That’s quite a statement to make when we have been around for 2000 years and the LDS just popped on the scene with racist policies from the start. Please back up your statement that “Catholics are still dealing with the problem of racism and the preisthood”. By far, the greatest number of men becoming priests in the Catholic Church today are right out of Africa. If the Church is racist, how can this be?
Do you really want me to do this?
Really?
Because I don’t want to do this. The problem is, I can…and those who have known me over the past year know that I can. I would rather concentrate on what the church is doing NOW…and you are correct, Catholicism is working very hard to overcome a very racist past. This is a good thing.
I will mention two things to illustrate the problem…The Catholic church has been present in the Americas since the early 1500’s. During that time slavery was endemic–and very much supported by official Catholic policy. The first African American priest, Father Tolton, wasn’t ordained until the very late 1800’s…and he had to go to Rome to get training because American Catholics would not allow him to attend Seminary here. This is one of the reasons Father Tolton is now being considered for sainthood; his courageous stand against bigotry in the US–FROM the Catholic hierarcy here.
Do the math: it took Catholics nearly 400 years to ordain an American black Catholic priest.
It took us less than 150 years to extend the priesthood to men of black African descent, (in case you don’t have your calculator out, that is less than half the time it took you…) and like Catholicism, a great deal of the growth we have in priesthood numbers is coming from Africa at the moment.
As well, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, there are approximately 3 million African American Catholics in the USA, out of 64.5 million Catholics. That works out to be approximately 4.5% of the Catholic population. If the ratio of black priests to white priests is to be equal to the population (that is, that if black members comprise 4.5% of the Catholic population, then 4.5% of the US priesthood should be black) then out of the 46000 priests in America, 2070 of them should be black. However, again according to the US Conference of Catholic bishops, you only have 250 African American priests in the USA. That’s less than .5%. not *five percent,*that’s ***POINT five percent. *** half of one percent of US Catholic priests are black, whereas, all things being not racist, almost 5% of the American priesthood should be black. Y’all have had half a millenium to fix this, and you haven’t managed.
As for the CoJCoLDS, the ratio is absolutely equal; every worthy male member of the church holds the priesthood, no matter what color he is. We did it on a sunny summer morning, thirty years ago, with one short announcement.
I’m not making up the facts, m’friend. What I AM saying is…the Catholic church is very large; monolithic and slow to change. It IS changing. It’s come a very long way from the Pope who told the Portuguese to go enslave the 'Saracens" (read, black Africans) in perpetuity and thus pretty much began the very profitable slave trade. Good for you.
Good for everybody concerned, and I’m serious about that.
All I am saying is that I will NOT put up with any Catholic criticising LDS history for racism. For one thing, it just so happens that Joseph Smith ordained a black man to the priesthood in America considerably before the Catholics did–by about, oh…fifty or sixty years.
