Negro Clergy Call Roman Catholic Church Racist

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31659, 20 April 1968, Page 13

Negro Clergy Call Roman Catholic Church Racist

(N.Z Press Assn.—Copyright) DETROIT, April 19. The Roman CatholicChurch in the United States was primarily a white, racist institution, a Roman Catholic clergyman declared today, and called upon the Church to make every effort to recruit black men for the priesthood. The meeting, officially known as the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, was held in conjunction with the Roman Catholic clergy conference on the inter-racial apostolate. The caucus was called by the Rev. Herman Porter of Rockford, Illinois, and presided over by

the Rev. Rollin Lambert, of Chicago. Both are Negro priests. There are only about 150 Negroes among some 58,000 Roman Catholic priests in the United States. The caucus adopted a statement saying that the Roman Catholic Church in the United States had addressed itself primarily to white society and was definitely a part of that society, and apparently was not aware of changing attitudes in the black community. It also said that the Church was not making the necessary meaningful and realistic adjustments. One of these changes had to be a re-evaluation of present attitudes towards black militancy, the caucus said. The Negro priests went on record as recognising the reality of militant protest and that non-violence —in the sense of black non-violence hoping for concessions aftei white brutality—was dead. They said the same principle on which people justified legitimate self-defence and just warfare must be applied to violence when it represented black response to white violence. Black people, they added, were fully aware that violence had been consciously and purposely used by America from its fight for independence to its maintenance of white supremacy. Black people were encouraged to fight abroad for white America’s freedom and lib erty. “We are now asking why it is not moral to fight fot their liberty at home,” they said. A total of 387 white and black priests, who work mainly in urban areas, attended the inter-racial conference, but only Negro priests participated in the black caucus. They included Bishop Harold Perry, of New Orleans, the only Negro bishop in the United States.

The priests also said in their caucus statement that the Roman Catholic Church was rapidly dying in the black community, in many areas, there is a serious defection especially on the part of black Roman Catholic youth. The black community no longer looked to the Roman

Catholic Church with hope they declared. And unless the Church, by an immediate, effective and total reversing of its present practices, rejected and denounced all forms of racism within its ranks and institutions and in the society of which it was a part, it would become unacceptable in the black community, they added. They called for black priests to be appointed to decision-making positions on the diocesan level and in the black community, that black priests be given a choice of assignment on the basis of inclination and talent, and that a black-directed department be set up in the United States Roman Catholic conference to deal with the Church’s role in the struggle of black people for freedom