Healing the Racial Divide. Lincoln Rice
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used Martin Luther King Jr.’s image of the Beloved Community to write about the Church’s role in confronting racism. Nilson understands this notion in King as pointing to “both the fulfillment of the American dream and the actualization of the Kingdom of God, a society where all live lives that befit their dignity as children of God; a society where everyone is accepted, everyone belongs.”118 Nilson then provides concrete examples of how the Beloved Community is not being actualized in American society or the Catholic Church. Across the United States, it is the norm to see the closing of diocesan offices dedicated to black Catholics. If anything, resources need to be rededicated to confronting racism on the diocesan and parish level. In order to take King’s image seriously, Nilson wishes there were diocesan plans that “intentionally fostered interracial communities and neighborhoods.”119
Without a doubt, Nilson’s work is permeated with the thoughts and ideas of African American intellectuals and theologians. He is well read in black sources and familiar with the history of slavery, Jim Crow, racism, and black theology in the United States. That said, while his thought offers advice and admonitions to white theologians and Catholics, it rarely provides any proper role for African Americans in securing their own liberation. Nevertheless, Nilson’s omission here is certainly due to humility and not to an accidental oversight. As someone who considers himself an apprentice to African American thinkers, Nilson does not deem himself qualified to give advice to blacks. This is why he quotes Cone’s advice to white Catholics, telling them that their best role in fighting racism is to be supportive of black empowerment.120
Summary of the Second Section
All the theologians I’ve discussed in the second half of this chapter are imbued with a sense that black agency and the use of African American sources are essential for any racial justice project. In addition, Cone plays a critical role in the thought of all the Catholic theologians, and it is difficult to imagine what their theology would look like without the inspiration they have received from Cone. Nevertheless, while Cone is suspicious of any interracial project, his Catholic peers, black and white alike, cannot comprehend a Catholic racial justice framework that is not interracial. In other words, while Cone is not at all troubled by the prospect of leaving whites behind who are roadblocks on the path to racial justice, the Catholic theologians never consider this as an option in their writings. For example, Massingale clearly laments and agonizes over the racist attitudes entrenched in the mindset of much of the Catholic laity and even among the American bishops, but he continues to dialogue with and challenge white Catholics.121
Placing an importance on African American sources and the black experience in the United States means that examinations of racism must begin with the suffering that is experienced by blacks. This experience, which is usually augmented with data from the social sciences, converses with traditional theological doctrines in order to permit fresh and relevant theological insights into the problem of racism.122 The theology in the second section is almost as much a historical project as an ethical project. Moreover, the inclusion of historical scholarship demonstrates the benefit and necessity of black agency. The stories of black struggle and survival brought to light by these theologians illustrate the powerful role that African Americans can and must play in their own liberation.
Conclusion
The contrast between the first and second sections of this chapter reveals the necessity and practicality of creating a racial justice framework that embraces African American sources and promotes black agency. The theological framework of the second half of the chapter began with racial injustice as its starting point in order to properly diagnose the evil. The theological framework of the first section of the chapter was more theoretical, less concrete, and less relevant to the all too common injustices that are faced by African Americans. Therefore, the solutions for addressing racism—such as calls for state and Church intervention, for patience and forgiveness to be practiced by African Americans, and for whites to be more kind and intentional in their actions toward blacks—were often theoretical and impractical.
Even if it could be argued that the decades of writings by LaFarge and the issuance in 1958 of Discrimination and the Christian Conscience laid the groundwork for Catholic involvement in the civil rights movement, it was the witness and actions of African Americans that inspired white Catholics to support or join the movement. The American bishops admit in Brothers and Sisters to Us that Catholic involvement in the civil rights movement had its impetus in African American thought and action.123
Cone is also very frank in his belief that black liberation can brought about only by African Americans. Cone’s historical narrative of black and white churches illustrates how white churches have repeatedly compromised their Christian values in regard to white supremacy. Even the African American bishops of the United States candidly wrote that black Catholics must “demand” recognition and leadership roles to aid the Catholic Church in eradicating racism.124 Copeland’s retrieval of Henriette Delille, a figure who shamed the greater society and the local Catholic Church of her time period with her aid to fellow blacks, is another reminder of the constant failure of white clerics and laity to address white supremacy in the United States.
In the writings of the theologians of the second section, there is an emphasis on the positive—and integral—role that black retrieval can have in deepening our comprehension of the mysteries of the Christian faith as well as in producing efficacious ethical formulations based on these mysteries. The profound experience of suffering and injustice that plagues the African American experience is invaluable as a resource for understanding hope in dire circumstances as well as the Christian necessity to reject any notion that racial injustice is willed by God. The very use of the black experience affirms the dignity and respect that the authors have for African Americans. This respect is completely absent in LaFarge. At best, LaFarge’s omission of black sources represents his lack of creativity; at worst, it represents a form of racism that does not deem the black experience as worthy of retrieval or having anything important to offer. Massingale’s emphasis on the elimination of racial stigma and racial privilege instead of racial differences is very different from the viewpoint offered by LaFarge, which focused solely on the ontological equality of the races and dismissed any type of cultural equality.
The survey performed in this chapter on the state of Catholic social thought regarding racial justice in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries clearly indicates the necessity for continued retrieval of African American narratives to aid the Church in more adequately confronting white supremacy. In addition, Cone asserts that white theologians, like me, can play a role in black freedom if they are willing to reorder their theological priorities according to an African American cultural viewpoint.125 As a forgotten black Catholic who dedicated his life to fighting racial injustice, Dr. Arthur G. Falls is an indispensable resource for those wishing to improve on contemporary Catholic racial thought. Therefore, the next chapter will narrate the life of Falls, and chapter 3 will critique his writings.
1. Nilson, Hearing past the Pain, 31. The FCC will be mentioned only briefly here; the focus in this section will be the theology and praxis of LaFarge. The FCC will be addressed more concretely in the next two chapters through Arthur’s involvement with the organization.
2. Southern, John LaFarge, 362.
3. Massingale, Racial Justice, 47–50.
4.