African-American Catholics have a dynamic history of "uncommon
faithfulness" in the church, but it's one that has been generally
invisible -- even to other Catholics, a U.S. nun from New Orleans told a
Rome audience.
Dominican Sister Jamie Phelps, director of the
Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of New
Orleans, explored the U.S. observance of Black History Month in February
from a Catholic perspective.
She spoke Feb. 25 at the Pontifical
University of St. Thomas of Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, at a
program organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.
The U.S.
ambassador to the Vatican, Miguel Diaz, said black Catholics were a
little-known but important segment of American society, and he wanted
Rome to hear about it.
Sister Phelps recalled that when she was
growing up, people would look puzzled when she and her family showed up
at Catholic events and tell her, "You're supposed to be Protestant."
There
are about 3 million African-American Catholics in the United States
today, she said.
They generally identify closely with the teachings of
the church, on matters from abortion to concern for the poor.
"What resonates with the worldview of African-American Catholics is respect for the dignity of the human person," she said.
Black
Catholics are proud of their religious history. There were early popes
and saints from northern Africa, "and we claim them as our own," Sister
Phelps said.
"We recognize that missionaries who came to Africa
gifted us with Catholicism, even as they defined us as less than
themselves," she said.
Sister Phelps said that by establishing
schools for black Catholics as far back as the 1800s and by maintaining
Catholic schools in inner cities over the past 100 years, U.S. bishops
played a key role in promoting social justice. She worries, however,
that economic pressures are eroding that commitment to education.
"We
are losing black Catholics ... there really is a battle on for that.
The closing of schools is one of our big concerns," she said. For more
than a hundred years, she said, Catholic schools have been the major
instrument of evangelization in black communities.
"So it's sort
of crazy for us to be engaged in evangelization in one breath, and to be
closing Catholic schools in the other breath. You need to meet people
where they are," she said.
The reasons given always have to do with money, but Sister Phelps said she finds those arguments unconvincing.
"It
seems to me we're one church, and there are some rich Catholics in the
United States and there are some rich parishes. What's the obligation of
those rich Catholic parishes to nurture and sustain the Catholic Church
in the inner city, where we're supposed to be doing our ministry to the
poor?" she said.
She added: "Don't get me wrong, all black Catholics are not poor. So we should make it come out of their pockets also."