Sunday Mass....

"Momma, why are there no other chocolate people like me?"

Ouch. We have diversity in many areas of our lives, but our parish is not one of them. There are only a few black Catholics in our community.

African American Catholics are still very much the minority, not only among African Americans in general, most of whom are Protestant, but also within the Church. While as many as three million African-Americans are Catholic, they make up only about three percent of all U.S. Catholics. And while there are more than 1,000 parishes that are predominantly African-American, most of the other 18,000 U.S. Catholic parishes are predominantly white.

There have been many influential black leaders and Saints in the Catholic Church, including one of my favorites, St. Augustine. St. Moses, was an Ethiopian desert monk born around 330. There have also been 3 Popes from Africa. There are 200 million Catholics of African decent worldwide.

But that is not what my daughter sees when she looks around our church on Sunday.
We are apparently not alone in this struggle - only 5% of all churches in America are truely integrated, according to this CNN article.