Black Church/White Church? Catholic Church

Recently I have been hearing a lot about the Black Church - White Church divide. It is part of the recent conversation about systemic racism. Several thoughts.

On the face of it, this divide makes as much sense as the Fat-Skinny Church distinction or the Blonde-Brunette-Redhead Church divide. It is nonsensical. Skin color makes about as much difference as the thickness of one's ear lobe; or the muscle structure around the elbow. Nevertheless it is a historical fact that after 250 years of black slavery and 100 of Jim Crow we do have such a divide. It is a complex, rich reality with distinctive gifts as well as pathologies. It is fundamentally Protestant as the America of the time was Protestant. It is not Catholic. ("catholic" itself means universal.)

Secondly, separation or segregation into distinct ethnic/cultural groups is not in itself immoral or dysfunctional. The immigrant American Catholic Church was characterized by just such segregation: Italians, Irish, Polish and later the Hispanics enjoy their own priests, language, customs and so forth. But it always was One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church and everyone knows that. To this day I enjoy mass at Christ the King, Jersey City, an Afro-American non-geographic parish where I am completely comfortable or Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bayonne, a breathtakingly beautiful Polish Church where the daily lector is a young black woman. It has been lamented that Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America. I do not lament. Thanksgiving and Christmas are similar: sometimes, particularly in worship, we want to be with a group to which we belong. This is not racism. I customarily frequent black and hispanic barbershops in Jersey City but I am not normal: barbershops seem to be quite segregated. That is not racism.

Thirdly: I grew up in the prosperous, liberal, working class Church of the 1960s. We were reading America, Maryknoll, NY Times and even John Osteriecher's The Bridge on the semitic roots of Christianity. My own family (father was a UAW union organizer) was passionately open to the poor and the international scene, but this typlified the broader Church...the parishes and schools I attended. The Church...indeed the entire world including politics, religion, academia, entertainment, athletics, media, business...opened its heart and mind, happily and generously, to the challenge of civil rights. In retrospect, I see in the mainsteam, liberal Catholicism of the time a blind spot, a passion for justice for blacks (itself entirely correct) but a harsh judgment to what were legitimate concerns of other working class ethnicities. I recall our senior retreat, 1965, at the Loyola Retreat House in Morristown NJ. The priest was condemning systematic racism as an inherent evil. I was in accord. An Italian kid from Newark respectfully agreed but added that his father, a barber, could not service blacks because it would jeopradize the business which provided for his family. The priest insisted that that was precisely what he meant by the evil of systematic injustice. The boy defended his dad. The priest would not back down. It almost came to fisticups. Even at the time as a 17-year-old I thought: life is more complex, nuanced and difficult than Father is allowing! Give the kid a break! Already by 1965 the Catholic Church...all the mainstream Churches...and the entirety of respectful not to say elite society...was vigorously, sometimes eccessively, anti-racist.

Lastly: the Eucharist. When we consume the Body and Blood of Christ we become the Body of Christ. We become One with all other Catholics...really, ontologically, completely. Color of skin is of absolutely no importance. This is what I have always learned; always believed; always tried to practice. God bless the Body of Christ on earth...in all its fragrant, colorful, thrilling diversity!