{"id":7128,"date":"2010-05-13T22:13:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T22:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7128"},"modified":"2014-10-05T22:22:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T22:22:45","slug":"was-first-black-priest-black-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7128","title":{"rendered":"Was first black priest black enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was first black priest black enough?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chicago Tribune<\/a>
\n2010-05-02<\/p>\n

Manya A. Brachear<\/strong>, Tribune reporter<\/p>\n

Healy, son of a plantation owner, isn\u2019t mentioned as often as Tolton, who is being pushed for sainthood<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

More than a year after some African-Americans scrutinized the blackness of the nation’s first black president, America’s Catholics are now wrestling with the same questions to determine who was the nation’s first black priest.<\/p>\n

The debate emerges as the Archdiocese of Chicago seeks sainthood for the Rev. Augustus Tolton<\/a>, long hailed in Chicago as the first African-American clergyman to serve in the U.S. Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

A rival for the title is Bishop James Augustine Healy<\/a>, who was ordained in 1854, the year Tolton was born. But Healy, the son of an Irish-American landowner and a mixed-race slave, was light-skinned enough to pass as a white man. And in many cases, he did…<\/p>\n

…As bishop of Portland, Maine, Healy served another marginalized population: Native Americans.<\/p>\n

The eldest of 10 siblings, Healy was raised Catholic but attended a Quaker school in New York. In 1849, he graduated valedictorian of the first class at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.<\/p>\n

He attended seminary in Canada and was eventually ordained in Paris. But he distanced himself from an African-American identity. He declined to participate in African-American organizations and turned down invitations to address the National Black Catholic Congress, citing the New Testament \u2014 “Christ is all and in all” \u2014 as his reason.<\/p>\n

James O\u2019Toole<\/a>, author of “Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family [, 1820-1920]<\/a>,” said that denial comes across to some as betrayal. To others, it gives a new dimension to the struggle. But he believes contemporary categories or agendas shouldn’t be imposed upon historical figures.<\/p>\n

“In a sense, that can look like racial treason. Why are you denying who you are?” said O’Toole. “Those are very much the standards of today. But they’re not their standards. As a historian, that’s what ought to govern here. \u2026 We should be assessing them on their own terms.”<\/p>\n

But Michelle Wright<\/a>, associate professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University and author of “Becoming Black [: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora],” cautions that ceding to Healy’s self-identity could further the misconception that African-Americans did not contribute to society…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was first black priest black enough? Chicago Tribune 2010-05-02 Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporter Healy, son of a plantation owner, isn\u2019t mentioned as often as Tolton, who is being pushed for sainthood More than a year after some African-Americans scrutinized the blackness of the nation’s first black president, America’s Catholics are now wrestling with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,3015,6462,820],"tags":[2996,2995,2805,2997,815,2992,2993,2994,1110,2998],"class_list":["post-7128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-native-americans","category-passing-2","category-religion","tag-augustus-john-tolton","tag-augustus-tolton","tag-chicago-tribune","tag-james-augustine-healy","tag-james-m-otoole","tag-james-otoole","tag-manya-a-brachear","tag-manya-brachear","tag-michelle-m-wright","tag-michelle-wright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}