A bishop in the United States has denounced comments by a Black Lives Matter activist who said statues of Jesus Christ that depict him ‘with European features’ need to come down ‘because they support white supremacy’.
As a shepherd of the Catholic Church, “I cannot remain silent. I need to denounce such a call to violence and destruction”, the bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, Donald J. Hying, said, responding to a recent tweet by activist and writer Shaun King about ‘the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus’.
“Our statues, pictures, stained-glass windows, churches, icons and devotions are holy to us,” Bishop Hying said. “They are sacramentals, blessed and sacred, visible expressions of the love of God, poured out in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus, and made manifest in the saints.”
Bishop Hying’s remarks came in an open a letter posted on the website of the Madison Catholic Herald diocesan newspaper, www.madisoncatholicherald.org, which addressed the broader issue of the need for the country to come to terms with its moral failings in its history as a nation, but to do so with a national educational effort and respectful discussion, not through destruction and violence.
Picture: File photo, dated 22nd September 2012, shows a statue of Jesus Christ standing in front of a church in the village of Soto on the Caribbean island of Curacao. (Sebastian Kahnert/DPA/PA).
