Segregation in the Confessional

[papaspicy]

This is a bit random of a question, but I haven’t been able to find any information that isn’t coming from an anti-catholic website.

Recently, I was taking a group of students through some churches in Rome and one of my students had a curious question: Did the Catholic Church ever have segregated confessionals? This was brought up after seeing the various language confessionals. I explained that those the confessionals were only so that you could have a priest who spoke your language (this student was not religious as far as I know), but that I wasn’t sure if it was the case in times and places when segregation of society was in place (e.g. the Irish and Italians being excluded from places in New York, in South Africa under apartheid, and obviously in the American South between the civil war and civil rights eras). Does anyone know in any place or at any time in Catholic history where or when the Church practiced any sort of segregation, such as a “No Irish Confessions Allowed” sign?

 

[LilyM]

Confessions were (and still are) for the most part anonymous, so it’d be impossible to tell the ethnicity of the person confessing, in a lot of cases.

Besides which the priests mostly WERE those very same Irish and Italians, just like their congregations. And Catholics as a whole were segregated against in many ways, being denied public office on occasion and so on.

So having experienced segregation themselves in the wider world, sometimes merely for the ‘crime’ of being Catholic, it doesn’t stand to reason that they would impose it in the confessional!

 

[FCEGM]

No segregation, but the languages a priest speaks would be posted so those confessing could be understood and understand.

 

[brotherhrolf]

I grew up in the Deep South before Vatican II. Black people were part and parcel of my parish. There were no segregated confessionals just as there was no segregated Communion. Busses, movie theaters, restaurants, water fountains - all these were segregated…as were Catholic schools until 1962. Thank God those days are long over.

 

[PacoG]

Down here in South Texas, a lot of towns had two Catholic churches–a Spanish speaking one and an English one. It was along the lines of the ethnic churches you hear about in the Midwest. Some towns, like in the farming communities around San Antonio, had Spanish, English, Polish and/or Czech congregations.

The city I live in had a Spanish parish and an English-speaking parish. Both were run by the OMIs. The reason for the two parishes was strictly logistical. The Oblates felt that the way to best minister was to have a different church for each language group.

Of course, there was crossover both ways. As Mexican-Americans got educated and moved from the north and east parts of town to the south and west parts of town, they started attending the Anglo parish. Eventually, the parishes were realigned to be geographical as opposed to ethnic in the late 60s when a third parish opened up.

We moved here in the early 1970s, from Brownsville, where my parents attended the cathedral parish. One of the first things my mother noticed that at our parish (the former Anglo parish), the Anglos sat in the south pews (the Gospel side) and the Mexican-Americans sat in north pews (the Epistle side).

My mother, whose family had attended the Cathedral in Brownsville almost since it was built had always sat third pew down on the Gospel side. That was the pew our family donated when the Cathedral was built. Brownsville is one of those communities where Mexican-American culture has always prevailed so such segregation was unheard of.

So when we started attending Mass at our new parish in our new town, she sat us where we were accustomed to sitting in Brownsville–third row down on the Gospel (south) side. We got some ugly stares, but they wore off.

 

[PhilotheaZ]

In large cathedrals with international visitors (for example, Notre Dame in Paris), there are often signs on confessionals indicating what languages are being heard in each.

I remember that St. John Vianney had separate confession times/locations for men and for women. It was probably necessary for propriety in his time.

 

[Ghoti]

I grew up in the Deep South before Vatican II. Black people were part and parcel of my parish. There were no segregated confessionals just as there was no segregated Communion. Busses, movie theaters, restaurants, water fountains - all these were segregated…as were Catholic schools until 1962. Thank God those days are long over.

Sincere question:

Did black and white people sit together in the same pews?