Black Catholics are the past and future of the U.S. church

When you think about the history of American Catholicism, images of Irish, Italian, German and Polish immigrant parishes probably come to mind. Think about the future of the U.S. church, and you’ve probably been told it’s Latino. But the story of the church, in the United States—past, present and future—is the story of black Catholics.

On this week’s show we talk with Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning journalist and columnist at Roll Call, who recently wrote about the African-American Catholic experience for America. We ask her how the church can address the sin of racism, about the gifts black Catholics bring to the church and what she thinks about Pope Francis five years in.

The beautiful legacy of black Catholicism in the United States

This week’s guest is Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning journalist who is currently a columnist for Roll Call. Her latest article for America is “Catholics of color are keeping the U.S. Catholic Church alive.”

Ms. Curtis says “being [a] black Catholic was very natural, it was just my life.” She grew up in Maryland, and the political turmoil of the school desegregation movement, the trial of the Berrigan brothers, and the involvement of nuns in the Civil Rights movement informed her experience of Catholicism. She said article is about “keeping the faith, and seeing the Catholic church change through ways of inclusion and exclusion.”