 I felt secure growing up with the village
guarding and guiding me. Someone was always in charge on the playground, in
the classroom, in the house and on the streets. It seemed at times that
everyone knew me and my family, even in the Big Easy (New Orleans). I
surprised no one when I went to the seminary for high school. I played
football, ran track and sang in the glee club and folk group. Through high
school, college and the graduate theology, there were always people trying
to guide me, but my real mentors were the Black religious men and women of
the Joint Conference of Black Catholic Religious and the professors of the
Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana. They
taught me to venture in God's kingdom and not my own; to seek first God's
design for me; and to hold on to the traditions of a people dark and lovely.
To persevere was no easy task for this brother, who loves to take risks and
never let grass grow under his feet. I was a pilgrim and stranger, the
second post-Vatican II Black diocesan priest in New Orleans. I had to face
and overcome stereotypes, rising above the fears that surrounded my
assignments as a parish priest in New Orleans. My contacts with them led me
to being a Franciscan Friar, who has served young men at Hales Franciscan
High School in Chicago, IL; St. Vincent de Paul Church in Nashville, TN;
East St. Louis, IL Parishes, and now Althoff Catholic High School in
Belleville, IL.
I am proud to be a Black Catholic. I treasure my
Blackness, which embodies a moral value system with a foundation based on
not starting a war based on lies; moral values that protest the senseless
genocide in the Sudan, Haiti and Iraq; ethical values that provide people
with health insurance, medical care and social security; just values based
on the worthiness and integrity of each person. I am not ashamed to be a
Black Catholic. I know that all those years of Jim Crow laws, sitting in the
back pews of churches, forced integration of inner city parishes, enduring
the racist attitudes of seminary professors and administrators, taught me
that it was by God's grace and mercy that I am still a Catholic and a priest
today. Yes, like many others before me, "I've been buked and I've been
scorned. I've been talked about, sho's you' born." "Dere is trouble all over
dis worl', ain't gwine lay my 'ligion down." God says in scripture in
Zechariah 4:6, "NOT BY MIGHT, NOR BY POWER, BUT BY MY SPIRIT." So I just
"do
what the spirit says do." "I've been through a lot; I had to press my way
through, but I'm going with Jesus all the way." Being a Black Catholic is my
passion, my life.
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