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Undoing the Knots
- Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
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Summary
A personal and historical examination of White Catholic anti-Blackness in the US told through five generations of one family, and a call for meaningful racial healing and justice within Catholicism
Excavating her Catholic family’s entanglements with race and racism from the time they immigrated to America to the present, Maureen O’Connell traces, by implication, how the larger Catholic population became White and why, despite the tenets of their faith, so many White Catholics have lukewarm commitments to racial justice.
O’Connell was raised by devoutly Catholic parents with a clear moral and civic guiding principle: Those to whom much is given, much is expected. She became a theologian steeped in social ethics, engaged in critical race theory, and trained in the fundamentals of anti-racism. And still she found herself failing to see how her well-meaning actions affected the Black members of her congregations. It seemed that whenever she tried to undo the knots of racism, she only ended up getting more tangled in them.
Undoing the Knots weaves together narrative history, theology, and critical race theory to begin undoing these knots: to move away from doing good and giving back and toward dismantling the White Catholic identity and the economic and social structures it has erected and maintained.
Critic reviews
"[The author’s] willingness to examine her actions while coming to the realization that, while her intentions have always been good, they do not address the problem, is incredibly refreshing . . . Though the material may be uncomfortable to digest, it is an absolutely necessary read to foster antiracism.” —Booklist
"O’Connell’s…revelation offers some hope to the reader: traditions are constantly evolving. Although Catholicism and anti-Blackness remain entangled, O’Connell believes that connection can be unwound."
—Emma McDonald, Commonweal Magazine
"Maureen O'Connell's important book. . . offers a model for how white Catholics can face up to our histories and find a way forward as people who pursue racial justice." —John Gehring, National Catholic Reporter