What was the Catholic church's stand on equal rights in the 1950/60's?

[TimeEntrance]

Where did the Catholic church stand on equal rights back in the 50’s and 60’s? Not what it’s stance is now, but what were church leaders telling people way back then? In other words, what was in the “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” back then?

That’s a good question.

The Civil Rights Movement as you may know was largely multi-racial. I do know Catholics (lay, priests, and nuns) participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s through means like mass marches.

But most lay Catholics are a product of their times and own ethnic and/or national cultures. As such… I do know a lot of lay Catholics were opponents of the Civil Rights Movement.

In the City of Milwaukee the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s primarily revolved around the Fair Housing issues and marches. Catholic Polish-Americans on the South side did not want their property values to go down and were often violently opposed to Black-Americans living next door to them. They worked beside black men in the factories and in working relation got along with them mind you.

(Various Catholic confraternities of “ethnic” white men and women also ran the KKK out of Milwaukee when the Klan entered the city and began to organize and promote in Milwaukee on a anti-Catholic platform in the 1930’s)

Were African Americans allowed to attend Catholic services? Were they allowed to partake in communion and confession?

Thanks!

I’m sure. Attending Mass is a requirement and the Catholic Church has always given the Eucharist to black people even if they were slaves.

It might interest you… that black and mulatto slaves and free people had Catholic confraternities in Latin America during the slave eras. These confraternities used to save and buy the freedom of some of their members at times.

In the United States you have the Knights and dames of Peter Claver. I’ve met some of their members in the Milwaukee chapter. They are headquartered in New Orleans though.

Now, bear in mind the first black priest in the United States had to go to Rome to be ordained (because all U.S. Bishops refused to ordain him) where he was ordained by the hands of the Pope himself. I assume that to have been a symbolic gesture of rebellion by the Pope towards his fellow American Bishops probably meant to insinuate he still holds the power.

Historically one of the Italian Popes possibly had a mulatto son anyways. His son had secular political power in Italy too. That was centuries before Thomas Jefferson made his supposedly own near-white mixed-race children domestic slaves on his landed property.

The Catholic Popes also - it is theorized - used “blackness” and black people as symbols of the universality of the Church against Protestant national Churches.

 

[TimeEntrance]

This PBS link provides more information on its site (with different links) about some of what I mentioned above in post #21.

pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/medici.html

Despite the many portraits of this 16th century Italian Renaissance figure, his African heritage is rarely, if ever, mentioned.[Editor’s Note: For more on this omission as it has occurred in the art world, read this January 2005 update.]

Alessandro wielded great power as the first duke of Florence. He was the patron of some of the leading artists of the era and is one of the two Medici princes whose remains are buried in the famous tomb by Michaelangelo. The ethnic make up of this Medici Prince makes him the first black head of state in the modern western world.

Alessandro was born in 1510 to a black serving woman in the Medici household who, after her subsequent marriage to a muleteer, is simply referred to in existing documents as Simonetta da Collavechio. Historians today are convinced that Alessandro was fathered by the seventeen year old Cardinal Giulio de Medici who later became Pope Clement VII. Cardinal Giulio was the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

On being elected Pope in 1523, Cardinal Giulio was forced to relinquish the lordship of Florence but he appointed a regent for his thirteen year old son Alessandro who had just been created Duke of Penna, and a nephew, Ipollito. Even though both were bastards, they were the last of what has come to be referred to as the elder line of the family.

There have been a few African Popes too. Although no one knows if they were black or not.

 

[Godfollower]

Where did the Catholic church stand on equal rights back in the 50’s and 60’s? Not what it’s stance is now, but what were church leaders telling people way back then? In other words, what was in the “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” back then?

Were African Americans allowed to attend Catholic services? Were they allowed to partake in communion and confession?

Thanks!

Maybe this will help (note the dates in the title):

From Slave to Priest: The Inspirational Story of Father Augustine Tolton (1854-1897).

amazon.com/From-Slave-Priest-Inspirational-Augustine/dp/1586175246/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352421677&sr=8-1&keywords=from+slave+to+priest

 

[TimeEntrance]

In Milwaukee the most noted Civil Rights for blacks was a Catholic priest that was a white man.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Groppi

Father James Edmund Groppi (November 16, 1930 – November 4, 1985) was a Roman Catholic priest and noted civil rights activist.[1]

At first assigned to St. Veronica’s Church in Milwaukee, in 1963 Groppi was transferred to St. Boniface, the latter parish having a predominantly African-American congregation. It was then that Groppi became interested in - and active in - the cause of civil rights for Africans Americans, participating in the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 on behalf of the Voting Rights Act, also working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference voter registration project, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., during the summer of 1965.

Here’s two youtube videos of Fr. Groppi.

1. youtube.com/watch?v=WCCRRESRP14
2. youtube.com/watch?v=y-78E_Ggm_o

 

[BroomWagon]

I am not familiar with the situation in NO, but I am aware that to this day blacks and whites in Louisana often attend seperate parishes. Often seperated by a fence but still on the same property.

And the book makes references that when he was in downtown New Orleans, restrooms really were not open to them as African Americans. However that said, compared to the rest of the South, it was not as oppressive meaning it was bad but not as bad. It’s in the first part of the book, probably first 20 pages and it’s not a long book. He starts out in New Orleans. The author himself makes this point. Maybe he is wrong in this. However, Churches are often divided on ethnic lines. Notably is black gospel music. Even in cities of migrants in the Midwest, Catholic Churches were often divided into the Polish Church, the German Church and so on.

 

[Tony_the_mad]

There have been Catholic African-Americans for about as long as the US has existed. However, that doesn’t mean that Catholics or Church leaders always embraced the standards of this modern era.

Quoting from The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives of the Catholic University of America.

cuomeka.wrlc.org/exhibits/show/pfp/background

So in other words not near enough; although they had a presence. Such are the small things that our world hinges on; for maybe if they had the courage to speak more forcibly then they would have been seen has having more of a moral authority to deal with the problems to come.

 

[BroomWagon]

So in other words not near enough; although they had a presence. Such are the small things that our world hinges on; for maybe if they had the courage to speak more forcibly then they would have been seen has having more of a moral authority to deal with the problems to come.

And the Catholic Church history is also of importance, just as today, the “Communion of Saints” was questioned by Protestants. There may have been a persecution of the Catholic Church as well.

 

[_Abyssinia]

Catholicism and the Civil Rights Movement