Gloria Purvis believes strongly that the pro-life and racial justice issues, which both involve human dignity, are closely related.
“They’re twin sisters,” she told a July 22 “Prolife and Racial Justice” breakout session at the National Black Catholic Congress XIII meeting at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
Purvis, a podcaster with America Media and a media commentator, was addressing an engaged and supportive audience, judging from the calls of “Amen,” and “preach,” that some of her rhetoric elicited.
She would like to see Catholics lead a successful reparations movement in the United States, to help financially compensate the descendants of Africans who were enslaved in the United States, which some people consider this country’s “original sin.” How such a program could effectively advance justice, about 160 years after the end of slavery and more than five decades after federal laws the eliminated unequal practices in civil rights and public accommodations, housing, and voting were signed into law, is unclear to many Americans. Reparations initiatives around the country, from San Francisco to Evanston, Illinois, vary considerably in objectives and scope.
Purvis and some other speakers at the gathering expressed disappointment at the response of some white Catholics, including pro-life advocates, after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, which they thought would be a watershed moment for Americans to recognize the legitimacy of longstanding complaints of African Americans about police brutality and the law enforcement system.
She recalled that a Catholic religious forwarded for her thoughts a popular video by a prominent African American commentator after Floyd’s killing that pointed out Floyd’s criminal history and his behavior before his arrest, chiding African Americans for making Floyd into a hero. Purvis was hoping that Floyd’s murder would be a time of empathy, rather than judgment.
The evils of slavery and repression of Black Americans went well beyond the Emancipation Proclamation, in Purvis’s mind, as she pointed to a New Deal program that encouraged banks and mortgage financers to make loans available to neighborhoods that were predominantly white, while those that were predominantly Black were nixed, in a practice known as “redlining.” Such practices, including restrictions in who could qualify for GI Bill benefits in the first part of the 20th century, meant Black Americans had seen their ability to generate intergenerational wealth delayed, given the centrality of homeownership to personal wealth. Purvis said justice, which she defined as “giving to each his own,” demands a response to past mistreatments.
Purvis, who converted to the Catholic faith when she was 12 years old in South Carolina after a mystical experience, is a speaker, podcaster, and author. In response to an audience member’s question, she said that she does not know of any parishes that have a group that advocates for both pro-life and racial justice.
During the question-and-answer period, Purvis rejected the notion that abortion could be considered health care. She also blamed abortion, in part, on men who are promiscuous or who fail to take care of the women they share intimacy with. She advocated that couples reject contraception and use Natural Family Planning instead.
Referring to a two-hour visit she had with Pope Francis at the Vatican in November 2022, she said that the Argentine pontiff is intensely interested in African Americans and wants those who are Catholic to realize they have a home in the Catholic Church.
“Pray for me, Gloria,” Purvis said that Pope Francis asked her, as he clasped her hands. She asked the audience members at National Harbor to pray for the pope.
