Black Catholic Movement

In 1962, Pope John XXIII convened the most recent Catholic ecumenical council, Vatican II. Perhaps the most glaring change resulting from the council was the elimination of Latin as the required liturgical language of the Western portion of the Church.[1]

This change opened to the door for inculturation in places where it hadn't been dreamed of—but also in places where it had been. As early as the 1950s, under the creative eye of Black Catholics such as Fr Clarence Rivers, the fusion of Black Gospel music with Catholic liturgy had been experimented with on a basic level.[2] Rivers' music (and musical direction) was used at the first official English-language Mass in the United States in 1964, including his watershed work, "God Is Love".[3]

Alongside this nascent inculturation came a second boom in Black Catholic numbers, as they increased by 220,000 (35%) during the 1960s—over half being converts.[4] In 1966, Fr Harold R. Perry became the first openly-Black bishop to serve in the US when he was named auxiliary bishop of New Orleans.[5]

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King and its associated riots (including Mayor Daley's shoot-to-kill order in Chicago), Black Catholics inaugurated a number of powerful new organizations in early 1968, including the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCC), organized by Fr Herman Porter, and its sister organization, the National Black Sisters' Conference (NBSC), organized by Sr Martin de Porres Grey.[6]

The larger movement (or "revolution") broke out thereafter as Black Catholics increasingly latched onto Black Power and Black Consciousness as appropriate means of expressing their right to be "authentically Black" in their expression of the Catholic faith.[6]

The movement was headed off by the statement that came out of the inaugural NBCCC meeting in Detroit, in which the caucus members declared in the opening line that "the Catholic Church in the United States is primarily a White, racist institution."[6]

The statement unsurprisingly made waves throughout the Church, and went on to give some credence to the riots that were so intensely discomforting White American (and White Catholic) sensibilities, and to demand change in the Catholic Church—including an active commitment to Black self-oversight, freedom, and vocations. More specifically, they demanded a Black vicariate, an episcopal vicar, a Black-led office for Black Catholics, Black diaconate, Black liturgical inculturation, inclusion of Black history and culture in seminary education, and diocesan programs for training those who intending to shepherd Black Catholics. Without such changes, the caucus claimed, the Catholic Church would soon become irrelevant to the Black community.[7]

At least two of these requests were answered rather quickly, as—with the help of a White Josephite superior general who advocated for it as early as 1967—the permanent diaconate was restored in the United States in October 1968, and the National Office for Black Catholics (NOBC) was established in 1970.[7]

It could be said the movement/revolution centered in Chicago, where a large number of Black Catholics resided in the late 1960s, forming sizable Black parishes—though always under the leadership of White priests. Fr George Clements, one of the more radical(ized) members of the inaugural NBCCC meeting, entered into an extended row with Archbishop John Cody over this lack of Black pastors in Chicago and Black Catholic inculturation.[8]

Unconventional alliances with local Black Protestant leaders and Black radical activists resulted in innovative (and defiant) liturgical celebrations known as Black Unity Mass, trans-parochial events where Black priests donned Afrocentric vestments, decorated the altar similarly, and celebrated the Mass with a decidedly "Black" liturgical flair. One such Mass in 1969 included New York activist-priest Lawrence Lucas, an 80-voice gospel choir provided by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and security provided by the Black Panthers.[8]

One of the first parishes to engage in Black liturgical inculturation and establish a gospel choir was St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in New Orleans, in 1969 (now known as St. Katharine Drexel Church).[9] One of the first musicians to experiment similarly was Grayson Warren Brown, a Presbyterian convert who set the entire Mass to gospel-style music. Fr William Norvel, a Josephite, helped introduce gospel choirs to Black Catholic parishes nationwide (especially in D.C. and Los Angeles). This "Gospel Mass" trend quickly spread across the nation.[10]

Even as these new changes swept through the emerging "Black Catholic Church", so too did the backlash and general unease with which many Black Catholics held their faith as they embraced a more robust Blackness that often clashed with all they knew Catholicism to represent.[11] This sentiment was not limited to laypeople nor did was it contradicted by White reactions to the movement/revolution, as many dioceses, religious orders, parishes, and lay groups reacted negatively to both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements on the whole.

In 1970, the National Black Catholic Lay Caucus (NBCLC, or NBLCC) was founded, and would go on to partner with the NBCCC, NBSC, NBCSA, and NOBC in combating the marginalization of Blacks. At their first meeting in August of that year, they drafted a resolution echoing the demands of the inaugural NBCCC meeting two years prior—alongside new demands such as four Black bishops, greater lay and youth decision-making power, and "hierarchical support in developing an African-American liturgy".[12]

In summer 1971, the NBCLC staged a sit-in at the Josephites' headquarters, demanding similar changes.[13]

After the NOBC was allotted only 30% of their requested funding for 1970 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and after Cardinal O'Boyle (a staunch supporter of Civil Rights) announced his retirement, a delegation of Black Catholics led by the NBCLC president brought their grievances all the way to the Vatican in 1971, informing Deputy Secretary of State Abp Giovanni Benelli that the American bishops had been "lying" to Rome about the state of Black Catholicism (which was bleeding members and "dying"). They demanded a Black man be made the next Archbishop of Washington D.C., an African-American rite, and an African-American cardinal.[14][15]

That same year, the NBSC, NOBC, and Black Catholic laypeople spearheaded a national campaign to stop the mass closings of Catholic schools in urban and predominantly-Black communities. This was done mostly via turning neglected and/or to-be-shuttered Black Catholic schools into community-led institutions. Much like the period some 125 years prior, Black nuns led a movement to educate Black children in a time when the American and Catholic White hierarchy didn't particularly care to.[16]

During this same period, Black Catholic ministries began to pop up in dioceses around the country, often in response to hostile conditions and with pushback from many Black Catholics themselves.[17]

The unrest extended into seminaries as well—including the Josephites', where tensions between the more race-conscious Black students/members and their White peers as well as teachers/elders (Black and White) boiled over into open hostility, leading to an emptying of much of the seminary and the resignation of a number of Josephite priests. By 1971, the seminary had closed for studies. To this day, Josephite seminarians study at nearby universities and their vocations from Black Americans has never recovered.[18][19]

This phenomenon of resignation was felt across Black Catholicism in the 1970s and coincided with a general nadir of American Catholicism overall (the latter being more or less unrelated to race issues). Catholics of all races began lapsing in droves, and between 1970 and 1975, hundreds of Black Catholic seminarians, dozens (~13%) of Black Catholic priests, and 125 Black nuns (~14%) left their posts, including NBCS foundress Sr. Martin de Porres Grey in 1974. Up to 20% of Black Catholics stopped practicing.[20][21]

Even with the decline in vocations and lay practice during the 1970s, various new national Black Catholic organizations emerged by the end of the decade.

During the early to mid-70s, the various (and largely informal) Black Catholic diocesan offices/ministries began to gain official recognition and approval, and in 1976 their leaders formed a consortium known as the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators.[6] The next year, the NOBC became a member, and eventually the NABCA subsumed the NOBC altogether.[17]

The Black Catholic Theological Symposium (BCTS), a yearly gathering dedicated to the promotion of Black Catholic theology, emerged in 1978 in Baltimore. From it has emerged some of the leading voices not only in Black Catholic theology, but in Womanist and Black theology as well: a founder of one of the watershed organizations of the latter movement (the National Council of Black Churchmen, or NCBC) was the aforementioned Fr Lucas, and writers such as Dr Diana L. Hayes, Dr M. Shawn Copeland, Sr Dr Jamie T. Phelps, Fr Cyprian Davis, and Servant of God Sr Dr Thea Bowman have had an immeasurable impact in advancing the cause of Black Catholic history, theology, theory, and liturgy.[22][23]

The next year, the Institute for Black Catholic Studies was founded at Xavier University of Louisiana. Every summer since, it has hosted a variety of accredited courses on Black Catholic theology, ministry, ethics, and history, offering a Continuing Education & Enrichment program as well as a Master of Theology degree—"the only graduate theology program in the western hemisphere taught from a Black Catholic perspective".[24][25]

That same year, the USCCB issued a pastoral letter dissecting and condemning racism, entitled "Brothers and Sisters to Us", for the first time addressing the issue in a group publication.[26]

The end of the Black Catholic Movement could be said to have been precipitated by one Fr George Stallings, a Black Catholic priest known for his fiery activism and no-holds-barred demands of the Church. He was a vocal leader in pressing for a Black Catholic rite (complete with bishops and the associated episcopal structure) during the 70s and 80s, a bold request meant to give Black Catholics the kind of independence many were calling for at the time.[27]

Some of those calls were answered when Eugene A. Marino was named auxiliary bishop of Washington in 1974, and when Joseph L. Howze became the first openly-Black Catholic bishop of a diocese when he was named Bishop of Biloxi in 1977.[28] Marino would become the first-ever Black Catholic archbishop in 1988, following an open demand made to the USCCB in 1985.[29] Marino would resign from his archbishopric two years after his appointment, following a sex scandal involving his secret marriage (and impregnation) of a Church employee.[30]

Between 1966 and 1988, the Holy See would name 13 Black bishops, and in 1984 they would issue their own pastoral letter entitled "What We Have Seen and Heard", explaining the nature, value, and strength of Black Catholicism.[31][32] The next year, the United States Catholic Conference (a predecessor organization to the USCCB), with the help of Servant of God Sr. Dr. Thea Bowman, issued a document titled "Families: Black and Catholic, Catholic and Black", encouraging Black Catholics to maintain Black cultural traditions.[33]

In 1987, the National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC) emerged as a purported successor to Daniel Rudd's Colored Catholic Congress movement of the late 19th century, this time founded as a nonprofit under the name of Fr John Ricard, future bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee and future Superior General of the Josephites, in conjunction with the NABCA.[34][35]

In September 1987, Pope John Paul II visited the United States, famously making a stop in New Orleans—one of the genesis points of Black Catholicism. There he engaged a number of cultural groups, including during a Mass at the Superdome where jazz and gospel stylings were featured (including a rendition of "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian" sung by Servant of God Sr. Dr. Thea Bowman).[36][37][38]

The next day, the Pope would hold a private audience with a group of 2,000 Black Catholics from all over the country (including all the nation's Black bishops), speaking to many of their social concerns and praising their "cultural heritage".[33][36][39] During this meeting, a Black Catholic gospel choir sang at least one tune from the previous day's Mass.[40]

Also in 1987, the first and only Black Catholic hymnal was published; entitled "Lead Me, Guide Me", it integrates a litany of traditional Black Gospel hymns alongside a number of traditional Catholic hymns. The preface was penned by noteworthy Black Catholic liturgists Bishop James P. Lyke, future Archbishop of Atlanta, and Fr Norvel, then-president of the NBCCC. The foreword was written by Servant of God Sr Dr Bowman, covering the development and value of African-American Christian worship, and Fr J-Glenn Murray, a Black Jesuit, wrote an introduction explaining the compatibility of said worship with the Roman Rite of the Mass.[41][42]

Two years later in 1989, Unity Explosion was founded in Dallas as an annual conference celebrating Black Catholic liturgy and expression. It would grow into a more general Black Catholic advocacy conference sponsored by the USCCB, and is preceded annually by a pre-conference, the Roderick J. Bell Institute for African-American Sacred Music.[43]

That same year, Sr. Dr. Bowman, by then a celebrity of sorts (having appeared on 60 Minutes as well as The 700 Club) and also ailing from cancer, was invited to address the USCCB on Black Catholicism. Dressed in a dashiki, she addressed the bishops on the history, legitimacy, and ongoing struggle of the Black Christian patrimony (interspersing the speech with her renditions of a variety of historic Black hymns), and ended the event by having the assembly link arms and join her in singing "We Shall Overcome".[44][45]

Despite offers in 1989 from two Black bishops (namely Terry Steib and future Archbishop Wilton Gregory) to sponsor and oversee Stallings' plans for an independent Black Catholic rite, the proposals of the late 80s came to nothing.[46] Stallings would then apostatize, marry, and start his own quasi-Catholic denomination, Imani Temple.[47]

Confusion ensued in early August 1989 when the Washington Post reported that the NOBC had endorsed the formation of an independent rite, whereas subsequent reports indicated that no such decision had been officially made.[48]

In 1990 came perhaps the most important piece of Black Catholic literature, Fr Cyprian Davis' "History of Black Catholics in the United States", a voluminous tome covering the history from Esteban's expedition in the 16th century all the way to the period of the late 80s. It remains the primary text for the general history of Black Catholics.[49]

In 1991, the National Association of Black Catholic Deacons began operations, and that same year, Sr Dr Jamie Phelps helped to restart the annual meetings of the BCTS.[50][51] The Interregional African American Catholic Evangelization Conference (IAACE), a ministry training conference, also began meeting during this period (co-sponsored by the NABCA).[17][52]

The aforementioned St Joseph's Black Catholic Church in Norfolk, having been merged with St Mary of the Immaculate Conception (Towson) in 1961, renamed as such, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and renovated/restored in 1989 (its 100th anniversary as an independent parish), was named a minor basilica in 1991—the first "Black basilica" and first minor basilica in Virginia. This was technically the parish's 200th anniversary, as St Joseph's had split off from a segregated White parish (Saint Patrick's) founded in 1791.[53][54]

Around the same time, twin Divine Word priests Charles and Chester Smith, with their fellow Verbites Anthony Clark and Ken Hamilton, established the Bowman-Francis Ministry, a Black Catholic youth outreach ministry, and its yearly Sankofa Conference.[55]

At the behest of the Black Catholic Joint Conference—the annual meeting of the NBCCC, NBSC, NBCSA and NABCD (including the deacons' wives)—a survey was taken of Black Catholics in the early 1990s to gauge the need for and interest in an independent rite; the NBCCC formed an African American Catholic Rite Committee (AACRC) and in 1991 published a monograph entitled "Right Rites", offering a proposal for a study that would be presented at the next year's Black Catholic congress. Their plan was much like Stallings'. Black Catholic theologian (and future bishop) Edward Braxton proposed an alternative plan, but neither would come to fruition.[56]

Though the 1995 results of the lay survey did not point directly to the desire for an independent rite, debate ensued concerning whether the respondents knew that such a rite would still be in full and unmitigated union with the rest of the Roman Catholic Church, and whether they were properly informed about the nature of the prospect in general. Some also wondered whether the nation- (and Church-)wide emphasis on multiculturalism during that era had soured the prospect of a Black-centered endeavor.[57]

Similar proposals had been floated by the bishops themselves as far back as the plenary councils of Baltimore in the 1800s, but the desire to do much for Black Catholics was incredibly sparse then and no action was taken. History repeated itself, and the NBCCC's AACRC disbanded after the results of the survey were released.[57][48]

• National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCCC)
  • National Black Catholic Seminarians' Association (NBCSA)
• National Black Sisters' Conference (NBSC)
• National Association of Black Catholic Deacons (NABCD)
• National Association of Black Catholic Administrators (NABCA)
  • Interregional African American Catholic Evangelization Conference (IAACEC)

• Black Catholic Joint Conference (annual meeting of the NBCC, NBSC, NBCSA, NABCD, and the deacons' wives)
• National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC)
• National Black Catholic Men's Conference
• National Black Catholic Women's Gathering
• Archbishop Lyke Conference
• Unity Explosion
• Bowman-Francis Ministry
  • Sankofa Conference

• Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS)
• Black Catholic Theological Symposium (BCTS)