Catholics at a Crossroads: Chapter 3 Race

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!