May 25, 2022

It is with the deepest sadness that we have learned of another mass shooting, of children and their teachers in Texas.  Our prayers and sympathy are for those who lost their lives, those who were injured, and those family members whose lives have been shattered and altered forever.

Another teenager has taken his incapability to address and deal with his own social, psychological, and spiritual problems, and turned to releasing his own anxieties and frustrations on others.

It has been said that if we “do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.”  Twenty-one innocent people lost their lives to a deranged gunman, nineteen of them were fourth grade children.  Eight years ago, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut, twenty-six people, most of them children, lost their lives in the same manner.

Our society must realize the “constitutional right to bear arms,” is not a legitimate right, when it infringes on, takes away, or otherwise discards another’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

As we pray for the victims of this latest instance of domestic terrorism, let us also pray for the family of the teenager who killed so many yesterday.  They will have the rest of their lives destroyed by these killings.

We commend the souls of those lost in yesterday’s shooting to the mercy of our loving God, and may he have mercy on the soul of perpetrator of these killings.

Bishop Roy Campbell
President
National Black Catholic Congress