|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Black Catholics Triumphant
| Article
# : |
10393 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
2,517 Words |
| Author
: |
Lucy Mazareski
Lucy Mazareski reviews frequently for Catholic publications. |
THE HISTORY OF BLACK CATHOLICS IN THE UNITED STATES
Cyprian Davis, O. S. B.
New York: Crossroad, 1992
347 pp., $24.95
The status, role, and contributions of black Christians in mainline churches remains a largely neglected chapter in U.S. church history. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in the U.S. Catholic Church. Cyprian Davis, a black Benedictine monk and professor of church history, offers a meticulously researched chronicle that all too often is revealed as one of institutional indifference, or at times hostility, brightened in places by individuals of faith, and kept alive by the often intense loyalty of the black Catholic faithful.
Black Catholic history in America began with the arrival of African slaves in the New World with the Catholic Spanish conquerors. Interestingly, the oldest black town in the United States was a Catholic township for free blacks. In 1565, a Spanish colony was established in what is now northern Florida, with St. Augustine as its center. In the late 1600s, rival English settlements in Georgia and the Carolinas provided a base for English raids on the Florida colony. In response to these raids, the Spanish authorities invited the slaves in those territories to escape and find refuge in Florida--provided they convert to Roman Catholicism. Until 1763 escaped slaves found a home in a free black settlement just outside of St. Augustine.
As the colonies, then states, developed into agricultural centers based on slave economy, African slaves were imported at an ever-increasing rate. Many Catholic families owned slaves, but a lesser known, yet more noxious fact was slaveholding by those charged with the pastoral care of souls--bishops, priests, and religious congregations such as the Jesuits in Maryland, Vincentians in Missouri, and Capuchins in Louisiana. By the end of the seventeenth century the Jesuits had introduced African slaves to work their estates. It was not until 1837 that they divested themselves of their slaveholdings, not by manumission but through sale: "Altogether 272 slaves from the Jesuit estates in southern Maryland were sold to purchasers in Louisiana. They were not necessarily sold to Catholic slaveowners, and in the end families were separated." This separation of families and transfer to non-Catholic slaveholders made the transaction particularly reprehensible, and it was roundly denounced by the archbishop of Baltimore.
In 1839,
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
