(From the @NCRonline archives, on Dr. Arthur G Falls, #BlackCatholic and founder of the first Chicago Catholic Worker.)
"“The time is not opportune,” the official church used to say when confronted by [racist] moral outrages. “The time was never opportune,” Dr. Falls recalled.
“But... Those who were responsible always knew what they were doing. And that included church leaders.”"
"[Falls attended] @NorthwesternU's Medical School, where the professors in the gross anatomy lab would assure the students they needn’t be nervous about making mistakes.
“Don’t worry about it,” they were told. “We can always go out on the street and get a nigger to dissect.”"
“I was always careful to explain the church’s position on reproductive issues. I never did an abortion. I don’t believe in it.”
“[But] if the Church had put as much energy into racial issues as it has on abortion, we would have held and increased the Black Catholic population.”"
"The archbishop for much of this period was Cardinal Samuel Stritch...
From 1946-1953, there were 6 race riots in Chicago. Stritch remained silent, saying only, “Give it more time.”
“This is very unchristian of me,” Falls said nearly 50 years later, “but Stritch was a bastard.”
"“I think he would qualify as a martyr,” said Msgr. John Hayes...
“This is an unchristian thought,” Falls said... “But when I die, I want to go to Heaven and sit next to St. Peter at the Last Judgment and listen to all those explanations about why the time was never ripe.”"
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LIVE: Day 2 of public sessions at fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops began with a vote, electing Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort-Wayne South Bend as secretary, following the current holder's election y'day as president.
#USCCB25 stream:
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has elected Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia as chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace.
Gudziak has strongly supported the Ukrainian war effort.
#USCCB25 stream:
The USCCB has elected Bp William Wack, CSC of Pensacola-Tallahassee as chairman of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.
Wack has previously shown himself a friend to Black Catholics, including the Knights of Peter Claver.
Also, @XULA1925 is kinda goated for their Daily Mass game (where I ran into Br Herman)...
The chapel is dumb nice—complete with my flavor of modernist architecture, a MASSIVE #BlackJesus above the altar, and Afrocentric stations of the Cross in the side windows. (pics soon!)
That seems to be a fairly common thing at Black parishes, but this is the only place I've seen full-on 4-hymn sandwich Monday-Friday.
👏🏾Love.👏🏾To.👏🏾See.👏🏾 It.
(Also doesn't hurt that the pianist is amazing and has a beautiful voice.)
Last but not least, they apparently are staffed (at least partially) by @TheJosephites, which is the cherry on top.
While it's literally their job to serve African-Americans, and we're the only Catholic HBCU, it's still cool to see young priests showing out #fortheculture.
Also, who knew "free negroes" ≠ "free people of color"? Apparently the former were those born in slavery, while the latter were those born free. (Gives a lil color to the current "people of color" terminology debate! 😁)
Also, "free negroes" as an academic term makes me giggle.
Used the Jesuits wiki as a model—for obvious reasons. They're the world's biggest religious order, we're the world's best, and our postnominal (SSJ) is basically the "super" version of theirs (SJ) anyway.
Check out the updated infobox up top (complete with the full list of founders and the official heraldry), the much-expanded history section (used to be one small section), and the brand-new Superior General table (used to just be a list, and of only the guys since like 1988).
Hoping this'll blossom into individual pages—and sources (😁)—for major figures/topics, and eventually into a Wiki "series" on Black Catholicism. (There's series for other Catholic topics, and I tend to envy with stuff like this. 👀)