Rich Thoughts

The cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed that religion must simultaneously challenge and uphold the status quo. Religion that does not challenge society... has no purpose. By contrast, religion that condemns society in toto... runs the risk of becoming a cult.

Four months ago, I was skeptical of terms such as white fragility and tone policing. But in my prayer since the death of George Floyd, now realize that I unwittingly participate in these phenomena. I must take an active role in making our society more just and more equitable. In my evolving reflections, I wonder: does the Church, as Geertz suggests, provide us with role models - saints - to challenge what until now so many white Catholics have unconsciously upheld?

The Church names two patron saints of racial justice. Unfortunately, no matter how holy these men were, their lives upheld the racial status quo, rather than challenged it.

The Spanish Jesuit Peter Claver (1580-1654) boarded slave ships when they arrived in modern-day Colombia to care for the ill and frightened captives. He fostered pastoral relationships with these people: feeding, catechizing, and baptizing them. Nevertheless, in a compelling 2015 article in Horizons, liberation theologian Katie Grimes of Villanova University demonstrates how Claver promoted black slavery and white superiority. For example, he preached to Africans preparing for baptism, “Just as a serpent sheds his skin, you all ought to change your life and customs... until you can forget the memory of all of these things."

The illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed African Native American woman in Peru, Martin de Porres (1579-1639) became a Dominican lay brother and established an orphanage and a children's hospital. In the same Horizons article, Grimes points out that the Dominican superiors repeatedly praised this first saint of African descent in the Americas because he humbly accepted his status as inferior to his white brothers, and because he urged other people of color to accept their lesser status as well.

Grimes argues that she is not simply imposing 21st-century standards on the 17th-century Claver and de Porres. Even before Claver and de Porres were born, other prominent Catholic Spaniards in the New World condemned the mistreatment of people of color, including Antonio de Valdivieso, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Bartolomé de Albornoz.

Sadly, of the many canonized saints in the Americas, none seems an appropriate patron for racial justice. There is one glimmer of hope: the cause of Sister Thea Bowman (1937-1990), an advocate for African Americans within the Catholic Church, was opened in 2018. To brighten your day, watch or read the speech she gave to the United States Catholic bishops in 1989. Most delightfully, she invites the overwhelmingly white bishops to stand up, join hands, and sing... and they do! As Bowman prophesied, "If we walk and talk and work and play and stand together in Jesus' name... we shall overcome - overcome the poverty overcome the loneliness - overcome the alienation and build together a Holy city... where they'll know that we are here because we love one another."

 ~ Fr. Rich Andre, CSP