Celebrating Black History Month

For Catholics, a good way to participate in February’s Black History Month is to recall the teaching of the American bishops in their 2018 pastoral letter: “Open Wide Your Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love.” The pastoral letter begins by helping us understand what racism is and how it functions. It defines racism as thinking one’s own race or ethnicity is superior and others are inferior. Racist acts are sinful because they violate justice and charity, failing to acknowledge the human dignity of others, who are brothers and sisters made in God’s image. Racist attitudes lead to discrimination in hiring, housing, education, and incarceration. They also lead to sins of omission, culpable failures to act against racial injustice. Despite civil rights progress, “racism still profoundly affects our culture,” causing “great harm to its victims” and “corrupting the souls of those who harbor racist or prejudicial thoughts.” In this situation we need a “conversion of heart,” leading to institutional and societal reforms.

The format of the pastoral is based on Micah 6:8 that says the Lord requires us to “do justice, love goodness and walk humbly with the Lord.” In the section on “Doing Justice,” the bishops argue that society must respect the rights of individuals based on their God-given dignity. We are socially interdependent persons who grow through interpersonal loving relationships. Justice is a matter of right relationships with God and others which is threatened by a “lust to dominate” as Augustine taught. Sadly, as a nation there has been “very limited formal acknowledgement of the harm done to so many, no moment of atonement, no natural process of reconciliation, and all too often a neglect of our history. ”Many of our institutions, laws, and practices still deny justice and equal access to black Americans. In chattel slavery, individuals were bought and sold, beaten, and worked to death. Families were separated and children maltreated.

After slavery ended, African Americans encountered new forms of discrimination and violence. Racist policies left many in poverty and impaired their ability to “find affordable housing, meaningful work, adequate education and social mobility.” From 1877 to 1950 more than 4,000 Black men were lynched, part of the reality we must face honestly in order to carry on the process of combating racism. At the end of this section, the bishops confessed: We have not sufficiently examined “where the racist attitudes of yesterday have become a permanent part of our perceptions, practices and policies of today, or how they have been enshrined in our social, political, and economic structures.”

In the section on “Love Goodness,” the pastoral states the problem is not so much overt racism but the tendency to separate “us from them.” Christ taught us to love our neighbor that requires us to make room in our hearts for others. This essential teaching moves us to see others as our brothers and sisters (2 Cor 5:14). The bishops put it this way: “Love compels each of us to resist racism courageously,” to reach out to victims, to help change hearts, and “to change policies and structures that allow racism to persist.”

In this section the bishops also raise up the “Servant of God” (the first step toward sainthood), Fr. Augustus Tolton. He was born into slavery but at a young age escaped to Quincy in the free state of Illinois. Despite a persistent calling to the priesthood, supported by others who knew him well, no U.S seminary would accept him. Persevering in his calling, he went to Rome where he completed seminary studies and was ordained a priest. He was sent back to the U.S and began his priestly ministry in Quincy, where he encountered a great deal of discrimination especially from a white diocesan priest who publicly denounced him and told people not to attend his masses. Nevertheless, Fr. Tolton carried on his ministry without resentment or recrimination toward his tormentors. In 1889, Fr. Tolton moved to Chicago where he established Saint Monica parish to serve the African American community. His ministry to Black Catholics earned him the attention of the American bishops. His charismatic presence and eloquent preaching drew both white and Black Catholics to his masses. When he died of heat stroke on July 9, 1898, at the young age of 43 some 100 priests attended his funeral mass and both religious and secular commentators praised him for his pioneering work with African American Catholics.

The bishops also highlighted the ministry of Saint Katharine Drexel (d 1955) who was born into a wealthy white family and devoted her life to educating disadvantaged American youth. She supported Fr. Tolton’s ministry, funding the construction of St. Monica’s church and multipurpose facility. She founded many schools, including Xavier University in Louisiana, the only Black Catholic university in the United States. It was Katharine Drexel who first advised “let us open wide our hearts” to serve God’s people.

In the section headed “Walk Humbly With God,” the pastoral letter recognizes racism as a moral problem that calls for a transformation of hearts leading to eliminating injustices. The bishops go on to confess: “The truth is that the sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have been complicit in the evil of racism.” For example, Pope Nicolas V (d 1455) granted permission for “the kings of Spain and Portugal to buy and sell Africans, setting the stage for the slave trade.” Many Catholic bishops failed to explicitly condemn slavery and some even owned slaves. In Catholic parishes Black parishioners were relegated to separate seating and required to receive communion after the white parishioners. The bishops admit that church members and institutions have committed acts of racism and stood by silently for which we ask for forgiveness. The pastoral suggests that the U.S. church learn from South Africa that established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to face honestly the horrendous evil of the apartheid system. It argues that Catholic parishes can play an important role in overcoming racism by proclaiming the message of human dignity and fraternal charity, celebrating parish diversity, preaching homilies on the evil of racism and promoting vocations in communities of color. The bishops insist that we must combat racist policies and institutions, while we examine our “values, points of interests, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life,” which may contrast with the Word of God. In a very consequential move, the American bishops who have consistently condemned abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia as life issues, emphasize the serious moral gravity of racism by declaring: “We unequivocally state that racism is a life issue,” that violates human dignity and “places brother and sister against each other.”

Finally, the bishops make their own the words of the Apostle Paul: “Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong. Every act should be done with love” (1 Cor 16:13-14). They conclude by inviting readers to cooperate in “striving for the end of racism in all its forms, that we may walk together humbly with God and with all our brothers and sisters in a renewed unity.”