News

Image

CHICAGO, March 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Archdiocese of Chicago's Office for Racial Justice hosted a speaker who called Pope Francis “evil,” denies the Apostle Paul was a prophet of God, denigrates the pro-life movement, demands that public schools teach children ideology that contradicts their parents' religious views, and rejoices in the death of his self-identified enemies.

“Timothy Jacob Wise is an American anti-racism activist and writer,” according to the website of the University of Dayton, where Wise is scheduled to speak later this month. “Since 1995, he has given speeches at over 600 college campuses across the U.S.”

Image

On February 7, the Archdiocese's Office for Racial Justice hosted a speech by Mr. Wise. A spokeswoman declined to say he would not be invited to address future archdiocesan events.

The author of White Like Me has consistently championed positions hostile to the teachings of Christianity in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular.

The New Pope: evil, like the last one”

Wise describes himself as “not a Christian,” adding “far be it from me to insist on the infallibility of the Bible.”

Wise has said the Apostle Paul “was not a prophet of God” and has called Pope Francis “evil,” as he did Pope Benedict XVI.

Wise listed the Christian doctrine that “people can be resurrected from the dead” as a teaching society may have to combat in the public schools.

The decision to invite Wise is surprising, not least due to his condemnation of for Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who now serves as bishop of Springfield. Wise wrote last November that Bishop Paprocki offered “more reason why the official Church should be shunned.”

It is also surprising given Wise's often-expressed and deep-seated hostility toward Catholic teachings.

Pro-lifers are “terrorists, plain and simple”

He has written that there are “plenty” of members of the pro-life movement who “are terrorists, plain and simple, who seek to subordinate women to the religiously fanatical, patriarchal dystopia of their theocratic fantasies.”

Only those who murder abortionists are consistent, in his view.

Image

“It should be obvious that” unborn human “life is not equivalent to that of born persons,” he wrote.

Christians guilty of “spiritual terrorism”

Presenting himself as an opponent of “bullying,” Wise has deemed Christian students sharing their Biblical views on sexuality guilty of “spiritual terrorism.”

He accuses parents who raise their children with traditional religious views of “child abuse by any other name.”

Wise explicitly rejects the Catholic Church's condemnation of homosexual relations as a form of bigotry. Responding to a female critic, he wrote, “If she believes 'homosexual acts are wrong' because the Bible tells her so, then she is guilty” of “heterosexist or straight supremacist” prejudice, which Wise places on par with racism.

Raising children in such homes, he said, makes them less likely to fit into Wise's preferred future society. The belief in the resurrection and other Christian miracles are among the doctrines he believes can “become a problem for the rest of us.” Thus, he tells parents that passing on such religious views is “something you haven’t the right to do.”

Society must “demand the right to demonstrate to them, however subtly, that their parents are superstitious, hate-filled, reality-allergic purveyors of mindless piffle.

“Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent’s faith,” he wrote, “and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.”

Archdiocese refuses comment on whether Wise will be invited again

Susan G. Burritt, media relations director for the Archdiocese of Chicago, confirmed to LifeSiteNews that “Tim Wise spoke to a group of educators in early February solely on the topic of systemic racism in this country.”

His talk was on racism and “did not address any religious issues or Church teachings in his presentations,” she said.

“No one involved with arranging for this presentation was aware of the quotes you shared with us this afternoon,” Burritt told LifeSiteNews yesterday.

Burritt explicitly refused to answer whether Wise would have been invited to speak if his views were known.

She also refused to comment on whether the Office of Racial Justice or any other office at the archdiocese would invite him back in any capacity.

It is not clear that Wise's views reflect Catholic teachings on racism, either.

Go die, please”

Wise has repeatedly called for or celebrated the ruin or death of his perceived enemies.

Before blogger Andrew Breitbart's death, Wise wrote: “when I say I want him destroyed I am not kidding. I want to see him penniless, homeless, begging on the street for money to buy food. … He can die on the street so far as I'm concerned. … I mean, the kind of destruction that involves the complete evisceration of his entire career. I want him destroyed. Penniless. Starving. I have never detested anyone this much.”

Wise has reportedly looked forward to the mass death of white people as a means to create a more left-leaning society.

He began one message asking “why, oh why, are so many white people so effin stupid,” and concluded by telling Orange County, California: “(at least the white part), go die please…figuratively speaking of course, or literally, whatever.”

Wise launched into an extended rant celebrating the death of elderly white people after the historic 2010 midterm elections, a missive that ironically accused the Tea Party of throwing a “temper tantrum.”

“In the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys,” he wrote. “And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.”

[Y]our time is limited.

Real damned limited.

So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.

The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.

Not much more now.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Tick.

Tock.

Wise reminded his audience that “in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it … guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.” (The U.S. Census has since moved the date up, estimating that whites will become a minority in the United States in 2043, 29 years from now.)

Wise is not the first liberal-progressive to say fundamentally transforming America into a left-wing nation hinges upon new demographic trends. In 2009, SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer and honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America Eliseo Medina told a far-left conference that if Congressmen “reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters.”

Noting that Hispanics vote for Democrats at a rate of two-to-one, he asked, “Can you imagine if you had even the same ratio, two out of three, if we get eight million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting, we will create a governing coalition for the long-term, not just for an election cycle.”

Contact:

Archdiocese of Chicago, Office for Racial Justice
Anita Baird, D.H.M., Director [email protected]
Alicia Juarez, Assistant Director [email protected]
PO Box 1979
Chicago, IL 60690-1979
(312) 534-8336

Archdiocese of Chicago
PO Box 1979
Chicago, IL 60690-1979
(312) 534-8200