I have been struggling to write this ever since the news broke about the over 300 priests who abused over 700 people over the course of 70 years. That means I have been struggling to write this piece for almost a year. In that time there have been more allegations against Catholic priests and bishops who have committed or kept secret crimes of sexual violence. These crimes against human bodies and the body of Christ have chilled me to the bone and made me question my commitment to the church as I have watched the consistent scapegoating and mismanagement of cases. I have spent the last year in fits of rage and fighting off an indifference toward the church that has been dangerously close to severing my relationship with God. I have also spent the last year reflecting on the value of remaining in the church at such as time as this, and what follows is a reflection on why I choose to persist with a church that is so deeply flawed and riddled with disease.

I converted to Catholicism two years ago, so I am still rather young in the church. Yet my age in church years does not preclude me from knowing what the church’s mortal sins are. Before my confirmation I knew that I was stepping into a religious institution rife with issues, pedarasty and sexual violence the most grave among them. Before I saw Spotlight or knew about the Boston Globe’s part in exposing the abuses in the Boston archdiocese, I knew in general about priests who abused young boys because it is an unfortunate common knowledge to have not just as a Catholic but as a Christian. It is an epidemic so pervasive that people inside and outside of the Church are powerless to intercede due to the immunity of Catholic priests and the impenetrability of church hierarchy. So why do I stay?

I am a Black woman who is Catholic. The former identification is not overridden by the latter and it is that identity alongside my faith in God that informs how I move through the world in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Given my identity, rarely am I able to unlink myself from oppression and vulnerability, neither the direct nor indirect experience thereof. This is not just a theoretical position but a practical disposition where I am compelled to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and the vulnerable and actively work toward their freedom and/or the establishment of practices of liberation.

Drawing from liberation theology, I believe in a preferential option for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed, and believe that this moment in church history forces me to be clear about this position. Therefore, the wounds of the victims of abuse are my wounds and in order to be a part of their healing I must stand with them in community by staying in the church. To stand is to stand for them when they cannot stand anymore because the wounds of keeping silent have weakened them. Scripture tells us to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep,” and I believe one of the significant spaces where this can be done is the church. In doing this we let wayward priests and impenetrable hierarchies know that there is a dispensation of us who will not be moved and who will fight against them, the insidious force that consume God’s church. I stay with the wounded as a sign of solidarity, as a way of saying without words, “I see you. I hear you.” Black women stay, we nurture, we seek healing for ourselves and for others. This loyalty is inside our DNA and is traceable throughout history when we’ve had to decide to stay against our best interest in countless instances.

I stay because I take seriously how being a Black woman in the Catholic Church shapes my relationship to its power. I come from an ancestral line of women who could not easily untether themselves from systems of oppressive power, but instead created tactics for resisting it. Thus, I come into the church with resistant energy and what the late Katie Cannon, a womanist theologian, called the virtue of unctuousness. Bearing witness to the ethical framework at work in the life of Zora Neale Hurston, Cannon birthed the concept of the virtue of unctuousness, a quality of “steadfastness, akin to fortitude, in the face of formidable oppression that serves as the most conspicuous feature in the construction of Black women’s ethics.”[1]

As a Black woman in the Catholic Church in the 21st century, I confront the space as an individual who is steadfast in the face of the formidable oppression that the church metes out through its insistence on not holding men accountable for their deeds. Yet, because my faith is in the God who called me to the Church, I stay because I was given a special level of audacity and outspokenness. Because of this I dare to speak boldly WITHIN the context of the church, believing that one effects change from the inside not the outside. I follow in the footsteps of Catholic women religious and intellectuals who have loved the Lord with all their heart, all of their soul, and all of their mind and have shown me what it means to be faithful to God, committed to the church, and still challenge the institution through intellectual reason and critical thinking. I stand on the shoulders of Thea Bowman, Diana Hayes, Jamie Phelps, and M. Shawn Copeland just to name a few of the Black Catholic women whose witness and work has constantly interrogated the church and its teachings. Thus, I take up similar work in moments like this, exercising both the intellectual and spiritual courage to stand in opposition to evil, and making clear the prophetic nature of Black womanhood.

I believe that I was called to the church for such a time as this. Not to suggest that God has called me to be a sacrificial lamb who can be slain for the sins of the church, but rather, I am called to be a person who has enough faith in God and people to stay where I was planted. There is a saying that goes, “The grass is not greener on the other side but where you water it,” and so I choose to water where I was planted instead of leave for alleged greener pastures. People tend to leave the church when they disagree with its polity or its politics, or when its problems seem to outweigh its promises. Yet it is the promise of the Catholic Church that makes me stay. What I found in the Catholic Church is a good way to live and be in the world through the rigorous intellectual tradition and social teachings of the church.

People may not realize it, but the social ethic of the Catholic Church mirrors womanist teachings. The social ethic is pragmatic, it prioritizes solidarity, and it allows people to make both a way out of no way and a way from their own way. At the core of Catholic social teachings is the beauty of the particularity of the human person and the importance of securing and protecting the dignity of human beings. Those who are usually most committed to the security and protection of human beings from exploitation, abuse, violence, and other modes of oppression and marginalization are those whose lived experiences bear the marks of those transgressions. It is not those in positions of power who sit behind closed doors and prefer their secrecy that offer protection, but those who are situated on the margins and who refuse the idea that the center must hold; this is the heritage of Black women. We have historical precedent for Black women’s work against all manner of oppression and we also have, what is becoming, people’s increasing interest in Black women as the necessary change agents of the world. It has been said, “Trust Black women,” and I invoke the saying here as a clarion call to the church both Catholic and Protestant to trust Black women.

I stay because I believe in the church’s potential to rise above the fray of its predilection to vice, but this potential can only be met when more decide to stay and overcome evil with good rather than leave and let evil consume the church. I stay as a Black woman, a Black Catholic woman who is staying to fight, resist, and heal by any means necessary. I stay because I and many Black Catholic women bring the virtue of unctuousness and a prophetic nature to bear upon a church that has been stymied by its secret keeping. It is a secrecy that we must name, and the ability to name, expose, resist, and heal are qualities found within the storehouse of Black womanhood. I stay as a Black woman who found God in what many would probably call a hopeless place, but because God made me a Black woman and called me to this church with my personhood and gifts, I believe that I can speak truth to power, put my hands to the plow, and bring God’s church and the world to its proper place.

[1] Cannon, Katie Geneva. Katie’s Cannon. New York, NY: Continuum, 1995.