View the recording for 2nd Sunday in Easter,
April 11 here. For the homily of Co-Pastor Dcn Rosean Amaral, click here. Here is a printed version of the liturgy to assist with prayer.

Did you miss one of the Holy Week services?
View and connect to Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Stations of the Cross, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and Easter Service here.
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BLM Reflection for April 11 Sunday Service
Voter Suppression: Unfortunately Still Alive and Well in America

The Constitution’s 13th Amendment outlawed human enslavement except as punishment for crime. The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 permitted Black men in the South to vote for delegates to write new state constitutions. The new constitutions confirmed the right of Black men to vote.

Most Confederates wanted no part of this new system. They tried to stop voters from ratifying the new constitutions by dressing up in white sheets as the ghosts of dead southern soldiers, terrorizing Black voters and sympathetic whites to keep them from the polls. The Ku Klux Klan’s tactics to suppress voting didn’t work. The new constitutions went into effect, and in 1868 the former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union with Black male suffrage.
As southern states continued to find loopholes to exclude Blacks from state government, the Constitution’s 15th Amendment was enacted to prohibit states from denying the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This only encouraged new tactics at voter suppression. For example, in 1890, Mississippi started requiring educational tests, poll taxes, or a grandfather who had voted, effectively getting rid of Black voting.

Sadly that tradition continues today. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in a backlash to 2020’s historic voter turnout, and under the pretense of responding to baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, state lawmakers have introduced a startling number of bills to curb the vote. As of March 24, legislators have introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states, many still targeting minority voters.

Colorado had 3 voter suppression bills, 2 were defeated and one requiring proof of citizenship remains under consideration. Nationally, most of the suppressive bills prohibit or restrict access to mail-in ballots or absentee voting, expand voter list purging practices, ban election day registration, or tighten voter ID requirements.