As the new year gets underway, it appears US Rep. Steve Scalise's role as Majority Whip for House Republicans remains secure despite the revelation that he addressed a convention of white supremacists in 2002.  Here's some of what we know:

• During his second term as a Louisiana state representative, Scalise spoke to the European-American Unity & Rights Organization (EURO) at the Landmark Best Western hotel in Metairie, LA on the weekend of May 17-18, 2002.
• Founded by former KKK Grand Wizard (and Louisiana state representative, and losing candidate for governor in 1991) David Duke, EURO is a racist and anti-Semitic hate group that currently exists primarily as a vehicle for Duke's self-promotion.
• According to Duke (who was not at the EURO conference), Scalise was invited by Howie Farrell and Kenny Knight, two of Duke's longtime aides.
• Longtime Louisiana political columnist James Gill observes in his New Year's Day column, "To accept an invitation from Howie Farrell and Kenny Knight, then act surprised they were fronting for David Duke, is like turning up at a rally with Goebbels and Goering and wondering how come there are swastikas all over the place."
• In an interview this week with the New Orleans Times-Picayune Rep. Scalise said he detests "any kind of hate group" and said of EURO, "When you look at the kind of things they stand for, I detest these kinds of views. As a Catholic, I think some of the things they profess target people like me. At lot of their views run contradictory to the way I run my life."
• On the other hand, as conservative activist/commentator (and Louisiana native) Erick Erickson noted: "By 2002, everybody knew Duke was still the man he had claimed not to be. EVERYBODY.  How the hell does somebody show up at a David Duke organized event in 2002 and claim ignorance? Trent Lott was driven from the field in 2001 for something less than this."
• Despite all this, after Scalise on Tuesday acknowledged his speech at the EURO conference as "a mistake I regret", his House Republican colleagues quickly issued strong statements of support, in part (it seems) because Scalise is good at his job.

And there it rests.

But since Rep. Scalise brought Catholicism into the discussion, it seems fair to point out that the Church's teaching on racism is clear.  It's been particularly clear in New Orleans, where Archbishop Rummel issued a 1956 pastoral letter on "The Morality of Racial Segregation" in which he declared, "Racial segregation as such is morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity-solidarity of the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam & Eve". 

Fifty years later, Archbishop Alfred Hughes humbly acknowledged, "I have always been uneasy about using the term racism. It has an emotionally charged meaning for many people. The Church, however, is not hesitant to define racism as both a personal sin and a social disorder rooted in the belief that one race is superior to another. Hence, it involves not only individual prejudice but also the use of religious, social, political, economic or historical power to keep one race privileged."

Later on in Hughes' post-Katrina pastoral letter on racial harmony, "Made In the Image & Likeness of God", he called on all Catholics in the archdiocese to "confront and reject any racial stereotypes, remarks and prejudices".

That's not, according to all available evidence, what Rep. Scalise did when he spoke to EURO twelve years ago.  It's not what the Republican party, as an institution, has done over the past 50 years, ever since that day in the fall of 1964 when Sen. Strom Thurmond found a home there after leaving the Democratic party because of its support for the Civil Rights Act. 

The entire episode is a reminder of how deeply embedded racism in in American society and in the American Catholic Church.  Given that the same Republican party that forced Sen. Trent Lott to resign his leadership post in 2002 for his praise of Sen. Thurmond has now chosen to, in effect, ignore Rep. Scalise's actions that same year, it would seem that the work of "undoing racism" has a long way to go.