For Catholics, the now-annual Juneteenth holiday is an opportunity for the Catholic Church to reflect upon the steps that have been taken – and those that still need to be taken – to fully eradicate the sin of racism and move toward healing as the united body of Christ.
Kurt and Yvonne Hill, parishioners at St. Moses the Black Parish in Detroit and members of the Change Makers, an initiative of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, believe the Catholic Church, at large, can do more.
“The Catholic Church misses opportunities to let the world know who we are and what we stand for,” Yvonne Hill told Detroit Catholic, the archdiocesan online news outlet. “We’ve got the Catholic social teachings, and at confirmation, you learned what they were, and that was it.
“So anything that we do, or anything that happens, we should be able to hook it back onto one of the Catholic social teachings. If we’ve got the true faith, we’ve got to know how to market it – and if we are keeping it under a bushel basket, people are not going to know what we do or who we are.”
The Archdiocese of Detroit marked its third annual Juneteenth celebration with a special evening Mass at Gesu Parish in Detroit.
In 2016, the Archdiocese of Detroit’s bishops celebrated a Mass for Pardon, during which the Detroit Catholic community publicly prayed for forgiveness for the ways in which the Church had failed in its God-given mission of upholding the rights and dignity of everyone, including the sin of racism.
More action is needed to address systemic racism, Yvonne explained.
Soon after that Mass, a group of Catholics led by the late Father Norman Thomas began to explore how to eradicate the impact of the sin of racism within the Archdiocese of Detroit. The conversations led to the formation of the Change Makers, a group of priests, religious and laypeople who sought to safely bring the conversation to the larger community so that individuals and groups could recognize racism as a sin and begin to change the status quo.
“The thrust of it was to look at racism within the Catholic Church and within the whole systematic way of trying to lower the level of racism, bigotry and prejudice, especially as it relates to the Church,” Kurt Hill said.
The group’s recommendations included how to involve people of color within different aspects of the Church, including Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Archdiocesan Central Services and parishes, Kurt said. This could be anything from hiring practices, fixing up Churches, cutting lawns, painting, or simply hosting discussions about racism in parishes and schools.
Such conversations cannot just take place within the Black Catholic community, Yvonne explained.
“We know we can’t change the world. And it’s going to take a while to do this, but how do we start to make people be open to the discussion and not just closed down?” Yvonne said.
Recently, the Hills participated in a series of videos through Compass, a new initiative for parents from the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Department of Evangelization and Missionary Discipleship, role-playing how to address racism with children. The videos are available on the Unleash the Gospel YouTube channel.
The two videos, “How to Talk to Your Child About Racism” and “How to Respond When Your Child Encounters Racism,” were born from an incident in which the child of a Church employee was called a racial slur at a Catholic school.
The Hills have a long history of working with youth – Yvonne worked for 40 years with teens struggling with emotional distress, and Kurt spent more than 20 years as a college counselor. Both now work with youth at their parish, St. Moses the Black, and have collected a wealth of resources over the years.
Kurt hopes the videos spur parents to have better discussions with their children.
“The parents can say, ‘You know what? I didn’t think about that. What do I know about racism? Am I prepared to talk about it to my son or daughter in an age-appropriate way? And what do they know? How are they feeling?’” Kurt said. “This is a start, and we can go from there.”
Helping to guide the Church toward racial healing is important, the Hills said, because the next generation is paying attention. Young people have become more aware and vocal about injustice, Kurt said, and are looking for ways to eradicate it.
“Everybody is on the road dealing with racism, it’s just you are at different places on this road,” Yvonne said. “And we have to respect everybody’s place on this road. Everybody has a story to tell, and we need to listen to that. So we have learned from each other and listen to each other.
“We have Catholic social teachings that have been around for a while: teach them, live them,” Yvonne added. “If you are for civil rights, show it.”
Since President Joe Biden signed legislation to make June 19 a federal holiday in 2021, more attention and focus have been drawn to what is commonly viewed as the true end of slavery in the United States.
But the date has been celebrated in the African American community since 1865, when on June 19 of that year Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger reached Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, signed two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln.
Now, 158 years after the enslaved people of Texas learned of their freedom, “the sin of slavery still greatly influences the world we live in,” Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said in a statement for Juneteenth. “We are called by God to recognize these detrimental influences and to create lasting change for the benefit of all. As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, God bestows his love upon us and this love ‘unites us to God.’”
“This unifying process” makes us a “‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one until in the end, God is ‘all in all’? (1 Corinthians 15:28),” the archbishop said, quoting the late pope.
He noted that the Archdiocese of Baltimore “is undergoing a period of self-assessment,” which includes the creation of the Commission on Slavery, which will oversee a historical study “that will prayerfully examine the Archdiocese’s connection to slavery.”
“At the same time, I would ask each of us to continue to understand and address the ways that racism destroys human dignity, shatters the unity of the human family, and rejects the Good News of Our Lord, Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Lori said.
“Together as brothers and sisters of Christ may we strive for true and lasting freedom, freedom from the power of sin which alienates us from God and estranges us from one another,” he added. “In Christ, may we ever discover and rejoice in the One who sets us free and who makes us sisters and brothers to one another.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, advised Catholics on Juneteenth to look toward a Black Catholic priest who is a candidate for sainthood for his witness of faith – Father Augustus Tolton, who was declared “Venerable” in 2019.
“A former slave himself, (he) experienced prejudice and bigotry in his quest to become a priest 140 years ago,” Bishop Burbidge said. “His powerful and committed witness of faith is a reminder of what is at the heart of what we believe as Christians: the fundamental truth that all persons should be treated with the inherent dignity with which they were created.”
Born into slavery in 1854 and ordained in 1886, Father Tolton was the first American Catholic priest known to be Black. He studied for the priesthood in Rome, because no U.S. Catholic seminary would then admit African Americans.
“As we reflect on how far we have come as a nation since slavery ended, may we pray both as Catholics and Americans that we will continue to work together to heal racial division and advance the cause of justice and freedom for all,” Bishop Burbidge said.
For their part, the Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary – an order established in 1909 and the oldest Black Catholic lay-led organization still in operation – offered a reflection for Juneteenth adapted from “Racial Healing and Liturgical Resources” of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
“Jesus, you revealed God through your wise words and loving deeds, and we encounter you still today in the faces of those whom society has pushed to the margins,” it said in part. “Guide us, through the love you revealed, to establish the justice you proclaimed, that all peoples might dwell in harmony and peace, united by that one love that binds us to each other, and to you.
“And most of all, Lord, change our routine worship and work into genuine encounters with you and our better selves so that our lives will be changed for the good of all.”
