The following Parish Pastoral Council statement was announced at today’s Online Community Mass:

Transcript:
Thanks Donna. Good Afternoon. I’m Francis Chin, one of the parish trustees, and I am speaking today on behalf of the Parish Pastoral Council. We would like to take this moment to reflect together on what is going on in our country today.

Today at Pentecost, we celebrate God, the Holy Spirit – the breath of life and the founding of the Church, a community commissioned to spread the Good News of God’s love, to serve God’s people everywhere, speaking to them in every language.

So let us say this plainly. George Floyd’s killing was unjustified. Breonna Taylor’s killing was unjustified. The 100,000 Americans killed by COVID-19 were unjustified. They were denied their breath of life because of racial, social, and economic inequality. They were denied their breath of life because there are those who believe that to enrich and advance themselves, others must suffer. The daily bad news cycle of demeaning words and anonymous deaths has made us numb to the fact that this is wrong.

We believe that to love God we must love each other as ourselves.  We call upon all of us to raise our voices to build up a more just society that serves everyone with dignity, rather than one that oppresses and tears people down.

Let us value each other more than we value our accounts. Let us redouble our efforts to care for each other and to be concerned for our world.

This Pentecost, let us speak each other’s language.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.