NY Times Story on Conn. Priest
Here’s a great story about a priest looking out for his parishioners:
EAST HAVEN, Conn. — Latino merchants in this New Haven suburb have been complaining for months that they get a disproportionately large share of attention from the local police. Officers, they say, have harassed them and their customers by lingering outside shops, stopping cars and demanding to see driver’s licenses.
But their complaints were largely confined to grumbling among themselves and at a local church until Feb. 19, when a white American priest was arrested.
The priest, the Rev. James Manship, who was videotaping a police visit to an Ecuadorean-owned grocery store on Main Street when he was led off in handcuffs, has become an unlikely symbol of racial profiling, charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with the police.
God bless that priest for getting out of his rectory and getting involved.
The quotes from the town officials are breathtakingly thuggish.
I’m of the opinion that “Waterfront” should be required reading for all clergy.
Thanks for this story. I do volunteer work in the office of Supervisor David Campos of San Francisco. Like me Campos is Latino and gay. Unlike me Campos started out in this country as a 12 year old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. He is very bright and earned his degrees at Stanford University and at Harvard Law School. He is becoming one of the most important voices for documented and undocumented immigrants in Northern California. A great deal of work needs to be done. Daily these people suffer indignities and injustices that would be unimaginable to the rest of us. Everybody’s help is needed. In San Francisco the religious community is an important part of this movement that attempts to unburden these people.
In the March 17, 2008 edition of America, Fr. Roger Haight, S.J. wrote about liberation theology and some of its theologians (Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Luis Segundo, Jon Sobrino, Ignacio Ellacuría). I believe we need to listen to what they teach us. Here is a little of what Haight wrote.
“Two fundamental elements reflect the essential logic of liberation theology. The first is negative experience, which leads to an awareness of the dehumanized condition of large numbers of people. The experience has three dimensions: a situation is wrong; we know it
could and should be different; the contrast fuels an urge to right the wrong. What does Christian theology say to this situation?
“The second fundamental element of liberation theology seeks to answer that question. The response appears embryonically in Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan, which can be read as dramatizing the principle that love of God is displayed as love of neighbor. The truth of the
principle is conveyed with climactic force by the shocking fact that only the Samaritan had internalized it. Modernity adds a conviction that beyond tying up the victim’s wounds, true love will make the road to Jericho safe for all. With this addendum liberation theology rewrites the parable for the whole world.
“Lesson 1. Social practice is an intrinsic dimension of Christian faith from which one cannot prescind. One of the deepest principles liberation theology presents to the Christian community is that action and practice are not just the consequences of faith, but the
intrinsic testimonial of its authenticity. As Ignatius of Loyola postulated in his Spiritual Exercises, “Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words” (No. 230). For this love to be effective and authentic, it must be directed against the causes of human
suffering.
“Lesson 2. Social-ethical considerations are intrinsic to theological understanding. Catholic theology has come to a new realization of the social ethical implications of Christian faith. After a period of separation between theology and ethics, theology has recognized the
necessity of accountability. In 1971 the essential link between faith and justice was written into magisterial teaching when the World Synod of Bishops wrote that “action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel” (Justice in the World, Nov. 30, 1971).”
http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/news_wtnh_hartford_license_fraud_200903122247_rev1
Things aren’t always as they appear.
Nancy Danielson,
What point are you trying to make?
I am trying to make the point that there does exist a problem with license fraud and the question one should ask is :Why does license fraud exist and how can we stop license fraud without the use of any kind of harassment?
FYI (We Lived in Connecticut, this is information on returning licence plates.)
http://www.ct.gov/dmv/cwp/view.asp?a=810+q=245050
Sorry, incomplete information: http://www.ct.gov/dmv/cwp/view.asp?a=810&Q=245050
Nancy Danielson,
Your attempt to connect these two stories has no foundation and makes no sense. Has it ever occurred to you to pause and audit yourself? At a minimum, human decency demands that we not create burdens for people who already over burdened.
At a minimum, human decency demands that we do not judge until we have ALL the facts.
Sorry, now I’m completely confused. I read the story in the NYT this morning, and I fail to see any connection between Fr. Manship’s actions and license fraud. Perhaps the reason why the cops were stropping people was to smoke out license fraud, but the article doesn’t say so. It suggests, instead, that they were stopped because they were Latinos. Or are we meant to conclude that Latinos are somehow more connected to license fraud than, say, Hmong refugees or Ashkenazi Jews, or Methodists? There’s nothing i the article to bear that out, however.
Mr. Penalver – you posted this story. Thank you.
This is the first time that I have requested this BUT this story has nothing to do with license plate fraud. The only connection are Latino surnames. I find the threads by Ms. Danielson to be either misinformed (at best) or bigotted (at worst).
Would ask that her postings on this excellent story be deleted – one (again, at best) because they are completely off topic; second (again, at worst) because they are biased and mean-spirited.
Here’s the incident report (in pdf) giving the police version of the events leading to the arrest of Fr. Manship:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-priestcase-pdf,0,7636817.acrobat
Father Manship could have asked the officers why they were asking the owner to take down the license plates. There may be a logical reason for this request. The Police officer could have asked Father Manship why he felt the need to film the owner removing the license plates from the wall. Both these men could have handled the situation better than they did.
Thanks for posting the report, William. I’m afraid I find the whole “I couldn’t tell what he was holding in his hands — it might have been a weapon” justification for the arrest pretty fishy. But then, I guess they have the tape… There was an incident in NYC within the last year where a police officer knocked a guy riding a bike to the ground. The biker was participating in a “Critical Mass” ride — a semiregular, civil-disobedience-style pro-bicycle event — and there had been reports of clashes between police and bikers in the past, so there were people videotaping along the route. By the next day, a video clip of this incident was circulating online (and eventually on the local news), and it was really shocking to see this cop shoving this man off his bike. But it was even more shocking when the incident report came out — the cop blatantly lied about what happened, claiming the biker assaulted him! He even tried to press charges against the biker. And he would probably have gotten away with it if it weren’t caught on tape. Anyway, that whole long story is just to say I know now that police officers do occasionally lie on their written reports. And I think I’m glad Fr. Manship brought his camera.
Thanks, Mr. Collier. In this area of north Texas, we see almost daily examples of profiling, targeting immigrants, raids, suburbs passing laws discriminating against illegals, etc.
Like Ms. O’Reilly – wonder about the circumstances here and feel for the priest if he truly was acting out of need to protect his parishioners and his own frustration. There actually may be a criminal element that is taking advantage of this situation but it still appears that immigrants, Hispanics, etc. are being both targeted and profiled. Obviously, there is frustration on all sides.
Mollie and Bill D.–
It’s hard to tell exactly what the facts are as to the Fr. Manship arrest, but he’s getting a lot of publicity for what may be a serious pattern of conduct. I’m betting the charges against him will be dropped. The authorities know he won’t take a plea, and they don’t want any more publicity than the incident has already gotten. I noticed in one of the linked articles that the Yale Law School clinic is helping Fr. Manship and the Latino merchants. The YLS clinic does good work, and they’ll help get to the bottom of whether profiling and harassment is going on.
Bill DeHaas, we all know that discrimination exists. The best way to provide evidence of discrimination is to provide evidence of discrimination. Unless one can first establish that there was no basis for the Police officers to request that the owner take down the license plates, one can not conclude that this particular case was a case of discrimination.
I too, believe that the charges will be dropped. I do not believe that Father was guilty of harrassing the Police officer, just annoying him.
This is clearly harassment akin to ku Klux Klan activity. The same happened to Irish, Italian, and other immigrants. At least in this instance this priest is doing what he is supposed to do; protect the poor and downtrodden. Not sit at a perch somewhere condemning people taking communion in the hands or other silly things.
We all have immigrants on our streets lining up for jobs. A couple of years ago there was an outcry about them. A concerned Catholic wrote a letter to the editor asking all those people to remember their actions when they went to church on Sunday. Suddenly the harassment stopped.
Not without reason Jesus made humility the top priority. How many Catholics are willing to go out and take the lowest place with God’s people?
Bill’s post.I think, is most germane!
There was a time when our Church in the US was the immigrant Church and its doors were filled with many whom the church worked with and supported.
Change has come, first by the Church’s folk becoming more educagted and upwardly mobile.
The Church and its leaders became more concerned with the institution’s needs and not the people.
The people felt they weren’t being heard and drifted.
But a new “browning” was coming.
THE NYT series begun today on immigrant populations underscore this issue and the problems/needs and difficlties of this new population.
Fr. Manship, it strikes me, acted like the priest in the old immigrant Church days would have -acting for his people and not for the imnstitutionally set leadership.
Will the Church of our changing landscape be filled with his likes or those more intefested in institutional loyalty?
A word to the New York Archbishop to be: a good idea migh tbe to take a crash course not only in hablando espanol but also the cultures of the new brown majority of New Yorkers.
Motives aside, I think the good priest’s behavior toward a law enforcement officer was ill-advised. In the heat of the moment, it’s best to abide by a policeman’s orders. Rev. Manship, from what I’ve read here, was not engaged in civil disobedience. True, he was looking after the welfare of his flock, but when civil disobedience is not in play, obey the cop. Discretion in this instance would have been a better response.
Fr. Manship acted in the best tradition of men like this:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/press/clips9.html