Father Isaac Achi was burned alive in his rectory by militants at the parish of St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Kafin-Koro, Nigeria. He was there with one other priest, Father Collins Omeh, who was shot in the back but escaped. Before Father Achi insisted that he flee, the two priests heard each other’s confessions. Upon the possibility of imminent death, both, knowing themselves to be sinners, wanted to be assured of God’s mercy. Christianity has at its core the humility of knowing that men are weak and in need of the sacramental grace that only God can provide. In this way, Christians trying to truly live Christianity can make decent neighbors and fellow citizens — and leaven, even, in a harsh culture.
When one watches the inexplicably barbaric video footage of the police beating of Tyre Nichols for a supposed traffic stop, it goes without saying that the officers appear devoid of humility and every other virtue there is. Besides the obvious disregard for the humanity of Nichols, pleading with them to remember their own humanity, one officer seemed too consumed with his own discomfort to care that there was a man on the ground who would die days later because they’d chosen to disregard his life. Some automatically identified race as the explanation for Nichols’s death, appearing to ignore the fact that everyone in the story is black. To make this all about race is to not only to misdiagnose; it also lets us all off the hook.
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