The number of the issues of the parish and our racial sin is legion, so I’ll likely ask more questions than provide concrete suggestions. However, I hope to set the framework for what our parishes are dealing with.
On the whole, this astute observation from Brad Klingele is what worries me about the relative lack of diversity in race and economic status we often find in our parishes (and by extension, our parish schools):
We cannot hope to help our children to stay Catholic when they are cut off from the people with whom Jesus is closest. It is very clear that our Lord is most present in the protagonists of history: ‘When I was naked, you clothed me’ (cf. Mt 25:36). If Jesus is closest to those in need, and our only connection with people occurs across the ocean of a soup kitchen pot, we are not close to Jesus. We cannot find our Lord when we are absent from him, and he is with the poor.As racism is a related but not equivalent injustice, since systemic racism has damaged economic mobility, I’ll amend that to say the Lord is with the marginalized, per Dan’s CST analysis.
Our parishes can and should be places where we are forced into encounter. And all too often, we do not truly encounter one another. We are not made to reckon with ourselves in relation to the “other.”
When I sat in my parish’s perpetual adoration chapel a few Fridays ago, I was struck by wording in one of their suggested prayers for adorers: “I give thanks… for the privilege of visiting you in this sacrament, here in this place.” As Dan noted, “privilege” is a word closely associated with racism, as well as other socioeconomic injustices.
If an unknown black man were to enter the adoration chapel here, would I assume he was here to pray with our Lord? Or would I sit uncomfortably, wondering what his intent was? I’m really sad to say that I would not fully trust myself. The latter thought might at least cross my mind. The privilege of visiting Christ in the sacrament might not be denied by my bias, but someone else’s prayer should not be colored by any self-consciousness, created by my sinfulness and prejudice. He or she deserves the privilege of visiting Christ in the sacrament and to feel fully known and loved while there.
So where do we begin to cross the ocean of racial divide between parish communities? The easiest question and solution that came up again and again for me is representation. As always, representation is only a beginning to a solution, but it is a beginning for which I see some action steps.
Since Catholics tend to err towards too much respect for the clergy, perhaps we can let that bias work in our favor a little. What would happen if we saw more priests of color? How would parishioners feel if their leadership really brought home to them that the priests of color we are seeing now are here because we're a "missionary territory”? These clerics are doing us a great service; they are venturing far outside their comfort zones and far from home, while offering us the exact same access to the Person of Christ as the priests who grew up in America. We owe it to them to do at least a little of the same.
How do we get a more diverse ministerial priesthood?
Wealthy parishes, practically entirely white suburban parishes like mine, often proudly support vocations from our own parishes. (In truth, we are always very proud and happy to take credit, regardless of whether we personally know the seminarian or did anything to support him).
The next step for us is to coordinate ways to support vocations from the heart of the diocese, where Jesus dwells with the poor and marginalized. Black Catholic children, Latino Catholic children, children of St. Louis’ Bosnian refugee community - they should know, explicitly and clearly, that if God is calling them to be a priest, their local Church will make that possible.
We’re not doing super well. Right now, our fancy youth vocations retreat happens during the school day, in the suburbs. If you attend public school in the predominantly-black St. Louis City? Or really, public school anywhere? If your Catholic grade school in the City doesn’t have the funds to bus the 6th grade there?
Fall into any of these categories, and you will not be able to attend. I would not blame these children for hearing, “This prayer and discernment experience is not for you,” or perhaps even, “The priesthood is not for you.” I’m sure this is not intentional by the organizers. Maybe they just have never considered that anyone interested in the priesthood might come from outside our wealthy, primarily white, suburban Catholic grade schools.
Not only must the privileged consider such vocations a possibility, we should form those youth to consider it a real possibility as well.
While drafting this piece, I got curious and searched out some data.
- In 1984, when “What We Have Seen and Heard” was published, there were 10 black bishops.
- Now there are 9 active and 6 retired. Hardly much in the way of increased representation. There are 456 active and retired Catholic bishops in the US, by the way.
- Black representation in the American episcopate is at ~3.5%. Meanwhile, 4-4.5% of Catholics in America are black. The clergy is not representative of the Church, but that’s not awful. There is certainly still work to be done. However, 16% of America is black. The Church is not representative of the country.
- Where, if not the Church, are our black brothers and sisters?
* * *
- Native Americans are 3.5% of Catholics. They have their representatives among the saints; where are their bishops?
- In 2000, according to the Association of Native Religious and Clergy, there were two Native bishops, twenty-eight Native priests, eight Native brothers, sixty-seven Native women religious, fifty-one Native deacons, and two Native seminarians. More recent data than that I did not find.
- Where, if not your parish, are our Native brothers and sisters?
In other words, we are more likely to be forced into encounter, and we can practice in seeing Christ in the other. Even if the other with whom you have your parish disputes is of the same race or ethnic background, being engaged in true community and working out your differences is a formative experience that can be translated into racial encounter as well.
I fear that out of expediency, we’d be tempted to keep our larger parishes and just add priests to them. There could be benefits to this; a greater number of parishioners or wider parish boundaries may equal more diversity in the parish at large. But within a large parish, like gravitates to like. (I see this often - my parish is large.) You know the people who are interested in the same issues or devotions as you are, and everyone else is just the person who stole your preferred seat at Mass. While you may see a black Catholic at your Sunday Mass occasionally, you may well not know him.
Formation in encounter is not currently a reality in many of our parishes. In fact, as Jennifer Fitz states in this Patheos post from 2015, “We have set our standards for parish life so low that we’ve forgotten even basic social skills like knowing each others’ names.” While we do need to tackle this related but separate issue with parish life, the priest is the person whose name almost everyone in the parish knows.
These are the stakes:
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| Servant of God Augustus Tolton, the first priest in America known to be black, was sent by Rome to Quincy, Illinois because the Vatican thought America needed to have or see a black priest. (The American bishops of the time thought America was not yet ready.) He opened an important door; his white parishioners also drove him to exhaustion and an early death with their prejudice. |
We need black priests in predominantly black parishes, for the sake of representation.
We need black priests who have grown up experiencing the particular difficulties of being black in America, so that they can inspire other young black men that the priesthood is an option available to them.
We need priests whose families came here illegally in order to prioritize their first responsibility and vocation - keeping their family together and safe.
We need white Catholics to see a person they would easily dismiss as a racial stereotype standing in persona Christi at the altar and reckon with that image, so that they might more easily see the imago Dei - see the face of Christ - in that priest’s brother or sister of the same race and background.
There will still be some people who say, “I have a black pastor, so I can’t be racist.” Others will retreat behind statements like, “Katharine Drexel was founding Catholic schools specifically for black and Native children when no one else was!” There is room for pointing to the best among us as an illustration of Christ’s goodness seen within the Church, but we must avoid pulling out our token saints and clerics, patting ourselves on the back for having a better record on human rights than many organizations, and moving on with our day.
I fear we will never truly live in a post-racism society, as long as we have a diversity of cultures to celebrate. In short, sin will always exist. But this would be a start.
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