The view of Catholic Church upon the racial and sexual discrimination have always been controversial, as Catholic religion without official proclaiming has always put the races that worshipped it superior to all others, and men superior to women. The examples of this are numerous in many countries, especially in the USA. In St. Mary’s Academy a woman was not allowed to be a judge at a basketball game only because she was a woman. This corresponded to the views of the African American Catholic Church and discrimination against women is atypical thing there. The beliefs referred to are supporting the views from the Old Testament that are no longer official views of Catholicism but spoil the image of religion. According to them, men are breadwinners and therefore have much more rights in the society, while women should be house-keepers and cleaners, who always stay at home and have no right for political and social activities and for protests against such a state of things (Copeland, p. 632).
The same situation can be observed in respect of the catholic attitudes towards ethnic minorities and, other than the white, races. Since the initial period of the European conquest of America Catholicism supported the point of view that all religions except Christianity are false and people who worship them are inferior to Christians. This was a nice and strong ideology for the conquerors that needed a convincing and, at the same time, justifying idea to explain the reasons and motivations for the conquest: “White Americans need for black and brown, yellow and red people to believe that whites are superior to people of color. Men need to have women believe that men are superior to women. Otherwise the conquest must continue until normative divergence is completely wiped out.” (Hewitt, p.300) From this quote we can see that religion had nothing to do with faith that people had, it was just a powerful means of conquering new lands and controlling people, and in this the ideology of the Catholic superiority was of great use as it allowed Catholics to suppress other nations having a good excuse for it.
Nowadays, as the more and more attention is being paid to the issue of discrimination and role of religion in it, the situation seems to have started changing for better. Even the officials of the Catholic Church recognize that the actions of the church they represent and the tenets of Catholicism were not human in all aspects and the current state of things can not be considered normal. John Paul II even apologized before women for the long years of discrimination promoted and encouraged by Church: “And if objective blame [for offenses against the dignity of women], especially in particular historical contexts, has belonged to not just a few members of the Church, for this I am truly sorry.” (Hewitt, p.312)
All the above said allows us to conclude that as far as discrimination against racial minorities and women is a significant problem in the modern world, especially in respect of social relations and employment, the current essay is relevant and actual. Its aim was to examine the influence of Catholicism on the discrimination of women and racial or ethnic minorities at working places (Valasquez, p. 213). The results of the research allow us to say that the Catholic Church is really promoting discrimination, but recently the situation has started changing and this allows us to hope that in future the Catholic Church will be the defendant of equal rights for both sexes and all races. This will improve the quality of living for many people and make their employment easier and not-prejudiced. Moreover, people will seek for and find the relief and peace in religion instead of facing discrimination that is based only on the place of their birth or certain biological factors.
References
Copeland, M. S. (2000). Tradition and the Traditions of African American Catholicism. Theological Studies, 61(4), 632.
Hewitt, W. E. (1991). Roman Catholicism and Social Justice in Canada: A Comparative Case Study. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 28(3), 299-323.
Manauel G. Valasquez (2006). Business Ethics Concepts and Cases. Prentice Hall, 6th Edition, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.