With the visit this past week of Pope Francis, the news media have focused on many aspects of the Church in the United States. One story had to do with African Americans in the Church. NPR had a story wich featured Cecilia Moore who is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. Here is the exchange bewtween the NPR host and Professor Moore:
May I talk to you then about the church itself, though, in that context? It has been said generally about American Christianity that the church is the last segregated institution in America. What about the Catholic Church? For African-Americans, was it an experience of segregation? Has it been?
MOORE: Well, I would say that, yes, there is that experience. But there are also experiences where you see the Catholic Church lead on desegregation. Archbishop Ritter of Indianapolis in the 1940s desegregated the Catholic schools in Indianapolis. For me, this is a really important thing.
Nice to see Archbishop Ritter getting some of the credit.
You can read the entire transcript by going HERE If you want to listen, you can go HERE and click on the “Listen” button.
