[Baltimore Sun] Black Catholics perceive echoes of neglect in church’s realignment proposal
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The cafeteria at St. Frances Academy was packed to overflowing as officials from the Archdiocese of Baltimore hosted a comment session for its Black Catholic membership, the first meeting it has held for parishioners since releasing a proposal to radically realign its operations in the city.
Standing and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, the crowd of more than 200 listened as leaders of Seek the City to Come, the archdiocese’s revitalization initiative, reviewed the basics of a plan that would cut the number of parishes in Baltimore and nearby suburbs from 61 to 21 and slash worship sites from 59 to 26. The proposal would reduce the number of predominantly Black Catholic worship sites from 15 to 6.
Several audience members took the mike Tuesday night to argue for their own church to remain open as a worship site. Others questioned the wisdom of some decisions within the plan, which the archdiocese says is a first draft. And as the evening went on, speakers began drawing cheers for remarks suggesting that the process so far has shown insufficient respect for the city’s Black Catholic population.
“A lot of people are leaving the church. A lot have left and may never return,” Ralph Moore, a longtime member and leader of St. Ann’s, a 150-year-old parish in East Baltimore, told the audience. “But we have remained. We have been the remnant. When others have left, we have stayed around, and that should be a reward for us.
“The Catholic church owes Black Catholics,” Moore said, to raucous applause. “They should leave our churches alone.”
The archdiocese called the meeting — the first of four sessions at which local parishioners can offer feedback — to give the members of the Black Catholic community their own forum to respond, spokesman Christian Kendzierski said.
“It’s important to hear from specific communities who have specific concerns and perspectives,” Kendzierski wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun. The archdiocese reached out directly to its predominantly Black parishes to invite participants, he said.
Three pending town hall meetings have been more widely advertised: one at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Archbishop Curley High School in East Baltimore, a Spanish-language meeting Monday at Our Lady of Fatima in Southeast Baltimore and a session Tuesday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in North Baltimore.
Archdiocesan officials are encouraging anyone with questions or comments to attend and share their reactions so that they can be incorporated as revisions are made.
Moore is no stranger to the role African Americans have played in the history of the Catholic Church. He and others continue to lead a movement aimed at prevailing on the church to recognize six pioneers of the faith — including Baltimore’s Mother Mary Lange — as its first Black American saints.
Consultant John Butler speaks Tuesday at a meeting for Black Catholics in the cafeteria at St. Frances Academy. (Jonathan M. Pitts)
As the meeting progressed, it became clear that, as Kendzierski suggested, Baltimore’s Black Catholics are reckoning with issues that resonate with special power within African American churches and parishes.
In a denomination that has historically been dominated by an overwhelmingly white power structure, it was long common practice in Baltimore and beyond for African Americans who wished to worship in Catholic churches to have to sit in the balcony or in the last few pews.
Those days remain front of mind for Catherine Thomas, a lifelong member of St. Peter Claver in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester. The Josephites, or the Society of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, founded the parish in 1888 for Black Catholics.
It’s named for Peter Claver, a 16th- and 17th-century Spanish missionary who spent his life ministering to enslaved people in South America. The Josephites, founded in Baltimore, work specifically among African Americans.
Under the plan, St. Peter Claver and two historic nearby parishes, St. Gregory the Great and the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Druid Hill Avenue, would be absorbed into a parish anchored by St. Bernardine Church. The latter was founded as a white parish in the 1920s, but has long had a mostly Black congregation.
Thomas, who is Black, said her mother, also a St. Peter Claver parishioner, told her that African Americans who wanted to worship in those other parishes long ago had to sit in the back pews, and she believes that should be taken into account.
“When we were brought as slaves from Africa, who ministered to us?” she asked. “St Peter Claver! My mother told me that when we would go to Immaculate Conception, we sat in the last three pews. When we went to St. Gregory’s, where did we sit? In the last three pews. And St. Bernardine’s didn’t want us at all. So why should we as a church be designated to go someplace where they didn’t want us in the first place?”
Five and a half miles south of St. Bernardine’s, Nina Duckery serves as parish council president of St. Veronica Catholic Church in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of South Baltimore.
Duckery also said the archdiocese should consider the history of that parish as officials weigh what changes to make.
In the mid-1940s, she said, when Cherry Hill was established as a community for African American soldiers returning from World War II, Black Catholics who wanted to attend Mass in the vicinity would have had to do so at predominantly white St. Rose of Lima, St. Rita’s, or St. Athanasius churches, where they would have been kept to the last few rows.
St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in the Upton neighborhood of West Baltimore. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Staff)
The archdiocese founded St. Veronica instead, and as Duckery told the audience, it has served as the only Catholic church in Cherry Hill — and a center for spiritual life and social services — ever since.
Duckery was “feeling some kind of way” that the plan calls for St. Veronica to be absorbed by a new Curtis Bay/Cherry Hill parish, one that would be anchored by St. Rose of Lima in Curtis Bay.
“There would be no Catholic presence in Cherry Hill — none,” she said. “St. Veronica came into existence 80 years ago as a place for Black Catholics to worship. We were not welcome at the very same parishes that you’re now telling us to merge with … Don’t send us to a church that never wanted us in the first place.”
Some speakers, meanwhile, said they considered the services offered by their churches so vital that they plan not to allow the archdiocese to close them — an option the archdiocese had not presented.
“We will — do you hear me? — We will be staying open,” Tony Fair, a parishioner at 150-year-old St. Gregory the Great, vowed after listing many of its ministries.
Church officials first asked attendees to sit Tuesday night in groups by parish and to develop observations and questions to share. Some found it hard to make room in the cramped space, others moved to the gymnasium upstairs, and not a few speakers said they believed the conditions reflected an all-too-typical lack of planning on the archdiocese’s part when it comes to dealing with Black Catholics.
John Butler, an independent consultant who works with the archdiocese and helped preside over the meeting, told the crowd that turnout was much higher than anticipated. Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, a co-director of Seek the City, told the audience he had chosen the site in part because of its historic import. St. Frances, established in 1828, is the first and oldest continuously operating Black Catholic school in the U.S. He apologized for the “terrible mistake” in planning.
As the meeting drew to a close, Lewandowski fielded other questions, including one from a man who wanted to know what would happen to the properties of any closed churches. Lewandowski said some would be repurposed, others sold, and proceeds from any sales would flow to whatever enlarged parish that church is asked to join.
Archdiocese official Geri Royale Byrd, co-director of the initiative, reminded audience members throughout the evening that the plan is a proposal, that Seek the City’s more than 200 team members are determined to hear out all comments and questions and to incorporate them as the process unfolds.
Comments made Tuesday night were recorded and entered in the record, she said.
Those who attend the upcoming town halls, either virtually or in person, will be able to offer feedback, and so will anyone who emails the archdiocese. The proposal will be reviewed and refined by archdiocesan committees in early May. Archbishop William E. Lori is to sign off on a final version by June.
Bobby Jackson, a member of St. Ann church, argued Tuesday night to keep the 150-year-old parish open. (Jonathan M. Pitts)
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