Whither black Catholics?

From OpinionJournal:

After World War II, though, everything changed. Bishops led the way by integrating parish schools, and blacks who migrated to northern cities found in Catholic charities and schools welcome entry points to their new world. "For blacks, it was looked on as a step up if you became Catholic," says Bishop William N. Perry, an auxiliary in Chicago who heads the U.S. hierarchy's secretariat for African American Catholics.

But the black consciousness movement of the 1960s, with its emphasis on African roots and traditions, helped to pull blacks away from the Catholic Church. By the time the Catholic hierarchy responded, a lot of religious alienation had set in. There are probably fewer black Catholics today than there were 50 years ago.

The church's efforts to play catch up now are being hampered by other developments. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, for instance, are reaching out to black Americans as part of their proselytizing mission. And the vast network of inner-city parochial schools--once the principal gateway to the church for black Americans--is shrinking. Black students remain overrepresented in Catholic schools relative to the black Catholic population. But the schools themselves are shutting down as Catholics migrate to the suburbs. Meanwhile, in the church's leadership, just 1% of priests are black, and only 300 of the 70,000 women religious are.

But there are reasons for hope. There has been a rise in the number of black seminarians, to about 5% of all priests-in-training. And after years of dashed hopes, several African-American bishops are emerging as national leaders, even though there are still only 13 black bishops among some 400 active and retired American prelates. Most prominent among them is Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory, whose election in 2001 as the first African-American president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was heralded as a breakthrough.

Also encouraging is the fact that lay African-Americans are taking the lead in ministerial and other church roles, replicating the experience of black Catholics in centuries past. "We never had the luxury of our own priests, like other Catholic communities did," says Beverly Carroll, executive director of the secretariat for African American Catholics.

Perhaps, the biggest boost to black Catholics in America recalls the traditional immigrant path of other Catholics groups. The recent influx of African and Afro-Caribbeans--from places like Nigeria and Haiti--means an increase in black Catholics overall, but these are black Catholics who bring their faith with them, along with their devotions, customs and clergy. "They are missionaries to us," says Ms. Carroll. "If it weren't for them, there wouldn't be anybody black up on the altar."