A diocese in Kentucky apologized Saturday after videos emerged showing students from the Catholic boys' high school mocking Native Americans outside the Lincoln Memorial on Friday after a rally in Washington. Catholic parishes rarely examine the church’s record of actively participating in the federal government’s conquest and colonization of Native Americans and the West, part of the church’s effort in the 19th and 20th centuries to gain mainstream acceptance in America. Colonizing indigenous land and constructing walls, both figurative and literal, to win public influence and political power is not a new story in American Catholic history. Many white Catholics of the Reconstruction Era and Gilded Age depicted Native Americans in racist, infantilized ways. The actions of the young men harassing Phillips are only possible because of the failure to address and understand this shameful history.

Source: Washington Post January 20, 2019 16:07 UTC