teaching and that any wrongs or excesses that may occur are either the actions of outside bad actors or at, at worst, minor excesses which must be excused because the result being sought is good. This approach strikes me as being overly optimistic about the nature of the wider 'woke' movement, which is heavily secular and is both explicitly tied to movements obvious conflicts with Christian morality (abortion rights, gay marriage, trans ideology, etc.) and also with actions which are not moral regardless of their goal. While on the surface, those who argue that the secular social justice movement is identical in its aims to Christianity seem to at least be adhering to Christian doctrine, I think that the end result is much like those who look at a broader Republican movement and argue that since it's pro-life it's at core just Christianity and any bits which may not fit with that are just flukes. 

In the end, I think that the virulent attacks on Archbishop Gomez for having delivered this talk to some extent underscore his point. He worries, among other things, that the secular social justice movement is too focused on identifying enemies and not focused enough of the conversion and salvation of each person. And indeed, the reaction to Gomez's speech seems often enough to have been that people identified him as an enemy and proceeded to vilify him, despite the fact that his address stated repeatedly that combatting racial injustice was the necessary task of Christians. 

Since he clearly agrees with his attackers on this point, it seems rather as if the reason that he's being attacked is for failing to fall neatly in line with a particular secular political movement which is intent to divide the world into allies and enemies.