TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071089/07108900.076

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.6 KB | 109 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 57

Black Catholics vs. the Church


Disputes in two U.S. cities dramatize a widening rift


    Since well before the Civil War, black Americans have been
predominantly Protestant. Despite extensive outreach by the
Roman Catholic Church, only 2 million of America's 54 million
lay Catholics and 300 of the nation's 19,000 priests are black.
Thirteen of 314 active Catholic bishops in the U.S. are black.
The first black archbishop, Eugene Marino, was assigned to
Atlanta only last year. Catholicism has not only had difficulty
finding new recruits in the black community, it is even
beginning to lose its grip on those few already in the fold.

    Nowhere are the problems more evident than in Detroit and
Washington, two archdioceses where the church is confronting
sharp dissatisfaction among blacks. In Washington, a fiery,
articulate black priest named George A. Stallings Jr., fed up
with the church's treatment of blacks, plans to defy James
Cardinal Hickey this week by inaugurating his own independent
African-American Catholic Congregation. In Detroit, black
resentment is aimed at Edmund Cardinal Szoka, who last week
finally shut down 21 of the city's 114 parishes, mostly in black
neighborhoods, with nine others soon to follow. The action came
despite angry protests and eleventh-hour courtroom maneuvers by
both black and white parishioners.

    For Washington Catholics, Stallings is a figure to reckon
with. During a twelve-year assignment, the 41-year-old priest
built up a black parish from 200 to 2,000 families. Last year
Hickey appointed him director of the archdiocese's evangelism
program. Heedless of Hickey's stern warnings, Stallings is
determined to celebrate Mass for his Imani (Swahili for faith)
Temple, which will meet temporarily in a chapel at Howard
University. How many of the archdiocese's 80,000 black
parishioners will enlist in this self-made Catholicism?
Jacqueline Wilson, who directs the Washington archdiocesan
office for black Catholics, thinks "there are a lot who share
his concern," but expects that most will stick with the official
church. "No one," she believes, "can go off and start up his own
church and call it Roman Catholic."

    According to church law, only the diocesan bishop can
authorize a new parish or decide where priests work. In a
toughly worded response to Stallings' challenge two weeks ago,
Hickey threatened to notify all U.S. bishops that the renegade
priest was no longer in good standing and should henceforth be
forbidden to speak at any Catholic institution in the U.S.
Stallings is unapologetic. "I have been caught up in the spirit
of destiny," says the rebel priest. "I know I am breaking canon
law. But to stir up the conscience of a nation, I'll do it. When
laws control, then laws enslave."

    Stallings is regarded by critics as an inveterate
grandstander whose grandiose actions could lead to his
excommunication -- and eventually a schism within the church
that could spread beyond Washington. He was recently president
of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus and built a
nationwide following through appearances in black parishes. He
claims that he remains within the Catholic Church but rejects
its hierarchical rule, charging that the bishops are
imperialistic and the church racist. Imani Temple, vows
Stallings, "will ask the people what we should be all about."

    Catholicism, he believes, should allow experimental worship
with broader appeal to the black community, including
African-American Masses complete with recitations from black
literature. Such an African-American liturgy with an all-black
priesthood, Stallings believes, might be patterned after the
Eastern rites within the Catholic Church. He seeks to combine
"Baptist practices with the beauty and tradition of the
Catholic faith." As a young Catholic in North Carolina,
Stallings often attended an enthusiastic black Baptist church
with his grandmother. Says he: "The church is failing to bind
together the church with the needs and aspirations of African
Americans."

    In the Detroit imbroglio, Cardinal Szoka threatens to shut
down another 25 parishes by next year unless offerings and
memberships increase. Though many white worshipers too are hurt
by the retrenchment, the archdiocese's 65,000 black Catholics
especially feel that the church is abandoning them. Marian
Gabriel, co-chair of a local black Catholic organization,
considers Szoka's decision "blatantly racist." Says she: "This
is the most disgusting thing I've ever run up against."

    Szoka has written movingly about the church's past failures
in ministering to blacks. But the Cardinal felt compelled to
take drastic action, in part because of Detroit's ruinous
population decline. The city's churches, however, are also dying
because they have failed to enlist any significant numbers of
blacks when white ethnics began moving out of their
neighborhoods. Says the Rev. Norman Thomas, a white priest who
opposes the closings: "The church has not done an adequate job
of being a church in the city, and that includes attracting
blacks."

    Poignantly, these events are occurring just after a meeting
of the nation's bishops that endorsed a blueprint for
stepped-up evangelism among blacks. A special report to the
hierarchy warned that experts are deeply concerned about
attrition among black Catholics "leaving the church for
Protestant denominations where they will feel more at home." As
developments in the two cities indicate, the losses could just
be beginning.