Standing in the Shoes my Mother Made

A Womanist Theology

Diana Hayes

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780800697570
• eBook ISBN: 9781451406573
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

PART I

FAITH AND WORSHIP

CHAPTER ONE

WE’VE COME THIS FAR BY FAITH

Black Catholics and Their Church

THE BLACK CATHOLIC BISHOPS¹ of the United States issued their first and, to date, only pastoral letter, What We Have Seen and Heard,² in 1984. They did so in recognition of their belief that “the Black Catholic community in the American Church has now come of age.” This coming of age, they noted, brings with it the duty, the privilege, and the joy to share with others the rich experience of the “Word of Life.”³ Today, we are witnesses to further signs of that coming of age. African American Catholics⁴ are today asserting their rightful place in the Roman Catholic Church, nationally and globally. Basing our claim for recognition and inclusion on our history in the American church, which predates the Mayflower, our persistent faith gives living expression to the “Word of Life,” which we have received and which we fully embrace:

you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Eph 2:19–22)

Strangers and sojourners no longer, African American Catholics can no longer be required, in the words of the Psalmist, to “… sing the Lord’s song in a strange land” (Ps 137). Instead, we are taking down our harps and converting that “strange land” into a homeland, one rich with the woven tapestries of our voices lifted in praise and song; of our spirituality expressed in deep and heartfelt prayer and preaching; and of our cultural heritage—a colorful mixture of peoples of Africa, the Caribbean, the West Indies, South America, and North America.

A New Birth

In many ways, the voices of these new and yet so old Catholics can be seen as calling forth a new witness. We see ourselves as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” who work to “declare the wonderful deeds of him who called (us) out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Throughout our existence in the United States we were seen as “no people” but today, African American Catholics affirm that we “are God’s people”; once little mercy was given us “but now (we) have received mercy” from God on high (1 Peter 2:9–10). As part of that witness, we recognize the necessity of exposing the miseducation received by all, of whatever race, who dwell in this land regarding the contributions of our black and Catholic foremothers and forefathers to the present status of the United States. The truth of our history, both in this and other adopted lands, and in our motherland as well, must be recovered, for that history reveals the proud and distinctive heritage that is ours, one which predates the Greek and Roman empires as well as Christopher Columbus. Black Catholics must also tell our story within our church, a story that has as part of its richness a cherished role in the life of the church dating back to Africa. For it was our African foremothers and forefathers who received the teachings of Christ from the church’s earliest beginnings; they who nurtured and sheltered those teachings, preserving them from the depredations of those who were not believers; they who received, revitalized, and re-Christianized those teachings, too often distorted at the hands of their would-be masters, in the new lands of the Americas. Cyprian Davis has written of those early years of African history:

Long before Christianity arrived in the Scandinavian countries, at least a century before St. Patrick evangelized Ireland, and over two centuries before St. Augustine would arrive in Canterbury, and almost seven centuries before the conversion of the Poles and the establishment of the kingdom of Poland, this mountainous Black kingdom (Ethiopia) was a Catholic nation with its own liturgy, its own spectacular religious art, its own monastic tradition, its saints, and its own spirituality.⁵

This cherished heritage must once again be brought forth, exposed to the light of a new day, and shared with all of the church catholic.

One can arguably say that the continued presence of black Catholics in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States serves as a subversive memory, one that turns all of reality upside down, for it is a memory of hope brought forth from pain, of perseverance maintained in the face of bloody opposition, of faith born of tortured struggle.⁶ It is the memory of a people forced to bring forth life from conditions conducive only to death, much as Christ himself was restored to life after a scandalous death. Ours is a memory of survival against all odds. It is the memory of a people, born in a strange and often hostile land, paradoxically celebrating Christ’s victory over death as a sign of God’s promise of their eventual liberation from a harsh servitude imposed by their fellow Christians. Today, black Catholics are affirming that we are no longer sojourners, we are no longer just passing through; we are here to stay and intend to celebrate our presence as only we can.

The Sinful Persistence of Racism

This memory becomes even more challenging when we recognize the demographic shifts taking place both in the United States and in the Roman Catholic Church as we enter upon the third millennium. U.S. Census statistics present a picture of a very different American society and American Catholic church, one in which persons of color, as a whole, are the majority rather than the minority. African American Catholics will be a part of this majority, which can be seen, depending on one’s perspective, as threatening to the very stability and identity of both church and state, or simply as a sign of the changing times that must be dealt with.⁷

These changes do provide a critical challenge for us as church today as we seek to affirm the new understandings of theology, ministry, and liturgy that are emerging from persons heretofore marginalized on the church’s periphery. The development of a black Catholic theology is only one example of these shifts in understanding that must be acknowledged and affirmed. This theology was born out of the struggle to maintain both our Catholic faith and our black culture, in the face of the racism that still besets our church, institutionally and individually. The Pontifical Peace and Justice Commission noted in 1989:

Today racism has not disappeared. There are even troubling new manifestations of it here and there in various forms, be they spontaneous, officially tolerated or institutionalized. The victims are certain groups of persons whose physical appearance or ethnic, cultural or religious characteristics are different from those of the dominant group and are interpreted by the latter as being signs of innate and definite inferiority, thereby justifying all discriminatory practices in their regard.⁸

Racism is a fact of life that continues to torment black Americans regardless of their particular faith. It has its roots in the very foundations of our society where, in drafting the Constitution, the enslavement of blacks was recognized and accepted. The revolutionary phrases of the founding fathers, proclaiming liberty and justice for all and declaring the equality of all “men,” ignored the condition of black humanity. As the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall noted, “the famous first three words of that document, ‘We the People,’ did not include women, who were denied the vote, or blacks, who were enslaved.”⁹ The intent was clearly expressed in the notification that blacks counted as only three-fifths of a white person and then only for the purpose of white male representation in the new Congress. The Constitution of the United States of America was developed not as a color-blind document, but as one assuring the hegemony of white, propertied males over all others living in the newly formed union.

Racism, today, has changed its face. Rather than the blatant, overt racism of prior years, today we are confronted with a more sinister—because it is less visible—form of covert racism. Institutional racism “originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society and thus receives far less public consideration.”¹⁰

As such, institutional racism is more than a form “sanctioned by the Constitution and laws of a country”¹¹ as the Vatican commission suggests. For even after that Constitution has been expunged of its color bias and the laws mandating segregation and second-class citizenship have been removed, the aura of institutionalized racism still persists. It persists in the very warp and woof of that society, which has, for so long, been imbued with an ideology supported all too often by an erroneous interpretation of the teachings of sacred scripture.

The 1960s and 1970s saw significant changes in the laws governing American society with regard to African Americans. Yet, today, many of those changes have been nullified and labeled as preferential treatment, thereby ignoring the centuries of slavery and second-class citizenship that hindered the descendants of African slaves from attaining equal opportunity before the law. All too often, persons of faith have been silent in the face of these assaults against the human dignity of persons of color.

Racism still persists. It is a mind-set that flies in the face of sacred scripture and the teachings of the Christian church. It is a distortion of the teaching that “all are endowed with a rational soul and are created in God’s image.”¹² Racism is incompatible with God’s design. It is a sin that goes beyond the individual acts of individual human beings. Racism, to be blunt, is sin that is incorporated into and becomes a constituent part of the framework of society, sin that is the concentration to the infinite of the personal sins of those who condone evil.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have affirmed this understanding:

The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority. Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are. Perhaps no single individual is to blame. The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real. The sin is social in nature in that each of us in some measure are accomplices.… The absence of personal fault for an evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must seek to resist and undo injustices we have not caused, lest we become bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt for it.¹³

Reflecting on the Journey

Theology, in its simplest understanding, can be seen as “God-talk.” We, as African American Catholics, often become intimidated when asked to reflect theologically on a matter of importance to us, such as our relationship with God or how we see our role in the church, because we see ourselves as academically unqualified. There are too few of us with academic degrees in systematic theology.¹⁴ Yet, when asked to simply talk about God’s action in our lives, or the working of the Holy Spirit in our midst, our reaction is quite different.

Although the world of academe may not recognize our reflections as such, we are, indeed, speaking theologically when we do this. And as African Americans, we have been doing so for all of our existence. What we have done, as a holistic people in whom the sacred and secular are intertwined rather than alienated, is simply to talk about God, about Jesus Christ, about the Holy Spirit, and about their importance in our lives—a God that you can lean on, a brother you can depend on in your darkest hours, a Spirit that walks with you and brings peace to a troubled soul. We have not put our theology down in dry, dusty tomes that no one can or really wants to read; we have lived it in the midst of our daily lives. That theology has been expressed most clearly in our songs, in our stories, in our prayers. We talk of a God who saves, a God who preserves, a God who frees and continues to free us from the troubles of this world.

Theology can also be seen as “interested conversation.” In other words, theology is talk, dialogue, discussion, conversation about God and God’s salvific action in the world not from an objective, unbiased stance because no such stance truly exists, but from the perspective of one who is “involved,” one who is caught up in that discussion, one whose involvement is “colored,” as it were, by his or her own history, heritage and culture. We cannot speak about the church, Jesus Christ, or anything else except from within the context of who we are: a people caught in a daily struggle to survive despite the constant assaults of racism, prejudice, and discrimination from the institutional structures of both our society and our church.

This is to say, in one sense, that there are as many different theologies within the church as there are persons talking about God but, on the other hand, that all of these theologies have as their foundation the context of Roman Catholicism with its particular teachings, traditions, and faith beliefs. Our theology as African American Catholics is “interested conversation” about that “ultimate reality” that is central to the core of our being, our faith in Jesus Christ. As such, it cannot be understood or conceived of apart from our being and the place in which we find ourselves. All theologies are particular, rooted in and arising from a particular context, the context of the people engaged in their development. Theology arises out of their loves and their angers, their joys and their sorrows, their sufferings and their hopes for a better tomorrow as they express these in the light of their faith. Today, we, as an African American Catholic people, are engaged in the development of a black Catholic theology that speaks truly to us and expresses who we are and whose we are, as children of a justice-loving God, for the enlightenment of the entire church.

We are African Americans: a people with roots deeply sunk in the history and culture of our African homeland, yet also a people with a long and proud history in these United States. Both strands of our heritage are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Here I am, Send Me: The Making of a Catholic, Womanist Theologian
• Part I: Faith and Worship
• Part II: Ministry and Social Justice
• Part III: The Public Face of Faith
• Part IV: A Womanist Faith Challenge
• Notes
• Index