Michelle Martin

Racism still no stranger to U.S. Church

Dioceses, groups try to erase assumptionsabout minorities that remain among Catholics

Jo Anne Tardy remembers when she was a little girl and her grandmother would take her on long walks on Saturday afternoons from their home in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans.

Those walks often ended at Holy Name of Mary Parish, where she and her grandmother sat in the back row, along with any other blacks who happened to be there.

"That made me uncomfortable," said Tardy, author of a "A Light Will Rise in Darkness: Growing up Black and Catholic in New Orleans" (Acta, $9.95). "I didn't understand why we had to go there, when we had our own church where we could sit anywhere we wanted."

Tardy, now 67, learned only recently why her grandmother was so attached to Holy Name of Mary Church: She was married there, before the black All Saints Parish was opened. Tardy's mother was the first baby baptized at All Saints.

But that discomfort was the exception for Tardy, who writes of a deep faith nurtured by her family, the nuns who taught her and the large black Catholic community of New Orleans.

Her experience, both of racial discrimination within the Church and a great love for her faith, might be more common than many Catholics would think, said Adrian Dominican Sister Jamie Phelps, director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans and a professor of systematic theology.

Assumptions remain

Catholic teaching leaves no room for racism.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The equality of men 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" (No. 1935).

While overt racism within the Church has declined markedly since 1979, when the U.S. bishops released their pastoral letter "Brothers and Sisters to Us," Sister Phelps said, underlying assumptions about blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans remain. So questions surface when dioceses close Catholic schools in central cities that are home to many people of color, or when staffing decisions seem to favor white people.

Among the assumptions is the idea that blacks are not Catholic. That assumption is reflected in the title of the bishops' pastoral letter itself, she noted, because it seems to exclude people of color, the "brothers and sisters" from the "us."

In actuality, there are an estimated 2.3 million black Catholics in the United States, many of whose families have long histories in the Church.

At the same time, Sister Phelps said, many young people -- including young people of color -- don't see the racism in the world around them. That might be changing, she said, as young people have mobilized around the handling of the Jena 6 case in Louisiana.

Denial remains

It's clear to Sister Phelps that many white Americans don't see racism around them, whether in the Church or in American society.

"This is not knowing what you don't know," she said. "White people don't have to think about it because it's not apparent to them. It's just so much a part of the fabric of the United States that we are not attuned to it in its day-to-day manifestations."

Sister Anita Baird, a Daughter of the Heart of Mary and director of the Office for Racial Justice in the Archdiocese of Chicago, is familiar with the denial many people use when confronted with a discussion about racism.

Since 1997, the archdiocese has held anti-racism workshops bringing together members of mostly white, black and Latino parishes. Since the release of Cardinal Francis George's pastoral letter on racism, "Dwell in My Love," in 2000, the archdiocese has required staff to participate in anti-racism training -- including education about "white privilege," meaning that white people have advantages to which they are often blind.

The efforts have not been universally welcomed, Sister Baird said. "Sometimes people are very resistant. They say, 'You're making me feel guilty, you're putting me on a guilt trip.' But sometime later, something they heard is going to make sense. People don't leave converted." But many of them do make progress, she said.

Work to do

Even so, Sister Baird doesn't foresee racism within the Church disappearing any time soon.

"I think racism will always be with us," she said. "It's part of our human sinfulness. It is important for the Church to be serious about its efforts to eradicate racism and to become anti-racist."

Sister Phelps agreed with the need for ongoing effort to eradicate racism, a goal she believes can be attained.

"I say racism is a social construct," she said. "We created it, and we can eliminate it."

The Church must eliminate it, she said, or deprive all of its members of some of the gifts God has given them.

"We are all made in the image and likeness of God," Phelps said. "We are called to be connected and in right relationship with one another. That's what preaching the reign of God means. We are already one. What impacts one group impacts all groups. If we don't address the needs of one group, we will be impacted by that failure later on."

Bishops speak

"Therefore, let the Church proclaim to all that the sin of racism defiles the image of God and degrades the sacred dignity of humankind which has been revealed by the mystery of the Incarnation. Let all know that it is a terrible sin that mocks the cross of Christ and ridicules the Incarnation. For the brother and sister of our brother Jesus Christ are brother and sister to us."

--"Brothers and Sisters to Us," U.S. Catholic Bishops Pastoral Letter on Racism, 1979<[qr]>

Michelle Martin writes from Illinois.