Session 5

The Witness of African-American Catholics in the Americas*

Africana Catholicism

• Embraces both the Continental African Experience and that of the Black Diaspora

• Sustained contact with Africana experience begins in the 15th century

• In the Americas, Black Catholic Spirituality has traditionally had two foci

• Evangelism

• Elimination of racism

• Afro-Catholic Spirituality shares a commitment to preserve the historic deposit of Catholic faith while embracing certain values that are at the heart of the Black Experience

Black Catholic Spirituality - Key Features (from the 1984 Pastoral Letter from U.S. Black Bishops - What We Have Seen and Heard

• Contemplation

• Holism

• Joyfulness

• Communitarianism

Africana Catholicism in the U.S. -- 2004 Statistical Profile

• 14 Bishops

• 250 Priests

• 400 Deacons

• 500 Sisters

• 4% (2.4 million) of the 62,000,000 Roman Catholics in the U.S.

Significant Religious Orders

Society of St. Joseph (1871) 

• http://www.josephite.com/vocations/

Oblate Sisters of Providence (1829) 

• http://oblatesisters.com/

Sisters of the Holy Family (1840s) 

• http://www.cmswr.org/member_communities/SHF.htm

Handmaids of Mary (1916) 

• http://members.aol.com/fhmnyc/index.htm

More Information at Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark: Office of Black Catholic Affairs at http://www.rcan.org/bca/index.htm

Black Catholic Educational Institutions

Xavier University, New Orleans, LA (1925)

• http://www.xula.edu/ 

Research & Teaching Initiatives - Institute for Black Catholic Studies (1969)

• http://www.xula.edu/IBCS/

Black Catholic Theological Symposium (1978)

• http://www.bcts.org/about_bcts.htm

*Information here was taken from the following articles in the Winter 2004 edition of In All Things: A Jesuit Journal of the Social Apostolate - "What Black Catholics Have Offered the Church" by Cyprian Davis (1-3); "Uncommon Faithfulness: The Witness of African American Catholics" by the Most Rev. Wilton D. Gregory (4-6); "The Black Catholic Population Today" by Beverly Carroll and James Cavendish (7-8); "Ignatian and African American Spiritualities: Shifting Paradigms" by Allan Figueroa Deck (12-13); "A Tradition of Evangelization" by Cyprian Davis (14-15); "Oblate Sisters of Providence - 175 Years Young" by M. Reginald Gerdes (15); and "Another of the Best Kept Secrets of the Catholic Church in the United States: Xavier University of Louisiana's Institute for Black Catholic Studies" by Shawn Copeland (Winter 2004 Online Supplement, 1-2). The brief selection from Stephen J. Ochs' Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Priests, 1871-1960 (Louisiana State University Press, 1990) was also consulted (14).