Faith and Racial Healing – St. Pius V Catholic Church

Faith and Racial Healing: Embracing Truth, Justice, and Restoration guides participants in telling the truth about the history of racial injustice in the United States, that we might work toward true reconciliation with God and restoration with one another.

Regardless of whether your group is new to the topic, or if you’ve already taken our first program on racial equity, Faith and Racial Healing will guide your small group in the difficult but necessary conversation about the historical roots of racial injustice.

Before we come to the communion table, we first confess that we have not loved God and our neighbors with our whole hearts. In other words, before we can receive the joy of reconciliation with God and one another, we must first tell the truth about what we have done and left undone. However, our temptation is to try to skip right to the easy part — reconciliation — without first doing the hard work of truth-telling. And because there is no truth-telling, there is no true reconciliation.

In outlining the topics to be covered in our first program on racism (Faith and Racial Equity: Exploring Power and Privilege), we at JustFaith Ministries quickly realized that it is impossible to work toward racial healing without first acknowledging the truth of our history. So we put together this second program to explain the historical context behind the racial inequalities we face today, whether in education, the criminal justice system, the workforce, or even in church life. Though we focused specifically on enslaved Africans and their descendants, this program will open participants’ eyes to patterns of injustice that affect other communities across the nation.

Through the one-day opening retreat, immersion experience, and eight sessions, your group will emerge from Faith and Racial Healing better equipped to work toward restoration.