1mkaop1htl6m2its812mogf3-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com



America August 6, 2019Religious orders owning slaves isn’t new—black Catholics have emphasized this history for yearsShannen Dee Williams August 06, 2019A photo of the late Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis, a renowned chronicler of black Catholic history, is seen July 31 in the center of the altar at St. Katharine Drexel Chapel of Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans surrounded by pictures of four candidates for sainthood. (CNS photo/Christine Bordelon, Clarion Herald)?Recent stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post have once again turned the spotlight on the Catholic Church’s long and largely unreconciled history of slavery in the United States. This time, the focus has shifted to the nation’s communities of nuns.Over the past few years, an increasing number of Catholic orders with roots in the pre–Civil War United States have begun to take concrete steps to confront and atone for their complicity and agency in the history of chattel slavery. In fact, their efforts represent a larger story of white orders reckoning with their longstanding histories of anti-black racism.As a historian, I am always happy when more Americans, especially Catholics, become aware of the church’s history as the first and largest corporate slaveholder in the Americas. I suspect minds will be blown again when more people become aware of Pope Nicholas V’s 1452 papal bull “Dum Diversas,” which authorized the European invasion of Africa, Asia and the Americas, and sanctioned perpetual enslavement.An increasing number of Catholic orders with roots in the pre–Civil War United States have begun to take concrete steps to confront and atone for their complicity and agency in the history of chattel slavery. Tweet thisHowever, I am deeply concerned about the current conversation and its erasure of the decades-long struggle waged by black Catholics and scholars of the black Catholic experience to bring the church’s painful history of slavery and segregation to light.The evidence of slaveholding among nuns is not new knowledge to historians of slavery and the American church—and it is not new to many black Catholics.For decades, black Catholics have been at the forefront of the fight calling for the church to confront its racist past. Descendants of the church’s enslaved communities who remained Catholic have led the way. Over the years, they and others have published hundreds of articles, including in the pages of America, and delivered even more talks to Catholic audiences in a clear and concerted effort to ensure that the foundational presence of black people in the church is not erased or forgotten.The Black Catholic Theological Symposium, the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana and several black Catholic archives also have been instrumental in the preservation of this history and the establishment of the field of black Catholic studies. These institutions have supported the pioneering scholarship of Father Cyprian Davis, Diane Batts Morrow, Bryan Massingale and many other scholars of the black Catholic experience.Unsurprisingly, an essential part of the more recent black Catholic struggle for justice has been calling upon Catholic leaders, especially religious orders of men and women, to grant access to sealed archival records that document the church’s history of slavery and segregation.The evidence of slaveholding among nuns is not new knowledge to historians of slavery and the American church—and it is not new to many black Catholics.For decades, black Catholics with roots in New Orleans asked the archdiocese to make the baptismal and confirmation records of their enslaved ancestors accessible so they could conduct genealogical work. The archdiocese had previously published 17 volumes of its sacramental records for free people. However, it had not published those for persons recorded without surnames—i.e., thousands of the church’s enslaved people. In a historic move in 2011, under the direction of Archbishop Gregory Aymond, the archdiocese digitized thousands of the church’s early sacramental records in an effort to begin to right this wrong.Black Catholics also have been at the forefront of the push to get the Vatican to confront the church’s racist past and present. In 1987, Pope John Paul II famously assailed American racism and the economic plight of black Americans following a special meeting with black Catholics during his visit to the United States. In 2016, many of the same black Catholics and others formally called upon Pope Francis to apologize for slavery. They are also leading the push to have five black American Catholics, including three black nuns and one ex-slave priest, Augustus Tolton, canonized in the church. Just two months ago, the sainthood cause for Father Tolton, who was the first black U.S. priest, advanced in Rome with Pope Francis elevating him to the status of “venerable.” Born into Catholic slavery in Missouri, Tolton is one of the scores of black pioneering priests and sisters in the United States who can trace their lineage to the earliest days of the American church and the enslaved people who built it.Three white Catholic orders of nuns in Kentucky formally apologized for their slaveholding pasts and began taking steps to atone for it 16 years before The New York Timesstory about Georgetown broke. Tweet thisThere are also many black Catholics who can trace their lineage to the nation’s founding slaveholding European Catholic families. These include the Carrolls of Maryland, who gave the nation its only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and first Catholic bishop; the Spaldings of Kentucky, who gave the U.S. church two of its pioneer bishops in Maryland and Kentucky and women congregational leaders in Kentucky; and the Pintados, who surveyed much of the land area of Spanish Florida and Louisiana.I do not deny that there are many black Catholics, like most people, who are unaware of the church’s history of slavery and segregation. I was certainly one of them before I entered graduate school. However, it is deeply disappointing that the Times and Post articles omitted, or simply overlooked, the political and intellectual work of black Catholics and other scholars of the black Catholic experience. This history, as well as reporting on related activism, is a Google search away. Moreover, scholars like Matthew Cressler have been directing public conversations on the history of black Catholics in the United States on Twitter for the past several years.Indeed, one of the most frustrating aspects of this entire episode is the fact that so much misinformation is now being spread online because the work of black Catholic history is simply not being consulted. One tweet responding to the Washington Poststory, which has received over 1,000 shares, for example, is filled with historical inaccuracies about the nation’s second successful community of African-American nuns.Because so much of this history has been suppressed or misrepresented, accuracy is essential in these kinds of conversations. So, for the record, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the nation’s and the modern world’s first successful Roman Catholic order of black nuns, are the only non-slaveholding U.S. order of sisters?known to have educated enslaved people. Unlike their white counterparts and the historically Afro-Creole Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, the Oblates never employed any admission restrictions based on race, color, class, ethnicity or previous status. Prior to the Civil War, the Oblates admitted at least 10 formerly enslaved women into their ranks. In the case of the Sisters of the Holy Family, the order (which briefly owned a small number of enslaved persons prior to the Civil War) did educate enslaved children. But they educated them on a segregated basis with free Afro-Creole children. The Holy Family sisters also briefly split apart after the admission of the order’s first formerly enslaved member in 1867, with the majority of the Afro-Creole sisters voting against her entry. This information is published and available.The untold history of black nuns in the United StatesAshley McKinlessIt also is important to note that three white Catholic orders of nuns in Kentucky formally apologized for their slaveholding pasts and began taking steps to atone for it 16 years before The New York Times story about Georgetown broke. So, while the current reckoning among other orders is important, it is not without significant precedent.If this nation is ever going to fully confront, let alone make reparation, for its foundational sin of anti-black racism and slavery, the reckoning currently underway in the Catholic Church is a necessary step forward. As such, I pray that it not only continues but also expands to every corner of the church. It is equally imperative, however, that we remember that the current moment is not the result of one archivist’s or one journalist’s discovery of this shameful history a few years ago. It is the result of a persistent and costly struggle that has been waged by the descendants of the enslaved people who built the church, and a host of archivists and scholars of the black Catholic experience, who have been fighting to preserve and disseminate this history for decades.Shannen Dee WilliamsDr. Shannen Dee Williams is the Albert LePage Assistant Professor of History at Villanova University. She is completing her first book, Subversive Habits: The Untold Story of Black Catholic Nuns in the United States, under contract with Duke University Press. In 2018, Dr. Williams received the inaugural Sister Christine Schenk Award for Young Catholic Leadership from FutureChurch for using history to foster racial justice and reconciliation in religious congregations of women.? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download