THE PAPAL VISIT : ‘Great Awakening’ of Black Catholics Stirs a Bold Beat

The life-size marble statues that long graced the altar of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church here have been moved into the old confessional booths at the rear of the sanctuary.

“It jumps a little more up here than it used to, so we put the statues back there to keep them from falling down,” said Father Fernand Cheri, the youthful pastor of this 140-year-old church in a predominantly black inner-city neighborhood.

What jumps a little more these days is Sunday Mass. At St. Francis de Sales, the sedate Roman rites of traditional Catholic worship are a thing of the past. On the Sabbath, the front of the sanctuary reverberates with a bold black beat--gospel songs and black spirituals, hand-clapping and shouting, exhortatory sermons and soulful Scripture readings.

It is a beat increasingly being heard in black Catholic churches throughout the United States. In a dramatic movement that some black Catholic clerics and scholars have likened to a “Great Awakening,” black Catholics are reaching into their Afro-American cultural heritage to reinvigorate their spiritual lives and recast black Catholicism in a distinctive new mold.

A big step for this movement is to come today, when Pope John Paul II addresses a special session of black Catholics. About 2,000 black Catholics, headed by the nation’s 11 black bishops, will meet with the pontiff at the New Orleans Superdome.

“This is the first time in history that a Pope has met with black Catholics as a body in this country,” said Bishop James Lyke, auxiliary bishop of the Cleveland diocese. “His visit will mean many things but, above all, it certainly is going to dispel the myth that the church is a white church. That message should be loud and clear.”

The liturgical changes in the Mass are the most striking signs of this new black Catholic spirit. Priests wear vividly colored vestments--often featuring the red, black and green of black liberation--and deliver their sermons in the rolling cadences often associated with black Baptist ministers. Gospel choirs sing to the accompaniment of organs, drums and guitars. There is a black hymnal that contains not only such standard Latin hymns as “Tantum Ergo” and “O Salutaris” but the black gospel classics “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.”

The new black consciousness is also permeating every aspect of black Catholic living, from family life, education and religious vocations to evangelization, Catholic history, theology and church organization.

For example, a 1985 publication by the U.S. Catholic Conference titled “Families: Black and Catholic, Catholic and Black” urges black Catholics to “maintain and strengthen black rootedness, black traditions and rituals, whereby faith and values are transmitted and celebrated in family, in extended family, in intimate person-to-person exchange.”

For blacks, the publication says, “the family has always meant the ‘extended family’ ” and “this rich notion of family was not only part of an African tradition but also was our own African-American experience.”

National Agenda

One of the most vivid indications of the force of this movement occurred last May, when more than 1,500 black Catholics convened at the Catholic University of America in Washington to celebrate their new-found spirit and to map a national agenda for black Catholics.

The conference, the first National Black Catholic Congress since 1894, included among its participants the United States’ 11 black bishops, many of the more than 1,000 black American priests, nuns and lay members from 110 of the 184 U.S. dioceses.

“Black Catholics are now beginning to see that they can be both black and Catholic, and that’s a good sign for the universality of the church,” said Bishop Joseph Lawson Howze, head of the diocese of Biloxi, Miss., and the highest-ranking black cleric in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy. “To be Catholic means to be universal, but to be universal does not mean having to be uniform.”

“Authentically black and truly Catholic” is the rallying cry of this movement, which was spawned in the mid-1960s but has come of age only in recent years. Its ultimate goal is a generations-old quest of black Catholics: to win wider recognition for their contributions to American Catholicism and to carve a bigger niche for themselves in the church.

The movement has its critics. For example, many older black Catholics, steeped in the Roman traditions and comfortable with them, fear that the new breed of black Catholics may engender a divisive “blacker-than-thou” attitude.

Recognition of Diversity

“Whatever will help people to better serve God, I say good to,” said Mother Rose de Lima Hazeur, head of the Holy Family Sisters, a black order founded in 1842 and based in New Orleans. “But we as a people need to realize that there is diversity among blacks as well as among whites. We shouldn’t impose a certain liturgy and say, ‘This and only this is for blacks.’ ”

Even some proponents of the movement express deep concern that the increasingly popular “gospel” style of worship at Mass does not become an end in itself but a means of enriching the celebration of the central Catholic sacrament.

Nevertheless, by most accounts, the black Catholic crusade seems to be an idea whose time has come. As the mute statues in the confessionals at St. Francis de Sales so vividly attest, the old order may sometimes have to step aside under the force of change.

“I think black Catholics are going to be the greatest gift the church has ever received,” Cheri said with a fervor characteristic of the movement. “The miracle of the church today is that we still have black Catholics after enduring what we have had to endure.”

Black Catholics, who make up about 2% of the more than 52 million American Catholics, have long lived a shadowy existence in the church.

Cheri, 35, recalled when blacks were treated like “second-class citizens” at many Catholic churches in his native New Orleans. Black communicants were relegated to back pews or choir lofts and often had to wait until whites had finished before being allowed to take Communion.

Blacks Pistol-Whipped

“In 1959, at the Church of St. Joseph the Worker, which I attended, four black youths were once pistol-whipped outside the church after the service by a white parishioner for daring to sit in the front pews,” he said.

Black Catholic churches are often in the poorest and most run-down urban neighborhoods, and of the 57,000 U.S. Catholics priests, 300--about .05% of the total--are black. For most of their history in this country, black Catholics have also had to conform to modes of worship, prayer and religious authority that are largely European in origin.

As a result, black Catholics have suffered a severe identity crisis. At a 1984 conference of black Catholics in Chicago, Father Edward Braxton of the Chicago archdiocese said: “When (civil rights activist) Jesse Jackson, (Chicago Mayor) Harold Washington and (‘Roots’ author) Alex Haley speak of the black church and its power and its impact, they do not mean us.

“When we hear that the church is the source of values, culture, community, solidarity and political power in the black community, they do not mean the Catholic church,” he said.

The liberal reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which was convoked by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and concluded by Pope Paul VI in 1965, set the stage for the black Catholic awakening.

Vatican II introduced the vernacular to the liturgy, revised liturgical fashions, underscored the legitimacy of individual conscience and encouraged theological exploration of hitherto sacrosanct beliefs and practices, including the exercise of authority in the church.

“Without the Second Vatican Council, this movement among black Catholics simply would not have happened,” Lyke said.

Liberation Movements

The black liberation movements of the same decade also played an influential role. Several present-day black bishop were young priests during that period and were actively involved in struggles for black rights.

Lyke, for example, worked with Operation Breadbasket, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ministerial alliance for obtaining economic justice for blacks. Lyke’s efforts for the campaign included involvement in voter education drives and the picketing of an inner-city branch of a national supermarket chain.

“The employers were all white and the customers all black,” he said. “All the money spent by the blacks was going out of the area.”

Many bishops feature the black liberation colors of red, green and black in their coats of arms.

Bishop Moses Anderson, auxiliary bishop of the Detroit diocese, also includes a representation of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the scene of a bloody confrontation between unarmed civil rights demonstrators and club-wielding state troopers and police in 1965. Selma is Anderson’s birthplace.

In 1970, in a step many cite as crucial to the development of the new black Catholic consciousness, the National Office for Black Catholics was created in Washington as an advocate within the church not only for black Catholics but for all black Americans.

‘Enrich the . . . Church’

Responding to the challenge by Pope Paul VI to “enrich the Catholic church with your valuable and unique gift of blackness,” the national organization set goals that included promoting Afro-American religious and cultural traditions and enabling black Catholics to assume a greater role in the church.

Putting the new preachings into practice at the parish level has not always been easy, however.

In an essay in “Thus Far by Faith: American Black Worship and Its African Roots,” a 1977 publication of the Liturgical Conference of the Catholic Church, Father William Norvel recalled his often discouraging experiences at St. Benedict the Moor parish in Washington.

Norvel became the pastor of the lower-middle-class black parish in 1975 and, at the time, was the only black pastor of a Catholic church in the city and only the second black priest ever to hold such a position there.

“A lot of buried middle-class fears began to surface” when he assumed his duties, he wrote. “Some (parishioners) said frankly, ‘We don’t want a black pastor.’ Some were suspicious that the advent of a black man in that role would mean ‘bringing in all of that black stuff into our parish.’ ”

Parishioner Departs

When he hung banners on the walls of the church with such mottoes as “Black is not a color but an experience” and “God in his wisdom has made me black and beautiful,” a woman who had been “queen of the parish” for years asked him, “Do you mean to tell me that those banners are going to stay on the wall?”

“Yes, ma’am, as long as I am pastor,” Norvel replied.

“Well, I’m leaving and I won’t be back, and I refuse to participate in anything any more in this parish,” she said.

As she swept out, Norvel recalled, another woman shouted after her: “Bye, now!”

Norvel persevered in his course and eventually established St. Benedict the Moor as a model of the new black Catholic consciousness. Along the way, he noted, he continually drew inspiration from the words of a veteran parishioner who told him: “Father, I am 75 years old. Excuse the language, but I know you’re getting a lot of hell here. But I have been waiting for a black priest all my life, so, please, don’t leave!”

Another important step in the growth of the new black Catholic movement was the creation in 1980 of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans, the nation’s only black Catholic institution of higher education and widely known as the “black Notre Dame.”

Afro-American Preaching

The institute is a three-week summer program that involves priests, nuns and lay members in a variety of academic courses, including black theology, black sacred song, black biblical history, black religious education and black sociology.

One course teaches students how to preach in an Afro-American style. Students study models of black preaching from slave sermons of the antebellum era to the homilies of King and Jackson. They then put what they have learned to the test in sessions devoted to application of theory.

“Good preaching is an art,” said Sister Thea Bowman, consultant for intercultural awareness for the diocese of Jackson, Miss., who teaches the preaching course. “Some people are natural speakers and preachers, but my assumption is that anybody who concentrates time and effort on the communication process can grow.”

One of the key documents in the black Catholic movement is the 1984 pastoral letter on evangelization from the black bishops, titled “What We Have Seen and Heard.” In eloquence, thoughtfulness and unflinching honesty, it has been compared with King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

“There is a richness in our black experience that we must share with the entire people of God,” the pastoral letter says. “These are gifts that are part of an African past. For we have heard with black ears and we have seen with black eyes and we have understood with an African heart.”

‘The Fact of Racism’

It calls upon black Catholics to use these gifts to enrich their own spiritual lives and those of members of the rest of the church. It acknowledges that the “major hindrance to the full development of black leadership within the church is still the fact of racism.”

“This racism, at once subtle and masked, still festers within our church as within our society. It is this racism that in our minds remains the major impediment to evangelization within our community. Some little progress has been made, but success is not yet attained,” it says.

Nevertheless, impressive progress has been made. St. Francis de Sales parish in New Orleans is an example. Since Cheri arrived as pastor two years ago, church attendance has gone up, the weekly collection has risen to $2,400 from $800 and the church and rectory have had a $70,000 renovation.

Many parishioners have become imbued with a new sense of pride in their church, reputed to have the best gospel Mass in New Orleans and one of the city’s most community-minded congregations.

“When you’re in a meeting with other people and say you’re from St. Francis, they just look at you in awe,” said Deborah Cola, 37, who left her old parish in East New Orleans to become a member of St. Francis de Sales.

“They say there’s something different about us. It’s the way we’re so vocal, the way we express ourselves so well, the way we move our hands. I can feel the presence of the Lord all the time. It’s like being caught up in a rapture, a spiritual rapture.”

THE POPE’S DAY: NEW ORLEANS Saturday, Sept. 12: All times are local to the area.

NEW ORLEANS 8:15 a.m. Holds prayer service at St. Louis Cathedral. 9 a.m. Two-mile parade to Louisiana Superdome Via Popemobile. 9:25 a.m. Meeting with black Catholic leaders at Superdome. 10:15 a.m. Meeting with Catholic elementary, secondary and religious educators, Superdome. 11:45 a.m. Youth rally in Superdome. 3:45 p.m. Celebrates Mass at University of New Orleans lake-front area. 7:15 p.m. Meeting with leaders of Catholic higher education at Xavier University. ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW ORLEANS

Established: 1850. in the early 18th Century, this territory was under the authority of the bishop of Quebec.

Archbishop: Philip M. Hannan (installed 1965).

Catholic Population: 535,000 (37% of total archdiocese population).

Parishes: 143 in eight counties of Louisiana, covering 4,208 square miles.

Priests: 470.

Nuns: 1,160.