The Catholic Studies Reader

12 We Have Been Believers: Black Catholic Studies

12 We Have Been Believers Black Catholic Studies diana l. hayes and cecilia a. moore On a typical sizzling New Orleans afternoon, C. Vanessa White and her classmates were socializing just minutes before their first class in Introduction to Black Theology at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University. Amid the chatter, in stomped an unkempt black man screaming, ‘‘Somebody stole all my stuff!’’1 He turned, slammed the door, and repeated, ‘‘Somebody stole all my stuff.’’ Angrily he searched the faces of the class and again asserted, ‘‘Somebody stole all my stuff!’’ Completely thrown off guard and frightened, White remembers thinking, ‘‘Does he think I took his stuff?’’ ‘‘What stuff is he talking about?’’ ‘‘Where is our teacher?’’ At that moment, the irate and scary stranger introduced himself to the class as Father Bede Abram, O.F.M. Conv., their instructor. According to White, this dramatic introduction was just the beginning of an unfolding of a Catholic world she and her classmates had never seen or even imagined, even as it also laid bare an experience they knew all too well. As with the best-executed thefts, one knew something was missing, but just quite what one could not say. In this summer class, Father Abrams’s objective was to teach these students to retrieve and restore the record and memory of black Catholic thought, experience, history, and theology, and to redeposit it into the minds of black Catholics—and all Catholics for that matter—for the purpose of transforming the Church and the role Catholicism could play in black communities. The Birth of Black Catholic Studies Black Catholic Studies as a formal field came into being in a time of social, political, and religious tumult and transformation. The waning days of the civil rights movement, the waxing days of the Black Power movement, the reforming spirit ushered in by the Second Vatican 260 diana l. hayes and cecilia a. moore Council and its aftermath, and events associated with these movements set the stage for the development of Black Catholic Studies.2 Nineteensixty -eight was a pivotal year. Following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., black Catholic clergy for the first time met together as a body in Detroit during the annual meeting of the Catholic Clergy Conference on the Interracial Apostolate. Father Herman Porter of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, urged his fellow black priests to address the violence that was being perpetrated in cities such as Chicago against black youth. In particular, he referred to Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, who called on police to ‘‘shoot to kill’’ rioters in Chicago, many of whom were black youth.3 In attendance was Father Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., who would later become a primary shaper of Black Catholic Studies in the United States. Davis recalled: This meeting, which was held at the Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel, was the first time that black Catholic priests had assembled as a national group. The meeting which began as a planning strategy to face the situation at that time quickly became a concerted effort to share their experiences and their feelings as black men in that institution that was then seen to be a very white organization. They spoke of their disappointments, their hurt, and their bitterness. Not all had had the same experience. Not all were of the same mind, but enough were so that a unity was formed and the decision emerged to challenge the American bishops and to publish a manifesto.4 The manifesto was a forthright and fiery declaration that asserted ‘‘the Catholic Church in the United States, primarily a white racist institution, has addressed itself primarily to white society and is definitely a part of that society.’’5 The clergy followed this statement with a call for greater leadership by black Catholics in the Church, better formation for white clergy and religious serving in black communities, the education of black Catholic laypersons in leadership, and the formation of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus.6 Later Sr. Martin De Porres Grey, a Sister of Mercy of Pittsburgh, who had been present with the priests in Detroit, organized the first ever meeting of black women religious from more than seventy-nine different religious communities from the United States and abroad. The black sisters met at black catholic studies 261 Carlow College in Pittsburgh and took up similar questions about the role...