“Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.”
Leonard Cohen wasn’t writing about the Roman Catholic women’s religious order when he wrote those lyrics for a song on his first album back in the 1960s but today, in particular, his words resonate as the nuns of the Sisters of Mercy spoke out against the Catholic high school students from Kentucky harassing a Native Ameican elder at the Indigenous Peoples’ March in Washington DC today.
The Sisters — a congregation of women founded in Dublin in 1831 with a mission to help create a just world for the poor, sick, and uneducated — pointed out just how far from their religion’s teachings the student’s behavior has strayed and how today’s incident reinforced more than ever the need for their efforts to serve social justice.
Racism and intolerance in all forms go directly against Catholic social teaching.
The disturbing videos being shared of this incident showcase a bigoted disrespect of indigenous peoples and remind us how urgent our work for racial justice remains.https://t.co/FqorFPRFNq
— Sisters of Mercy (@SistersofMercy) January 19, 2019
The responses to their post proved just how many people agreed with their interpretation of the students’ actions and condemned the ignorance and bigotry behind their heinous behavior.
“Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well, I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned:
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.”
The late Leonard Cohen was certainly prescient with his lyrics. Who knew that we’d one day be looking at them in a completely different light after today’s events and that the real Sisters of Mercy would come through for us at this time.
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