Xavier institute nurtures black Catholic experience

    A diverse faculty and student body, including seminarians and religious from Africa and nationwide ministry leaders and educators, are the hallmark of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana.

     “We prepare those who are ministering in the black Catholic community, whether ordained, nuns or laity and those who wish to have a better understanding of the gifts of black Catholics,” Dr. C. Vanessa White, a faculty member of the degree and certificate and enrichment programs and coordinator of spiritual formation at the institute.
    White, also an associate professor of spirituality at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, enrolled at the institute in 1987 as a Claretian lay volunteer and said her first class opened up a new world of black Catholic history, culture and the meaning behind the expressive way black Catholics celebrate their faith and approach theology. It inspired her to earn master’s and doctorate degrees.

    “For me, it was connecting with my own identity of who I was and whose I was,” White said.
Completed its 32nd year
  

 Each summer since 1980, the institute has immersed students in history of African-American worship in the Catholic Church with the intent that they return to their parish ministries as enlightened and active members.
    “The average student comes to the institute wanting to learn more of what it means to be a black Catholic and about black Catholicism,” interim director Pamela R. Franco, Ph.D., said. “We need to find a way to get this into the parishes. I think that is the big role the institute plays.”
    Courses can be taken toward a master’s degree in theology, and the institute also offers certificate programs in several concentrations as well as enrichment classes.
     The master’s program runs for three weeks each summer and takes about five or six years to finish, depending if three or six hours of credit are taken each session.
     The certificate program offers courses needed for certification as a catechist, youth and young adult minister and parish leader. The certificate and enrichment courses are offered in one-week modules.
    Other tracks include intensive workshops for parish musicians and liturgists, and week-long seminars for priests and pastors ministering in African-American parishes.
    Faculty members said the institute emerged after ideas for such a course of study were discussed at the Black Catholic Theological Symposium in 1978.
    “We had a history. We had scholars. We had these intellectual giants (in the black Catholic Church) and needed an institute,” said Father Roy Lee, a middle school principal and adjunct college professor from the Diocese of Milwaukee. He is the institute’s associate director for community life.
    Early faculty at the institute included several noted theologians such as Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Thea Bowman, the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in theology from Boston College; Franciscan Father Bede Abram and Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis.
Many revelations
    Institute graduate Kathleen Dorsey Bellow, who participates in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults in the Diocese of Lake Charles, remembers how these charismatic teachers culled from their faith experiences to bring the black Catholic Church history alive to students in a theological perspective.
    “I gained stuff I never knew about black Catholic participation in the life of the church and an awareness that my voice as a woman and a layperson had theological value not only for my community but the church at-large,” said Dorsey Bellow, associate director of the certificate and enrichment program.
    The faculty today includes charismatic teachers such as Redemptorist Father Maurice Nutt, a 1989 graduate with a master’s in theology from the institute and a doctor of ministry degree in preaching. Father Nutt, a member of the Redemptorist Parish Mission Preaching Team in Chicago, teaches black theology at the institute.
    The history of the black Catholic Church is personal to Father Nutt. His great, great grandfather, Haller Nutt, a white man who died in 1864, was one of the largest slave owners in the south. Haller Nutt wrote a code of ethics on how to deal with slaves, considering them “valuable property” that he had to treat fairly and honestly to keep healthy to work his cotton plantations.
    Many might know Nutt for Longwood, an unfinished home in Natchez, Miss., that he was building in 1859 but didn’t complete once the Civil War broke out in 1861.
Where the institute is today
     Sandra Morgan of Baltimore attended the institute this summer, earning a certificate in youth ministry to bring back ideas to her church. She relishes how the institute not only teaches rigorous courses but encourages community learning and fellowship.
    “I am gaining information that validates me being truly black and authentically Catholic, and it helps my personal identification as an African American, an African American woman and African-American Catholic.”
    The institute’s leadership is working to attract younger students by possibly offering year-round courses or online courses that include a summer track.
    White compares the mission of the institute to how St. Paul nurtured people and then sent them to proclaim the good news to others.
    “That what the institute does,” White said. “It is a gift to the universal church.”
    The dates for the Institute for Black Catholic Studies 2013 summer session will be July 1-20. Visit www.xula.edu/ibcs or call 520-7961.
    Christine Bordelon can be reached at [email protected].