Cover story
Black Catholics: life in a chilly
church
By ARTHUR JONES NCR
Staff Charlotte, N.C.
During her frequent appearances
as keynote speaker at Catholic workshops, Sr. Anita Baird always asks a series
of questions.
First, the member of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary asks
How many have heard of the U.S. bishops [1983] peace
pastoral?
Everybody, everybody, she says, puts up their
hands.
Then she asks how many have heard of the document Brothers
and Sisters to Us, the bishops 1979 pastoral on racism
(http://skutt.creighton.edu/academics/senior_studies/racism.htm).
Its one hand here, one hand there, she said.
Concludes Baird, The bishops did a phenomenal job in
marketing the peace pastoral. They did not do it on the racism
pastoral.
Baird was one of more than 220 attendees here at the annual Joint
Conference of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, the National Black
Sisters Conference, the National Black Seminarians Association and
the National Association of African-American Catholic Deacons.
Implicitly, racism and the extent to which black Catholics are
still absent from the table were joint conference themes under the more
optimistic title, The Storm is Passing Over.
Dominican Fr. Tom Jackson, homilist at the opening liturgy,
alluded to the conference title: Some storms come and seem to pitch tent
and hover over our lives, not moving at all. One such storm is racism.
Yet Jackson added, The storms are not the issue for Gods people,
but how we respond to them.
Dominican Sr. Jamie Phelps spoke of that response when she told a
conference session, God gave us power, and it takes power to suffer and
be disciplined, power to suffer through the wilderness of injustice, which is
still here. She did not need to spell out the injustice.
The audience responded with Amen and Right
on when Phelps, theology professor at Catholic Theological Union in
Chicago, continued, The God we must proclaim to the young and
disaffected, the unchurched and the underchurched, is the God of Jesus Christ
but -- as the God revealed to us that helped us survive slavery, lynchings,
segregation, desegregation, false integration.
And when, after a prolonged pause, she added, We still
here, everyone hooted with laughter. Rollicking laughter, high
seriousness and endorsements from audience or congregation were hallmarks of
all the joint conference sessions and services.
Jackson, preaching in an air-conditioned tent the hotel had
erected in its parking lot, brought laughter to the liturgy when he quipped,
Too often those who are supposed to be pointing the way are too docile.
And when I was young I was told, If you want to be a bishop, dont
you be hanging around that [black priests] organization.
Jackson is an associate pastor in Chicago.
Fr. Bryan Massingale, professor at St. Francis Seminary in
Milwaukee and the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University,
using the topic, How to Survive in a Chilly Church, described how
Holy Mother Church, if truth be told, was less than a mother to many of
us.
We dont like to speak of these things, said
Massingale, the pain and grief, the hurt and the disappointment of
belonging to a church in which we sometimes feel orphaned and
abandoned.
He said, The relief that is on our faces and the joy in our
spirits when we come to bodies like this is itself a silent testimony of the
ordeal we have endured.
He outlined the ordeal: To be black and Catholic is often to
be discounted and devalued, usually deemed irrelevant and insignificant,
repeatedly trivialized and patronized, habitually overlooked and ignored,
infrequently endorsed and celebrated, sometimes supported and embraced, but
seldom fully appreciated, valued and welcomed at the table.
Speaking of that table, Chicagoan Baird, who is Cardinal Francis
Georges executive assistant, described how, when she took the job last
year, everyone black in the chancery building came to look at me because
there had never been a black person in the level of position I had. And
were almost in the year 2000.
And in our own archdiocese, Baird said, you look
at the decision-makers, you look at the people gathered around the table,
theres no Hispanic, no African-American, no one of color. Its all
white, all middle and upper middle-class, predominantly Irish, so how do you
have a world view?
On the black Catholic absence from the table, Massingale said,
The church is comfortable with, if not comforted by, our
exclusion.
To be black and Catholic is to be absent, Massingale
said, and the fact that the church does not even know whether there are 2.5
million or 4 million black Catholics is itself significant.
Fr. Timothy Reker of the bishops Secretariat for Vocations
and Priestly Formation was at the conference to describe the bishops
forthcoming study on multicultural vocations. Fr. Victor Cohea told Reker, the
U.S. bishops still have not addressed the fundamental problems of
attracting minorities to priestly and religious vocations, and this is
not a new issue for us.
Most vocations directors themselves know nothing about the
cultures of the minorities they are supposed to welcome, said New
Orleans-based Cohea. When he added, In 15 years of vocations work,
Ive seen half the students leave because of the inflexibility and
insensitivity that greets the [minority] candidates, the audience
responded with thunderous applause.
Continued Cohea, those in charge should at least take part
in programs like the Mexican-American Cultural Center and the Institute
of Black Catholic Studies.
Added Cohea, I said the same things in meetings with the
bishops 10 years ago. The bishops, he said, have still not
addressed the fundamental question. That is, you are looking for a passive
person.
The bishops will not accept strong leaders --either male or
female -- into roles of religious leadership, nor deal with how we
can support the [minority vocations] process where our communities insist on
being involved in formation of the persons for ministry, he said.
Franciscan friar Fr. Martin Carter said, Our gifts, these
seminarians, must be able to see themselves in the educational process and come
back to their people intact rather than being transculturalized.
Said Carter, Youre talking multiculturalism. What kind
of curriculum do we have in our seminaries? What do our faculties look like? We
should not bring in a multicultural student body and give them a Eurocentric
faculty.
Massingale, in his address, also tackled the multiculturalism
issue. Multiculturalism, he said, means, more and more
Hispanic or even Asian and less and less us. Multiculturalism is a subtle
refuge for dodging racism.
Again to tumultuous support, Cohea told Reker another question not
addressed is why we are bringing in our brothers and sisters from Africa
to staff our formation programs and parishes without [their] being grounded in
our African-American culture.
A contributing factor to all these issues, said Sr. Mary Ann
Henogan, is that African-Americans need to be present in numbers on the
decision-making boards. Part of the problem, said the member of the
Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, is were not being
heard.
It goes back, in Carters words, to something else not heard
often enough or widely enough: We have to recognize the institutional
racism of our church historically. We have never truly addressed that
adequately.
That past, said Massingale, explains the neglect and
indifference of the present.
National Catholic Reporter, August 14,
1998
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