CNA Staff, Feb 12, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
A Catholic educator from Texas says teaching students about Black Catholic saints and other holy men and women of color “gives not only representation, but new role models for all of our students.”
“Being Catholic is an overarching, cross-racial identity. There is no outgroup in the Catholic Church,” said Kaye Crawford, who founded the site Black Catholic History in 2021.
February is Black History Month, and the Church also celebrates Black Catholic History month every November.
Crawford, who has a master’s degree in theology from the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in Louisiana, hosted a webinar for fellow Catholic educators Feb. 1 titled “What Our Students Don’t Know About Black Catholic History.” She told CNA that in her remarks she emphasized the importance of presenting to students a diverse range of Catholic role models, such as the African Pope Victor I, who is believed to have been the first pope to celebrate the liturgy and write Church documents in Latin rather than Greek.
“The history and the wisdom of Black Catholic theologians is too beautiful to miss,” Crawford said, adding that the faithful examples of Black Catholics can draw people into the Catholic faith, including those of other faiths.
She pointed to the example of Sister Thea Bowman, who was raised Protestant and later converted, leading her parents to embrace the Catholic faith also. Crawford encouraged parents and educators to seek out resources about Black Catholics, suggesting as a resource Father Cyprian Davis’ historical tome “Black Catholics in America.”
“If the lessons in the classroom are overwhelmingly Eurocentric, what does that say to the child of color? And then what does that say to the Anglo child about what Catholic identity looks like?” she asked, adding that Catholics can also assess the sacred art in their homes to consider whether some additional representation would be appropriate.
“It is important for every single student, regardless of complexion or ethnicity, to know this fuller history of our Church … Black Catholics know this history, [but] if their children go to Catholic school and it doesn’t get taught, it’s sort of like my ‘side’ of this universal family isn’t going to get spoken about,” she said.
About 6% of the Black population in the U.S. — approximately 3 million total people — is Catholic, compared with some 66% who are Protestant. Black Catholic communities in the U.S. include not only African-Americans but also African and Caribbean immigrants. They make up about 4% of all Catholic adults. African-American Catholic populations can be found in cities including Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Chicago; and numerous cities throughout the South.
While there are already numerous Black canonized saints in the Catholic Church — such as St. Martin de Porres, St. Josephine Bakhita, and St. Augustine — none are African-American, despite communities of Black Catholics existing in the U.S. for centuries.
There are currently a half-dozen African-American candidates for sainthood, however, with perhaps the best-known being Father Augustus Tolton, who was born a slave in Missouri and was the first African-American priest. Others include Venerable Pierre Toussaint, Servant of God Mary Lange, Venerable Henriette DeLille, and Servant of God Julia Greeley.
Another notable Black Catholic who gained worldwide attention recently is Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the foundress of a Missouri-based religious congregation who died in 2019 and was allegedly found to be incorrupt after being exhumed last summer, though her congregation has said it has no current plans to open her cause for sainthood.
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When you put a color in front of a movement, e.g.Black Lives Matter, White Power, It is you who are the racist.
If we could come up with better terminology & focus on culture rather than colour we’d be making real progress.
YES, or course, to Black “role models.” But the incarnate Christ is more than a role model…
So what does it mean to also say that “If the lessons in the classroom are overwhelmingly Eurocentric, what does that say to the child of color?” How about nothing less than a “child of God”?
“Eurocentric,” not only as in a geographic culture of dead white guys, but as also the geography where the harmony of universal Faith and universal Reason was/is articulated. And the geography where the universal Church took root as a culture higher than the northern, pagan, and invading Gothic tribes or the eastern Arabian tribes of fideistic Islam.
The most useful Black witnessing to notice today is the continent of Africa which joyously refuses to suck up to the post-Christian European anti-culture as it even now is annexing (!) the perennial Catholic Church itself, as through der Synodale Weg and Fiducia Supplicans.
So, a larger YES to the Catholic Church of the Berber St. Augustine!
These are Apostolic times once again. And not the time of ephemeral and sometimes effeminate identity politics.
I learned recently that St. Mark is believed by the Coptic Church to have evangelized Egypt around AD 42. So there’s a very long history of Christianity in Africa. And of course, The Holy Family sought refuge there.
Critical race theory has had the effect of White to Black transformation, Whites magnanimously depicting every possible famous person, geographical region as Black or of Black heritage from Carthage and St Augustine, suddenly a dark Berber, to Egypt’s Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, Origen as Black men.
Historically the people of Thagaste and Carthage, the area known today as Tunisia were populated by Phoenicians, a seafaring semitic people from the Mideast. Alexandria was established by Alexander the Great. His general Ptolemy established his empire in Egypt. The inhabitants of Alexandria were Macedonian and Greeks. Sorry to disappoint, Cleopatra was Macedonian not Egyptian.
Black history and the recognition of Black accomplishments has real value. Whereas it may be well intended, fawning doesn’t end in good results.
The plausibility that St. Augustine was Berber is based on sources prior to current identity politics, nor is it implied that Berbers were “dark Berbers.” Two sources:
John K. Ryan’s Introduction to “The Confessions of St. Augustine” (Image, 1960):
“The native inhabitants of the region [Thagaste] belonged to a race that was perhaps European in origin. Typically, its members were fair-skinned, with brown or yellow hair, and blue eyes. Called Afri (Africans) by the Romans, or more restrictedly, from geographical and other considerations, Mauri (Moors), Lybians, and Getulains, some of them at least were also called BARBARI [italics], or near barbarians, by the Romans. It is from this fact that their descendants, the modern Berbers of northern Africa, derive their name [….] The weight of the evidence is that Augustine belonged to this native north African stock. However, his family was certainly associated with the Roman ruling class and the Christian community in Thagaste.”
Hugh Pope, O.P. in his Introduction to “St. Augustine of Hippo” (1957/Image 1961):
“Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that the people whom we now term ‘Berber’ consist of both browns and blondes, the latter, with their fair skins, brown hair and blue eyes predominating; thus while the Mauri, Getuli and Numidians are all dark, the Libyans are fair; yet all are comprised under the modern terms ‘Touareg’ and ‘Kabyles,’ or more broadly ‘Berbers.’ There is no need to suppose that by St. Augustine’s time the Phoenicians had been exterminated [….] Some, it is true, hold that the Phoenician element was a negligible one, and that the language spoken of as ‘Punic’ by Sallust and St. Augustine was really Libyan or Berber. But Augustine does not use the term carelessly, and that he himself had more than a nodding acquaintance with Punic is not only antecedently probable but seems borne out by his use of it. Thus he translates a Punic proverb into Latin on the ground that ‘you do not all know Punic'” [followed by several other examples].
Berber, not a racial term, but North African.
“But Augustine does not use the term carelessly, and that he himself had more than a nodding acquaintance with Punic is not only antecedently probable but seems borne out by his use of it. Thus he translates a Punic proverb into Latin on the ground that you do not all know Punic”.
I don’t really care what shade of complexion Cleopatra or St Augustine had and I suppose neither did their contemporaries if it’s not mentioned much.
North Africa has been a melting pot of peoples and civilizations for thousands of years. And Africans are identified by geography, not colour.
Dear mrscracker. If Saint Augustine were discovered to be a Zulu I’d be delighted. The point of my comments is the exaggerated, fawning response to placate critical race theorists.
Thank you so much Father Peter. I understand you and I share the same feelings about that. I dislike the whole critical race nonsense , too.
My ancestry is a little complicated but distant enough that it allows me to hear really awful racist comments from people I wouldn’t expect it from. If I resembled some of my ancestors more closely I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be hearing those kinds of narratives and stereotypes in conversations. People behave differently depending upon who’s present.So, critical race theory is a racket but there really are folks who are in need of a reboot. The good news is that it’s becoming more of a generational thing. It’s mostly older people who carry on those predudices from the eras they grew up in.
God bless you Mrs. Ironically, my ethnic heritage likely has desert Berber blood running through my veins. Arabia’s Aghlabid sultanate attacked Sicily, my parents homeland, 827 AD. They weren’t able to fully succeed until 965 when the sultanate enlisted Desert Berbers, who are quite dark. During my youth I suffered an anemia blood disorder similar to African sickle cell anemia that’s believed to stem from the 200 year Aghlabid occupation during which Sicily became an emirate. Pope Nicholas II charged the Norman duke Robert de Guiscard to liberate Sicily 1072.
Shouldn’t we care that reverse racism has become a prevalent means of abusing children to adopt a historical narrative of Caucasian antipathy towards all non-Caucasians throughout history?