Could We Be Slaveholders?
Could We Be Slaveholders?
Just as many Catholics of the Old South, including slaveholders, may have been unable to see the injustices of slavery, modern Catholics may be unable to see our own complicity in injustices rooted in the Godless ideologies of our time.
History books help us examine how Church teaching intersects with human history. The narrative offers insights into the Church's experience, wounded by sin yet fortified by the splendor of her teaching.
For example, Theodore Maynard’s 1953 book, The Catholic Church and the American Idea, offers honest insights into the institution of slavery. He explains that slavery in the Old South was not the monolith depicted by present-day Hollywood.
Some slaves were brutally exploited; others were incorporated into plantation families. The abolitionist opposition to slavery threatened not only the economy of the agrarian South but also the employment prospects of Catholic Irish immigrants. Emancipation was bittersweet. Former slaves and slaveowners faced destitution.
Maynard notes how some slaveowners reduced their slaves to chattel and encouraged the men to impregnate as many of the enslaved women as possible, hoping to increase their slave holdings without the cost of slave auctions. Such practices contributed to the dehumanizing racial stereotypes that persisted after emancipation.
Many plantation owners, particularly Catholics in Louisiana, treated their slaves as members of the family. Marriage was honored. Families were supported. And intact families of slaves worked the plantations from youth to old age. These slaveholders sometimes observed that employers treated the Irish immigrants working the sweatshops in New York worse than the plantation slaves. Such paternalistic treatment, however, did not erase the injustices of slavery.
Many of the Irish saw the abolition of slavery as a threat to their jobs and livelihoods. The draft riots in New York testified to the passion of Irish resistance to the prospect of fighting to “free the slaves.” (Union soldiers had just fought Lee's army at Gettysburg and were soon called upon to suppress the New York City uprising.)
Of course, politically correct narratives can ignore the history of slavery. We can easily judge the era through a present-minded opposition of “absolute good” versus “absolute evil,” congratulating ourselves for standing on the right side of history. But our own moral judgments are also vulnerable to cultural expectations.
The Catholic Church subsists in both the clarity and confusion of the times. We always face a variety of cultural forces, good and bad. So every Catholic in every generation must work out his salvation in “fear and trembling.”
Invoking and abiding by the Ten Commandments, a slaveholding Catholic might explain that he respected the human dignity of his slaves, encouraged their fidelity in marriage, refused to violate personal property rights, and encouraged honesty. On occasion, families of slaves became Catholic and attended (although segregated) Mass on Sunday! Yet good intentions and cultural circumstances did not redeem the institution itself.
It is easy to critique the socioeconomic and political culture of Old South plantations with hindsight. But we dare not underestimate the power of cultural and ideological expectations, and our blindness to their formative influences. After all, we have little reason to assume that we would have been morally different had we been formed by plantation culture. Alas, even a few freed slaves owned slaves themselves.
Today, Catholics struggling to remain faithful to the Gospel necessarily remain entangled in an increasingly ideological culture. We divide our country into “liberal” and “conservative”—or, invoking the Enlightenment, “right” and “left.” Intellectuals and politicians package the issues according to our ideological expectations. Just as many Catholics of the Old South, including slaveholders, may have been unable to see the injustices of slavery, modern Catholics may be unable to see our own complicity in injustices rooted in the Godless ideologies of our time.
Here are some of the questions we must ask. To what extent does the ancient tendency to demonize enemies influence me? Do I consider some groups absolutely evil when compared to our impeccable goodness? Am I an American first, and a Catholic second? Am I a conservative or liberal before I am a Catholic? Is my moral system based on American practicality and military might rather than the demands of the Gospel?
In every culture, Jesus challenges our assumptions about goodness: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:18) Catholics must judge the issues of the day by the Ten Commandments. The dichotomy is not “right and left,” but “right and wrong.”
The Church’s members must undergo conversion and purification in every generation—not because the Gospel changes, but because we do. Catholics must conform themselves to Christ and the Deposit of Faith with faithful vigilance. The Council Fathers wrote of “The Church in the Modern World.” But we often behave as if they wrote “The Modern World in the Church.”
We can easily recognize the sins of those who came before us because we no longer share their commonly held assumptions. It is much harder to recognize the sins that our own culture teaches us to regard as normal, necessary, or even virtuous.
Maynard observes that Catholics viscerally object to a priest meddling in politics, even if they agree with him. The “art of the possible” belongs to the laity, not priests. But when an injustice represents a grave and present danger, we need prophets. And we know what usually happens to them.
The parable Jesus offers during Holy Week is timeless:
Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Matthew 21:37-38)
Someday another generation will look back upon us with the same moral clarity with which we ponder the slaveholders of the 19th century. What will they see?
Please, God, no nukes. The conflagration “over there” begins in our hearts.
We always need God’s grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to see ourselves as we truly are and take responsibility for our continuing conversion. We are never on the wrong side of history as we strive to obey God’s commandments. We are on the right side of eternity.
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