Gulf Pine Catholic
•
July 18, 2014
15
W
ashington
L
etter
From page 10
Norman Francis said that if his brother were alive
today he would likely say that the “church has made
great progress” but he also wouldn’t give the church a
pass. “It’s hard to excuse that we haven’t gone as far as
we should have” he said, adding that his brother would
particularly be concerned about the lack of young Afri-
can-American seminarians.
Retired Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Talla-
hassee, Florida, who is president of the National Black
Catholic Congress, knows all about that. The 74-year-
old bishop, who retired in 2011 for health reasons, is
rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary, the Washington semi-
nary of his order, the Josephites. The order was founded
to serve newly freed slaves in the United States and
now ministers in African-American communities. The
bishop said the order’s new seminarians are primarily
from African countries.
Bishop Ricard, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Loui-
siana, was a seminarian in Washington when the Civil
Rights Act passed during what he described as “a very
tumultuous, but very productive time.”
“I grew up in the segregated South where everything
was defined by race and segregation,” he told
CNS
June
18, adding that he always sensed the “law enforcement
was there to maintain segregation and if you crossed the
line, you’d be in big trouble.”
When he came to Washington, it was very different
because the city was “in transition, on the move -- and
like the rest of the country -- in great change.”
After the Civil Rights Act passed, he remembers
how different it was for him and the other African-
American seminarians to make the drive from Wash-
ington to the South where “you could go to hotels and
restaurants” for the first time.
The bishop noted that many church leaders were at
the forefront in integrating schools and fighting against
racial discrimination before the civil rights legislation
passed because they viewed segregation as “incongru-
ous to what it means to be Christian.”
And today, he said the “church in many ways is still
a leader” in these efforts, but its involvement is less di-
rect.
The challenge, he said, is that “racism is still a part
of the fabric of our environment -- of the air we breathe.
It’s still part of the DNA of most Americans.”
He also said the issue can’t be addressed without
recognizing that “whites, by and large, deny racism ex-
ists” and “black Americans, by and large, see it every-
where.”
He also noted that racism is so embedded in Ameri-
can society that “no one group is going to solve it. ... We
have to be in this together.”
And cooperation alone won’t be enough.
As he put it: “It’s going to take a lot of courage, fore-
thought, imagination to address this well.”
C
ivil
R
ights
-B
ishops
From page 11
During that year, several Catholic leaders includ-
ing New York Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, St. Louis
Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter and Boston Cardinal Richard
J. Cushing spoke about the urgent need for civil rights
legislation.
On Aug. 23, 1963, the U.S. bishops issued a joint
statement on racial harmony; five days later seven
Catholic bishops took part in the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom. In the months after the historic
march, churches continued to urge support for equal
rights in housing, employment and schools though dem-
onstrations, sit-ins, prayer services and convocations.
Sen. Hubert Humphrey, D-Minnesota, who man-
aged the civil rights bill on the Senate floor, repeatedly
stressed that church support of the legislation was cru-
cial.
In a graduation speech more than a month before the
act was passed, he said credited churches for “turning
the tide on civil rights legislation.”
“The moral issue has been recognized; the responsi-
bilities have been felt,” he said.
C
ivil
R
ights
-G
reenwood
From page 12
One of the African-American women at St. Francis
and a white parishioner at Immaculate Heart each told
about the nuns getting new tennis shoes courtesy of a
Greenwood merchant one week and wearing them in
a protest march against the merchants a few days later.
Decades later, the story still gets a little different spin
when told by a woman who supported the protests and
the son of a ‘60s merchant.
A bitter legal battle over how protests were conduct-
ed and the months-long “unbelievably effective” boy-
cott were finally settled, Malouf said, when he worked
with the merchants and Father Nathaniel worked with
the African-American community through the ministe-
rial association to negotiate a settlement.
“You could get killed over that,” Malouf said, add-
ing that in those days in Greenwood, such conversa-
tions across color lines just didn’t take place. “I was
threatened. The Klan threw stuff at my house.”
Father Nathaniel had been threatened quite seriously
-- a man who said he’d been hired by the Ku Klux Klan
to kill the priest came to the rectory one day. The two
talked at length and eventually the hired killer said he
decided the priest was too good a man to kill and gave
back the money. For a time the priest’s brother, a fellow
friar, served as a sort of bodyguard, various Greenwood
residents said.
As for the boycott, Malouf said the negotiations he
and Father Nathaniel helped arrange bore fruit, surpris-
ingly quickly.
The merchants agreed to hire a few African-Amer-
ican employees and to work on getting the city to hire
blacks for the police and fire departments. And they
agreed to start referring to African-Americans with
courtesy titles -- Mr. and Mrs., as they did white cus-
tomers -- instead of by their first names.
In return, the boycott ended and Greenwood’s ma-
jority black population began patronizing their local
businesses again.
C
onfession
-R
uling
From page 1
The Baton Rouge Diocese, in its own statement July
7, said the state Supreme Court violated the Establish-
ment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Consti-
tution in its decision.
“A foundational doctrine of the Roman Catholic
Church for thousands of years mandates that the seal
of confession is absolute and inviolable. Pursuant to
his oath to the church, a priest is compelled never to
break that seal,” the diocese said. “Neither is a priest
allowed to admit that someone went to confession to
him. If necessary, the priest would have to suffer a find-
ing of contempt in a civil court and suffer imprisonment
rather than violate his sacred duty and violate the seal of
confession and his duty to the penitent.
“This is not a gray area in the doctrines of the Ro-
man Catholic Church. A priest/confessor who violates
the seal of confession incurs an automatic excommuni-
cation reserved for forgiveness to the Apostolic See in
Vatican City.”
The diocese added, “In this case, the priest acted ap-
propriately and would not testify about the alleged con-
fessions. Church law does not allow either the plaintiff
(penitent) or anyone else to waive the seal of confes-
sion.
“This matter cuts to the core of the Catholic faith,
and for a civil court to inquire as to whether or not a
factual situation establishes the sacrament of confes-
sion is a clear and unfettered violation of the Establish-
ment Clause of the Constitution of the United States,”
it continued. “This matter is of serious consequence to
all religions, not just the Catholic faith. The statutes in-
volved in this matter address ‘sacred communications’
which are confidential and are exempt from mandatory
reporting.”
The diocese said, “For a civil court to impinge upon
the freedom of religion is a clear violation and the mat-
ter will be taken to the highest court in the land by the
church in order to protect its free exercise of religion.”
