Catholic Complicity

As we stood in the midst of a memorial listing every name of every enslaved child who died at Whitney Plantation, I was awestruck. “How do we know their names?” someone asked our guide. “Baptismal records,” she answered. In Catholic Louisiana, every enslaved child had to be baptized, and so every child had a documented name. Beyond that, not much more information was known, just life and death. My mind was racing. How could the church have recognized humanity enough to save a soul, but not enough to save the body? How could they let this happen? The complicity of Catholicism in the institution and perpetuation of slavery had never occurred to me. I was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion, anger, and bitter disappointment. 

I should have thought about this earlier. From Maryland, I should have already reckoned with being from one of the few predominantly Catholic English colonies that was also the home of Charles Carroll, regarded as the wealthiest man in the colonies who, from what I could glean (as many sources on him don't mention slavery at all), owned anywhere from 300 to 1000 enslaved people, the latter equaling one third of the Catholic slaves at the time. But I didn’t know that; the concept of Catholic slaves never crossed my path. I should have thought about it when for two years at work I had been telling the story of Charles Carroll Jr.’s gift to his wife Harriet Chew: an enslaved woman named Charity Castle. I told hundreds of kids about Charity’s accident and how she sued for freedom, citing Philadelphia’s Gradual Abolition Act. I wanted them to see her as a noble fighter, a hero, but I never stopped to think about Catholic Charles’s hypocrisy. 

Hypocrisy shouldn’t surprise me; it’s the whole bitter irony of enslavement to begin with: Christianity was always present and participating in it, using God as a force for power instead of as a force for love. I know this, just as I know there were Christian abolitionists, both black and white, who fought for freedom of enslaved Africans on the basis of God given human dignity. I’d thought about Christianity broadly, and Quakers and other Protestants deeply, but where were the Catholics? With twelve years of Catholic schooling, I have no memory of being taught specifically about Catholicism’s involvement with slavery, neither for or against it, nor its involvement in segregation or the Civil Rights Movement. And if it wasn’t taught in history or religion class, it certainly wasn’t going to happen from the pulpit. Perhaps because I grew up in waves of clergy scandal after scandal, the Church thought it had more immediate fish to fry. But those scandals and this blank spot in my education have something in common: a tendency to sweep dark and dirty truths under the rug.

Maryland contributes to this unspoken and unreckoned past. Too north to be south and too south to be north, its Border State designation preexisted and outlived the Civil War. I’ve felt it my whole life. My Virginian mother and my Pennsylvanian father chose Maryland for its virtue of being the in-between. Raised with pristine hospitality thanks to my mama, I embraced and emphasized my Southerness when I went to college in Pennsylvania. Maryland ways are different, I’d tell people: relaxed, generous. Among people from New Jersey and Boston, I’d pass for Southern, but among friends from the Carolinas, I’m a fraudulent wannabe. It doesn’t matter where my mother is from; I am from Maryland and that is not the South. So in a state that has never been able to decide what side to be on, it’s little wonder that it can’t decide what, or how much, history to tell. I had to go all the way to New Orleans to really think about early Catholic America, because unlike Maryland, Louisiana wasn’t just Catholics carving out space in a Protestant world; it was Catholic – Catholic France, Catholic Spain, Catholic missions, Catholic rules. Louisiana has to talk about Catholicism. It has no other side to conveniently choose in order to avoid the tough conversations. 

Despite receiving this eye-opening information two years ago, and thinking about it a great deal, I admit I didn’t go home and delve into the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s history with black Catholics. I haven’t spent the last two years unpacking the Catholic Church’s complicated history with American slavery and segregation. But, with all the protests and distress happening in the United States at present, I keep thinking about that memorial, and those baptismal records. I keep wondering, what else do I not know?  The Catholic Church – not my city, state, or country – is my first and foremost community and identity. If I expect my community to improve the lives of all its members, and its black members particularly – and I do expect it, because we believe that every person is conceived and born in the image and likeness of God and thus we should will the good of that person – if I expect this, then I must understand its past. I must understand its actions, not just its words. I must be aware of these things, so that I can minister effectively and live the Church’s mission of being one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. And this most extraordinary season of Ordinary Time is the perfect time to begin.

St. Katherine Drexel, pray for us. 

** I'll be using this resource as a starting point, for anyone who would like to also expand their understanding on this topic: #BlackCatholics Syllabus **