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Race in the Catholic Imagination
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.
Iin 1989, the united states bishops' committee on Black Catholics issued a statement commemorating the 10th 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 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 their fabric, 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 in 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 toward 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
PERSPECTIVES 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
The Church Church to break her silence about the marginalization, devaluation, and sysmust seek the temic oppression of Blacks and Hisforgiveness of panics and other groups within the ecclesial, social, economic, and political those whom institutions of this nation. she has If race in the Catholic imagination is to exemplify the love of Christ, it victimized by must move forward with the realizaher past tion that no one can enter full communion if one’s relationship to the other is injustices. 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 Murry, S.J. (1948–2020), was the Bishop of Youngstown after previously serving as auxiliary 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.
To watch Bishop Murry's full 2017 presentation, visit: bc.edu/c21spring21
