Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.
FAITH FEEDS GUIDE RACE AND CATHOLICISM: PERSPECTIVES
CONTENTS
• Introduction to FAITH FEEDS 3
• FAQ 4
• Ready to Get Started 5
• Conversation Starters 6
• Race in the Catholic Imagination by Bishop George V. Murry, S.J. 7
Conversation Starters 10
• Sister Thea Bowman and Catholic Spirituality by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins 11
Conversation Starters 13
• Gathering Prayer: Lectio Divina 14
The C21 Center Presents
The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation about faith.
The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.
The cover of today’s Faith Feeds is a photo of Sister Thea Bowman, courtesy of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. The photo directly left is by of Jesus and Mother Mary from St. Mary’s Chapel at Boston College. The marginal photo throughout the guide is of Martin Luther King Jr. at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Washington D.C., courtesy of Johnathon Kelso.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?
Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.
Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?
You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10-12 people.
What is the host’s commitment?
The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.
What is the guest’s commitment?
Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.
Still have more questions?
No problem! Email karen.kiefer@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.
READY TO GET STARTED?
STEP ONE
Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.
STEP TWO
Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.
STEP THREE
Review the selected readings from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/ FAITHFEEDS.
STEP FOUR
Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the discussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!
STEP FIVE
Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Here are two articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. In addition to the scriptural passages, you will find a relevant quotation, reflection, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go wherever the Holy Ghost leads. Conversations should ensure confidentiality.
This guide’s theme is Race and Catholicism: Perspectives.
RACE IN THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION
by Bishop George V. Murry, S.J.
On September 11, 2017, Bishop George Murry, S.J. of Youngstown, Ohio, spoke at Boston College as a Church in the 21st Century Center episcopal visitor. Excerpts from his address are below.
In 1989, the United States Bishops’ Committee on Black Catholics issued a statement commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Conference’s only pastoral letter concerning racism, Brothers and Sisters to Us. Sadly, this anniversary committee found little worth celebrating. It concluded:
The promulgation of the pastoral letter on racism was soon forgotten by all but a few. A survey revealed a pathetic, anemic response from archdioceses and dioceses around the country…
Two years later, at a symposium celebrating the centennial anniversary of modern Catholic social teaching, Bishop Joseph Francis, one of the first African American
bishops in modern times, declared that the lack of attention given to Brothers and Sisters to Us made it “the best kept secret in the Church in this country.” He concluded:
Social justice vis-à-vis the eradication of racism in our Church is simply not a priority of social concern commissions.... While I applaud the concern of such individuals and groups for the people of Eastern Europe, China, and Latin America, that same concern is not expressed… for the victims of racism in this country…
While racism is America’s most persistent sin, the Catholic Church has continued to be virtually silent about its significance in seminaries, churches, and every other segment of Catholic society. Which leads to the question, why? What is the place of race in the American Catholic imagination?
Roots of Racism in the Catholic Imagination
The issue of slavery is one that historically has been treated with concern by the Catholic Church. Some argued against all forms of slavery while others pressed
the case for slavery subject to certain restrictions. Initially, Church teaching made a distinction between “just” and “unjust” forms of slavery, with unjust slavery being that which enslaved those who had been baptized. Pope Eugene IV authored a papal bull, Sicut Dudum, in 1435, [that] condemned the enslavement of the indigenous people that had converted to the faith. A century later as Europe expanded into the Americas, Pope Paul III with his encyclical Sublimis Deus asserted that whoever is endowed with the capability to receive the faith of Christ and receives his Gospel, baptized or not, should “by no means be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property.” Such pronouncements helped to create some apprehensions among Catholic colonists in North America. But as the colonies began to grow, the institution of slavery was so entrenched in the fabric of the colonies, at least in the South, that the complete abolition of slavery was not considered realistic.
Moreover, anti-Catholic nativism encouraged Catholics to not oppose some cultural ideas that were common among their Protestant neighbors. As a result, many Catholic communities developed an understanding of slavery similar to the Protestant colonists—namely, that masters and slaves, though unequal on earth, were equal the eyes of God and would enjoy freedom in the next life.
In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI issued In Supremo, an apostolic letter that condemned the slave trade in the strongest possible terms. By this time, the slave trade and slavery were completely abolished in Britain. Nonetheless, both Spain and Portugal continued to participate in slave trading. Pope Gregory had hoped that this apostolic letter might persuade Spain and Portugal to enforce laws against slave trafficking. It did not, but in the United States, the Pope’s pronouncement initiated a debate within the Catholic community.
While some put forward Gregory’s letter to make the case that the Church opposed any and all forms of slavery, many American Catholic leaders sought to interpret the apostolic letter in the narrowest possible terms in order to minimize its significance.... Many bishops in the South were slave owners. For some southern bishops, slavery was not simply an institution that had to be endured, but was in fact a blessing for Black people…
Here it is important to point out that this negative attitude towards Blacks in the Catholic community was not unique to the South. Even in the North, the sentiments of the Catholic laity, most of whom were recent immigrants, was decidedly anti-Black. In the years leading up to the Civil War and even after the destruction of institutional slavery, there were few white Catholics who really believed that Blacks were equal to whites.
Seeds of Hope
Despite [this], there was always a remnant of Catholics that worked diligently to advance race relations in the United States. One individual who was responsible for such efforts was Daniel Rudd. By the end of the nineteenth century, Rudd had made himself known to clergy and laity as the leading Catholic representative of the [Black] race.” [According to Rudd,] “The Catholic Church alone can break the color line. Our people should help her to do it.”
Rudd developed the idea of a national congress of African American Catholics. Along with the Black lay congress, in 1909, another important movement among Black Catholics began in Mobile, Alabama: the Knights of Peter Claver, a national association for Black men to foster fellowship and bring about a spiritual awareness and interest in the Church’s tradition. In 1922, a ladies’ auxiliary was instituted within the organization.
The Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver became very important in the religious lives of Black Catholics. Many members worked on issues of civil rights and collaborated with organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League.
Across the Atlantic, the efforts of Black Catholics caught the attention of the Roman Curia. [At the Vatican’s direction,] the Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. launch[ed] a series of initiatives to provide for the spiritual welfare of Black Catholics and further the evangelization of Black Americans as a whole. The Delegate enlisted the help of Father John Burke of New York, who organized the Catholic Board for Negro Missions. Burke’s primary effort was directed toward the creation of a Black Catholic clergy.
Burke’s work is exceptional because of its fairness. Unlike many Catholics of the early twentieth century, Burke, although white, never spoke about Blacks in a condescending and demeaning manner. He made no assumption of Black inferiority. Burke represented a small minority within the Catholic community that pushed for an end to the racist rhetoric in America, especially within the Catholic community.
From the end of the nineteenth century to 1965, racial segregation was an official legal policy throughout the American South. Nonetheless, there were actions taken by local bishops and priests against the practice.... In 1951 Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans asked his people to end all vestiges of racial separatism within the Church. He worked toward the gradual integration of all Catholic schools, churches, and hospitals. Two years later, Rummel officially declared the end of racial segregation in all New Orleans Catholic institutions in a pastoral letter, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” However, these clerical denouncements of segregation
were regretfully rare, and certainly were not shared universally among the clergy.
During the Civil Rights Movement, eight white Birmingham, Alabama clergymen denounced [Dr. Martin Luther] King’s civil rights organization as outsiders seeking to destroy the racial harmony of the city. One of the authors was Joseph E. Durick, Auxiliary Bishop of Mobile, Alabama. The state archbishop, Thomas J. Toole, denied priests the right to participate in demonstrations or to speak out against racial segregation.
As a result, most Catholic parishes remained segregated during the first half of the twentieth century. Some dioceses created separate parishes for Blacks. In other areas, Blacks could attend any Catholic church, but often had to sit in the rear and were unable to receive communion until every white parishioner had received. Some parishes even placed screens between the two races.
Still, some Catholics refused to accept segregation. The Southeastern Regional Interracial Commission, founded in 1948 by students of Loyola and Xavier Universities, both Jesuit schools, held interracial Masses on college campuses. The Commission on Human Rights, organized in 1949, held integrated Masses and sent petitions to Church officials demanding integration in southern parishes. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church’s role during segregation and the Civil Rights Movement remained ambiguous.
So Much Work To Do
On August 23, 2017, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops established an Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, [… focused] on addressing the sin of racism in our society and Church and the urgent need to come together as a nation to find solutions.
A social appropriation of “communion ecclesiology” will require a radical conversion by which the Church acknowledges the sinful nature of the systems of oppression within its ecclesial institutions and society. The Church must then seek the forgiveness of those whom she has victimized by her past injustices. Finally, both parties must work together toward human solidarity rooted in their shared emphasis on communion.
Within the Church, this reconciliation must be manifested in the development of more inclusive patterns of relationship between people of color and the Church. These patterns must allow for the full participation of Black, Hispanic, and other people of color who are faithful members of the Church in decision-making, as well as ministerial and social actions.
The Catholic social justice tradition, as illustrated in the life of Christ and evident in His Gospel, impels the Church to break her silence about the marginalization, devaluation, and systemic oppression of Blacks
and Hispanics and other groups within the ecclesial, social, economic, and political institutions of this nation. If race in the Catholic imagination is to exemplify the love of Christ, it must move forward with the realization that no one can enter full communion if one’s relationship to the other is marked by indifference or oppression.
As we progress, the Church has an opening to acknowledge her past contribution to the evils of racism, to ask forgiveness, and to commit herself to living in communion as the people of God that Jesus envisioned. People can become one with others only if they can speak the truth of their sinful pasts, asking and granting forgiveness and reaching out to each other in a spirit of reconciling love and solidarity.
George Vance Murray, S.J. (1948–2020) was the Bishop of Youngstown, after previously serving as auxilliary Bishiop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and the Bishop of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. He served as the Chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism. He died in June 2020 from leukemia. Published in C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2021.
RACE IN CATHOLICISM
“God made us all of royal status, because we were made in His image and likeness.” — Gloria Purvis
Summary
Bishop Murry provides a brief overview of race relations in the Catholic Church. He discusses the development of thought through papal letters, lay movements, and local activism. He shows how a central truth of the Gospel — that by baptism, we all have been incorporated into the Body of Christ — has more deeply penetrated the conscience of Catholic Christians in the West. He concludes by addressing the work remaining to be done in addressing the historical legacy of racism as preserved in social structures, as well as the ongoing need to address racial injustices and pursue reconciliation.
Questions for Conversation
• Did anything in the history Bishop Murry shared surprise you in a positive or negative way?
• What racial injustices remain to be addressed within the Church and by the Church?
• What would racial reconciliation look like at your parish? What would fake reconciliation look like?
• How can Christians avoid superficial, token acts of racial justice, instead choosing to pursue genuine interior conversion and real justice for their Black brothers and sisters?
READING 2
SISTER THEA BOWMAN AND CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY
by Dawn Araujo-Hawkins
I got a crown up in-a that kingdom, Ain’t-a that good news!
I got a crown up in-a that kingdom, Ain’t-a that good news!
I’mma gonna lay down this world, Gonna to shoulder up-a my cross, Gonna to take it home-a to my Jesus, Ain’t-a that good news! Happy new year — “Ain’t That Good News,” a Negro spiritual
It’s been nearly 30 years since Sr. Thea Bowman famously declared to a gathering of the U.S. Catholic bishops that her “Black self,” with all the Black songs, dances, and traditions she’d imbibed while growing up in Canton, Mississippi, was a gift to the Church.
That doesn’t frighten you, does it?” she asked them, her eyebrows raised. By the time Bowman, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, took the stage in front of the bishops, she was already something of a celebrity. The dashiki-wearing, gospel-singing Black nun
had been preaching the legitimacy of Black religious expression in the Catholic Church since the early 1960s. For that work, she’d been featured on “60 Minutes” and “The 700 Club” and invited all over the country to speak. Bowman was Black and proud. And authentically Catholic.
The idea that Black religious expression isn’t truly Catholic was and is pervasive, said C. Vanessa White, an assistant professor at Catholic Theological Union who teaches Black spirituality, including a course on Bowman’s writings. Some white Catholics are quick to dismiss as non-Catholic anything—like Bowman’s gospel songs and Negro spirituals—that seem too Black.
“People say, ‘Oh, you’re being Baptist; this is not Catholic,’” White said. But what those people fail to understand, and what Bowman sought to explain, is that spirituality—the ways believers exist and act— is inherently cultural.“If the leaders are all white, then that spirituality is going to be shaped by that cultural
group,”she said.
Black people, of course, are not a monolith. However, the shared experience of enduring the United States’ systematic brutality against them has left a real and observable mark on how Black communities across denominations experience God.
“Black people, in ages past, have traditional ways of teaching the children to rejoice in grief, in adversity, in oppression, in slavery,” Bowman told [a] reporter... “It’s that kind of joy that helps a person keep going in faith.”
Some Africans were already Catholic when they were trafficked to the United States between 1619 and 1860. Others were outfitted with Catholicism when they became the property of Catholic slaveholders in Maryland and Louisiana. But the majority of Black Catholic families in the United States became Catholic after the Great Migration that began in 1915.
Forsaking the South, Black people began moving en masse into the urban centers of the North, filling the vacancies in formerly white Catholic schools and churches created by white flight into the suburbs. Respectability politics—the belief that Black people can gain white acceptance through respectable behavior— began taking hold in Black communities. Many middle-class Black Christians eschewed the religious expressions and denominations they’d grown up with, believing them to be too déclassé.
A European assimilation model carried the day within most 20th-century Catholic institutions. Even predominantly Black parishes were led by white priests and prioritized European-born spiritualities that frowned upon parishioners dancing in the aisles or punctuating homilies with shouts of “Amen!”
This was the state of affairs in the U.S. Catholic Church in 1953, when 15-year-old Bowman traveled the nearly 900 miles from Canton to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to become the first black Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, the community of sisters that had educated her.
Although Bowman had converted to Catholicism six years earlier, up until that point, she’d always been surrounded by robustly Black religious expression. She herself had dabbled in historically black Protestant denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Baptist Church before becoming Catholic. But there were no other Black Christians in La Crosse, and, according to the authors of the 2009 Bowman biography, Thea’s Song: The Life of Thea Bowman, the void of Black spirituality was a shock to the young Bowman.
“It was... a challenge to refrain from wholebody, whole-spirit, whole-voice living,” they write. “She learned it was not ‘proper’ to sashay, to sway, to prance, to dance, to break into song at the least provocation any
time of day or night. She strove to please, and mostly she hid her cultural identity.”
Two things happened in the 1960s that would electrify Black spirituality in the Catholic Church.
First, a swelling Black-pride movement convinced many young Black Catholics that being Black was nothing to be ashamed of. Second, the Second Vatican Council confirmed what some Black Catholics had come to suspect: Black spirituality was just as valid an expression of Catholicism as the European-born spiritualities they’d been taught.
Black Catholics in the ’60s sought more authentic expressions of their faith. There was a proliferation of Black Catholic organizations, including the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus and the National Black Sisters’ Conference.
Sister of St. Mary of Namur Roberta Fulton, current president of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, said organizing in such a way was an important step in standing up for the dignity of Black Catholics.
“We came together to promote not only positive self-image among ourselves and our people, but to build up the spirituality,” she said. “It was being able to say, ‘Yes, African-American women can be vowed women religious and share our spirituality with the Catholic Church—and bring forth our gift of Blackness where we are not just promoting ourselves, but we are always, always wanting to be about the business of our people.’”
Bowman was one of the founding members of the National Black Sisters’ Conference in 1968 and remained an active member until her death from bone cancer in 1990. In 1980, Bowman became a charter faculty member of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans, where she taught liturgical worship and preaching.
Just before Bowman died, a group of students from the Institute for Black Catholic Studies visited her at her Canton home. White was among those students, and she recalls that although Bowman had, by that point, largely lost the ability to vocalize, at the end of the visit, she expressed a desire to sing one of her beloved gospel songs.
“For me, that was a testament to the power of Black spirituality as a source of healing,” White said. “To heal not only wounds, but to help one cope through times of trouble and immense pain.”
Dawn Araujo-Hawkins was a staff writer at Global Sisters Report from 2014 to 2019, writing primarily about the intersections of religion, race, and gender. Published in C21 Resources Spring/Summer 2021. This article was originally printed in the March 2018 Global Sister Report under the title, “Black spiritual traditions have a long history in the Catholic Church.” It was reprinted with permission of the author and the Global Sisters Report.
SISTER THEA BOWMAN
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” — Colossians 3:14-17
Summary
Dawn Araujo-Hawkins writes about Sister Thea Bowman’s legacy in the Catholic Church. She addresses the popular notion that African American traditions of worship are not truly Catholic, arguing instead for an openness to the affectivity, vibrancy, and historical richness of Black spirituality. Araujo-Hawkins points to the way in which worship in particular has helped Black Christians to redeem suffering and persevere in hope.
Questions for Conversation
• What is “Catholic spirituality,” and how do the cultural traditions of different races and ethnicities fit into and enrich it?
• The Second Vatican Council teaches, “Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §37). What in Black traditions of worship and spirituality harmonize with the spirit of the liturgy?
GATHERING PRAYER
Lectio Divina on 1 Corinthians 12
In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
For more information about Faith Feeds, visit bc.edu/c21faithfeeds This program is sponsored by Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center, a catalyst and a resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church.
