Bishop Vasa November Column

November 1, 2021

PRACTICES ABSOLUTELY UNWORTHY OF THE CHRISTIAN NAME - PART I

         In 1840 the Catholic Bishops of this country were facing a horribly divisive issue - slavery. In retrospect, knowing what we now know and, in reality, what the Bishops knew even then and what we now more fully appreciate about the equality of all races, the issue should not have been divisive at all. Everyone of sound mind should have known and should have acknowledged and supported the abolition of slavery. Yet, that was not the case in 1840. What, in retrospect, should the American Bishops have done?
         They had a variety of options but I suggest four here:
         First possible option, say and do nothing.
         Second possibility, engage in dialogue with those Catholics who were staunch defenders of slavery or who were slave owners themselves.
         Third option, speak boldly and forthrightly about the evil of slavery, its categorical unacceptability, and the reality that support of slavery by someone purported to be a ‘faithful Catholic’ is absolutely contradictory to the authentic practice of the Catholic faith.
         Another option, the fourth, declare that those who support the evil of slavery are, by the very fact of their support of slavery, excommunicated from the Church or, at very least, unworthy of the claim to be Christian.
         Option one is unacceptable because silence seems to give consent. While Bishops certainly did not give consent to this evil practice many remained silent.
         Option two, is appealing unless, of course, you are a slave. From the vantage point of a slave, these two options would have offered little, if any, consolation or even hope of change. While the silence or the dialogue continued, people continued to be slaves. Besides this, there was that troubling 1839 document of Pope Gregory XVI, In Supremo Apostolatus, which condemns slavery in the strongest possible terms.
         The third option, which in fact Pope Gregory XVI chose, might have been more effective if the American bishops had risen to the moral challenge facing them. Such bold and forthright speech would have offered greater consolation to those confined to slavery but even such strong speech would have offered little, if any, actual relief. Further, while speaking boldly, the very ones so speaking would be welcoming to Church and to Holy Communion, the very souls to whom the bold words were addressed. Imagine, from the perspective of a slave, the challenge of coming to Holy Mass (if they were permitted to do so by their ‘masters’), hearing about the great evil of slavery and then also hearing that the Catholics who owned or trafficked them were welcome, without conversion or repentance, to approach the blessed table of the Lord’s Sacred Body and Precious Blood.
         The question to be asked is whether adamant support of slavery, which necessarily denies a human being’s humanity, was / is a serious enough issue to rise to the level of being an offense absolutely incompatible with Catholic belief and thus incompatible with the reception of Holy Communion.