Racism

Finding the Holy Spirit in Chaos

sverma15 Community, Mission and Ministry, Mission Monday, Social Justice , ,

Recently, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity invited academician and scholar Maureen H. O’Connell to speak about her book Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness.[1] In her remarks, which drew from her own personal history as well as the history of the American Catholic Church, O’Connell examined Catholic anti-blackness and its mournful legacy of slave ownership, segregation, inequity, and exclusion. She also did something unusual and juxtaposed this history with the Synod of Bishops currently taking place in the Catholic Church.

For those unfamiliar, a Catholic synod is a body made up of selected bishops from around the world. Their purpose is to advise the Pope on myriad issues pertaining to the Church and to help the Pope grow closer in understanding and relationship with the bishops, clergy, and indeed, all members of the Catholic community. This current synod was called by Pope Francis and is scheduled to last until late 2024. Its themes revolve around communion, participation, and mission, as Pope Francis endeavors to make real his vision of a more inclusive Church—one that is open, collegial, and supportive; a Church that walks with its members with mutuality and care.

It is provocative that O’Connell chose to review one of the darkest chapters of American Catholicism through the lens of a forward thinking, hope-filled synod. For whether we are looking back at our history or taking stock of our present reality, it can be difficult to build a convincing case that humans, Catholic or otherwise, can live as Pope Francis dreams. The scourge of enslavement and racism, inequity and exclusion, the ongoing wars in Gaza, in Sudan, and Ukraine, and even the unrest on our own campus are but some examples that illustrate the long reality of discord throughout both the Church and the world.

However, O’Connell offered a radical response to the tumultuous and disordered reality of the human condition: the Holy Spirit can be found in the chaos. If we are people of faith and hope, then somewhere within us is a belief that disarray in the world may be transformed into something beautiful and good. In a letter to Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac herself proclaimed this belief when she said: “I see such disorder everywhere that I feel overwhelmed by it. Nevertheless, I continue to hope, and I wish to place my trust in Divine Providence…”[2] Likewise, Pope Francis has acknowledged the brokenness of the world and the role of the Church when he said, “We have to learn to live in a church that exists in the tension between harmony and disorder, provoked by the Holy Spirit.”[3]

Saints Vincent and Louise, Pope Francis, and Maureen O’Connell share this in common. Each holds fast to the belief that chaos can be transformed into something good; that the Holy Spirit can be found in the brokenness. From this shared belief, each has worked in their own way to realize this hope. Vincent, Louise, and their followers have done so by serving those most in need of spiritual and material support, while Pope Francis and O’Connell have used their gifts to help bring needed reform and reconciliation to the Church and the world.

At DePaul, we are the fortunate beneficiaries of the faith and wisdom that Vincent, Louise, Pope Francis, and O’Connell pass on. Like them, we can choose to believe that good will make its way through the chaos, and that the Holy Spirit, however understood, is alive in us even during our most stressful and disordered times. And, like them, we can commit to do all we can to bring these hopes to life.

Questions for Reflection:

  1. Have there been times of chaos in your life or, like Louise, times when you have felt overwhelmed? How did you get through those times? Looking back, are you able to see any good that came from the chaos?
  2. If you believe, like Vincent and Louise, that challenging and tumultuous times may be transformed into something better, what is something you can do to help that transformation occur? How can you help make a challenging circumstance better?

Reflection by: Tom Judge, Assistant Director and Chaplain, Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission and Ministry

[1] Maureen O’Connell, Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness (Beacon Press, 2022), 272 pp.

[2] L.10, To Monsieur Vincent, (Between 1639 and 1647), Spiritual Writings, p. 335.

[3] Austen Ivereigh, “An Interview with Pope Francis: ‘A Time of Great Uncertainty,’” Commonweal Magazine, 12 March 2023, at: www.commonwealmagazine.org/time-great-uncertainty.

 

Confronting Absurdity: Slavery and Racism as Historic Disruptors of Our Mission

bcicirel Mission Monday, Vincentian History ,

In my studies of philosophy, I learned that several existential philosophers, including Albert Camus, asked how we can face and reduce suffering when we ourselves often cause it for others. This profound contradiction is what they call absurdity. Please note that I will be using this existential understanding of profound absurdity throughout this text.

In the context of our Vincentian history, we are now firmly confronting such an absurdity in our complicity in causing, instead of reducing, people’s suffering. Instead of helping people and communities to overcome it, as Vincent de Paul did in his life, we became a significant cause of their pain. The absurdity of Vincentians’ involvement in enslaving human beings and of DePaul University’s engagement in institutional racism needs to be learned, researched, recognized, and confronted with determination. Today we, the Congregation of the Mission, and DePaul University, ought to become partners in the human quest to overcome the systemic harm of racism and discrimination while investing the best of our human, structural, and financial resources to confront all causes of humanity and our planet’s unbearable suffering.

Racism is an affront to humanity. In our current sociopolitical context, the strengthening of racism becomes a specific element of the radical polarization through which minorities are ostracized and blamed for all evil without reason. The white supremacy culture perceives the sociopolitical and economic oppression and disappearance of people of African descent and other minorities as the triumph of the symbolic order of a nation that builds its memory by discursively annihilating others, flatly denying essential elements of their historic collective identity. Slavery and racism dehumanize us partly because they illustrate the absurdity of our human experience. The dehumanization of its victims happens through symbolic, existential, religious, and socioeconomical violence, exclusion, and oppression.

In solidarity with those in the African American community, we must advocate individually and institutionally for their freedom, defend their rights, support their organization, and ally ourselves in constructing a society that makes systemic inequities and racial discrimination increasingly impossible.  This is a concrete and effective way for us to confront our history and contribute to overcoming absurdity in our own institutional identity.

Over the past two years as the liaison of the DePaul task force to respond to the legacy of Vincentian slaveholding, I became strongly convinced that we need to institutionally support an awakening of the Black consciousness that is so present in our midst, in organizations and individuals that fight to rescue the identity and existence of all African American communities. Our commitment calls for supporting the liberation of a denied identity and, simultaneously, invites us to become members of a project that makes explicit and confronts the absurdity expressed in so many forms of racism from a national and globalized perspective.

As a DePaul task force, we have been working with people who bear witness to centuries of enslavement and oppression, and we have been encouraging people to fight so that such inhumanity will not be perpetrated on anyone again. The history of slavery inflames us with the necessary conscience to understand that everyone in our society is also responsible, by action or inaction, for the inequities that continue to disproportionately affect Black people today. We all collectively have the duty of historical reparation and to make real the justice that has not yet arrived.

I have learned during my life as a Vincentian missionary that God’s love for the oppressed is a core element of our Vincentian vision and mission. From this perspective, I again apologize on behalf of my community for our absurdities and moral failing, our sinful participation in enslaving other human beings, and the historical and contemporary bias and perpetuation of racist systems and practices that have denied the very heart of our identity and mission in our relationships with African Americans in the United States of America.

On May 18, at 10:30 a.m., we will rename Room 300 in the Richardson Library and the Belden-Racine residence hall to honor Aspasia LeCompte, a woman formerly enslaved by Bishop Joseph Rosati, C.M., one of the first Vincentian missionary priests in St. Louis. This woman represents the enduring centuries-long resistance and resilience of African American communities. Naming prominent places on campus after her will perpetually lift up the life of an incredible Black woman whose legacy deserves to be known. Through Aspasia LeCompte’s story, the realities of Vincentian participation in enslaving people will continue to be remembered as new people join the DePaul community, and our community will forever be reminded that we need to continue to name and confront racism at our institution and in society.

Join us to continue this journey together and to find new ways to structurally design DePaul for equity.

Reflection by: Fr. Guillermo (Memo) Campuzano, C.M., Vice President of Mission and Ministry