10 Things to Know About the BCI September, 2017 The Lord Be With You

Just like the Faith, the Drum works for us if you pass it on. TO SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER CONTACT BC I   TO SUPPORT THIS WORK PRAY AND GO TO GIVE

1. KEEPING PRAYED UP

Please submit all prayer requests to  BCI 312-577-0475

Office of the Archbishop 835 North Rush Street Chicago, IL 60611-2030 312.534.8230 archchicago.org Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, August 30, 2017 Over the past few days, we have heard and witnessed many heartbreaking stories and images from areas affected by Hurricane Harvey. The damage caused by the storm and flooding has been catastrophic, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries, destroyed homes and businesses, and thousands of displaced people seeking shelter. Intense rainfall will continue in Texas and Louisiana throughout the next few days, causing further harm. During this time of great need, I invite you to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast region. All parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago are strongly encouraged to take up a second collection at all Masses on Saturday, September 9 and Sunday, September 10. Proceeds from this special collection will support the humanitarian and recovery efforts of Catholic Charities USA and provide support to affected dioceses through the USCCB. To donate, please visit http://pvm.archchicago.org/harvey or mail contributions to the following address: ATTN: Hurricane Harvey Emergency Appeal Catholic Charities USA 3525 South Lake Park Avenue Chicago, IL 60653 Your generous support of this collection will make a difference to our brothers and sisters suffering in the wake of this natural disaster. It is my prayer that as we renew our own archdiocese, we support the renewal of Gulf Coast Catholic communities that will grapple with its effects for many months to come. With every good wish, I remain, Sincerely yours in Christ, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich

Cardinal Blase Cupich One Human Family   Over the past few weeks at Mass, we have been reading from the prophet Isaiah. He reminds the people that while they are the chosen race, from the beginning God desired the unity of all peoples. While humanity is divided by culture, heritage and language, God created us to be one human family, one race - the human race.   This reminder of our fundamental unity as a people could not come at a more necessary time, as our nation continues to roil from the violence and hatred displayed by white supremacists in Charlottesville and beyond. Racism is our country's original sin, a wound that forever requires tending. There can be no equivocating. Racism is a sin. White supremacy is a sin. Neo-Nazism is a sin. We know this.    Yet here we are in 2017 mourning the death of Heather Heyer, killed by a vehicle driven into a group of people in Charlottesville protesting hate. Here we are mourning the deaths of two Virginia State Troopers, Berke Bates and Jake Cullen, whose helicopter went down while monitoring the chaos. How many of our young people went to war to fight the ideology of hate we know as Nazism? How many sacrificed and toiled to support the effort to resist that evil? We call them the Greatest Generation. What will this generation be called?   "Hatred paralyzes society into hopelessness" Of course, we find easy excuses to live in tribal ways. Focus on our differences and the aspects we find objectionable or even threatening to our way of life. We exclude the other, hold fast to the comfort of the familiar. As a result, tensions and divisions arise, hostilities erupt and hatred paralyzes society into hopelessness.    The Gospel texts that have accompanied the Hebrew Scriptures in our worship recently challenge us to search for what we share in common with others. Take, for example, the story of the Canaanite woman who begged Jesus to cure her possessed daughter. The followers of Jesus ask him to discard her, to separate her from them as an alien. She was pagan, after all, and belonged to a tribe known for being superstitious and for their historical hostility to the Jewish people. When Jesus dismisses her request by ignoring her, she persists, repeatedly insisting that Jesus heal her suffering child.    Yet Jesus saw something in her the disciples missed: her great faith and her great love for her daughter. This is clear from her willingness to humiliate herself by making repeated requests of Jesus. She also seems to have a good sense of humor to respond to Jesus' remark about not giving the food of the children to dogs: "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the Master's table." Jesus then stuns his disciples and the onlookers by calling her a woman of great faith. I wonder what Peter thought about that, especially after he was chastised for his little faith, failing to trust in Jesus who called him to walk toward him over the stormy waters. "Unite around the values we share"   In response to the terrible events in Charlottesville, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a letter to his employees in which he decried terrorism in all its forms, including both the white-supremacist march in Virginia and the attacks in Spain for which ISIS claimed responsibility. Terrorists mean to divide us, he wrote. "The challenge and best response is to speak out, to give hatred no place to fester, and to unite around the values we share," he continued. "It's often hard for people to find common ground and to work out the best ways to counter the swelling tide of hatred and terrorism. But history has shown we must try."   When we come across people who are different from ourselves, too often we are tempted to look for those things that validate our fears and our prejudices, convincing ourselves that we are justified in excluding them from our group, our tribe, our family. It has been observed that when mining for gold tons of dirt and rock have to be cleared away to find an ounce of gold. Miners don't go into the mine looking for dirt; they go in to find the gold. The Gospels in these summer weeks provide us with the timely message that instead of looking for the dirt, we should get about the task of looking for the gold in each person, thereby treasuring the differences among us as gifts that enrich us all.    God didn't make us all the same. God made our differences. And it is in those enriching differences that we experience the abiding truth which we must proclaim in word and deed: We are all made in God's image. Believing that has consequences. It means knowing that together we all form one human family. And that we owe each other what all members of the same family deserve: love. Because, as Heather Heyer's mother put it so powerfully just hours after her daughter was killed, "Hate cannot fix the world. Hate only creates more hate."    As bearers of God's image, all of us share in the responsibility of breaking that cycle, and that work must begin now.

WE YEARN FOR PEACE!  by Bishop Perry My late father was a World War II veteran who was assigned in 1942-1945 to the European Theatre. That generation of men has been dubbed the 'greatest generation' for reasons of their patriotism, their family values, and work ethic. It has also been suggested that many of the WWII veterans that returned home had been made pacifists by the ravages of experience connected with that war. The sons they spawned turned out the Vietnam War generation – my generation – who fought that war, others of whom became draft dodgers and pacifists, protesters through the streets for an end of a longer than long and lengthy conflict in Asia. My father would not allow me as a child to have guns and holsters and toys that dealt with war. I was ill-equipped to play with the neighbor kids when they played war or Cowboys and Indians or pretended to shoot each other. I did no quite understand it back then, only later in my adulthood did I begin to understand what my Father was doing with me that he could not quite articulate. Ours is a different generation. We have gathered to pray, once again, for a new year safer for our children to travel the streets and sidewalks to school and church and parks and other places. We cannot confine our children to inside the home. It is natural for children to want to be outdoors. Continue to encourage them as you have always done to be aware of what’s in front of them, in back of them, on the side of them. More and more kids travel to school on busses or in cars these days. Yet even then, encourage your children and grandchildren to be vigilant, to speak up to parents and teachers when they see something wrong and where to take refuge if danger closes in on them. When we were growing up my mother did not allow us to watch certain TV shows that were considered “adult entertainment”. In the 1950s, adult entertainment was Payton Place and The Untouchables . We had to go upstairs while mom watched her favorite TV adult shows. I wasn’t able to watch The Untouchables until I became an adult and then got a kick out of some floozy sitting atop a desk filing her nails while her gang lord crook wearing a gun and holster next to his rib was on the phone bringing booze into the city. Those images were off-limits for children of my time. How things have changed with the tenor of morals displayed on the viewing screen and the troublesome Internet!  Today is different. Notice, the popular video games with which children and teens are engaged. Most of them have to do with rabid violence, high powered weapons cutting down opponents and blood spurting every which way. Kids have these at home and work them with their coins in video arcades and at shopping malls. This is considered innocent youth entertainment. And we purchase these games for our youth. I suggest we should fast from these images and other movies where people like actors Stephen Seagal and Vin Diesel and others act out glorified violence. Unbeknownst to us these images work themselves in the consciousness of our youth getting across the idea that violence and killing are the only ways to be somebody. A gun in the hand always renders one a false sense of power. Now, I am not saying my parent’s methods of raising us were the best. All I know is that I did not turn out the worse for it. I believe there is something to be said for steering clear of giving birthday gifts and Christmas gifts and gifts in between that symbolize violence and killing so prevalent in our city and other cities across the country. Follow through with the rearing of your kids and grandkids on this. Support your prayers and messaging by fasting from the images and instruments associated with violence. Then, sooner or later, the kids will understand.

2. THE CAUSE OF FR. TOLTON

3. HONOR, HONOR UNTO THE DYING LAMB

4. NOW SEEKING NOMINATIONS

The Archdiocese of Chicago Black Catholic Initiative Unbroken Circle Award

The "Unbroken Circle Award" is designed to acknowledge our creation, unity and diversity. Awarded to an individual or group, whose actions connect us to the "Civil Rights Movement", this sculpture embodies the prayers and songs that plea for God to "unbreak" the circle so that all can be one.

5. ON THE AIR

RADIO BCI Tuesdays 9-9:30 a.m. Relevant Radio 950-AM Deacon John Cook hosts this weekly half-hour program that explores a wide range of topics relevant to Chicago's Black and Catholic communities. Deacon Cook serves at St. Felicitas Parish in Chatham, and is very involved in overseeing youth programs in the Bronzeville neighborhood.  Tune in and Call in 312.255.8408 After the March After the March Sept 5th- Dr. Ansel Augustine - Campus Minister, St. John's Uni in New York City Sept 12th- Donna Grimes - USCCB Asst. Dir of African American Affairs -Washington D.C. Sept 19th- Doug Tooke - Executive Dir of Monarch Catholic Ministries-Helena Montana Sept-26th Dr. Renee Murrell - Victim Specialist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Baltimore MD Make Them Hear You!

7. CATHOLIC EDUCATION

8. SOCIAL ACTION

9. PARISH LIFE AND FORMATION EVENTS

The BCI received the following announcements from parishes, schools and organizations for the purpose of sharing information and invitation. Please seek permission to publish items in this newsletter from the pastor or person responsible for the sponsoring agent. Please take care not to violate copyrights.

Peace Fair Peace Fair - Englewood Join us for a Block Party to Foster Alternatives to Idleness & Violence   Children and teens can sign up to programs such as computer literacy, musical groups, art classes and sporting activities.    Participants of all ages are invited to learn about ways to empower individuals to make the community safer. www.margaretsvillage.org Free parking is available   Saturday, Sept 9 th 1:00 – 4:00 pm  7320 S. Yale Avenue, Chicago 60621

Phone: 773-651-8372

Kujichagulia, Umoja and Imani. This is a meeting of the seven sacraments of the church and the seven principles of Kwanzaa. This is a meeting of the church. That is what makes it and us truly catholic. Stay tuned, stay close, get involved, walk together and don’t you get weary! There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land. Believe that you are in the camp.

Thanks Be to GOD ! ! !  Someone asked the question… RED is for the blood of the people BLACK is for the community of the people GREEN is for the growth of the people

THE BCI AND YOU

All are welcome to bring ideas and gifts to this collective work of baptizing, matrimony and anointing, this effort of Kujichagulia, Umoja and Imani. This is a meeting of the seven sacraments of the church and the seven principles of Kwanzaa. This is a meeting of the church. That is what makes it and us truly Catholic. Stay tuned, stay close, get involved, walk together and don’t you get weary! There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land. Believe that you are in the camp.

About the Black Catholic Initiative

The Black Catholic Initiative (BCI) has as its focus the 66K African American Catholics served by 351 parishes, 38 of which are predominately African American. The BCI was created to prepare the church for the next generation of African American Catholics, charging them to be fully present and accountable. The goal of the BCI is to come together and work together in order to give and serve the Church. The BCI is an ethnic ministry that actively participates and offers its work as a gift to the local church of Chicago. Those involved in the BCI will practice Umoja, Kujichagulia and Ujima, (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility) in order to first give honor to God and to offer Catholicity with the whole church. The BCI will be one church, not many parishes. In this tried and true tradition, the BCI will plainly and clearly be Catholic.