September 2011 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

A Historical Failure to Speak

In "The History of Black Catholics in the United States", Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis, professor of church history at St. Meinrad Abbey, Indiana, writes from a black perspective. Davis asserts that as a body the American bishops stood on the sidelines during the many years in which slavery was the toxic topic in town halls, the halls of Congress, and some houses of worship. As individuals, some bishops saw no practical way of eliminating slavery and so tolerated it; some opposed it: some supported the Southern states, slavery and all; but as a body the bishops chose not to address the issue in public statements.

Davis also points out that just after the war, at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866, the bishops failed to follow the recommendation from Rome that a prefect apostolic, perhaps a bishop, be placed in charge nationally of the African American apostolate. Thus the bishops failed to provide a unified policy and program for evangelizing the freed slaves.

Father Davis's book, first published by Crossroad, New York, in 1990, and now with several editions, is available in paperback at $24.95. Reviews of the Davis book include the U.S. Catholic: "One of a dozen books that every Catholic should read." and Laurence Cunningham who wrote in Commonweal: "A goldmine. I cannot recommend it highly enough."

The first American bishop, John Carroll [1735-1815], though a slave owner in Maryland, took the pastoral care of the slaves very seriously. I n his first letter as ecclesiastical superior for the newly formed United States, Carroll informed the Roman Curia that twenty of every one hundred Catholics in Maryland [the only state where Catholics were numerous] were black. Davis says: "The peculiar conditions of American slavery made this Catholic population a particular concern for Carroll. Neither the conditions nor the concerns would change for Carroll and his successors in the episcopate until slavery disappeared from the United States over seventy-five years later. American slavery existed in the United States in one of its most brutal modern forms and marked the American Catholic church in a way that no other American institution would do." Davis says that Carroll tried to meet the demands of his conscience, the pastoral needs of all his people, and the standards of American public opinion; and that his dilemma and his failure became the dilemma and the failure of the American church.

In the twenty-one years between 1828 and 1849 there were seven provincial councils of bishops in Baltimore, and in 1852 there was a First Plenary Council. Not once was slavery nor African Americans mentioned. The reputable church historian, Msgr. Peter Guilday [1884-1947] compliments the bishops, saying: "By their silence our prelates divorced this burning political question from church affair." But Father Davis thinks that policy was a mistake.

In 1839 Pope Gregory XVI condemned the slave trade: "We admonish and adjure in the Lord all believers in Christ, of whatsoever condition, that no one hereafter may dare unjustly to molest Indians, Negroes, or other men of this sort; or to spoil them of their goods; or to reduce them to slavery; or to extend help or favour to others who perpetuate such things against them; or to exercise that inhuman trade by which Negroes, as if they were not men, but mere animals, howsoever reduced into slavery, are, without any distinction, contrary to the laws of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and doomed sometimes to the most severe and exhausting labours."

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Nonetheless, some Southern bishops were apologists for the institution. John England [1786-1842], born and ordained in Ireland, was chosen in 1820 to become the first bishop of Charleston, South Carolina. England published a series of

eighteen public letters in which he cited Scripture and Tradition to support his position that Pope Gregory's condemnation of the slave trade applied to the Spanish and Portuguese versions, but not to the slavery of the American South.

Francis Patrick Kenrick [1796-1863], was a seminary professor, then the bishop of Philadelphia, [1842-51] and the archbishop of Baltimore [1851-63]. His manual of moral theology [c.1840] tolerated slavery: "... nothing against the law must be attempted, neither anything by which the slaves might be set free, nor must anything be done or said that would make them bear the yoke with difficulty. But the prudence and the charity of the sacred ministers must be shown in this, so that the slaves, informed by Christian morals, might show service to their masters, venerating always God, the supreme Master of us all; so that in turn the masters might show themselves gentle and even-handed and might lighten the condition of their slaves with humanity and with zeal for their salvation."

The bloody war came; some families were torn apart as one brother chose blue, another gray; father and son were sometimes in opposing armies; some church bodies split up, as did the Union itself.

With the end of the Civil War, the bishops were no longer faced with the moral question of slavery, but rather with the necessity of working out a national policy for ministry and evangelization to the former slaves. The agent of the Holy See in New York, Henry Binsse, had reported to Rome that with the end of the war it would no longer be possible to maintain "a political policy of reticence and abstention." Archbishop Martin Spalding [1810-72] of Baltimore saw the necessity that the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore [1866] take up the religious care of the freed slaves. In a letter to Archbishop McCloskey of New York, Spalding spoke about the objective of the coming council: "I think it precisely the most urgent duty of all to discuss the future status of the negro. Four million of these unfortunates are thrown on our Charity...It is a golden opportunity for reaping a harvest of souls, which neglected may not return." The discussion among the bishops was long and bitter. But nothing came of the proposal for a coordinated national approach to African Americans. This failure is one of the tragedies of American church history, says Father Davis.

History has taught us, concludes Davis, that no one can remain silent in periods of great social turmoil and still retain any moral authority. It has also taught us that there is no such thing as a political issue without moral consequences. From today's vantage point it can be said that the American bishops in the period of slavery made bad choices.

I think that Father Davis' revision of history deserves to be more widely pondered by Catholics, especially in the light of the dictum of Pope Leo XIII, who when he opened the Vatican Archives said: "The first rule of history is not to utter falsehood; the second is not to fear to speak the truth.

Frank McGinty

Frank is a member of CPF