Orlando Standard

Amid recent unrest across the country in response to the police-involved deaths of African Americans, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote to Congress members calling for better formation and accountability among law enforcement.

Their letter both recognizes the vital role law enforcement plays in society and calls for leaders to address the use of lethal force and the problems of prejudice in policing, the Catholic Bishops said in a June release. 

"We stand in the long tradition — from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, to Dr. Martin Luther King — that claims that the purpose of law and law enforcement is the promotion of justice," the June 24 letter reads.

Flora Moore, from Orlando, said she believes Catholics have a duty to vote and vote as their faith leads them, as she feels the example of Jesus demonstrates.

"He was the most political figure that's ever lived. That's why they wanted to get rid of Him," Moore told the Orlando Standard. "Because he had a political following, where he was pulling people away from Herod and all those people, and they couldn't understand why he had such a following because they didn't understand natural versus spiritual."

Jesus' challenge to the authorities of the time created upheaval and upset the status quo, Moore said.

As an African American, Moore said that she does not think social workers alone can do the police's job. She recalled growing up in Houston when drugs began to become a problem in her community.

"They flooded our neighborhoods," she told the Orlando Standard.

Moore said that treating Black lives as mattering goes deeper into society than encounters with police. As a Catholic who follows the church's principles regarding abortion and the sanctity of life, she is disappointed in how often she is the only Black person at a rally against abortion.

She also said there is a lack of respect within the Black community for its own members' lives.

"Black lives don't matter, because when they burned down these Black businesses, and they shot the man who was supporting President Trump, standing in front of his own business, they had nothing to say about that," she told the Orlando Standard.