Although there was immediate speculation that Paige, a white supremacist, had attacked the Sikhs because he had confused them with Muslims, the police chief said the evidence was that Paige wasn’t after any group in particular.
He was after anyone who was different from him.
We’ll never know for sure what was on Wade Paige’s mind, because after he had shot those ten people he killed himself.
We could try to minimize the significance of this incident by dismissing Paige as an extremist.
But we have Sikhs living and working among us here in the Western Hemisphere, and I suspect that more of us than not have heard disparaging remarks made about them—remarks that were based on no knowledge of Sikhism, but only on the fact that Sikhs are different from us.
And I think we have all heard this same kind of judgment applied to other folks who stand out because of the color of their skin or the mode of their dress or the sound of their names or the manner of their speech.
As Catholics we have to recognize, teach our children, and demonstrate by our own behavior that this attitude collides with what Jesus and his Church have taught us.
Jesus went out of his way to demolish the idea that human beings were anything less than brothers and sisters.
He breached the social and religious conventions of first-century Palestine by spending his time with those who were marginalized by others.
On October 11, the Catholic Church throughout the world began to observe the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, and the church will be reminding us of what that council taught.
Nothing that we hear will be more important than what the council taught in a document known as Nostra Aetate (In our time):
These are the council’s words:
"We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: ‘He who does not love does not know God’ (1 John 4:8).
No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.
The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to ‘maintain good fellowship among the nations’ (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.’’ (Nostra Aetate, 5)
Charles Paolino is a member of the RENEW staff and a permanent Deacon in the Diocese of Metuchen.