> MIT’s leadership apparently took umbrage at his statement of these simple facts: that George Floyd “had not lived a virtuous life” (based on his multiple criminal convictions)
Surely the authors know that "statement of facts" has the ability to completely alter the interpretation of the rest of the content. Key questions are: why is this fact relevant in this context, what is the author conveying by bringing this in? Etc. To take a radical example, if one reads an article about a recent mass shooting followed by "statements of fact" about the declining population of whites in America, then one would reasonably conclude that the author is a white supremacist who implicitly supports the shooter. Non-white supremacists don't talk about the great replacement.
So the question is why would someone bring up the criminal record of an unarmed Black man who was extrajudicially killed by an officer of the state? What does this fact do for the reader? It's not hard to imagine what many would conclude. Editorial narrative is something I learned about in middle school, why are the authors feigning ignorance about its existence?
Reading the email in question (https://newbostonpost.com/2020/06/19/heres-what-the-m-i-t-ca...), it really seems like he was attempting to bring together the two camps. At the time the talking point of “oh, he was just a criminal” was pretty widespread as if this somehow justified what happened. In his email, as I understand it he’s addressing people who think like that.
A core purpose of a church is to identify and evaluate:
1. What a virtuous life is.
2. How to live one.
3. What examples exist of people who have lived one.
4. How practically achievable a virtuous life is.
The chaplain is doing his job here. He is supposed to identify that Floyd hasn't lived a virtuous life, but he is still part of a greater community and that a virtuous person would help Floyd live the best life he can.
> Non-white supremacists don't talk about the great replacement.
It isn't clear that the church actually objected that much, for all their statement to the contrary. It isn't like they defrocked him or anything. It is more likely that MIT asked for him to be sacked and they took a decision not to fight over it because it wouldn't be helpful. What the chaplain was trying to do here was entirely in line with how he was meant to act.
I wasn't blaming anyone but it does seem quite likely that this action was driven by MIT rather than the church. The church hasn't fired him, MIT has had him moved on from their campus. The church is being relatively proportional about the whole business.
> It isn’t clear that the church actually objected that much, for all their statement to the contrary.
I disagree. Not only is it clear that they objected to his message, its clear from the Cardinal Archbishop’s own public message on the same issue two days before Moloney’s why they did.
> It isn’t like they defrocked him or anything.
Er, yeah, I mean no matter the severity of the disagreement, its not even the class of issue for which that is appropriate. It’s like saying DOJ must not really be upset at someone prosecuted for tax fraud because they didn’t seek the death penalty.
> It is more likely that MIT asked for him to be sacked and they took a decision not to fight over it because it wouldn’t be helpful.
It’s clearly the case that MIT brought Moloney’s message to the Archdiocese’s attention, and its pretty clear that the message stands in stark contrast to both the MIT President’s and the Cardinal Archbishop’s prior statements on the same issue. It’s not clear to me what even shadow of a basis you have for suggesting that MIT was upset but the Church viewed the chaplain as “entirely in line with how he was meant to act”.
Someone thinks that this letter - which I cheerfully point out is not only race-neutral but preaching tolerance and peace - is threatening enough that they have to disassociate with the priest.
He then disassociates from MIT. He is still associated with the Catholic Church. This suggests that the outrage is emanating from MIT, rather than the Church.
> Er, yeah, I mean no matter the severity of the disagreement, its not even the class of issue for which that is appropriate.
It isn't appropriate to fire him full stop, appropriateness isn't at play here. The problem is that it has been a number of months, the people involved were convicted and there is still no evidence that the Floyd case was racially motivated. And that is politically inconvenient for a vocal group of people. People who, coincidentally, are very much associated with MIT students and leadership.
To all, your defenses of the chaplain are more nuanced than even the authors of this article give. The sole argument they make is that the chaplain made "statement of...facts" and "facts are not racist, and stating facts is not racism." As discussed above, this may be true in a narrow sense, but the inclusion, exclusion, and sequencing of facts is the very basis of editorial narrative. If we agree that bigoted diatribes such as the white supremacist example above are a sequence of carefully chosen facts, then how is this a valid defense of anything?
To me the issue is that they fired the guy. It's one thing to disagree with someone's statement or political views, it's another to fire them over it.
It might be different if the chaplain was blatantly racist. But even if we read his statement as "I don't think George Floyd was innocent here" - that is not something you should get fired over. You can't compare this to white supremism, he didn't even imply George Floyd wasn't innocent.
He got fired for saying something which suggested he was a racist.
When you fire people over saying things which suggest they are bigoted, you create a culture where people hide mundane things and non-PC facts. You get people to be shy and not say anything for fear of vaguely implying something bad. And you risk hiding real "harsh truths" like (idk) the fact that the J&J vaccine caused fatal blood clots in 0.000014% of people.
He resigned. And, yeah, he was asked to resign, which is very much like being fired, but he was asked to resign his post as chaplain by the Archdiocese of Boston, not MIT. Why? Well…
Moloney wrote on June 7: “George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn’t have been. He had not lived a virtuous life. He was convicted of several crimes, including armed robbery, which he seems to have committed to feed his drug habit. And he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest. But we do not kill such people.” And: “In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.”
Sean Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston wrote, in a “Letter to the People of the Archdiocese of Boston” on June 5 (that is, two day before Moloney’s email, so Moloney would—if not completely negligent—have been aware of it when writing his own missive): “The murder of George Floyd, an African American citizen, at the hands of four rogue police officers was tragically all too familiar to the African American community. During our lifetimes there has been the reality of the Negro Travelers Green Book, identifying locations where African Americans stop and stay in our country with less likelihood of being attacked. We have seen the Ku Klux Klan’s brutal lynchings of innocent black people. And we have now again witnessed heinous violence perpetrated by some who were entrusted with the duty to protect. George Floyd’s death makes clear that racist premises and attitudes, often implicit, are woven through basic structures—political, legal, economic, cultural and religious—in the United States.” And he wrote, later in the letter: “Going forward, the reality of racism in our society and the moral imperative of racial equality and justice must be incorporated in our schools, our teaching and our preaching. We must uphold the commitments to equal dignity and human rights in all institutions of our society, in politics, law, economy, education. Catholic teaching on social justice measures the way a society acts fairly or not. Our work will not be done until African American men, women and children are treated equally in every aspect of life in the United States.” [0]
Moloney wasn’t forced out because of a conflict with MIT leadership over a statement of simple facts. He was forced out because of a conflict over the basic pastoral responsibilities of the Church in the context of then-current events with the Church official to whom is entrusted, under Canon Law, the charge to “take care that [presbyters, a.k.a priests] correctly fulfill the obligations proper to their state” and the power and duty “to govern the particular church entrusted to him with legislative, executive, and judicial power” [1]
This wasn’t MIT “wokeness” impinging the freedom of the Catholic chaplain to minister to the community, this was the Catholic Church in the Boston Archdiocese taking action because a chaplain was acting at odds with the pastoral priorities identified by the highest authority in that particular church.
The story being spun here by Hafer and Miller is propaganda where facts are discarded and replaced with more convenient fictions where it advances the political narrative.
Counter that it was an inappropriate argument, don't fire the person who made it. Seems overkill at an institution that used to take pride in intellectual freedom.
Surely the authors know that "statement of facts" has the ability to completely alter the interpretation of the rest of the content. Key questions are: why is this fact relevant in this context, what is the author conveying by bringing this in? Etc. To take a radical example, if one reads an article about a recent mass shooting followed by "statements of fact" about the declining population of whites in America, then one would reasonably conclude that the author is a white supremacist who implicitly supports the shooter. Non-white supremacists don't talk about the great replacement.
So the question is why would someone bring up the criminal record of an unarmed Black man who was extrajudicially killed by an officer of the state? What does this fact do for the reader? It's not hard to imagine what many would conclude. Editorial narrative is something I learned about in middle school, why are the authors feigning ignorance about its existence?