Ongoing SHU Panel Considers Church’s Relationship with Racism

Historically, the Catholic Church was more concerned with other issues

The Catholic Church was reticent in its approach to slavery and racial injustice in the U.S., according to panelists at Sacred Heart University’s fifth installment of the online discussion series, “Heart Challenges Hate: Wrestling with the Legacy of America’s ‘Original Sin.’”

Three SHU faculty members spoke with Michelle Loris, professor and associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, about the Catholic Church and its position on racial injustice in America from the time of slavery to present day. “We also want to take a look at what Catholic colleges and universities are doing or not doing in terms of racial justice,” said Loris.

Loris asked the panelists to touch upon four key factors: Pope Gregory XVI’s apostolic letter of 1839 against the Atlantic slave trade; the American Catholic bishops’ statement condemning slavery in 1958; the United States Conference of Bishops’ statement, “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love—A Pastoral Letter Against Racism,” in 2018; and the current call from students and alumni to Catholic universities that have not dismantled systemic racism within their institutions.

Slavery as an institution

Onoriode Ekeh, associate professor in the department of philosophy, theology and religious studies, began the discussion with a look at slavery in the 19th century. During this time, he said, slavery was not seen as a moral issue, but rather a legal and political one. “If you had asked a theologian in the 19th century if slavery was intrinsically evil, you wouldn’t have gotten an affirmative answer,” said Ekeh. “The answer would be ‘No, it’s not. It’s just simply that slavery is a part of the natural order.’”

Ekeh related how Pope Gregory XVI wrote in 1839 that the trade and displacement of people was wrong but failed to mention slavery as a practice. During the 19th century, said Ekeh, nearly every Protestant denomination disagreed about slavery, splitting whole churches. Meanwhile, the American Catholic Church and Rome, the cradle of the Catholic Church, remained unbothered by this issue.

In 1861, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin, diocesan leader of Natchitoches, LA, published a letter degrading Black people. “He said Black people were basically savages, and that slavery was actually a step up for them because it provided them some structure,” Ekeh said. Rome, which was very involved with the affairs of the Catholic Churches in the U.S., said nothing. It was not until 1864, when it became clear that the North would win the Civil War, that Rome took a strong stand against slavery as an institution.

The Catholic social justice tradition began, not with slavery, but with the poor working conditions of Europeans during the Industrial Revolution, which extended from 1793 to the early 1900s. Ekeh posed the question, what left Catholics so untroubled about slavery when other groups could clearly see that there was an issue?

Words do not translate to actions

The Catholic Church in the U.S. has issued two more major statements since the American Catholic bishops condemned segregation in 1958, said Daniel Rober, associate lecturer in the department of Catholic studies and assistant director of the Thomas More honors program. However, these three documents are missing some aspects, Rober said. Father Bryan Massengale, a Black priest who teaches at Fordham University, and Catholic activist-writer Eric Martin, who teaches religion at the University of California Los Angeles, have noted that the writings fail to name systemic racism. “There are individuals who have never had a racist thought in their life, but who go about their everyday actions totally complicit in racist systems in our society,” said Rober.

For many bishops who came of age between 1978 and 2005—during the papacy of John Paul II—the biggest evil was abortion. Because of this, said Rober, they had difficulty acknowledging that other major issues needed the same kind of attention. Many bishops are conservative when it comes to American social issues, particularly abortion and LGBTQ rights, and have become overly comfortable with political coalitions that at best underemphasize racial justice. “You would rarely find a bishop who would come out and make an explicitly racist statement,” said Rober. “But a lot of what they’re saying and doing is not pushing back nearly hard enough.”

Institutional responses to systemic racism

Loris said that, while the United States Conference of Bishops’ pastoral letter against racism in 2018 denounces racism and white privilege as a sin, the group has been stagnant in response to addressing actual instances of racism throughout the country.

Father Anthony Ciorra, vice president for Mission Integration, Ministry and Multicultural Affairs, said racism is a white issue. “We might talk about the sin of racism, and we say that this is wrong, but who is it that we’re referring to?” Ciorra asked. If racism is, in fact, “America’s original sin,” he continued, then people grow into a racist mentality, and children grow up learning racism until it is passed from one generation to the next. Therefore, some bishops may not be consciously racist and do not have bad intentions, but they show them nevertheless through their unintentional actions, said Ciorra.

He tied this into Loris’s final point about Catholic universities’ role regarding racism. “Part of the role of the university is to be prophetic to the Church,” said Ciorra.

The Church has failed us, he said. Those at Catholic universities are part of the Church and therefore must challenge it. “You know, the Church is an institution that moves slowly. We count time in centuries. The (Catholic) university comes out of the Church, right? And so, we move slowly. In this instance, in my career in higher education, the changes being made at our University to respond to racial injustice are the fastest-moving responses that I have seen,” said Ciorra.

Sacred Heart is taking steps to counteract systemic racism.

• Faculty have met with Black students to learn what parts of the University’s system need to change.
• There will be a hotline for people to report discriminatory issues, which then will be handled in a timely manner.
• Incoming freshmen will read So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.
• The University has formed a multicultural center as a safe space for students, staffed full time with faculty members.

“The idea is, how do we integrate these issues of race into the curriculum, but also into the daily life of our students?” said Ciorra.