From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Religious Minority
Blacks in the Catholic Church--then and now.
As the debate continues over what to rebuild in New Orleans, the fate of the city's black Catholic community may be one of the more poignant tales of loss and uncertainty in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is also one that points to a challenge for the wider Catholic Church in America. New Orleans, along with Baltimore and New York, is one of the precious few strongholds of black Catholics in the United States, a venerable old community facing challenges beyond the storm's toll.
Katrina dispersed much of New Orleans's Catholic population, including many African-Americans. Even now, seven months later, only half of the 350 families from the Church of St. Augustine, a parish near the French Quarter founded in 1841 by slaves and freedmen, have returned. The local archbishop wants the congregants to merge with another church.
Indeed, people outside major cities are often surprised to discover that there are black Catholics at all; for them, the church's vaunted universality is limited to a light-toned blend of European and Latino nationalities. And indeed, African-Americans make up just 3% of the nation's more than 65 million Catholics. Why should this be so?
When it comes to racial integration, the Catholic Church in America carries much of the same historical baggage as many other institutions. True, there have been remarkable black American Catholics, notably Venerable Pierre Toussaint, the Haitian immigrant and slave who bought his own freedom in the early 19th century, and then used his wealth to fund all manner of charitable efforts and help to underwrite the building of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street in New York.
But such individuals had little support from on high. The Vatican condemned the slave trade only in 1839. During the Civil War, Pope Pius IX made no secret of his affinity for the Confederacy, and the American hierarchy was so fearful of local schisms that the bishops were reluctant to speak out on behalf of abolition. Some Catholic orders owned slaves, and it was not until 1888 that Rome officially condemned slavery.
The Catholic immigrants pouring into America from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did little to improve matters: Irish, Italian and Eastern European Catholics and their clergy often excluded blacks from local parishes with the same intolerance that they themselves were enduring. Many blacks simply felt more at home in their birthright Protestant churches, where adaptable liturgies and ministerial opportunities meant that black Christians could worship their own way more readily than in staid, Latinate Catholicism.
The black Catholics who did remain in the church adopted an enclave mentality, congregating in places like New Orleans. They also founded religious orders for black nuns and priests since diocesan seminaries would not accept them.
After World War II, though, everything changed. Bishops led the way by integrating parish schools, and blacks who migrated to northern cities found in Catholic charities and schools welcome entry points to their new world. "For blacks, it was looked on as a step up if you became Catholic," says Bishop Joseph N. Perry, an auxiliary in Chicago who heads the U.S. hierarchy's secretariat for African American Catholics.
But the black consciousness movement of the 1960s, with its emphasis on African roots and traditions, helped to pull blacks away from the Catholic Church. By the time the Catholic hierarchy responded, a lot of religious alienation had set in. There are probably fewer black Catholics today than there were 50 years ago.
The church's efforts to play catch up now are being hampered by other developments. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, for instance, are reaching out to black Americans as part of their proselytizing mission. And the vast network of inner-city parochial schools--once the principal gateway to the church for black Americans--is shrinking. Black students remain overrepresented in Catholic schools relative to the black Catholic population. But the schools themselves are shutting down as Catholics migrate to the suburbs. Meanwhile, in the church's leadership, just 1% of priests are black, and only 300 of the 70,000 women religious are.
But there are reasons for hope. There has been a rise in the number of black seminarians, to about 5% of all priests-in-training. And after years of dashed hopes, several African-American bishops are emerging as national leaders, even though there are still only 13 black bishops among some 400 active and retired American prelates. Most prominent among them is Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory, whose election in 2001 as the first African-American president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was heralded as a breakthrough.
Also encouraging is the fact that lay African-Americans are taking the lead in ministerial and other church roles, replicating the experience of black Catholics in centuries past. "We never had the luxury of our own priests, like other Catholic communities did," says Beverly Carroll, executive director of the secretariat for African American Catholics.
Perhaps, the biggest boost to black Catholics in America recalls the traditional immigrant path of other Catholics groups. The recent influx of African and Afro-Caribbeans--from places like Nigeria and Haiti--means an increase in black Catholics overall, but these are black Catholics who bring their faith with them, along with their devotions, customs and clergy. "They are missionaries to us," says Ms. Carroll. "If it weren't for them, there wouldn't be anybody black up on the altar."
Mr. Gibson's biography of Pope Benedict XVI, "The Rule of Benedict," will be out in September.
