POLITICS & COMMUNION

...His actions were directed at specific individuals, and he acted only when there had been direct and flagrant assaults on his authority as archbishop and on the theological integrity of the church's teaching on the common dignity of blacks and whites...

...Being an excommunicated Catholic in pre—Vatican II New Orleans was serious business...

...Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go beyond current values, and their hope in some-thing that is not seen and that no one would dare to imagine...

...American Catholicism is suffering the worst leadership crisis in its history, and the political issues that are driving certain bishops to act are hotly contested in the United States and abroad...

...Despite their confidence in the superiority of their moral claim, American blacks chose to operate Commonweal 18 October 8, 2004 within the American democratic process and respect the rule of law in their efforts to win equal rights...

...We must, though, be thoughtful about our witness in a secular world...

...Generous stipends available to qualified applicants...

...Perez was joined in the public fight by Una Gaillot, the leader of a militantly segregationist group called Save Our Nation, and Jackson Ricau, who was executive director of the New Orleans Citizens' Council...

...He ignored Rummel, continued to attend Mass, and spoke out against integration with vigor...

...In the end, only Perez was reconciled with the church, but the event is shrouded in controversy and his burial on the campus of Loyola University in New Orleans in 1969 provoked angry student protests...

...Unlike the pride and jubilance that American Catholics showered on John F. Kennedy, though, the potential election of John F. Kerry promises to be as divisive for Catholics as for the electorate at large...

...Unlike racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, when the church's position was consistent with the direction of secular law and the democratic process, today the church and American civil law have diverged...

...Archbishop Rummel appears to have chosen the latter course, and that may be why he did not threaten to excommunicate half the Catholics in New Orleans in 1962...

...The Catholic schools of St...

...Gaillot, who still lives in New Orleans, has not entered a Catholic Church since 1962 and remains defiant...

...In the end, which is more likely to persuade and evangelize in the modern world, authoritarian accusations and whispered suspicions, or a "capacity for understanding and acceptance...

...Catholics want to participate fully in the life of American society, as well they should, but we must remember that the culture is secular, not Christian, and it will never be perfected in a Christian sense...

...He is writing a book titled Cosmopolitans in the American Empire: Progressive Christian Citizenship in the New World Order...

...The current environment is quite different...

...Every faithful Catholic must approach the church's teaching on life with the utmost seriousness and respect...

...Ricau and Gaillot had to take their excommunications more seriously...

...Ricau toned down his support for segregation, but he was forbidden from escorting his daughter down the aisle at her wedding...

...That said, church leaders should be sensitive to the fact that Catholics live in a secular environment in which that teaching is the center of passionate differences of opinion...

...The bishops who are so critical of Catholic Democrats may want to consider this history...

...As in the rest of the American South, segregation was en-trenched in Louisiana at the turn of the twentieth century, but Catholic Louisiana was known for bending the rules and blurring the lines, particularly in New Orleans...

...As all Southerners knew, the familiarity of the school setting made it ground zero for inappropriate interracial intimacy, and ultimately, the great evil of miscegenation...

...On March 31, 1962, Rummel sent letters to Ricau, Gaillot, and Perez, warning them that their actions were in direct defiance of his authority over Catholic schools and that they were in danger of excommunication...

...There may be times when these steps are necessary, but in most instances such actions seem inconsistent with the vision of Gaudium et spes, which clearly ties the dignity of the human person to the right to make choices free from external constraint...

...He also had clear support from the Vatican, not to mention the weight of international public opinion on his side...

...We are no better, just different...

...The Vatican later commended Rummel for his courage in the face of entrenched American racism...

...Schools, on the other hand, were more strictly segregated...

...All refused to curtail their activities...

...Segregationists responded immediately with threats in the state legislature to deny aid to Catholic schools (Huey Long had made Catholic schools eligible for state aid in the "Don't ask me about politics—I carne tip here to avoid politics...

...Several American bishops have suggested that Kerry's positions on abortion and stem-cell re-search call into question his ability to present himself publicly as a Catholic, and some have even suggested that Catholics intending to vote for him may be due for an examination of conscience...

...but they should proceed cautiously...

...POLITICS & COMMUNION A bishop's response to segregationists Vincent Rougeau F or the first time in over forty years, there is a strong possibility that the next president of the United States will be Catholic...

...Rummel was pushing Louisiana Catholics to respect not only basic religious and moral principles, but also the authority of American civil law and the nation's democratic process...

...This should not cause us to despair, for opportunities to evangelize abound...

...They were to be denied the sacraments and a Catholic burial, and were forbidden from at-tending Mass (although they would not be physically ejected if they did so...

...Finally, in 1962, Rummel announced that Catholic schools would be desegregated in the 1962-1963 academic year...

...After World War II, the push for integrated Catholic schooling be-came a major national issue...

...The church's position on the equal dignity of human beings is just as emphatic as its teaching on life, yet it took a long time for this country to fully appreciate its meaning...

...Indeed, one source reports that on the day following her excommunication, Gail-lot hurled herself at Rummel's feet while he was leading a pilgrimage...

...There are going to be times when bishops will need to play hardball with Catholics who break publicly with church teachings...

...In 1956, Archbishop Rummel published his second major pastoral letter denouncing segregation (the first had been in 1953), and announced a plan for the desegregation of Catholic schools...

...She begged for mercy but at the same time declared that she would not change her views on segregation...

...Under Perez's leadership, many of the black people of Plaquemines lived in a debased state of peonage little better than slavery...

...In New Orleans, they found them-selves socially isolated and ostracized...

...In Plaquemines Parish, where Perez was something akin to the master of an antebellum plantation, few dared to cross him...

...Just as heat and humidity define Louisiana's climate, Catholicism defines the culture...

...Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their own capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good...

...This was not how Catholicism was understood in the Louisiana of the 1950s and 1960s, when the specter of ex-communication loomed over a group of Louisiana Catholics because of their vociferous public opposition to the racial integration of Catholic schools...

...When the New Orleans public schools were integrated in 1960, Catholic school enrollment jumped dramatically as whites attempted to flee integration...

...Catholic dioceses in Louisiana did not create separate churches for blacks and whites until well into the twentieth century, and even after that, black Catholics could attend Mass at many "white" churches, as long as they sat in the back and took Communion after the whites had finished...

...Denying Communion, or asserting that being a Democratic politician is inconsistent with being Catholic, seems designed to publicly humiliate people in an effort to shame them into changing their views...

...Especially in South Louisiana, personal and family identity is deeply intertwined with the Catholic Church for a significant portion of the population...

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...Despite being the archbishop of a prominent diocese with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, at a time when few would have dared question his authority, Rummel reached his decision as a last resort...

...Pope Paul VI said it best in Evangelization in the Modern World when he described the importance of the witness of life: Above all, the gospel must be proclaimed by witness...

...In 1949, the archbishop of New Orleans, German-born Joseph Rummel, began laying the seeds for school desegregation by denouncing racial segregation as un-Christian and, in the following year, removing all WHITE and COLORED signs from Catholic churches...

...God loved the segregated Catholics of Louisiana just as much as he loves us...

...Leander Perez was once a state judge but is best known as the political boss of Plaque-mines Parish, an extremely isolated rural area south of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River...

...Louis and Washington, D.C., were integrated in the late 1940s while Jim Crow laws were still in force in both areas...

...On April 16, 1962, the chancellor of the arch-diocese, Msgr...

...Catholicism placed individuals in an interlocking web of relationships, values, and identities, all intimately tied to the church...

...the 1950s, and many of those that did appear were established primarily to allow blacks to worship in an environment where they were not forced to defer to whites...

...Yale Institute of Sacred Music A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY GRADUATE CENTER FOR LITURGY, MUSIC AND THE RELATED ARTS GRADUATE DEGREES OFFERED THROUGH THE YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC Master of Music Master of Musical Arts Doctor of Musical Arts GRADUATE DEGREES OFFERED THROUGH YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL Master of Arts in Religion Master of Divinity Master of Sacred Theology Full tuition scholarships awarded to all Institute students...

...In some ways, the current situation is worse than excommunication because it lacks the implicit invitation to repentance and reunion that excommunication contains...

...Indeed, when the movement became more radical in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the backlash against black progress was immediate...

...f tY t i,x,si' ?r sure:.:'' s, ~ .. BALOO Commonweal 1 7 October 8, 2004 1930s), protests to Pope Pius XII, and the burning of cross-es on the archbishop's lawn...

...Ultimately, her defense of segregation cost her husband his job, and she had to seek help from Perez to put one of her sons through college...

...One was Catholic regard-less of what one did or how one behaved...

...When one looks closely at the circumstances of the Louisiana excommunications, what is particularly striking is how cautiously Rummel proceeded...

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...Catholics now find themselves in a role similar to one occupied by African Americans prior to Brown v. Board of Education...

...Charles J. Plauche, announced that the three had been excommunicated...

...In the end, Catholic schools integrated rather peacefully, but not before Rummel was forced to take a dramatic stand in defense of his authority...

...Just as Catholics in Louisiana were deeply influenced, and some-times blinded, by the structures of a racist society, so too are those of us who live in a culture that exalts individualism, craves convenience, and despises weakness...

...Other than South Africa, the United States was the only nation in the developed world that provided legal sanction to racial segregation, causing it to be denounced routinely by friends and foes alike...

...Ricau ultimately rejected Vatican II and became a Lefebvrite, as he remained until hisdeath in 2001...

...In some rural parts of the state, segregated churches were unknown until Vincent Rougeau is an associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame...

...There are important distinctions between the denial of Communion and excommunication in canon law, but they are of a kind only a lawyer could love...

...Yale University / Institute of Sacred Music / 409 Prospect Street / New Haven, CT 06511 tel 203.432 5180 www.yale.edu/ism Commonweal 19 October 8, 2004...

...All three publicly repudiated the theological arguments behind Rummel's statements on racial equality and led efforts to encourage other lay Catholics to defy Rummel and to undermine the church...

...In 1960, Perez retired and devoted himself full time to the battle against integration...

...Three Louisiana Catholics were well known for their die-hard stances against integration...

...Recognizing the depth of op-position and the difficulties of integrating Catholic schools before public schools, Rummel slowed his integration plan...

...Unlike many Protestant denominations in the South, Catholicism provided no religious justification for segregation, seeing it instead as another unfortunate product of man's fallen nature...

...Few doubt that had they done otherwise, the civil-rights movement would have been much less effective and certainly less peaceful...

...In a culture that prizes individual autonomy, the exercise of episcopal authority will be viewed with great skepticism...

...N o Catholic politician in this current election year has been threatened with excommunication, but some bishops have suggested that John Kerry should be denied Communion...

...Conservative American Catholics, in particular, have begun to sound like sectarian Protestants, with the "saved" seeking to publicly out the "damned" in order to preserve the integrity and purity of the true faith...

...For over thirty years, the nation's highest court has given women a constitutional right to an abortion...