11 minute read
Black Consciousness in the Church
PERSPECTIVES
Black Consciousness in the Church
Fr. Cyprian Davis, O.S.B.
In 1993, Benedictine Fr. Cyprian Davis sat down with the editors of U.S. Catholic Magazine to talk about Black Catholic history and the future of Blacks in the Catholic Church. The interview was reprinted in October 2020. Excerpts from it are below.
HHOW LONG HAVE BLACK CATHOLICS BEEN IN THE UNITED STATES? Black Catholics arrived with the Spaniards in Florida in the 16th century. There is an article in the American Historical Review that looks at an event known as the Stono Rebellion in Georgia in the 1700s. Some of the slaves who rebelled in that incident had come from the Congo region, part of what is now Angola. The writer hypothesizes that these slaves considered themselves Catholic. The Congo became Catholic in the 15th century, when the king, Alphonso the Good, converted to Catholicism. After they conquered the area, the Portuguese had converted many Congo natives to Catholicism, so there was definitely a Catholic tradition in the area. Later there were many Blacks in Maryland and
Louisiana who were traditionally Catholic because the
Jesuits evangelized them there. But we don’t know for certain how many African slaves might already have been
Catholics because the study of the Catholic Church in
Africa is still going on.
WERE THERE ANY BLACK RELIGIOUS ORDERS EARLY ON IN AMERICA? Yes, there were the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the Holy Family Sisters. The Black women who joined these orders became in a sense “super nuns” to prove themselves to all the people who were asking, “Can they make it? Can they do it?” For that reason they became very conscious of the demand that they always do better than everyone else. Much of their expression was less African American than I think would have been the case otherwise.
WERE CATHOLICS PART OF THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT? The abolitionists opposed slavery on moral grounds and were very religious, well-educated people from establishment backgrounds. Yet many had an intellectual disdain for the Catholic Church. They saw Catholics as lower-class immigrants with a bigoted religion, so Roman Catholics in this country saw the abolitionists as their enemy.
The first bishop in the country who really took a public stand in support of the Union and the emancipation of slaves was Archbishop John Purcell of Cincinnati, who, along with his brother, decried slavery at the outbreak of the Civil War. Later, however, Purcell met his downfall, because Cincinnati became bankrupt and the bishops were not happy that Purcell broke ranks.
Another outspoken Catholic abolitionist was Irish statesman Daniel O’Connell. Out of religious conviction, O’Connell saw slavery as a great evil. He castigated the Irish in America who were sending him money to fight for Irish emancipation from English rule while supporting slavery in the United States.
Claude Maistre, a French priest originally from the Diocese of Troyes in France, who worked a while in the Chicago area and ended up in New Orleans at the time of the Civil War, also took a very strong stand against slavery. In fact, the archbishop told him to stop preaching against slavery, but he refused. Ultimately the archbishop put Maistre’s church under interdict to get him to stop.
credit : Christine Bordelon/CNS,
photo via Clarion Herald
WHO WAS THE FIRST BLACK PRIEST TO IDENTIFY HIMSELF AS BLACK? The first Black priest who was ordained and identified as being Black was Augustus Tolton. His mother, Martha Chisely Tolton, was a Catholic slave from Kentucky who became part of the dowry of a young lady who married and moved to Missouri. Martha married a slave named Peter Paul Tolton, who was also Catholic…
Martha was insistent that her children get a Catholic education, despite being treated very badly by Catholics. Two priests in Quincy [Missouri], one German and one Irish, befriended Augustus. He then decided he wanted to become a priest, and the two priests tried to find a seminary for him. But no one would accept him.
Eventually the minister general of the Franciscans arranged for him to go to Rome and become a seminarian at the Urban College. It was almost like a fairy tale. He was ordained in 1886.
Tolton was supposed to go to Africa after he was ordained. When the time came, however, the cardinal prefect said that America was a great nation and needed to see a Black priest. So, he sent Tolton back to the United States.
It was a triumphant return, and the whole city of Quincy was there for his first Mass. But after he started work as a pastor of a parish, there was a racial conA photo of Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., is seen at St. Katharine Drexel Chapel of Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, surrounded by pictures of four Black candidates for sainthood.
flict between another priest and him. Tolton almost had a nervous breakdown...when word [got] back to the cardinal prefect, he was very upset. Luckily for Tolton, Archbishop Patrick Feehan of Chicago wanted to have a Black priest, so Tolton was sent there and formed the Black parish of St. Monica’s.
Tolton ended up in very bad health and died in 1897. He wrote in one letter that he wished there were 27 different Toltons, because Black people from all over the country were writing to him wanting him to do things for Black people everywhere. Black lay Catholics were very active in those days.
IN WHAT WAYS? Five Black Catholic Lay Congresses took place between 1889 and 1894. We have the minutes for the first three. An address given in 1893 is extremely interesting because it included participants’ feelings about, their attitudes toward, and their understanding of what it meant to be Catholic and Black. They insisted how proud they were to be Catholic, how grateful they were to the Church, and then went on to say that they had to speak out against the racism that had existed, because it was contrary to Catholic teaching. The conference also determined that part of the Church’s mission should be to deal with social justice issues.
WHAT DID THE CONGRESS PARTICIPANTS DRAW ON FOR THEIR IDEAS AROUND SOCIAL JUSTICE? One of the things they talked about was their past. They talked about their history in Africa and in the Catholic Church in Africa, and they mentioned the struggles of the Black saints—Augustine, Monica, Cyril of Alexandria, Perpetua, Felicity, and St. Benedict the Moor.
What they were doing was exactly what the Irish, the Hungarians, the Poles, and every other Catholic was doing in the 19th century—establishing an ethnic identity with the saints. They created an identity and rooted themselves in the early Church. Their Catholicism was something that they had begun to assimilate.
WHO ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE FIGURES IN BLACK CATHOLIC HISTORY? Pierre Toussaint really grabs my attention. Toussaint, a Haitian, came with his owner, John Bérard, and Bérard’s wife to New York in the 1780s. Toussaint spoke French very well. He even read and wrote and evidently had a very Catholic training. The Bérards established themselves in New York, and John Bérard sent Toussaint off to be trained as a hairdresser.
Bérard went back to Haiti, where he died. He left his widow with Toussaint, who by then had a good-paying job that took him to the houses of the wealthy. He became the confidant of many of his customers. They liked him because he was French, very gentlemanly, and evidently exotic—a violinist with earrings in his ear. But this was also the guy who went to Mass every morning before he began his work.
He kept Madame Bérard alive. She didn’t know it, but all of the assets that her husband had were worthless and she was really living off Toussaint. At the same time he was supporting Madame Bérard, Toussaint engaged in all kinds of acts of charity. Eventually she freed him.
After Madame Bérard’s death, he bought the freedom of his future wife and that of his sister, who died and left her daughter, Euphémie, whom Toussaint raised as his own. He also took in a lot of homeless Black children and taught them how to play the violin. He nursed the sick. He was admired by everyone…
When Toussaint died, there was a tremendous funeral, and everyone agreed that he had been a terribly holy man. He was buried next to Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where no Black people normally were buried. Toussaint practiced the gospel commands, lived an extraordinary life of religion and devotions, and helped both Black and white people at a cost to himself.
I hope Toussaint will be canonized, because it would be the canonization of someone who was a layman, a Black, a devoted husband, and a father to his niece.
DID BLACK CATHOLIC CLERGY GET INVOLVED IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS CALL? The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus was formed in 1968 in Detroit in the wake of the riots that started after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Herman Porter, a Joliet, Illinois, priest who was part of the Midwest Clergy Conference for Interracial Justice, said it was time for Black priests to do something…
It was the first time that Black Catholic priests ever got together as a group. It was mind-boggling, because the younger priests were very radical. One of the priests decided to draw up a manifesto that stated that the Roman Catholic Church in the United States was a white racist institution.
HOW DID THAT GO OVER? I remember the arguments—it was a very soul-searching thing. I remember one of the other priests yelling that nonviolence died when Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. There was all sorts of arguing going on. Finally, they drew up 10 demands addressed to the American bishops.
The letter was published…[T}he demands were rather reasonable...the letter asked that the clergy who came into the Black community be educated regarding Blacks. It asked for encouragement of Black vocations. From that time on, the Black consciousness movement reached Catholic priests, sisters, and seminarians. That was a good thing.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE CHURCH WILL OFFER BLACK CATHOLICS IN THE FUTURE? We’re growing. In terms of race, we are a Church where Black and brown people now outnumber those who are white.
It is no longer outside the realm of possibility or even probability that there may be elected in the course of the 21st century a Black African pope. There certainly are cardinals who are capable. And it is probably more likely than a Polish pope was 20 or 30 years ago.
The Church in this country reflects the problems of the country, which has yet to solve the question of race; that has been America’s tragic flaw. We have never really come to grips with race. We went through the civil rights movement, but...there’s still an awful separation between people. The Church for a long time did not take a stand. It has started to.
I believe we will see a stronger, better educated, and more committed Black Catholic community in the future. That is the best news that the American Catholic Church could have, because it has a group of people who are dedicated and are going to make contributions.
In each diocese some of the strongest constituents are and will be Black Catholics. Black Catholics have something to give in terms of a moral sense and an appreciation of what it means to be a family, to be educated, to create hope, to help turn around the attitudes of young people who have so little moral fiber. But we, as Black Catholics, have got our job cut out for us in bringing about the regeneration of a whole people. We can do it; I think that’s our opportunity.
But it’s also the responsibility of the entire Catholic Church. That’s part of what evangelization is. Evangelization is our task and the whole social questions must be part of the agenda of the American Catholic Church. There is no other way. We just can’t ignore it anymore. ■
Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. (1930–2015), was an African American monk and renowned chronicler of Black Catholic history. He was an ecclesial historian of St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana.
Excerpted with express permission from U.S. Catholic, 205 W. Monroe St., Chicago, IL 60606; uscatholic.org. To read the article in its entirety, please visit: https://uscatholic.org/articles/202010/in-thebeginning-there-were-black-catholics/
The Church Speaks Out on Human Dignity
“The equality of men [and women] rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it: ‘Every form of social or cultural discrimination in fundamental personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language, or religion must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God’s design.’“
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), #1935, cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (1965), 29:2
“Despite the widespread aspiration to build an authentic international community, the unity of the human family is not yet becoming a reality. This is due to obstacles originating in materialistic and nationalistic ideologies that contradict the values of the person integrally considered in all his [or her] various dimensions, material and spiritual, individual and community. In particular, any theory or form whatsoever of racism and racial discrimination is morally unacceptable.“
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004), 433
“My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.“ Pope Francis, June 3, 2020
