The Gift of Blackness to the Church
Racism, Clergy Abuse, & Fr. Augustus Tolton's witness
Happy Juneteenth! Check out my “conservative” (lol) case for celebrating Juneteenth in Newsweek.
More importantly, we just released our pod interview with Gloria Purvis, in which we discuss her Carmelite spirituality, the history of Black communities in the US Catholic Church, and other cool stuff. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
[Also check out our first interview in America Magazine from back in 2020.]
In the interview, I mentioned my esteem for Marcus Garvey (who many of you forget was Catholic) and my visits to the parish of St. Charles Borromeo parish in Harlem.
We also talked about the cause for canonization of Servant of God Augustus Tolton. We thought we’d rerelease this piece I wrote a couple years back in Ethika Politika (RIP) about Tolton and his relevance to the clergy abuse scandal. Enjoy!
Finding Gold in the Mud: Race, Clergy Abuse, and the Witness of Fr. Augustus Tolton
A few weeks ago I watched a stage play about the life of Augustus Tolton, the first Black American Catholic priest. Tolton was born in 1854 in Missouri to enslaved parents. His family escaped slavery and settled in Quincy, Illinois, where young Augustus received a Catholic education. His relationships with some of the priests at the school sparked his interest in the priesthood, and he eventually discerned a calling in the early 1870s.
No American seminaries would accept him, some outrightly stating it was because of his skin color, while others found other objections to mask their racism. Through the help of a persistent Irish priest, he applied and was accepted to the Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fidei in Rome in 1880.
Tolton assumed that he would be sent on mission to Africa, as was customary for most black priests at the time. He was surprised to find out that the Propaganda was sending him back to Illinois to pastor to both black and white parishioners.