Black History Month, as with all celebrations of ethnic diversity, allows us to learn of and appreciate what makes our sisters and brothers who they are. Our neighborhoods, parishes, nation and world can be brought closer and made better by sharing our cultures. With respect to the Catholic Church, this particular celebration holds great promise for learning, healing, and most importantly, evangelization of souls in Black Communities long estranged from the Sacraments by a difficult history.
The Catholic Church is all but non-existent in many Black families and communities, and therefore absent in the lives of a people that certainly have a need for a beacon of hope and justice. This has been my own experience as well. I was received into the Catholic Church through the RCIA process as an adult in 2002. That’s not to say that Jesus and church were absent from my life, because Jesus and church have been the backbone of Black families and communities throughout our history in this country, though in many denominations outside the Catholic Church, especially in the North.
My attendance at the National Black Catholic Congress XIII in July of 2023 was an eye-opening experience. I found that Black Catholics from the Southern areas tended to be life-long Catholics with generations of family history in the Church going back to the days of slavery.
In the South where the issue was outright discrimination, segregation and even exclusion, we have a Black People rooted in the Church, the Sacraments, the Eucharist. If you ask them, and I did, they say that Jesus is their beacon of hope and justice; and that Jesus abides in a particular way, in the Eucharist, only in the Catholic Church.
The opportunity before us is to bring the northern and southern Black community together and then into the larger Catholic community to share this incredible tale of perseverance for the sake of the Eucharist.
Sharing the stories as part of not just Black history, but Church history, has the power to attract many to Jesus and the Sacraments. The road will be bumpy because it will force us to acknowledge and recall a very painful history, but if we walk together toward Jesus, guided by the Holy Spirt, Spirit, we will arrive safely where God the Father wants us to be.
Black History Month has assured that Black leaders, innovators, athletes and performers are recognized and celebrated. Along with the now-established Black Catholic History Month in November, the Church has sought to do the same. There are Black Catholics that are leaders, innovators, athletes, artists, musicians; highlight them as examples for Blacks and for all. There are also Black Saints. Celebrate them! Be proud of them! Put their art up in your parishes! They will be beacons to others that look like them and that will bring people to Jesus, thereby growing the Church.
Currently the canonization causes of the so-called “Saintly Six” (Mother Mary Lange, Father Augustus Tolton, Mother Henriette DeLille, Mr. Pierre Toussaint, Ms. Julia Greeley, and Sister Thea Bowman) are under consideration and in various levels of the process. There are currently no African American canonized saints, and still there are generations of Black Catholics in the very lands where those same generations suffered under slavery.
Seeing the canonization of the first African American saint(s) is something that we should all be willing to pray for. Recognition and sharing of these and other exemplary Black Catholic names and stories during Black History Month and Black Catholic History Month would surely stir up a spiritual curiosity that can be used to evangelize.
I was pleased to see the release on Feb. 5 of the National Black Catholic Congress XII’s five-year pastoral plan which includes recommendations and suggestions developed using the input of thousands of clergy, religious and lay faithful, Black and White, collected before, during, and after the July, 2023 gathering. I will be reviewing the plan with Multicultural Ministries Coordinator Sr. Miriam Perez, and later with diocesan committees to discern how and what we can implement here in Metuchen.
Black History and Black Catholic History months can be our “40 days” twice a year, like Lent and Advent, to look inward for areas we can call upon Jesus to help us improve; to become more like Him in this particular mission … the salvation of souls within the Body of Christ in Black families and communities.
Deacon Rick Fortune serves in the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, Metuchen.