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Catholics at a Crossroads: Chapter 3 Race

5/31/2025

THE HARD NUMBERS

Chapter Three of Maureen K. Day’s et.al. new publication, Catholicism at a Crossroads: The Present and Future of America’s Largest Church [2025] is devoted to both a detailed numerical summary of Catholic cultural demographics across the country and interviews on the question of parochial inculturation. The numbers don’t lie; the authors report how much we have changed in the past four decades. In 1987, of all Catholics polled that year, 86% identified themselves as white. In 2017 that number dropped to 56%, meaning that we are rapidly approaching a day when a white Anglo-Saxon Catholic is a minority in his or her diocese in the United States, at least in many locations. [pp. 103-104]

The largest increase, ethnically speaking, in this study is Hispanic respondents [10% in 1987 to 35% in 2017]. Black/non-Hispanic Catholics reported in at 3%, and others, including Asian Catholics, at 6%. The authors cite the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as a factor in the present-day diversity of Catholics, and certainly of the U.S. population. Prior to 1965 U.S. immigration policy favored northern and western Europe, the old “quota system.” The post-1965 wave of immigrants came “from Catholic-dense countries and regions such as Mexico, Central and South America, and parts of Africa and South Asia.” [p. 104]

Some other takeaways in the raw numbers: while Hispanic Catholics are more likely than either White or Black Catholics to take the Church’s ban on artificial birth control seriously, it is not a radical difference; Hispanics answered affirmatively on obedience to this teaching at 25%; White Catholics 12% and Black Catholics 5% respectively. On the need for personal confession to a priest: Hispanic 42%, White 28%, Other 27%, Black 25%. Black Catholic respondents scored highest in the obligation to extend charity to the poor at 58%.

In this chapter of Catholicism at a Crossroads, the authors wisely recognized that the numbers, per se, are not the whole story. If anything, the raw numbers indicate a need for evangelization and faith formation in all quadrants in many ways and degrees. But there are two key issues that defy quantification. First, all the populations polled in the surveys have long histories with and against each other. Second, the American Church must address itself to unity in sacramental/communal life, however difficult that may be.

THE LONG HISTORY

It probably depends upon where in the U.S. you live or grew up in, but certainly east of the Mississippi the strained relationship of race—Anglo-Saxon to African American—continues to this day. Some portions of this history we learned in school, though some states—including my own state, Florida—have attempted to sugarcoat their textbooks when dealing with a painful truth, that the first people from Africa arrived on North American soil for purchase and involuntary servitude to sustain the American economy.

It is a particularly sad chapter of American Catholicism. If you are a student of history, you probably are aware that professional historians are examining Catholic involvement in the slave trade and the Church’s purchase and use of slave labor. To its credit, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has owned up to the Jesuit ownership of the “GU272,” or 272 slaves [about half minors] sold by the university/order for the retirement of debts. See this current link, Collaborative on Global Children's Issues, for the full story and Georgetown’s efforts to make amends.

The post-Civil War era of relations between the races is so complex that I cannot summarize it here, and in fact I doubt if anyone could. Many of us white Catholics grew up in predominantly white urban parishes where, after World War II, middle class whites moved to the suburbs or the countryside as African Americans moved into our neighborhoods, a phenomenon referred to as white flight. The belief among whites was that an influx of persons of color lowered housing values…a belief later undermined by the process of gentrification, whereby the old neighborhoods were refurbished and restored to luxurious standards and placed on the open market at massive profits to the developers and investors.

One thing that is clear: Black Catholics themselves seemed to have embraced the energy of Vatican II; the Council itself [1962-1965] was held during a time of massive civil rights battles in the U.S., in government and on the streets. Black Catholics across the country engaged in two decisive strategies to enhance their pastoral care. First, they petitioned Rome for the appointment of black bishops. Second, they actively embraced the development of their cultural style within the reform of the Mass, particularly in music. The Vatican responded by appointing auxiliary bishops in New Orleans and elsewhere in the 1960’s; in 1991 James Lyke was appointed Archbishop of Atlanta [1991-1992], and Wilton Gregory has served as the Archbishop of Washington, D.C. until his retirement last year. The book’s commentators make an interesting point—in long established Black parishes in the United States, contemporary immigrants from various African nations such as Nigeria experience degrees of stress in the process of inculturation with Black American Catholics. [p. 116]

Looking West, Spanish Catholics settled in what is now the United States long before the thirteen colonies got themselves organized. The past generation has seen significant academic research into the introduction of Catholicism to the Indigenous populations of the Pacific Coast, Central and South America. Again, the history of this process is too long to treat of in detail, and there continues to be heated discussion of the intentions of the European Spanish missionaries and the establishment of the mission-Church. Were the missionaries saviors of souls, importers of European culture, or task masters? Mexico in the 1800’s was a Catholic country; the Battle of the Alamo pitted Catholic Santa Anna versus Davy Crockett [though the church habits of both men are uncertain.] After the U.S.-Mexican War [1846-48], the United States acquired from Mexico the future states of New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas, and western Colorado. Much of this acquired territory was already divided into Catholic dioceses; Mexican bishops were replaced by primarily Irish bishops, unfamiliar with the culture of the landscape.

THE QUESTIONS ABOUND

The two preceding examples of ethnic-pastoral history have been presented here in response to the authors’ concern for the dignity of all people and the principle of unity in the Church. We know from St. John’s Gospel that Jesus prayed “that all may be one” and from Tradition that all sacramental celebration is communal. This being the case, several questions need to be addressed. They are open ended; I have no concrete answers but rather “table questions” for every Catholic gathering.

Must, or can, we apologize?
I am writing as a white male, so take that into account. I start with the thorny question of reparations. There is sentiment that the no-brainer in this consideration is the Native American: whites stole the land, livelihoods, and ultimately the children. In both the Canadian and the U.S. West, there were structured programs—government and religious—running into the twentieth century whose purpose seemed to be deprogramming Native American children from their culture and recreating them to be absorbed into predominantly while society. If you are a sports fan, there is a very recent [2022] biography of the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe [1887-1953] by David Maraniss which describes in detail the travails of Native Americans. Thorpe, incidentally, was raised Catholic.

If one is looking for a “legal and binding” sort of reparation, I have significant reservations. It is too big a challenge for paper and pencil; the specifics alone—as in who gets what and how much—would add to lingering estrangement for decades. A better approach is truth. Florida is a state rich in Native American culture. Given my state government’s sudden interest in history, I wonder whether Native American culture receives respectful attention in public and Catholic schools.

I do believe in public apologies. Pope Francis in 2022 issued strongly worded remarks about the [Canadian] system which extended into the 1990’s, describing the schools as a form of “cultural genocide.” Again, one cannot undo either the ignorance or the arrogance, but we can listen to the memories, engage in the cultural beauty, and visit the lands sacred to Native Americans to this day. The sufferings of a few—or even one—are my sufferings, too. In 2021 Margaret and I visited the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 in South Dakota, near Badlands National Park. I felt disturbed by the paucity of symbols and care of this memorial.

Can we worship together?

Last year I attended an Easter Mass in the Athens, Greece, cathedral, celebrated in a Philippine tongue for residents of that ancestry. In Belgium we attended a Mass in the local tongue in a church claiming to have a vial of Christ’s Good Friday blood, which was processed through the church to its sacred enclave in the structure. Even in Ireland, where we spent three months last year, the brogue can be so thick that conversation is nigh impossible.

Every time a new pope is elected, here in the United States many outlets of Catholic media immediately look for clues as to whether the new pontiff will allow/encourage/command the celebration of the Mass in the Latin Rite of Pope Pius V and the Council of Trent [1545-1563], the Mass we old timers remember. Every now and then I do wonder if the struggle for Church unity might be strengthened by the unity of Mass in Latin. However, I quickly come to my senses. The claims by some [certainly not a majority] that the Tridentine Latin formula is the only valid form of the Mass is absurd. I belong—as you probably do—to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Mass, which is one of about two dozen rites in communion with Rome. For two millennia we have been a Church which accepted a variety of forms and languages. To mandate a universal Latin Mass format for the entire world would be yet another dismantling of culture.

Beyond that, I just pray that Pope Leo XIV will lead us in an enlightenment of our hearts and a love of the Eucharist that will spill out in warmth to anyone with whom we worship, at home or on the road. Language is not our only means of engagement. Is there anyone who does not understand the language of hot coffee and donuts, for starters, after church? Or baklava in Budapest?

Here's a priest for any culture! My hero!

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Bending Toward Justice [2025] "When the bishop and the realtors come sniffing around your church.""

5/13/2025

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In 1986 I was a pastor in Florida when I received an invitation from former parishioners of the church where I was born and raised in East Buffalo, St. Mary Magdalene on Filmore Avenue, to offer a Mass at a reunion. I say “former parishioners” because St. Mary Magdalene was formally closed by the Diocese of Buffalo in 1978 and the property was purchased by the Antioch Baptist Church. The reunion event was held at a fire hall picnic pavilion in Bowmansville, N.Y., and I said Mass under a large tent. The organizers had asked to buy space for a public invitation in the Buffalo Catholic paper, but the chancery wouldn’t give them the time of day, hoping to keep all publicity and details of the closing and sale hush-hush. I guess my Aunt Margie did not want to get a local priest in trouble with the bishop, and I was happy to fly up, see my family, and form some impressions.

I grew up half a block from St. Mary Magdalene and witnessed firsthand what was called at the time “white flight.” More families of color moved into my neighborhood, and eventually most white households moved to the suburbs. Eventually St. Mary Magdalene, its 1900 elementary school long demolished, served a miniscule congregation. At sunrise on the morning of the 1986 reunion, I drove to the old church several hours before the Antioch Sunday Worship to visit the site where I was born into Catholicism, which I had not seen since 1962. As the church was still locked, I went to the old rectory—now an administration building—and found the pastor at his desk painting his nails. So, I sat down across his desk and talked for quite a while. Noting the size of the former parish plant--the church itself and two large residences converted to other uses--I inquired about the price the Diocese of Buffalo had asked for. He replied, “We got everything for $40,000.”

Later in the afternoon at the reunion I was sitting with some elderly relatives next to the Genesee Beer tap recalling my morning visit, and they asked me what the selling price was. I said, “$40,000.” There was a pause. Then one of them exclaimed, “I knew if we could get the right white man in there, he could get some [N-word] to tell us the truth.” As I flew home to Orlando, it occurred to me that the author Thomas C. Wolfe was right: “You can never go home again.” [And Antioch Baptist Church has been magnificently restored in recent years.]

I began with this elongated episode to illustrate that the closing of parishes is not a “new thing” in the American Catholic Church. What the tipping point for my childhood parish was, I can only speculate that many white Catholics embraced suburbia and the countryside and/or felt constrained by the changing culture to move elsewhere. The new residents were Baptists or Evangelicals if the success of Antioch Baptist is any indication. [If any Buffalo readers can fill me in, please do so in the comments section below or contact me privately.] From where I sit right now, it would seem the parish simply dissolved. In some dioceses, bishops might convert the style and human services of a parish like SMM into a sacramental-Catholic Charities inner city outreach, but to my knowledge no such project was considered for St. Mary Magdalene.

St. Mary Magdalene’s story in Buffalo was hardly unique, at least in the Northeast U.S. and the Rust Belt. Other parts of the country were doing well. Two years after that Buffalo reunion, I built a church in an Orlando, Florida suburb in 1987 for $4,222,698.06 in 2025 dollars, and in this diocese several more new churches would follow into the next century. Florida has for years served as a destination for people relocating from other states and countries. However, this flow into the state has decreased significantly; earlier this year Newsweek reported: “The net migration of people moving to Florida from other American states has fallen sharply from 317,923 in 2022, to just 63,346 in December 2024, according to a Vintage population estimate released by the United States Census Bureau.”

On a separate track, we have the national statistical decline of Catholic membership, which is well documented by many sources, plus the Covid disruption of much of Catholic life. Thus, even in sections of the country like Florida, where Catholic parishes are thriving or at least holding their own, Catholics cannot become complacent. Financial stress—even to the point of closing parishes and or institutions—may someday overwhelm the present-day Church in Florida or the state where you live. In 1980, would you have thought that New York City, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, to name a few, would all have wholesale programs of parish mergers and closings in 2025?

We talk about the “shortage of priests” but in fact the United States has rarely produced enough homegrown vocations. As I understand it, the years 1940-1960 were the only ones where we can say the American Church enjoyed self-sufficiency in terms of ordained priests. The evidence of a shrinking clerical pool was evident already from statistics in the 1960’s. It is fair to say that few ecclesiastical leaders addressed the problem, believing that “things would get better.”

Instead, things got much worse. The sexual abuse of minors by Church clergy led to defections from Catholic parishes by outraged or saddened laity, as many as 10%, though studies vary. Whereas parishes in the past sometimes simply dissolved due to pastoral absence of need, today 25% of U.S. dioceses have declared bankruptcy resulting from lawsuits in civil courts, lawyers’ fees, therapeutic services to victims, etc. How much money are we talking about? It is impossible to put a price on human suffering, but in dollars the costs [so far] range from $6-10 billion dollars. The Diocese of Buffalo is burdened with a $150,000,000 settlement; neighboring Syracuse at $100,000,000; Los Angeles $1,500,000,000. [You read that right.]

What has resulted is a new and exceptionally large class of aggrieved victims: faithful Catholics served by fewer priests whose parishes are being closed and sold on the open market to developers to meet the staggering costs of settlements. Of particular pain was the failure of many dioceses to consult individual parishes in open meetings and/or formalized consultations, and the suppression of information. But, as we all learned in Catholic schools or CCD programs, bishops have unlimited powers in such matters.

Or do they? Go fill your coffee cups and come back for the story of a Catholic nun, one of few women Canon [Church] lawyers in the U.S., whose doggedness and genius with the fine print of the 1983 Code of Canon Law saved the futures of dozens of parishes across the United States.

[Imagine intermission music.]

Our book is Bending Toward Justice: Sister Kate Kuenstler and the Struggle for Parish Rights [2025] by Sister Christine Schenk, CSJ. Mary Kathleen Kuenstler, born in 1949, was raised in Wendelin, Illinois, and adopted by a Catholic couple when she was four months old. “Kate’s” parents were parish leaders, and the local convent was staffed by the Congregation of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ [PHJC]. As a teenager Kate was on the fast track toward becoming a farmer, but she entered a local high school/junior college for potential candidates to the PHJC community. She followed through and professed final vows in 1976.

Kate’s religious career is intriguing: several years of classroom teaching, troubleshooting, and earning a master’s degree in theology. She established a catechists’ certification program for the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, and later for other regions of Illinois. It was not until 1988, when Kate was 39, that her community asked her to study Canon Law. As is well documented, the Vatican under Pope John Paul II was uncomfortable with the direction of women religious in the United States. Did the PHJC community foresee a need for “in-house counsel” in dealing with the John Paul and Benedict XVI papacies? My guess is quite possibly, but the book does not address this in detail. After a period of internship in the South Bend, Indiana Tribunal, where she learned to process annulments, she left to study in Rome. According to the author, Kate graciously turned down an offer from Fort Wayne Bishop John D’Arcy to pay for her studies in exchange for ten years’ service to the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese. Rather, her religious community funded her Roman studies. [Privately she joked that “I’m no cheap date.”] The author subtly brings to the fore the maxim that “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Women religious are lay persons, not clerics; Kate herself seems to have developed a theological appreciation of the rights of all baptized persons and did not desire a future as a diocesan house lawyer, so to speak, representing individual bishops in church business--a true turning point in her career.

Chapter Three, “Canon Law Studies in Rome,” is captivating. Kate elected to pursue her canonical doctorate at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as “The Angelicum.” A top-flight school for canonists? This is the Canon Law-Italian equivalent of Stanford or Yale civil law schools in the U.S. One of its graduates was an Augustinian priest named Robert Prevost…whose doctoral dissertation was “The Role of the local prior [superior] in the Order of Saint Augustine.” I’m guessing you’ve heard of him, if not his dissertation...

But for Kate, the Roman years were hard. The Angelicum conducted its lectures and examinations—including the grueling oral comprehensives—in the Italian tongue. The language, the living situations, the unreliability of Roman public transportation, and the absence of her religious community were formidable obstacles, and they are best described in the book itself. But it is worth noting Kate’s areas of academic concentration: annulments, international law, and sacraments. Of the latter, Kate would say that Canon Law addressed sacramental life but “never in a theological way. It’s always in a procedural way.” She also studied “temporal goods” in the 1983 Code of Canon Law—matters of finance and property management of a diocese. She was, in fact, preparing herself to become something of a pioneer in American Catholicism, a defender of lay rights where parish entities were involved, based on the theological principle that Baptism confers rights upon all members of the Church. Her dissertation was her first exercise of muscle, an account of a conflict between the Carmelite Order of women religious—then renewing its constitution and structure--and Pope John Paul II’s Curia or administrative bureaucracy. Evidently no career-minded soul in Catholic academia rushed to assume the cause of the Carmelites in a public forum until England’s Cardinal Basil Hume personally asked Kate to write a frank history of the affair. [A sixteen-page summary of her dissertation, “The Fractured Face of Carmel,” is posted on-line for free.]

Before delving into the specifics of Sister Kate’s work, it is important to say a few words about Canon Law itself, which governs every aspect of Catholic life. I studied Law under the 1917 Code then in force. I was ten years ordained when the new 1983 Code was released; our Orlando bishop, Thomas J. Grady, brought in a team of nationally known Canon lawyers for a week’s workshop for all the priests of our diocese to familiarize us with the changes from the 1917 legislation. It was one of the finest educational programs I have ever attended. Florida was in full growth mode—there was little or no discussion of legislation on closing parishes. Most of us were looking for new legal guidelines on such matters as annulments and marriage laws. I am embarrassed to say that I do not own a copy of the 1983 Code—it got lost in a move--but fortunately the Law in its entirely is available free on-line and in English. Of particular interest for us in this post are two provisions which play a significant role in Sister Kate’s work:

Can. 1222 §1. If a church cannot be used in any way for divine worship and there is no possibility of repairing it, the diocesan bishop can relegate it to profane but not sordid use.

§2. Where other grave causes suggest that a church no longer be used for divine worship, the diocesan bishop, after having heard the presbyteral council, can relegate it to profane but not sordid use, with the consent of those who legitimately claim rights for themselves in the church and provided that the good of souls suffers no detriment thereby.

It is the “grave causes” wording that created serious difficulties in many dioceses and disheartened many Catholics. The local bishop alone makes the final decision on what constitutes “grave causes;” the presbyteral council must be “heard” but it is not legislative, i.e., it cannot override the bishop. [I was president of Orlando’s Priest Council for two terms; the limitations of Canon Law I know.] In everyday language, Canon 1222 would seem to say that closing parishes and all the attendant implications are solely matters for the bishop, with a cautionary reminder to respect the sensitivities of Catholic parishioners regarding the future use of the church and parish facilities. You wouldn’t want your parish church sold to a gambling establishment for “business purposes.”

The ‘post-abuse” era created a new dilemma, i.e., the closing of healthy, vibrant, solvent parishes in dioceses with heavy debts, penalties, and bankruptcies. Does the evangelical spirit and identities of such parish communities count for nothing in a bishop’s decision to close the facilities and disperse the faithful to other parish communities? Again. Canon 1222 does not consider this question. Generally, bishops interpreted the “grave causes” phrase exclusively to financial circumstances and shortages of priests—a dangerous road because the law thus interpreted implies that a parish is buildings and assets, nothing more. The Baptismal community of its members—its sacramental identity—had no bearing on the final destiny of a parish.

These would be the kinds of parishes likely to seek the services of an independent Canon Lawyer such as Sister Kate, though she took up this ministry at a time when lay Catholics were painfully learning that demonstrations, church occupations, and media blitzes had little to no impact on local bishops, let alone on Vatican appeals courts. And as the author documents, the Catholic Church closings themselves were bittersweet, even cruel. In one diocese the bishop personally celebrated the final Mass of every closing parish in his territory and then padlocked the doors behind him.

Kate’s gift to the Church in this crisis was a gallant attempt to bring the Biblical-theological sense of parish as a Spirit-filled communion of faith into the nuts and bolts of canonical-legal considerations. In short, Faith must count for something in the deliberations of the Church. She was asking the Church Court system in Rome—and American bishops in their administrative behavior—to bring to law the teaching of Vatican II that parish communities are grace-filled creations exclusive of their temporal assets. I would be remiss if I neglected to comment on how plowing new ground brings together a true variety of souls. In 2010, during Roman litigation of parish closings in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, Kate engaged in fascinating correspondence with Cardinal Raymond Burke of the Apostolic Signatura [akin to our Supreme Court]. Burke is known to many Catholics as the ultra-conservative defender of the Tridentine Mass, an advocate for the right of Catholics to worship in the Latin Rite of the Council of Trent [1545-1563] and a fighter for the rights of Tridentine Catholic Churches.

The heart of the book is a detailed account of several dioceses where Sister Kate was retained as an independent Church canonist to defend parish communities against arbitrary dismantling of their membership, closure and/or sale of their church buildings, and dispersion to other Catholic churches. These include parishes in the dioceses of Syracuse, Camden, Cleveland, and New York City. While the problems of each diocese are similar, each one cited here had/has unique personalities, issues, and timelines; you would not be reading the same plotline multiple times. The author notes that for every hour of “lawyering,” Kate spent multiple hours of counseling broken, angry Catholics from across the country. Frankly, there was true pastoral need for the care of this new cohort of victims. One could call the heart of this book “Bishops Behaving Badly.” My little sister’s parish—St. Bernadette’s Parish in Orchard Park, New York—was decreed closed last November, effective May 1, 2025, just a few days ago. My understanding is that her parish has retained counsel for a Vatican appeal. If you’ve never seen a diocesan “Dear John” letter, here is St. Bernadette’s. I commend the parish for making this correspondence public, and I offer prayers for the resolute priests in Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, and around the country who are ministering solicitously under very troubling conditions. I know that my family is grateful.

Obviously, one issue I have not tackled is the outcome of cases. Even when Sister Kate and other canonists were able to win reprieves or reverses in Roman court, there was and is still the issue of enormous indebtedness. If you read the St. Bernadette letter, you saw that the pastor-administrator was told to clean out all accounts and to alert parishioners that major fund drives in all parishes would be held to retire a $150,000,000 indebtedness. Frankly, I think that is impossible for Buffalo, and I will do a follow-up posting as developments warrant. Please feel free to let me know what is happening in your parish/diocese.

The intensity of Kate’s work came to an end when she died of cancer in 2019. I was reading my notes and writing this review when Cardinal Prevost was elected to the papacy last Thursday. It is hard for me to imagine that the scenarios played out in Bending Toward Justice will repeat themselves with a practicing Canon Lawyer, Pope Leo XIV, at the helm. Better interpretations of the Code and clearer understandings of baptismal rights are to be hoped for. And on top of that, the pope’s childhood church in Chicago, St. Mary of the Assumption, was closed and converted into a community center. [See photo on Cafe online sites, courtesy of the Cardinal Newman Society.] He has skin in the game, as they say.

In a few weeks I will return to revisit this discussion with an emphasis upon Church debt –a real thing, as we saw the numbers above—and a perceived shortage of parish leadership.

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