New head of bishops’ anti-racism committee praises investigations into racist stories, champions causes of black Catholic saints

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Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago Joseph N. Perry, pictured in a file photo, was named chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism on May 10, 2023. Ahead of the bishops’ meeting Americans in Orlando, Fla., June 14-16, Bishop Perry recently spoke with OSV News about his new role. CNS Photo/Gregory A. Shemitz Ahead of the meeting of American bishops in Orlando, Florida, June 14-16, Bishop Joseph N. Perry said new investigations by church institutions into their involvement in slavery and Indian boarding schools are very healthy and help a collective examination of conscience.

It’s never too late to delve into your past. Self-examination is something Catholics were used to, the bishop told OSV News May 30. It’s never too late to look at yourself and see what you didn’t notice, to better understand what you didn’t know or who was too selfish to acknowledge. It’s never too late to establish regrets. And it’s never too late to apologize.

Bishop Perry, 75, was named chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc anti-racism committee on May 10. Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, he succeeded Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre of Louisville, Kentucky, who served two terms as committee chairman.

Bishop Perry praised ongoing investigative efforts, such as Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore establishing a commission to research the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s ties to slavery, announced May 22; and a group of archivists and historians releasing a May 9 list of 87 Native American Catholic boarding schools in the United States to help tribal nations gain access to their records.

He also noted the Jesuits’ ongoing investigation into their orders of 19th-century slavery practices at Georgetown University, which included the sale to entire Catholic families of 272 black men, women and children they had. baptized to Louisiana plantation owners in order to financially save the university, which boasted $1.5. billion in 2015. The GU272 Memorial Project has so far located 8,000 descendants of the families sold to save Georgetown.

Investigating the church’s institutional involvement in racist practices and systems leads the church to a better understanding of its humanity, its complicity with evil. It also arouses sympathy, if not empathy and leads to contrition, Bishop Perry said.

It engenders a deeper understanding that we did not have before. It gets rid of a compromise we made of the gospel that we didn’t live it as perfectly as we should have, the Lord’s teaching on love of neighbor, he said.

Bishop Perry, who is African-American, said he experienced racism as a child in Chicago in the 1950s, where he watched white people run away from his neighborhood, school and church . Places that had been racially diverse soon became predominantly African American, including his own parish, he said. Racism has been perpetuated by the systemic denial of insurance-based mortgages and loans in predominantly black or non-white ethnic neighborhoods, regardless of the person’s credit history or financial status and other practices of discriminatory housing, he said.

My thing has always been (that) we were definitely more when we were together but when we were apart we were less and making people realize that’s a hard nut to sell because it digs right in the direction of opportunity and people’s wealth, sense of privilege, and all those sorts of things, he said. This is the kind of trouble people would get from their pews and leave while the homily was being preached.

As society combats racism through the courts and public policy, the bishops’ work has emphasized racism as a sin and the need for personal conversion, he said. We have the Gospel, he said, and I think that is one of the main tools of this whole ad hoc committee, and that is the proclamation of the Gospel and the valuable social teaching from the church.

Although much attention is paid to racism against African Americans and Latinos, racism is not exclusively a white issue, he said.

People always wonder if African Americans and Latinos can be racist. Oh yes, we can. We can have biased judgments about people, and these types of human behavior and activity keep people at a distance, so we never get to know each other. We never realize we all have red blood, he said. We all suffer. We all cry. We all go through the same things. The differences between us or between us are very, very few.

The ad hoc committee against racism was created in 2017 under the direction of Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, who was then president of the USCCB. It was initially headed by Bishop George V. Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, with Archbishop Fabre being appointed to the position in 2018, when he was Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana. He was appointed Archbishop of Louisville in March 2022 and requested that a new committee chair be appointed.

In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the committee released Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love, A Pastoral Letter Against Racism. She also produced Everyone Belongs, a children’s book inspired by the pastoral letter. The committee has helped Catholic institutions and dioceses address issues related to racism, including pastoral considerations, Bishop Perry said.

As chair of the U.S. Bishops’ Subcommittee on African American Affairs, Bishop Perry has served on the Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism since its founding. The 2023 Spring Plenary of the U.S. Bishops in June will be his first committee meeting as leader, and he anticipates that its members will then identify immediate priorities. He said his goals for the committee are better understanding and empathy.

The whole thrust for this ad hoc committee is evangelism, evangelism towards a deeper understanding and empathy with human dignity, at all levels, he said. And that encompasses all of us, white, black, brown, Middle Eastern, etc.

Bishop Perry’s leadership comes as American Catholics are pushing the causes of six African Americans for holiness, including Father Augustus Tolton, for whose cause Bishop Perry is the diocesan postulator. Born into slavery in 1854 and ordained in 1886, Father Tolton was the first American Catholic priest known to be black. He was declared venerable in 2019.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are flocking to rural Missouri to see the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the African-American founder of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, whose body may be intact, having recently been discovered. little changed four years after his death and burial. . Some believe that a cause could also begin for his canonization.

For a long time in the United States, the possibility of African-American Saints was not widely apparent, Bishop Perry said.

If and when that (canonizing the first black American saint) happens, we will take our place alongside all other ethnic Catholics whose saints date back centuries and millennia, he said. We just didn’t have the people to stand up for our faithful Catholic members and people who were living heroic lives despite the odds. No one has brought this to the ground before. But these six candidates, I hope we can have them canonized, will improve the impression of many people, that yes, African Americans are as Catholic as anyone else, and they have their saints too, their holy people who have suffered much.

Bishop Perry said he was deeply grateful to the two former chairs of the committees, Bishop Murry, who passed away in 2020, and Bishop Fabre. These two Bishops have really led it in a very, very inspiring way, and I think the Bishops very much appreciate their service, he said. Well, let’s take it from there and see what we can do as well.

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