scholarly journals A Spiritual Inheritance: Black Catholics in Southern Maryland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura E. Masur
Keyword(s):  
Black Catholics

African American Catholics in the South and Desegregation, 1945–1970

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-200
Author(s):  
Mark Newman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Educational Quality ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Community Institutions ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

Recollections from former students often present a positive appreciation of black Catholic schools primarily for their educational quality but also, in many cases, for their emphasis on self-worth and also, occasionally, on black culture and heritage. African American Catholics valued black schools and churches as religious and community institutions. Prelates generally sought to achieve desegregation by closing or downgrading black Catholic institutions. African American Catholics differed in their response. While some black Catholics reluctantly accepted such action as a necessary price for desegregation, others opposed these measures, upset by the one-sided nature of Catholic desegregation and inspired by the rise of black con consciousness in the second half of the 1960s. Some disillusioned African Americans, especially younger Catholics, left the church.

Liturgy as Identity Work in Predominantly African American Parishes

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-152
Author(s):  
Tia Noelle Pratt
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
Race And Religion ◽  
The U.S

The experiences of African American Catholics are grossly underrepresented in the sociological literature on both race and religion. This is due, in part, to the perception that being both Black and Catholic is a disparate identity. This chapter asserts that while the approximately three million Black Catholics in the U.S. are indeed a minority, their historically rich past and dynamic present make them an integral part of both American Catholicism and the African American religious experience. This chapter explores how Black Catholics in predominantly African American parishes use liturgy to actively combine their dual heritages in forming a distinct Black Catholic identity. Participant observation research identified three distinct styles of liturgy—Traditionalist, Spirited, and Gospel—that highlight the diversity of religious expression among African American Catholics while also heeding the mandate of the Black Bishops of the U.S. to be “authentically Black” and “truly Catholic.”

Parish and Place

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia Colleen Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organizational Form ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Latin Mass ◽  
The Us ◽  
Structural Responses ◽  
Depth Interviews

The Catholic Church stands at the forefront of an emergent majority-minority America. Parish and Place tells the story of how the largest US religion is responding at the local level to unprecedented cultural, racial, linguistic, ideological, and political diversification among American Catholics. Specifically, it explores bishops’ use of personal parishes—parishes formally established not on the basis of territory, but purpose. Today’s personal parishes serve an array of Catholics drawn together by shared identities and preferences rather than shared neighborhoods. Their contemporary application permits Catholic leaders to act upon the perceived need for named, specialist organizations alongside the more common territorial parish, designed to serve all in its midst. Parish and Place documents the US Catholic Church’s earlier move away from national parishes and more recent renewal of the personal parish as an organizational form. In-depth interviews and national survey data detail the rise and rationale behind new parishes for the Traditional Latin Mass, for Vietnamese Catholics, for Black Catholics, and more. Featuring insights from bishops, priests, and diocesan leaders throughout the United States, chapters offer a rare view of institutional decision-making from the top. The book is at once a demonstration of structural responses to diversity across wider conceptions of space, and a look at just how far fragmentation can go before it challenges cohesion and unity.

Black Catholics

1971 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon P. Alston ◽  
Letitia T. Alston ◽  
Emory Warrick
Keyword(s):  
Black Catholics

Father Tolton’s Soldiers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kymberly N. Pinder
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
The Real ◽  
Conscious Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Churches

This chapter examines the use of black imagery in three Catholic churches in Chicago: Saint Sabina Church, Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church, and Holy Angels Catholic Church. It first provides an overview of Chicago's black Catholicism before discussing Saint Sabina's visual ministry, led by its activist white pastor Michael Pfleger. In particular, it explores how Pfleger foregrounds his activist ministry in the visualization of the real and the imagined blackness of his congregants and himself. It then considers Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church's exterior mosaics of black martyrs and church fathers, designed by artist Ildiko Repasi who made a conscious effort to make her work conform to the spirit of the heavily damaged work that she was initially commissioned to repair. Those compositions from decades earlier focused on the history of those figures in Catholicism relevant to black Catholics and Saint Elizabeth's history. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Richard Hunt's liturgical sculptures at Holy Angels Catholic Church.

Beyond Parish Boundaries: Black Catholics and the Quest for Racial Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 264-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Black Equality ◽  
National Networks

Abstract According to most historians, the majority of northern urban Catholics before Vatican II (1962–1965) were ensconced in their parish boundaries, viewing their existence through the lens of the parish and focusing the majority of their attention on matters within their particular geographic location. As African Americans moved north during the Great Migration (1910s–1960s) and the racial dynamics of cities changed, some black Catholics began to organize for what they called “interracial justice,” a term that reflected their belief that black equality would benefit African Americans and whites. This article argues that the parish boundaries paradigm for understanding Catholicism prior to the reforms of Vatican II fails to account for the efforts of black Catholics working for interracial justice. This article considers four ways black Catholic interracialists moved beyond their parish boundaries: (a) the national networks they cultivated with white priests; (b) the theological doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ they used to support their work; (c) the local relationships they developed with non-Catholics; and (d) the connections they made with young white Catholics. By advancing this argument, this essay highlights the relationship between race and religion—both how the institutional Catholic church reinforced racial hierarchies and how black Catholics leveraged their faith to tear them down. Finally, this article reorients the history of Catholic interracialism by focusing on black laypeople and connects two bodies of literature that rarely comment on one another: that of Catholicism and the long civil rights movement.

scholarly journals Augustine Tolton’s Struggle as a Black Catholic against Discrimination as Portrayed in From Slave to Priest by Caroline Hamesath and They Called Him Father Gus by Roy Bauer

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Agnes Mira Damayanti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Good Relation ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Positive Impacts

This thesis aims to analyze how Black Catholics overcome the discrimination against their life in American society during the nineteenth century and also to explore what are the impacts of Black Catholics struggle portrayed in the biographies entitled From Slave to Priest and They Called Him Father Gus. The interdisciplinary approach applied in this thesis are including literature, sociology, and the concept of time and macro to micro by McDowell are used to enhance the analysis of Black Catholics’ struggle against the discrimination that they got in American society during the nineteenth century.The findings of the thesis show that Black Catholics did some actions to overcome the discrimination against their life in American society. The actions done by Black Catholics are the sign that they work hard struggling against the discrimination from whites, Catholic Church, and Black Protestants. Also, since this thesis highlights the impact of Black Catholics’ struggle, it indicates that the struggle of Black Catholics, represented mostly by the struggle of Father Augustine Tolton, give the positive impacts such as maintaining the good relation among black and white Catholics, inspired Black Catholics to keep struggle for their faith and inspired the establishment of Black Catholics’ organizations. Key words: Black Catholics, Father Augustine Tolton, Struggle, Impacts

Black Catholics and Black Power

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Cressler
Keyword(s):  
Black Power ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Black Panthers ◽  
Archdiocese Of Chicago ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Freedom Struggles

This chapter introduces the Black Catholic activists in Chicago who, inspired by Black Power and the Second Vatican Council, fought for the self-determination of Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago and contributed to the birth of the national Black Catholic Movement. It argues that Black Power was more important than interracial liberalism with regard to Black Catholic involvement in the Black freedom struggles. It focuses on the protest movement to make Fr. George H. Clements, a prominent Black priest and activist, pastor of St. Dorothy parish. This movement united Black Catholics with Black Panthers and other Black Power organizations. The chapter discusses the creation of Black Catholic liturgies that creatively combined Catholic ritual practice with black cultural nationalism. It also illustrates that the incorporation of Black Power into Catholic life by activists was incredibly controversial, especially for other Black Catholics who objected to the “racial particularism” of Black nationalism, which they understood to be in conflict with Catholic universalism.

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