This question is often asked: “Why do we have to have Black History Month?”
I went to seminary outside of Buffalo NY, East Aurora. I studied theology, Scripture, history, dogma, doctrine, morality, liturgy, spirituality, pastoral care, and I failed Greek. Once, in my fourth and final year, a professor gave me a book, “Black Theology” by Rev. James Cone. I did not read it because it was not going to be on the test and I was too busy studying European theology.
In four years of study almost nothing was said about racism, not even in Moral Theology. It was not until I was 10 years ordained that I was introduced to the Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS) at Xavier University of New Orleans, where I studied theology. etc. from a Black American (Catholic) view point.
Wow! What a nose opener!
In addition to the usual challenges of being Catholic, a Black Catholic in the U.S. has to negotiate the scandal of institutional and personal encounters with hate, prejudice, racism and spiritual evil in the church and among her members. It was at IBCS that I was equipped, inspired and empowered to continue as a Catholic. I learned about and met men and women of uncommon faithfulness who gave witness of Jesus Christ in the Catholic faith in spite of the Church in America’s pro-choice stance when it comes to Black lives. (Recall the judgement of Supreme Court Judge Roger Taney — a Catholic: The Negro has no rights which a white man is obliged to respect.)
Black Theology is a “liberation” theology. Liberation would not be significant to Europeans because they were the ones from whom indigenous folk had to be liberated. Consider Native Americans.
For Black Americans the Book of Exodus and Moses resonate with Black folks’ experience of American slavery, Harriet Tubman and the North as the “promised land.” But for Native Americans the treatment of the Canaanite people and Jericho echoes the European treatment and conquest of America. Native Americans would have a negative appreciation of Exodus and Moses. Of course, Southern slave owners would not appreciate Exodus either. They would not want their enslaved Africans to think that God wanted them free. You can see then how Christianity in America is infected with white supremacy and privilege, and this is why Black History.
The names of traitorous soldiers from the Confederacy adorn American military bases. In just the same way there are unexamined and unrepentant demons of white racism breathing in the Catholic Church in America.
The Gospel of Mark all this year speaks of the confrontation of Jesus with similar unclean spirits. If we are to love one another we must confront and exorcise the evil in U.S. Confess our sin, do penance and take action to love as we have been loved: This too is why Black history.
Father Gerard C. Marable is pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Galloway.
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