The Church and Racial Justice: A Conversation in Truth and Hope

good evening and welcome to the archbishop fulton j sheen center for thought and culture i'm david deserto interim executive director here at the sheen center and on behalf of the sheen center i would like to thank all of you for spending part of your friday evening with us for tonight's virtual conversation the church and racial justice a conversation in truth and hope i also want to extend uh gratitude our gratitude to the office uh for of black ministry of the archdiocese of new york and the divine nine social justice subcommittee for allowing us to partner with them again this year to help celebrate this special weekend as a project of the archdiocese of new york the sheen center's unique mission is to showcase the true the good and the beautiful to evangelize and elevate culture and discourse through the arts theater music and film and through important conversations striving always as saint paul writes to speak love i'm sorry to speak truth in love building the beloved community growing into him who is the head christ um it is now without further ado it's my it's now my distinct honor to introduce and pass the virtual baton to dr don murad dr dimarad who has served as the chairman of this year's social justice subcommittee and helped plan this evening's program is a member of the office for black ministry divine nine leadership committee within the archdiocese of new york dr murad doctor dumbledore would you like to say something before i get started i don't want to interrupt the flow yes thank you so much good evening and greetings on behalf of the office of black ministry divine nine leadership committee within the archdiocese of new york this evening in collaboration with the sheen center we present a discussion on the church's complicated history matters of racial justice and equality featuring a panel of some of the greatest minds in religion journalism and filmmaking our moderator for this evening is an emmy nominated multiple award-winning haitian-american anchor reporter and television producer with over 25 years of experience behind the scenes in front of the camera and on the radio ms fabulous has worked for the nation's top media and news organizations including time warner the today show and bloomberg television she is also the founder of a private literal literary company million dollar pen inc before i present miss liz fabulous we would like to introduce dina thank you dr murad apologies for the technical difficulties let's try this one more time we begin as we do all things in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen the prophet micah says he has told you o man what is good and what does the lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your god and now we pray good and gracious god we come together this evening in your presence and in your love to do what you require of us we ask for your mercy and grace today as we engage in the work that helps to bring awareness cultivate courageous conversations and encourage us all to be diligent in our commitment to doing we pray for those who have been affected by racial injustice exclusion inequities and marginalization and may they seek your guidance for healing and growth in your care what is good and what is just is delightful in your eyes and we seek your guidance in being messengers of truth and light and we thank you for loving us unconditionally and holy for the greater glory of god who reigns forever and ever amen thank you again miss fabulous i present to you the panel thank you very much for joining us absolutely thank you so much for having me it really is an honor to be part of this discussion it's one that it's overdue at least at the in-depth level that we plan to explore tonight so i'm grateful absolutely that the sheen center so graciously agreed to collaborate and provide the platform for our virtual discussion now the discourse at no time will be about me my opinions or about my feelings about the topics that we discuss i told our esteemed panel when we met for the first time that um i have one role here i am not a theologian i'm not a documentary filmmaker a historian or a nun i am in the spirit of staying in my lane as they say i'm a journalist i'm a truth seeker and i am a storyteller and i want to guide the conversation in such a way that we are all informed that we're enlightened and more importantly that everyone that's gathered here is attentive and open-minded that is very important while it will be important to learn from our esteemed panel of experts i want everyone who joins us tonight to consider the the value of the resolute dialogue that goes beyond this event now you're committing 90 minutes of your time tonight and and i understand that time is at a premium so i want you to make sure that this investment of your time is not in vain i do want to there are no rules other than we're respectful and of course that is something that does not have to be said to our panelists i'm honored to be in your company and look forward to our discussion uh there is one other rule and i have to apologize right off the bat that because we do have such a short amount of time i may have to interrupt every once in a while in case the discussion tends to go a little bit long do not charge it to my heart charge it to our limited time but i do want to make sure we get all our thoughts and comments and this learning experience in so without further ado i would love to introduce our esteemed panelists beginning with father joseph brown who is the professor of african studies southern illinois university carbondale father joseph parks is the provincial assistant pre-secondary and secondary education east coast jesuits sister patricia chapel she is member of the leadership team sisters of notre dame de nimura east west province she's also the former executive director pax christie usa and former president national black sisters conference and mr steve crump who is a journalist a reporter with wb tv and he's also producer of the documentary facing an uncomfortable truth the documentary that underpins what we are going to be talking about today we are going to now review our first clip of that documentary so we can begin our discussion and i do want to let anyone who's watching know that when we return mr crump the floor will be yours you'll make your comments about the first clip that we see and then we'll begin our dialogue so let's go now to our very first clip for black catholics it was just pay pray and obey sacraments are an important part of this ritual but along the way there are things that seem to be forgotten hello and welcome i'm steve krump this is a story of history heritage and hardship going back to the late 1700s the earliest settlers in the commonwealth of kentucky expanded the reach of the roman catholic church they carry their faith into parts of the south as well as america's heartland however the contributions of one group appears to be missing we're talking about african americans they were builders and caretakers parishioners and worshipers understanding what they did how they lived and the sacrifices they made means coming to grips with facing an uncomfortable truth by connecting bluegrass roots and catholic realities um took roughly two years and some change to do um it was a very moving piece of work to have been involved in and more or less in some regards i hate to use the words exposed but that's kind of what happened as it relates to uh the role of the church hierarchy and what was happening in the 18th and 19th centuries um you guys are in new york in terms of uh the foundation this conversation but what we found in kentucky and this is right about the time after the diocese around the country were established out of baltimore which became the headquarters of the catholic church in america where the provinces were set up being new york philadelphia boston and this far away place off the east coast called bardstown kentucky and that area was referred to as kentucky's holy land and what we managed to find in this documentary is that so many of the parishes had been built by former slaves uh in addition to that the seminaries the orders the convents and the like in many regards uh the people who made the decisions and called the shots were involved in you know bluntly what today is referred to as human trafficking from the same point of where uh it was the free labor that got these places these emphasis built uh and in many respects uh it was one of those uh scenarios of where people enter the seminary or the convent uh african-american slaves should put up his dowry so i think that that's kind of where i want to begin and that was the crux of the beginning of this piece and i'm sure that many of you all on this panel will obviously weigh in as it relates to the content of the catholic church begin with a very very powerful just uh pronouncement in in that blacks had to pay pray and obey and uh we don't speak to that in the past tense anymore because it appears that this is a frame of mind this is a stream of consciousness that we've carried with us from the past into the present my my question to our panelists right now is why is it do we feel that we have to continue to carry this this this burden of the past this burden where we feel that we we need to continue to pray pay and obey when it appears that we've come so far or should have come so far in our way of thinking where do you think that mindset comes from uh father parks i'd like to start with you thank you liz i think it comes from a lack of knowledge in many ways uh you know the jesuit order is undergoing a tremendous effort now to come to the truth of jesuit connections to slavery we know about the maryland province that got identified with georgetown university it wasn't really a georgetown issue it was the maryland jesuit provinces issue and the jesuits were the one who did that hideous sale of 272 enslaved people and sent them down to the south broke up families uh against the direct order of the graduate general he did not want things done that way so i think the lack of knowledge uh allows this pay pray and obey uh systematic system of thinking to go on i'm happy to report that i think our truth project is breaking that down big time and uh you know we're in all the major i'm an east coast jesuit we have 28 schools on the east coast they're pretty much all in log city so we go right down from boston to new york philadelphia baltimore washington and atlanta and we have what we call classic high schools which are largely white but significant numbers of blacks and hispanics now and then crystal ray schools which are 95 black and hispanic and nativity schools which are middle schools again about 90 percent uh black and hispanic and that's had a huge impact i think on the jesuits because we know that we did the wrong things in the past and we want to write things as much as we can now father i'm going i'm going to stop you there because i do want to make sure we all take part in this discussion and also make sure that everyone is not muted so that we're all able to hear what you're saying um sister chappelle i want to come to you first of all to apologize for massacring your name in the beginning and also to to to get your uh response to to what father parks was saying uh this knowledge that he says we feel that we're accumulating more now uh what is more different about the knowledge that we had back then i mean we were we knew slavery existed we we knew the enslavement was there uh is it a more progressive knowledge now and are we even making use of that knowledge in order to progress further well i i really want to say that um as much as i appreciate what father parks has said uh i do continue to believe that from for many black catholics we continue to still find ourselves in places where we simply uh play pray and obey i mean and i think part of that has to do with the fact that when we look at all of our social systems that exist within the united states and certainly one one of our social systems is our beloved catholic church and yet we must uh we must readily admit um that the the catholic church certainly was the largest slave holding corporation in the united states um so that's a fact that's a that that is a that's a reality but i would even go deeper than that in terms of looking at the fact that when we look at social systems particularly in the united states many of those social systems the values that they are rooted in have been primarily eurocentric values and so therefore those values continue to play itself out in in many of our many of our institutions and so and because of that these are social systems don't really uh are not currently set up to be conducive to developing being in right relationships let alone anti-racist relationships and so to me we have to go back and look at the foundational values upon which these systems are rooted in brown i i want to get your input on this and um please make sure you're not muted but thank you so much i want to get your input on this and um sister chappelle makes an excellent point about the systemic aspect of it and the foundational aspect of it but uh we've we've talked about that uh several times like this is not the first time we've talked about uh where this type of mentality comes from it's not the first time we've talked about you know how far we've come and how far we have to go at what point do we say okay this is it this is what we have to do in order to finally break that cycle and how do we go about doing that i have to make one correction to my introduction my department is not african studies it's africana studies which means all people of the african diaspora or from the continent that's one thing the second thing i have to challenge is who is this we we're talking about we that was the introductions and all and the comments have been made who are we because watching that incredible documentary that mr krupp did there are some sections that i think we're going to discuss later on about how black catholics made their own culture and it was very proactive and very syncretic and very inclusive and very rich i would like to take as an answer to your question the scripture passages says the stone that was rejected has now become the cornerstone i believe that that is true for the church i believe that is true for the country and i believe that is true for the planet that if the catholic church is to endure and if the society of jesus is to endure the descendants initiative this is the the memory history reconciliation projects that father parks talked about and it's going across this country people have got to wake up and say well we didn't realize what you all were what you were going through and what we put you through until we started going through it ourselves if there's to be a future of this planet it's going to have to be con centered on and founded on the people who had been rejected by the dominant narrative so my basic response to all of that is yes you're absolutely right this is the time today is the day but the spirituality of black believers has been more authentically scripturally based than those people who had to assimilate into political and economic cultures in order to belong since we knew we would never belong we didn't have to go through all those changes and all of our contributions have been i think scripturally based performative ritualistic sophisticated and we are going to be the ones who have to sing and go let nobody turn me around mr crump your opinion on you know i agree in in many respects uh any of the rejected stone uh but i think what father speaks to guards um [Music] directly to the beatitudes in many respects are um you know those who are meek inheriting on the earth uh but even more of what it is and keep in mind i went back and looked at this piece uh earlier today and the thing kind of with me because you know when you're writing you're producing you get too close to it and then you tackle the efforts there kind of look at the pros and cons but at the end of the day we stayed we stayed we survived we endured you know and so when you look at the totality of the contributions in many regards uh the role of african-american catholics in my opinion clearly has been service and sacrifice and the announcement of that i think as we've said before before there's reconciliation there's got to be truth and the fact that the so-called oppressors if you will you know are are dealing with their own truths we have our truths which has been the pain which has been the endurance but the reality is you know how do you how do you how do you know my grandmother would like to say how do you make folk do the right thing at the end of the day father parks how do we make folk folk do the right thing at the end of the day you're uh pleased that's not easy and it's one of the things that we're trying to do so we try to do the right thing you know we feel we're in a limited part of the church uh you know in all humility we're very good at running pre-secondary schools and secondary schools we think in the cities we're in a big challenge to the black community is the young males uh one of the worst things that slavery did was not allow the enslaved to be educated uh and we've made tremendous progress i think in getting a lot of african-american males into our schools educating them properly helping them get into great colleges and universities and helping them to get good employment after they graduate so i think if everybody in the church tries to do what they're good at they can really help we can't you know what i see among the jesuits a lot and others people love to talk about justice i believe in doing justice that's more important than constantly talking about justice we have to understand the past and what happened but at some point i think we have to act and we can can do a lot of good that we can do and we should be doing a lot more good for the black communities sister chappelle i want to come to you and i also want to touch back on something that father brown said in uh who is the we uh and and you're absolutely right about that father brown we do tend to use the we and the they they did they we said or or and how is it do you think we can stop this assignation of blame to some unknown we or the or they and finally just take ownership of of the history of the past what we contributed and and how we can move past that and make progress uh how do we own it well i think that there are some folks that that are beginning to own it um as as father joe has said i mean the jesuits certainly have come out um and have and have uh spoken about their their sinfulness i mean there's been many religious communities the sisters of loretto i also know the you know the religious uh religious congregation of sisters of the rcjs they have also come out and acknowledged their own sinfulness in in owners slaves and so i i think that it is beginning that is beginning to to to come forth and and come out i think though at the same hand i think though that when i speak of the we i'm speaking about we as we as uh uh we are uh african-american catholics we also need to uh need to continue to empower ourselves we oftentimes get caught up into this thing uh we got to wait for someone else to empower us and yet when we go back and look at uh the wonderful documentaries uh mr trump put out our you know our people empowered themselves they built they taught they said as father joseph said you know ain't nobody gonna turn me around you know and so this is sense that we as african-americans catholics have to claim have to claim our own truth have to claim our own identity and and to say we you know we are new we are not new to this church you know we have been a part of this institution since the very beginnings so what we need to begin to do is to use our gift to use our talents to uplift and empower our people father brown uh before we move on we just have a couple of more minutes left but i love what sister chappelle just said this is something that i i talk to uh just young young kids about all the time and adults too this need for permission this need for affirmation uh this need for validation uh when we are the the people that we should be we don't need anybody's permission to say this is what we need to do this is how to do it this is we already know this what what is i'd love to hear your thoughts in in the time that we have left on that particular aspect of this topic sister chappelle made a comment that i'm going to take to the extreme and i know she already knew i was going to we were there since the very beginning uh simon of cyrene let's talk about the very beginning but it isn't just heroic people it's about the intellectual development of catholicism judaism comes out of moses and his his wife and his father-in-law who taught him how to walk up a mountain and pray and get a direct response from god he didn't get that from paris france the fathers and mothers of the desert when they had this escape atrocities went up towards the russian places and all into europe bringing literacy art theology and music we have been there since the very beginning we do not need permission and the black catholics that i know and the ones that i recognize in the documentary know that very well i'm i i validate my life with the experiences i've gone through and what i mean by that and i meant that before was sticking close to scripture the beatitudes yes but the corporal works of mercy and the injunction of jesus when he walks into the synagogue the first time after his temptation social justice finding a place at the welcome table for every every one of god's created beings that's what we have been saying and doing at our best so in some ways if you want to know what the catholic church looks like go to bardstown okay and on that note we are going to move on to the next clip although i would love to dig deeper into this topic as well but we're going to keep it moving we're going to take a look at the next clip now and continue our discussion right after that the first time i saw my mother crying was when an usher at saint louis bertrand told us we have the colored pews in the back and that's when i saw my mother crying right here in baltimore our sisters right down at the basilica had to sit they were not able to sit in the front pieces when the sisters went down south they were expected to sit at the back of the church and receive communion after everybody after the white parishioners had received it some of the sisters were denied holy communion because they the priest would not give it to them blacks did worship in the back of the churches they contributed to the church financially and separate records were kept such a commitment to service is well documented in the holdings at the library of congress images from the 1930s detail the contributions of african americans at a church-sponsored picnic at bardstown's st thomas we just were not respected we had to stay on the left side of church uh we received chameleon on the left side the only time that we went to the main altar in the center was when we made our first communion in this great white church saint joe's cathedral that our great great grandfather helped build as a blacksmith in that church we were still treated as less than the other folks but we knew what the great prize was the great prize was the body of christ sister chappelle i have to begin with you uh simply because uh when when i anchored i would always interview priests and i would always interview the mons seniors and i would always into i'd always interview men let's just get right let's just get right to the point and i would say to myself that our women religious uh remain so undervalued and under heard at least where i was and that was something that always bothered me and and my question was after viewing that segment of mr crump's documentary is that this treatment of women is is simply so antithetical to the very concept of what the church is uh the the church is referred to as she our mother uh the the church is the the spouse and the bride of christ we speak so highly of course of of the blessed virgin mary the holy mother this adoration it seems does not carry over into the treatment of of our women religious and and i i just really want to back then and now and i really want to hear your thoughts on that and and what you think needs to be done in order to to change that way of thinking because it needs to be changed oh oh definitely what i would say um is that and this is specifically as it relates to black women religious because i think white women religious um certainly have had their struggles but certainly have not had the struggles that we as black women religious have had i mean from from jump street even with us trying to enter communities you know as eclipse said you know we were told that uh i either they weren't accepting black women uh or we was just or we were told basically that we didn't have a vocation because perhaps we uh were not able to be celibate so these are these are the kinds of things that black women religions have have had to have had to deal with but underneath all of that we always have realized it is god who has done who does the calling you know and so therefore because we are called many of us have never really um bought into that okeydoke i mean so what we have what we have done is we believe in a god of liberation and so therefore it is this god of liberation that certainly has continued to allow us as black women religious and as black women i would say even more so even as black women to continue to be resilient to continue to be of the backbone and to continue to be the ones that transmit the faith father brown i'd love to hear your response to this and and your thoughts on on this i got shoes you got shoes all god's children got shoes when i get to heaven gonna put all my shoes and gonna walk all over god's heaven heaven everybody talking about heaven ain't going there now how did those folks manage to stand up in a religious assembly with an overseer with a whip and maybe a rifle and talk all in their faces about just cause you tell me who jesus is don't mean i got to believe you so from the very beginning of our spirituality in this country you had people who performed their full identity in spite of and i could do a 20-minute segment in mr trump's next documentary on my mother in the black catholic church when she and my father wanted to become catholics and the priest in southern illinois told them if i keep instructing you they will run me out of my parish and yet she was there when i was ordained she fed some of your fellow sisters sister patricia including sister pat haley once in a while and sister theod bowman once in a while i know that that song is absolutely grounding in our way of perceiving i'm gonna sit at the welcome table plenty good room in my father's kingdom we oh well the catholics didn't do that well yeah but the catholics went outside afterwards and still went to church after mass was over i know we went to mass at eight o'clock on a sunday morning in east st louis but at eight o'clock at night we would listen to sis mother sister mother willie may ford smith on her gospel program in st louis radio so i know that we were in my father's family methodist my mother's family baptist and i was in all their churches we have always i say that black christianity was the re-reformation because it has brought black christianity is more catholic sometimes in the catholic church with all of its ethnic parishes father parks you are muted yes i think one of the major uh faults of the catholic church was you know in terms of dealing with slavery and african americans was it brought into the current culture and got away from the bible frankly so the culture said blacks are barely human the culture said don't let them in the door if they have to come in the door sit in the back that was all in a culture same thing with regard to women women are second class citizens no matter what color or ethnicity they are and that was really the major major fault of the catholic church it took so long to get away from that and i think you know bit by bit the church and the religious orders have gotten away from that we still have a long ways to go and we have to be reminded uh by falling into that terrible falsehood it led to great evil and we have to be very careful we don't fall into that again mr crump i i want you to uh have the final word on this because um in direct uh in speaking to what father parks just said and also in in speaking to the clip we just saw uh the story of skilled african americans that stood out this is the part that stood out to me the story of skilled african americans putting in blood sweat and tears that led to the existence of edifices making the building more sacred knowing what they have been through knowing what they were being put through they saw that they saw the building as more sacred but there are those that would say how could you see a building being sacred when your blood sweat and tears was more the sacrifice of your of your dignity you you built the buildings because you had to not because you wanted to uh what do you say to that i i think you know in some regards let me uh thank father brown for bringing up sister pat haley what an amazing individual when i had a chance to meet her as we were putting this project together i was just unable to interview her but in response to your question it's kind of a double story and a bit of a i mean where yeah did in fact put in blood sweat and tears on one hand but on the other hand there was this whole scenario of second-class citizenship i mean that's exactly what it is cases in point plural from the standpoint of where you know when it came time to go to communion and a lot of these parishes go down the aisle and could be served in the back um you know you talk about the sisters of providence the oblates who we saw a clip from uh sister uh mary alex fisher's order who headed up that order at the time and uh you know who who were the descendants on that order of mother mary lane and two places in the south and from uh what i was told by one of the historians is that you know the nuns the ordained nuns just like sister patricia here could not receive the blessed sacrament you know and he used a line from james brown that ain't right you know from the same point of where you know again there is this investment and at the same regard going back to where you can even look at what happened barge town and and some of those places was the westward expansion of the catholic church and at the expense of our people in many respects so in some regards in the year 21 like yet we're defining at the same time more determine our own you broke up a little bit uh on my end mr crump so forgive me if if i don't quite grab if i didn't quite grasp the end of your comments but i i think i got uh the gist of it enough to ask and what i want to do as part of this discussion is so forgive me if this sounds like a non-sequitur anyone but uh at the end of at the end of this and i don't want to wait till the end so we don't time how do we begin to start acting in ways that this history that you have presented to us so well in this documentary and this history that we are all talking about this past that we are all talking about how do we bring it to the present and start making clear cut transitions into what can be seen as progress and i'll start with you father mark oh oh mr crump please well no no in some regards there's got to be a level of accountability and there has to be uh when i say accountability it's it's you know in greater peace like this it is an uncomfortable truth even from the critics well they say how dare you air our dirty laundry well the fact of the matter is truth is truth you can't you can't get around that but you know the reality is i think i think it's one of those things of where if people are going to be proactive and it's a cop out oh you're guilty feel guilty about what we've done to you it's like well hey wait just a minute you need to at least take stock and what it is we bring to the table value that don't take it for granted and allow us to define you know not only our destiny but your role in our destiny and how we can more or less work together in father parks i was going to say i think exposure to black spirituality for white people is very important so i grew up in jersey city irish immigrant parents and my mother often took me there was a small african-american catholic church christ the king and they had a novena one night a week and my mother took me to that many many times and i remember as a little kid well i guess the mommy the black people here not in our church you got to come here and then in cleveland when we opened the crystal ray school for low-income kids the head of it rich clock a good friend of mine he decided to go to a black church one sunday to recruit kids after the service and he liked to eat and he figured he told his wife i'm going to go out and have a great brunch after it's a 9 8 30 9 o'clock serving i'm going to be really hungry i'll meet you there 10 o'clock in the morning well we got there at one o'clock in the afternoon and he kept going back regularly he said that's the greatest liturgy i've ever been at in my life uh so just the exposure i think uh to black spirituality is unbelievable i heard bishop moses in detroit one time celebrated mass and sang at the end of it lifted the roof off the j through church there it's a suggestion i'm going to keep mentioning it to my friends you got to do that sister chappelle in in the current uh social justice uh climate that we're in in the current climate that we're in with regard to uh the way we are viewed in the church and outside of the church uh do you think this kind of exposure this kind of being open-minded to uh to black spirituality is that something that's just an ideal or is it possible and what does that look like you know what not everybody's going to want to go to the black church and not everybody's going to want to experience it that way and it's not something that we're begging them to do how do you encourage that without sounding like you're trying to you know have them validate us by being in our church so they could see how we think and how we celebrate you are your muted sister i'm sorry oh yes i guess for myself i'm not um i don't necessarily find me wasting my time on uh people who i know are not going to they're not going to change and that's where they are i'm more invested in putting my energies into into with and for my people you know in terms of empowering providing leadership ex uh sharing the gifts and the skills uh so we we so we stay bullied up in order not to in order to do what we we need to do we know we are children of god you know and and and so therefore in in light of that we know we are made in the image and likeness of our good and gracious god and so therefore it seems to me we have some work to do in terms of not falling into that needing to ask uh and and and and take and really taking the social justice teachings of our church seriously and i think it's i think the social justice teachers have been one of the best kept secrets particularly amongst uh catholics of color because if we really understood what those set that what the solstice catholic thoughts and teachings are about i mean we we would we we would know that it is okay for us to organize we would know that it is okay for us to question we would know that it is okay for us to uh be empowered instead of feeling like we gotta you know just wait until somebody gives us permission you know i ain't about waiting for nobody to give me permission at this point in my life that's right i know that's right sister thank you so much and and i think some people in the audience knows that's right too because we got some questions coming in so uh if if the uh if our esteemed panel will indulge me i want to read one of the questions how can we become brothers and sisters in christ segregation in the church is not what god wants uh i don't want to interpret the question because obviously i'm not the one that asked it but how is it do we claim our power our ownership our church and our spirituality without seeming as if we're trying to segregate ourselves from the church overall uh i i i put that to you the first to answer will be the first that that we receive well i think in inviting people to the let me recall i think they'll appreciate it they'll learn i've seen a lot of examples like that we run a parish in harlem uh a black jesuit great chisholm is the pastor i know a lot of people who go there like at least once a month with their family so they want to be and they feel very welcome so i think that's important to kind of share the great spirituality you have and just like my friend in cleveland i mean you know he was a georgetown graduate out of chicago uh he never really had a lot of experience with black people now he's running the school there it's going to be about half black kids in the school and he decides to go on sunday morning to the service in a black church and it it changed them completely he goes there regularly now mister mr crump i i think you were i think you were about to answer yeah i need to go back uh you know that is uh even phrases that we hear a lot in local media and in the like that is and it's applicable to the catholic church where we hear so much about black lives matter agreed but the also you know part of the part par part of the huge disconnect it's nothing new i mean in one of the clips in the documentary that we didn't get to something that i just found amazing there was a uh an archbishop in baltimore thomas during the civil war american and then just goes on this weird tangent you know from the standpoint of his words not mine you know uh were we were called vagabonds and the sentences being we would be known as infidels the point that i'm trying to get to is a lot of that stuff is generational or it's handed for one to when you can go on out of the zone of pipe organs and the light you know and and bring it to where the rubber meets the road in terms of our own liturgy and the way that we worship it can be very eye-opening and perhaps enlightening enough for people to at least to be open enough to say okay you know there is a a worship there's an understanding and perhaps there's a way that we can move forward i'm gonna i'm gonna jump in because uh mr crump has uh frozen i think or i don't know if it's on my end but before we go on to the next clip i i do want to ask and and i uh and i know the clip that you are talking about mr combat because i i watched the documentary several times it was it was just uh so provocative to me i want to ask our panel how high up does this have to go how high up do you care that it goes uh because uh we i i did note during the documentary that there was a point where it was just like how much did rome know i mean because we can't talk about catholicism obviously without talking about the holy father and and and the vatican it just wouldn't make any sense because because you know that is something we have to acknowledge uh has there ever been any question concern uh should there be of whether or not rome even cares what's happening with regard to black spiritual culture or is this something that we don't need to know whether they care about or not we're going to move forward with it anyway uh sister chappelle you know that's a a very um intriguing question certainly in terms of uh because it's a the american church or the church certainly um is in the relationship with with rome and the vatican and i and when i look at this current this current pope that's that's that's with us now uh pope francis seems to be uh very uh progressive in many in many instances you know i mean he certainly has come out and spoken against uh systemic racism i mean in in in in the uh pastoral letters that have been that he shared he certainly he certainly does say that he doesn't say a whole lot i feel with respect to the role of women uh in the church and uh etc so from from from one perspective uh i feel yes there is a need to continue to have these conversations with the hierarchical church but on the same at the same time you know it just seems to me we have to find a way to move forward whether whether the institutional church is with us or not you know because i because i am uh pro-black and pro-catholic you know it doesn't you know uh it doesn't mean that i don't that i don't embrace uh my my my white catholics etc but on the other hand i i feel like that's a good place to be right and as and if they want to be an ally ship with us fine i'm all for that but on the other hand you know uh we're not gonna stop moving and we're not gonna stop demonstrating and we're not gonna stop writing and we're not gonna stop doing everything we need to do to claim our rightful place within this church father brown i want to uh get your thoughts on this really quickly because we do want to move to the final clip but uh i'm very interested in hearing your perspective on on this particular topic the authorities in rome from the 1870s on well the jesuits from much earlier than that were opposed to much of what the american catholic church the american jesuits were doing as father parks pointed out one of the great sins of america's catholicism is that they they chose to go for culture as their norm as opposed to scripture now we're talking about truth reconciliation and reparations i told the superior general the society of jesus at a small mass we had in montreal canada in 2018 that i knew that the descendants of these so the 272 enslaved africans who were sold in 1838 i knew that the society of jesus would finally become healed when some of those descendants decided to become jesuits it is not enough for us to offer charity or justice to the black brown and native people who have been oppressed and economically exploited and sexually abused what we're gonna what the church is gonna have to do the formal hierarchical church is gonna have to do is to say okay you all built it it's yours the vocations if the society of jesus organized its school system that a great percentage of the first people in those schools would become jesuits it's not enough to give them a good education so they can go to college it's also imperative that we turn the institutions over to the people who are locked out and put in the back of it and until that part of justice takes place it's really not a catholic church okay i want to i want to leave it there because i i really do want to get to that final clip so we can continue our discussion and also to have um closing remarks from each member of our panel so the final clip please while battlefield flashbacks offered stirring reflections from the 1860s another conflict at the same time was underway here in the u.s this skirmish went all the way to rome and was carried out by american church leaders who boldly defied the vatican when you look back historically there was no such thing as telephones there was no such thing as as the media operations and communication systems that we have right now so the question for me often becomes how much did rome really know firsthand 22 years before the first shots were ever fired fort sumter pope gregory the 16th penned these words during 1839 saying quote to turn away the faithful from the inhuman slave trade in negros and all other men what's in the church is in society was in society is in the church whatever church and it's something that we're always battling and of course that obviously was an underpinning of what we just spoke to but i want to now take this forward um the acknowledgement of the hierarchy of rome uh with regard to what's happening today in in the catholic church um as the church in and of itself right now tries to reckon with the public shame of the clergy sex abuse crisis should we ask ourselves why doesn't this horror of enslavement of this past of human trafficking of the rape of the segregation why hasn't that met with the same level of contrition or apparent or perceived contrition that we're seeing with the clerical sex abuse or are they mutually exclusive i want to begin with you mr crump question uh and i want to come back with a question in terms of me just putting my journalist's hat on for a moment which is i think right now the uh church in america has a wonderful opportunity with the elevation of wilton gregory becoming the highest ranking african-american catholic cardinal here in the states and can this level of be part of this mission uh um but getting back to with what it is you and you raise i mean um you know abuses abuse it can be the scandal that's involved um you know where the churches had to write out huge checks to uh victims of abuse at the hands of uh priests and the like and even in as much as what we've seen uh as it relates to uh the other abuses that's happiness was the whole idea of reparation necessarily a bad idea as it relates to the church but at the same time how do you do it i mean does georgetown provide free education uh do some of these parishes that you know were founded upon you know the backbones of some of these african-american families is there a way of of of doing the right thing so i think that that provides a 21st century argument all of its own in terms of not necessarily trying to minimize one group's suffering towards another but at the same time you know finding ways of making amends to the point of where people can at least have their sense of self-esteem collectively and making it does in fact have a level of validation father parks i'd love to hear your thoughts on that thank you liz there are in the in the catholic church there's a there's a pretty big difference between the diocesan clergy and the breakup into diocese and then the religious orders and as sister patricia mentioned the religious orders have taken the lead on you know the projects we call them as slavery memory truth reconciliation uh the jesuits have really been in the forefront of that so there are two groups now one led by our jesuit conference in washington one by the missouri province so it's basically the maryland province and the missouri province that were very involved in slavery so we're very fortunate in a sense at georgetown because almost all the enslaved people became catholic so there's baptismal records and wedding records and that's how we've been able to track down descendants down to the current day i was at the great event three years ago at georgetown i had hundreds of people from new orleans from the south up very powerful and moving and those things are moving along the jesuits will have an announcement in february about some of the things that we're going to do but one of the touching things to me is a 60 year old woman from louisiana who was accepted into georgetown university as an undergraduate on a full scholarship and lived in the dorms and got her degree they're the concrete things that are some of the concrete things that are being done so descendants are treated like uh children of wealthy alumni in terms of getting into georgetown they have a really they have a leg up on getting in uh and then when they get in they get a lot of financial aid to be able to attend the school so there's some of the concrete things that we're doing i worry a little bit as i mentioned before uh jesuits love to talk judge justice uh i keep pushing yeah this is a great document you know we've apologized you can only apologize so often do something uh and education was one of the key things that was kept away from the black community i just finished the uh monumental biography frederick douglass and he was sent to baltimore when he was about 12 years old to live with the brother and sister-in-law and nephew of his master and the woman of the house taught him how to read and he heard her husband once yelling at her saying never teach a slave how to read because they'll never be happy being a slave again and douglas said that was one of the most important things he ever heard as a young kid first he was mad and then that stuck with him his whole life and even though he never had a chance to go to school he was incredibly educated and he kept pushing education and i like to i think he's right that's the key thing that certainly the jesuits and in many ways the catholic church can do as a form of reparations for what had happened in the past uh sister sister chappelle uh i i often ask myself is it ever going to be enough you know and um father parks you you make a great point you can only apologize but for so much for so long which is you know a respectable stream of consciousness but will it ever be enough to make up for the injustices that were suffered uh not just at georgetown but throughout the history of african americans in in the church uh are we looking for enough what are we looking for if anything at all sisters should go i don't think um it'll ever be enough sadly but what i do believe is this i do believe that we are beginning to see we need to see more and more men and women of color particularly black men and women um moving more into leadership positions with within our church we mentioned cardinal we've mentioned cardinal gregory i mean you know wonderful fantastic but will we have to wait uh several decades again you know before we see another uh african-american cardinal so the idea is we we really need to see more of us in leadership positions within the within the institutional church but then in addition to that um we know what we need you know we also just have to have the courage to come together define what we need and strategize and move towards it and doing that being of one accord and and of one spirit and that's where i feel sometimes that you know um that that that we also have to get to a point where we trust each other enough and we also have the mutual accountability amongst ourselves in order to continue to empower our people sometimes i honestly feel that this current institutional church has to implode and we have to begin a whole new paradigm a whole new way of thinking a whole new way of relating based on the social justice teachings of the church father brown i i want to kind of just take what sister chappelle just said and add just another element to it in that this conversation here is necessary it's honest it's raw and it's powerful can we have continue to have this conversation in in a very fearless way can we own what we're saying can we have this type of posture outside this event and have that be okay of course we can and if we don't then we're not living up to the gospel injunctions the point that i would like to make as we come to this point in this conversation it's what i said at the very beginning the stone that was rejected has become the cornerstone but there's something else and i had to say this at the unfortunate national prayer breakfast that i was forced to attend in 2009 when i had some people starting to talk about how you have to love the sinner but hate the sin when they were talking about gay and lesbian christians and this is that fundamentalist group that's a political powerhouse and i said what about exodus you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him for you were strangers in the land of egypt you shall not afflict any widow or orphan all the way through from exodus to hebrews the notion of complete hospitality and recognizing yourself in the other that is the injunction of christ that is the covenant of god and the church has don't ask have we done enough when will there ever be enough we haven't even started but patty chappelle is so right we are the church this is what i keep telling people i know who i am daniel berrigan asked me one day as i was driving him around omaha nebraska why do you stay a jesuit and i looked at him like i ain't going to jail three times like you have i haven't been i haven't been alienated by your by my provincial that same way now of course i have been alienated i have been turned down told i was too dumb to get a phd told i was too dumb to become a priest and yet i stand here i speak with the authority of my experience and i'm going to say this now as towards the end of all this the authority of black christianity in america i take this for my mentor and beloved saint james baldwin if we do not love one another we will all die that is the key to all of this the bishops have written letters but they haven't gone to confession father forgive me for i have sinned and i have to make amends for it and i have to profess that i will not sin like this again i haven't heard the church do that but i ain't waiting for it last thing i want to say and it's a complete echo of mr crump's uh documentary one day i had four jesuit seminarians scholastics with me in east st louis and my mother was in her seat on the aisle then my sister then me and then these three white young men and my mother said you see that man up there monsignor driscoll he don't like black folks he he throws communion at us because he's afraid his finger's gonna touch our lips well by that time i wanted to take out my adoption papers because she was once again embarrassing me in public so i took a deep breath and i waited for her to do the punchline because that's who she was she said but i don't care because i don't come here to worship my senior driscoll i come here to pray to jesus that's the church i belong to and when the bishop of that diocese insulted me at a confirmation ceremony thinking that i was a baptist minister dressed like this at a confirmation that was four months before i was to be ordained the priest in that church my father said if that man is in that ordination i won't be there so i got bishop harold penny harold petty came up from new orleans and ordained me that's the church i belong to i speak with the authority of my experience and the treasures of my family and that's will it ever be enough i really don't care because i know i got a seat in the kingdom mr crump i we have two minutes and uh we began our discussion with this amazing documentary that you produced and i want to end with your comments on this documentary because it sounds to me like there has to be a part two based on everything we have spoken about today and there has to be a part two because we need to see how we will progress we will turn reaction to action what say you sir about what a part two of this discussion of our progress of our movement is going to look like well i'm glad that you bring up a part two or we may be able to call it part 1a there is a project and we're writing about uh children's piece and that's on daniel rudd who was from bardtown uh daniel rudd who was born as a slave uh became a successful uh newspaper publisher uh was admired by people uh such as sibling davis who i did not get to interview uh and it's you know a deep subject where we probably a run awakening like we did in the in in the piece uh far as uh where he speaks to so much you all talked about evening which is hurts being uh comprised of its people the laity if you will uh and i think that he demonstrated in some regards and perhaps father brown would know this ties to uh saint louis and illinois the energy we've seen far is collectively doing the right thing we saw in 1965 and selma when so many sisters so many priests so many people of the catholic faith were there with dr king john lewis and opposed to so wrong what happened at the end of that mark question is how do we recapture that how do we put the lightning in the bottle and i see you shaking your head there father brown you know from the same point of where finding that kind of energy that we know can and does exist going back to what you were saying about us loving each other i uh uh father brown simply because mr crump mentioned you we're very short on time but i i i have to give you the floor so you can respond to what he said and and give you the final word on that i agree with him i was so deeply touched when i saw that documentary the first time and you're right but the lightning has always been there when you bring up selma sister patty chappelle and i felt the warmth of antona evo yes prayed over blessed cussed out i must admit once twice but she's never quit a few years anyway i'm only going to say this we hand on our faith to our young and then we ask them to teach us what the church needs to be that crystal ray network that father parks talked about across this country christo ray hispanic majority christ the king black majority nativity schools we've got all of these schools and all we have to do is to say where is the future of the church in the 12 year olds in the 5 year olds in the 20 year olds and we are obligated to tell them you have our blessing what you need us to do walk together children don't you get weary all right and on that note that very optimistic and powerful note i'd like to turn it over to dr dunn murad who i believe will have an introduction to to closing remarks there you are thank you so much for that intriguing conversation um to end our final remarks we introduce brother tyrone brown thank you so much okay okay sorry about that um you know as i i was saying uh first of all we want to um give honor and glory to the good and gracious god who has brought us to this day uh even to this conversation who brought us and blessed us with such thought-provoking challenging action-focused change-motivated group of movers and shakers in our church in our nation uh you know yes we we give honor and glory to the god of our weary ears the the god of our silent tears the god has who has brought us thus far on the way and challenges us to bring about some substantive and substantial change in this old world of ours in this old church of ours thank you lord thank you lord and then i want to thank the members of our fine panel and our very talented moderator for saying yes to this evening and saying yes to the many situations and and conversations you've been invited and called to and you have been called to so many situations far beyond conversations and most of these conversations and situations have required a level of courage of you that we don't see all over the place we don't see throughout our church so i thank you father parks uh sister patty uh father joseph mr crump uh and this uh fabulous uh for today and for all the days that have proceeded today and i thank you for all uh that i know you will be doing beyond this day and this conversations you're gonna do what you have to do without requiring permission oh i know that uh especially i know that of my sister sister patty uh and and my brother father joseph and you're going to do and say what you have to do and say whether or not many of us are fully committed to the work of change uh i also thank each and every one of you in our virtual audience for making a commitment of time at least to this conversation and hopefully more to to to an additional conference to additional conversations and to the many things that must happen for us to bring about some of the changes that are necessary for our church and world you know on that point you know i want to challenge our organizing leadership group our our our fantastic obm divine nine leadership committee uh to uh continue this conversation and to take it in a different direction and and and different levels as necessary if necessary and to and i want to thank the committee for already committing itself to continue these conversations and so i say you know stay tuned and stay committed as a side note let me just explain that this obm divine nine leadership committee uh which we convened in in 2018 is comprised of catholic members of the nine historically black fraternities and sororities who are all committed to leadership and service uh and as a further uh uh sidebar and and i as as long as i've known sister patty i did not know until recently that she herself is a member of one of the the divine nine sororities uh uh need i say that uh uh she is a a delta a member of delta sigma theta incorporated so uh uh she's also part of our committee then sister patty so we got we're going to call upon you many more times but in talking about gratitude i certainly must extend my gratitude to to dr don murad and her social justice subcommittee uh and their work in organizing uh this evening's conversation you know talking about movers and shakers um this is a group of movers and shakers catholic men and women uh who are really committed to their church and their community uh you know i only wish that our church knew better how to utilize black leadership especially black catholic leadership that so very often uh people seem to talk about you know where are they uh they are they are us and and us are here so um uh need not look very far i just need to be more committed to the incorporation of black catholic leadership i also want to thank our valued partner in this evening and and in so many other programs that being the sheen center for thought and culture and his director uh david deserto uh with all the challenges that we've been facing of recent i hope that we commit ourselves in the church uh to continuing the continuation of institutions like the sheen center so that we continue to have these hard and necessary conversations and engage in many other programs and activities for our church and world we need places like the sheen center because some of these conversations we unfortunately can't have in our churches but we can have them in the sheen center and finally i want to extend an invitation to each and every one of you to continue journeying with us uh during this weekend of this month this year uh but as for this weekend tomorrow is a day of service uh and and uh and you can find out about the many opportunities to serve and serve in ways that might be safe and even family oriented and then on sunday uh we will gather in person or virtually to worship in spirit and in truth at saint patrick's cathedral with father gregory chisholm of the society of jesus uh as is uh father joseph brown uh father gregory will be our homilies and then after mash you know we as black folks we we gotta we gotta have the service after the service so then after the mass we will reconvene for a memorial program an opportunity to remember to mourn to heal to celebrate as a universal church this memorial service will be available on our website www.obmny.org as of sunday at 2 30 p.m so to conclude i just i just want to thank everyone but i also want to thank you not just for what you did this evening but i want to thank you for what you're going to do tomorrow tomorrow evening and the many tomorrows that we have to uh make use of uh if we're gonna bring about change so i thank you all very very much for this evening uh and i i wish you uh god's abundant blessings uh and i i hope to see you again later this weekend and then on many other battlefields to come

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Id: a2xBSTZlJkE

Length: 84min 28sec (5068 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021