james augustine healy was the first black bishop in the U.S. back in 1875.
Yes, he was. There is a problem, though. Y’see, nobody KNEW he was black. He and his brothers “passed” as 'black Irish." True, their mother was a slave, but she was ‘mixed race’ herself. Turns out that she was only about a quarter black. Enough, in those days, to keep her a slave, but…
And his father was very Irish. He bought his mother from her owner, and may or may not have married her legally…doesn’t much matter, since the marriage would have been illegal, but he presented her as his wife all his life. He owned other slaves.
They had six children: the others were also sent ‘north’ to be educated by Quakers. From there, their father got them into Holy Cross, where the brothers did very, very well. His brother Patrick became the president of Georgetown University.
Y’see, I know all about the Healy brothers, Dee Dee, and I applaud them and their parents. They were an amazing family and a great credit to the church and their parents…but let’s face it. If they hadn’t looked “white” and hadn’t emphasized their Irish roots and ignored their black ones, they would not have achieved what they did. They were indeed first…but only because they fooled everybody.
It is a personal accomplishment for them that they did all that the did do (and Catholics should be very thankful these men joined the priesthood ) they are actually an illustration of how racist the American Catholic church was, not how wonderfully tolerant it was. After all, look at what it did to Father Tolton, who should really be given the honor of being the first African American priest. Y’see, he didn’t hide his ethnicity. He couldn’t; while the Healy brothers looked Irish down to their toenails, Father Tolton was a black slave, and looked like one.
HIS experiences were not anywhere near as shining bright as the Healy’s. He wasn’t allowed to study at Holy Cross, or at Georgetown. He wasn’t allowed to study at any American Seminary. The priests and nuns who raised him discouraged him, and when he insisted, they did everything in their power to make certain that he was not allowed anywhere near a seminary here. He earned his own way to Rome and studied there…and was told that he had to come back to America to serve, right where he had been born and raised. He didn’t want to; Europe, though not particularly kind, was kinder than Americans were. But, he came back, and he served the best he could—and he died early and he died alone and relatively uncelebrated. Personally, I think he deserves a lot more credit than the Healy brothers, as accomplished as they were and as much as they achieved.
In the defense of the Healys, if they needed defense (which, quite frankly, they don’t!) I think it’s fairly obvious that they weren’t internally dishonest by “passing.” They were doing what they absolutely should have done. Their heritage was mostly Celtic; Irish. For them to emphasize the 1/8 (or perhaps less) negro blood would have been pretty silly…rather like me claiming that because there was a German in my ancestry way back when, that none of my other ancestors, who were Scotts, counted.
As he was dying,Patrick requested that he be buried under a Celtic Cross. He thought of himself as Irish. So, by the way, did Georgetown…and trust me, NOBODY got interested in his African ancestry until it became politically correct to do so.
And that, come to think of it, is as racist a position as the one that would have kept him from Holy Cross or teaching (and becoming dean of) Georgetown.Why does that small bit of African heritage matter more than the whole of his Irish one? I think it is wrong to claim him as the first African American bishop–or dean of a major ‘mostly white’ university. He woldn’t have claimed that for himself; quite the opposite.
st. moses the black was ordained a priest in 405. the coptic church has had a black priesthood probably going back to the time of the apostles.
That’s nice. I rather like the story of St. Moses, myself.
Of the officially canonized 3000 Catholic Saints, 8 are black. There are over 10,000 saints that are called so but not officially canonized…and a great many more of those are supposed to be black, but we don’t really know about those. Again, they are termed so in many cases because they were slaves–but in Rome, a slave was far more likely to be white.
what you say here highlights how mormons attempt to make equivalent two things which are very different. on one hand, you have as religous dogma that blacks were punished with dark skin; on the other, you have ephemeral state sponsored racism prohibiting the catholic church from being fully integrated in america, especially in the south.
how can anyone be part of this mormon cult is beyond me. they taught racism as a religious tenant. that is evil.
Indeed. on one hand we have a church that claims to be non-racist, and whose proponents of this idea give examples of Saints…when blacks make up about .2% of the canon of Saints. Not two percent (which would be about right, representing the total black Catholic population) but POINT 2%. Not so good.
According to the Conference of Black Bishops, 3% of American Catholics are black. Yet only 1% of American Catholic priests are black.
We have a church that SAID it wasn’t racist, and SAID that owning slaves was an excommunicable offense, and SAID that any man who felt called to be a priest could become one…
But who never excommunicated a single slave owner nor even asked that they not take communion. Whose clergy owned slaves. Who was in the Americas for three hundred years before a single black American became a priest…and the first one had to hide his African heritage to do so, and the one who actually LOOKED black had to hitch his way to Rome to pull it off.
On the other hand, we have a church that had an official racist policy for a 150 years, and was honest about it. We didn’t pretend otherwise by saying one thing and acting another. Then, one day, that policy was changed and the priesthood extended to ‘all worthy male members’ (blacks of African descent get the priesthood) and, rather than take literally centuries to enact that policy, did it instantly. Now, thirty years later, every worthy black Mormon man has the priesthood, period. We have more general authorities, bishops and leaders in our measly 14 million population than the Catholics have counted in the entire 15 centuries of its existence…and we did it in thirty years.
Does that make us perfect? Not even close. What it does do, however, is make it a little difficult for a Catholic to call us ‘racist’ and honestly take the high road. It is a classic case of the ocean criticizing the lake for being wet, y’know?
Oh Healy Hall…