This is the first of two blog posts I’m going to write on this. The second, which will follow either later today or tomorrow, will offer a few historical resources.
This one will be from my usual off-center, peering with my head cocked sidewise perspective. That will probably be misunderstood partly because I don’t communicate my point that clearly and partly because people are stupid, sometimes willfully so.
Onward, despite all of our limitations.
Like you, perhaps, I observe public conversations about various issues with a combination of sympathy, understanding, confusion and puzzlement. Sometimes narratives seem so off you wonder where they came from. Also, the older you get, the more frustrated you get at the repetitiveness of both events (as in..when are we going to get this right and stop doing bad and stupid things?) and discourse (as in..you younguns are just now figuring this out?)
And so it is with this conversation, which I’ll confine, since it is so wide-ranging and deep, to the Catholic side of things. So..you’re just now figuring out that racism is an issue in Catholic life? Really?
None of us can avoid centering ourselves in a public conversation, but nonetheless it’s a little bemusing to watch white Catholics, in the name of anti-racism, presenting a project as an attempt to “welcome other voices to the table.” The lack of self-awareness of the paternalism – or, shall we say, maternalism, since most saying things like that are female – is startling.
It’s rather like those times – many – when Catholics pray words like, “May we reach out to the poor” – a “prayer” which expresses quite clearly our sense of the “poor” as Other and not included in the “we.” Not really the Body of Christ.
In some ways that reflects our natural tendency to be self-referential and tribal, but the point of this post is to point out a few ways in which the embodied structures of Catholicism reinforce these tendencies, as well as racial division, especially in the United States.
I think it’s important to understand, first – and this is something I’ll come back to in the second blog post – that the American Catholic experience on race is unique, and that’s because the United States is unique. Yes, there are other multi-cultural societies, but none quite as multi-cultural as we are here, along with our unique – especially in the 18th century – approach to religion and civic life.
Moreover, do know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the American Catholic hierarchy’s actions – and inaction – on racial issues were judged mostly negatively by others around the world, particularly Rome. In other words, most American bishops and religious order leadership during this period reinforced, rather than resisted racism. And that was noted.
This is startling to some because of a particular narrative, quite prevalent in the American Church since the 1980’s. It’s a triumphalist, self-satisfied narrative, the outgrowth of apologetics enthusiasm, that has glossed over institutional sins and presented a story of American Catholicism in which the main point about race has been something like: “Well, Catholicism didn’t split during the Civil War like the Protestants. And, er, Pierre Toussaint, Katharine Drexel and Augustine Tolton, you know. And that one cool Black parish in my city.”
As I said, I’ll dig into that a bit more later. But for now, let me suggest a few points to consider that might help understand American Catholicism and race and perhaps help expand the conversation beyond Maternalistic White Saviorhood.
Catholic Life = Geography
- Catholic life is organized geographically. From diocese to parish, Catholics normally relate to their faith in a fundamentally geographical context. Therefore, concrete Catholic life is going to reflect lived, concrete social parameters. So it’s going to reflect, in general, a couple of things. First, in terms of American life, it’s going to reflect a history of segregation, both legally enforced and less formal.
- And then, as legally-enforced segregation waned, of course other divisions developed and grew, both racial and socio-economic. So, the rise of the suburban parish that reflects, not the diversity of a dense urban environment, but all the homogeneity of the gated subdivision. Which – I hasten to say – in some communities are, indeed ethnically, but of course never socio-economically.
So that’s point one. American Catholic life is lived, outside of urban areas, in the context of parishes that reflect the diversity – or lack of it – of their geographic basis.
Modern Catholic Life: Local and personal > Universal and Global
- One of the great emphases of the Second Vatican Council was attention to the local. We were called to pay attention to the unique presence of God in the local and the personal, rather than the universal. The assumption was that this would help deepen spiritual experiences of God in whatever our present moment and culture might be – and perhaps it has.
But might it have also worked to elevate division and inwardness?
As the upper-middle class suburban parish is happily celebrating God In Their Midst, centered on that experience, counting its blessings and glorying in that, might it become more difficult to understand, in that context, one’s ties to the universal, to those who live, look and speak differently in different parts of the world, or even of the city?
Along this line, the New Liturgical Movement blog ran a post suggesting the traditional, universally celebrated Latin Mass as a symbol of unity, the loss of which exacerbates division.
I hasten to add two points to this – first, the universality of the traditional form of the pre-Vatican II Mass did not prevent racial and ethnic divisions, especially in American Catholicism. Shared liturgical forms aside, the history of American Catholicism during certain periods is dominated by rivalries between Germans, Irish and Italians, as well as others. New Italian immigrants were bound and determined to found their St. Philomena Parish rather than worship at the St. Boniface, six blocks east or St. Patrick, six blocks west. And, more to the point of these posts, those assumptions about the universality of the Faith didn’t prevent racism from infecting and in some ways, defining American Catholicism.
But with a universal form of worship, there were at least fewer excuses and justifications for tribalism, rather than more. I think. And it functions as a powerful symbol as well. Sure, there are German or French parishes, but at least the Mass is substantially the same in both. That works on a deep symbolic level.
Second point: the reforms of the Second Vatican Council were intended to emphasize the deeper unity beneath visible forms. Of course. But it’s worth considering how those forms impact us. How they work to emphasize and bring out either positive or negative forces or tendencies.
As I have said in many other contexts, this is not a matter of positing either a rosy past or golden future. It’s a matter of embracing, in hope, what God calls us to, but to also be realistic about human weakness, and then fashion our structures with both of those – the ideals and human weakness – in mind.
Modern Christian Spirituality: Dreams, not Duty
Contemporary Christian spiritual trends, which American Catholicism takes up with enthusiasm, characterizes the spiritual journey as one of personal fulfillment. Of following one’s deepest desires and dreams. If, it is said, one discerns that desire or those gifts, the best way to follow God is to follow where they lead. This, of course, is elitist and reflective of a lifestyle characterized by leisure, choice and mobility, the type of life which most people through history have not have the privilege of leading.
But it also – besides not being, you know, the Gospel – works to drastically narrow our spiritual vision, to lead us on a path on which our prayers and spiritual practices become about our feelings, our sense of ourselves, our peace with where we’re at in the world. In that context, concerns about charity and justice become hobbies. They become elements that we add as part of our personal spiritual growth project rather than aspects of faith that’s presented to us as an objective reality that we have a duty to form our lives to.
Read any of the saints for a contrast. Filled with joy, at the same time, they weren’t necessarily “following their dreams.” They discerned Christ’s call to hard, hard things with difficult people amidst great suffering, and because he said, “….you do unto me“…that’s what they did. You serve, you sacrifice, you change your attitude. Not because it’s satisfying your ambition, but because Jesus did this. Jesus said this. I’m following Jesus. I must do it too. I’m not sure I like it, but here I go.
This may seem roundabout to you, and perhaps it is. But really, no talk of greater diversity in Catholicism is going to progress until we acknowledge:
Catholicism is diverse. Caucasians are a minority of Catholics, globally speaking. If you can’t see this, if you don’t live with this as your reality, then start – start – by shaking off the idea that the essence of faith is embodied by your experience in your parish in your neighborhood and that your journey is about no more than feeling good feelings of peace and fulfillment in that place.
There’s a bigger, cosmic picture that each of us is only a tiny part of. That picture is expressed vividly in the totality of Scripture, in the tradition and worship of Catholicism, in the fractured, weird, history of our faith which reaches out to every corner of the world.
Racism is real, systemic and serious. There are changes specific to that tragedy of American life that require attention and transformation. What I’m doing here is simply suggesting a reset for the Catholic approach. I’m simply maintaining that the cramped, psychologically-shaped, self-help, personal fulfillment model of faith that is lived out in segregated, self-satisfied communities, that centers the white experience as normative and treats Blacks, Latinos and, while we’re at it – “the poor” and “the disabled” – as Other we “help” and “welcome” because it makes us feel fulfilled and at peace – doesn’t do a hell of a lot to affect that transformation.