¹ Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1972), 71.Google Scholar

² Copeland, M. Shawn, “A Theology of the Human Other: Interview with M. Shawn Copeland,” by Patterson, Margot, National Catholic Reporter, 18 July 2003, p. 17.Google Scholar

³ Merton, 72.

⁴ Without diminishing the tragic significance of September 11, 2001, nor the sexual abuse crisis in the American Catholic Church, the history of race relations in the United States recalls the oppression, suffering, and death of tens of millions of human beings; it continues to manifest today for millions of blacks in economic, material, and spiritual devastation.

⁵ Copeland, M. Shawn, “Theology as Intellectually Vital Inquiry: A Black Theological Interrogation,” CTSA Proceedings 46 (1991): 49–57, at 54.Google Scholar

⁶ Shipler, David K., A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America (New York: Knopf, 1997).Google Scholar

⁷ Copeland, , “Theology as Vital Inquiry,” 55–56Google Scholar; emphasis added.

⁸ The critique of white Christian and specifically Catholic theology has always been a strident theme of Cone's work. For a more recent example, see Cone, James H., “Looking Back, Going Forward,” in Black Faith and Public Talk, ed. Hopkins, Dwight N. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999), 246–59.Google Scholar

⁹ Copeland, M. Shawn, “The New Anthropological Subject at the Heart of the Mystical Body of Christ.,” CTSA Proceedings 53 (1998): 24–47, at 32.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Copeland, M. Shawn, “Racism and the Vocation of the Christian Theologian,” Spiritus 2 (2002):15–29, at 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., 21.

¹² Copeland, , “New Subject,” 32.Google Scholar

¹³ Certainly “black theology” is not a monolithic reality, and not all theology by blacks stand in the tradition to which I refer here. By black theology I mean the “black theology of liberation” which has its roots in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Cone, the birth of which closely paralleled the birth of Latin American liberation theology. For the close relationship between these two traditions, see Phelps, Jamie T., “Communion Ecclesiology and Black Liberation Theology,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 672–99, esp. 685–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Copeland, , “Interview,” 17.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 9.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Copeland's, “Wading through Many Sorrows: Toward a Theology of Suffering in Womanist Perspective,” in A Troubling in My Soul, ed. Townes, Emilie M. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 109–29.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Copeland, , “Toward a Critical Christian Feminist Theology of Solidarity,” in Women and Theology, ed. Hinsdale, Mary Ann and Kaminsky, Phyllis H. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 3–38, at 29.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 30.Google Scholar

¹⁹ My focus on race here is not meant to understate the Roman Catholic orientation of Copeland's thought, nor her longstanding participation in feminist theological discourse. Indeed, the former orientation will be evident below in the doctrinal symbols to which she appeals; the latter, in the fact that she rarely separates race, sex, and class in her consideration of theological anthropology. An early article, in which she writes about “the triple oppression of women of colour,” is typical of her work (see “The Interaction of Racism, Sexism, and Classism in Women's Exploitation,” in Women, Work, and Poverty, ed. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler and Carr, Anne ([Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987], 19–27).Google Scholar

²⁰ Copeland, , “Racism, Sexism, and Classism,” 19.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid., 20.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ The following summary of Lonergan's theory is limited to suit the task at hand, i.e., to facilitate the understanding of Copeland's theological anthropology. I rely here on Gregson, Vernon, ed., The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan (New York: Paulist, 1988), 16–35Google Scholar; Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1979)Google Scholar and Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Harper and Row, 1978; original 1958).

²⁵ Gregson, 28.

²⁶ Gregson notes that, for Lonergan, progress and decline are “ideal types”: i.e., “a set of ideas, which, though never found fully realized in actual experience, can be extraordinarily helpful in understanding our actual experience because of the clarity they can give to the underlying issues” (ibid.).

²⁷ Ibid., 29.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid., 31.

³⁰ Gil Bailie borrows this phrase from René Girard to describe the crucifixion of Jesus, and, more generally, the “logic” beneath cleansing acts of mob or state violence— e.g., the beating of Rodney King by a group of Los Angeles police officers on March 3, 1991. See Bailie, Gil, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 50.Google Scholar

³¹ Gregson, 32.

³² Ibid.

³³ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 18.Google Scholar

³⁴ Lonergan, , Method in Theology, 292.Google Scholar

³⁵ Copeland, , “Racism, Sexism, and Classism,” 20.Google Scholar

³⁶ Cited in Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 16.Google Scholar

³⁷ By existential I mean the concrete, historical, and experiential dimension of “human being,” as distinct from the metaphysical and eschatological view of human being, which Copeland develops under the symbol of the Mystical Body of Christ. The point is that Copeland's epistemological realism keeps the latter from drifting very far from the former.

³⁸ The analogy between bias and original sin may break down here, depending on one's theology of original sin. In other words, beneath both the transcendentals and the biases Lonergan emphasizes the freedom of the responsible human being. Racism is not a given such that it cannot be undone.

³⁹ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 17Google Scholar, citing Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States, From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), 55–56.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Not that this is a new phenomenon. One could say that the locus of racist imperialism has shifted from Europe to its well-formed adolescent progeny, the United States. Among other examples, Copeland references an interview of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “When asked what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of U.S. economic sanctions, Secretary Albright replied that it was a ‘very hard choice, but that all things considered, we think the price is worth it'” (“Racism and the Vocation,” 20).

⁴¹ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 37.Google Scholar Copeland employs the fictitious name “Fatima Yusif” to protect the woman's real identity; she is also careful to note “the danger that my analysis, however well intentioned, might foster negative stereotypes and reproduce the injury” the woman has suffered.

⁴² Ibid., 38.

⁴³ Ibid., 39.

⁴⁴ Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria, Mujerista Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996)Google Scholar, cited in Copeland, “New Subject,” 39.

⁴⁵ Copeland, , “Racism, Sexism, Classism,” 22.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 39Google Scholar: emphasis added.

⁴⁷ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 18.Google Scholar Emphasis original.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 20. Certainly racial formation bears out not only between different races but within the same race. Much African American literature attests to “colorism,” the comparing and ranking of shades of blackness in the community.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 18. Copeland recalls the “racial lumping” that took place after September 11, 2001, when anyone looking vaguely “like a Muslim” or an Arab were subject to assault, harassment, and even murder.

⁵⁰ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 40.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid., 38.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ I will never forget this statement made to me in Jerusalem in the summer of 1998 by Daniel Rossing, a negotiator frequently called upon by both Israelis and Palestinians to mediate local conflicts. This was a period of relative calm before the storm of the recent years of intifada.

⁵⁴ From “Wasting Time on Hate,” editorial, America, 2 April 1994, p. 3.

⁵⁵ Martin Luther King, Jr., e.g., recounts the shadow passing over his daughter Yolanda's spirit when he had to tell her why she could not go to the local amusement park. It was the first time she became aware of the meaning of her blackness in a segregated world (see A Testament of Hope, ed. Washington, James M. [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986], 342Google Scholar).

⁵⁶ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 31–32.Google Scholar “The word ressentiment is borrowed from the French and was introduced into philosophy by Nietzsche.”

⁵⁷ Ibid., 39.

⁵⁸ At the height of the Cold War, British pop musician Sting penned the song “Russians,” which states, “We share the same biology / regardless of ideology / Believe me when I say to you / I hope the Russians love their children too.”

⁵⁹ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 21.Google Scholar To the degree race is mentioned at all from the pulpit of white Christian churches, one suspects it most often accompanies pious rhetoric about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “dream” on the occasion of his birthday. While this is not in itself a bad thing, it surely cannot be mistaken for meaningful solidarity. While the Catholic bishops in the United States have issued a number of documents on racism, these have been criticized for appealing not to structural change in society but for moral conversion in individuals and groups. See Massingale, Bryan, “James Cone and Recent Catholic Episcopal Teaching on Racism,” Theological Studies 61/4 (2000): 700–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁰ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 16.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 42.Google Scholar

⁶² Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 30.Google Scholar

⁶³ Sobrino, Jon, “Our World: Cruelty and Compassion,” in Rethinking Martyrdom, ed. Okure, Teresa, Sobrino, Jon, and Wilfred, Felix (London: SCM Press, 2003), 15–23, at 21.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 25–26.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 30.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 42.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 44.

⁶⁹ “[O]ur theology cannot admit simplistic appeals to the Reign of God,” Copeland writes. “To quote Ellacuria … ‘It is necessary to determine the place in which the truth of the Reign of God is most accessible.’ Inasmuch as that determination is to be made before the cross of Christ, our theology must stand with society's most abject, despised, and oppressed” (“Racism and the Vocation,” 22).

⁷⁰ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 41.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., 30.

⁷² Ibid., 32.

⁷³ Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation, rev. ed., trans. and ed. Sr.Inda, Caridad and Eagleson, John (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), xxvii.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Bartolomé de las Casas, quoted in ibid.

⁷⁵ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 35.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid., 34.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Ibid., n. 31.

⁷⁹ In Christian terms what is described here is not an either/or dialectic but the both/and of agapac love, freedom and grace, the interplay of solidarity with contemplative or “sapiential” openness to the other.

⁸⁰ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 31–32.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 29.Google Scholar

⁸² Copeland, , “New Subject,” 46.Google Scholar

⁸³ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 29.Google Scholar For Copeland, the communal dimension of solidarity finds its apex in the Eucharist. Without the praxis of solidarity, the Eucharist is an empty gesture (see ibid., 30–31).

⁸⁴ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 43.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Ibid., 44. Both Copeland and Phelps emphasize the importance of Catholic social teaching and its application to a critique of white racist supremacy. See Copeland, “Racism and the Vocation,” 25; Phelps, 674–76. The U.S. Catholic Bishops have likewise combined the race critique with Catholic social teaching in many documents. For a rich collection of homilies, essays, and statements, see Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: U.S. Catholic Bishops Speak Against Racism (Washington, DC: USCC, 2001).

⁸⁶ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 15.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Ibid. Copeland points to “the splintering of the notion of sisterhood” to illustrate the profound differences (e.g., social location) that obtain within groups. A black female university professor from the United States, e.g., has much more in common with her white female colleague than with a poor black cleaning woman from the Bahamas (see ibid., 12–15).

⁸⁸ Ibid., 14–15.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 29.

⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁹¹ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 42.Google Scholar One has only to point to the Civil Rights Movement for evidence of this oneness in solidarity, surely experienced in a surprising way (materially and formally) by people from all walks of life.

⁹² See ibid., 44–47.

⁹³ Ibid., 44.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 46.

⁹⁵ Ibid.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 46.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 47; emphasis added.

⁹⁸ Ibid., citing Lonergan; emphasis added.

⁹⁹ Cited in Shipler, 3.

¹⁰⁰ Cone, , “Looking Back,” 252.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 22.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Ibid.

¹⁰³ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 18.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Historian Cyprian Davis, e.g., writes: “Slavery is the anvil on which the African American Catholic community was forged. Contrary to what many Catholics think, the Catholic Church in the South was implicated in slavery as an institution among the laity, the religious orders, and all ranks of the clergy. Black Catholic slaves supplied the labor and the skilled workmanship that built the antebellum Catholic Church” (“African American Catholic Experience,” Chicago Studies 42 [2003]: 117–26, at 124).

¹⁰⁵ See Metz, Johann Baptist, A Passion for God, trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1998), 40.Google Scholar In a passage that could easily apply to Copeland, Metz writes: “It is precisely because Christians believe in an eschatological meaning for history that they can risk historical consciousness: looking into the abyss. Precisely because of this, they can risk a memory that recalls not only the successful but the ruined. … This theology continually introduces into public consciousness the struggle for memories, for subject-related memorative wisdom.”

¹⁰⁶ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 16.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ While black theology neither needs nor seeks white approval, there can be no doubt that its critique of racism seeks and finds a reception among white theologians. This is especially so of Copeland, whose audience is largely comprised of (though certainly not limited to) white Catholic intellectuals. Theological Studies devoted its December 2000 issue to the question of “The Reception of Black Theology”; see also Nilson's, Jon address to the CTSA, “Confessions of a White Catholic Racist Theologian,” Origins 33/9 (17 July 2003): 130–38.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 25.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Copeland, , “New Subject,” 33.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Merton, 72–73.

¹¹¹ E.g., Emilie M. Townes, “Searching for Paradise in a World of Theme Parks,” in Hopkins, 105–25, at 116.

¹¹² Anderson, Victor, Beyond Ontological Blackness (New York: Continuum, 1995), 111, 116.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 29.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 17.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 29.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 17.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ I borrow the term “inscape” from Merton, who took it in turn from Gerard Manley Hopkins. See esp. Merton's, “Things in Their Identity,” in New Seeds of Contemplation, 29–36.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Copeland, , “Racism, Sexism, and Classism,” 25.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ The nearest Copeland comes to offering a positive transcendental inscape or counter-narrative may be her essay, “Wading Through Many Sorrows” (n. 16 above), an unflinching meditation on black women's experiences of brutalization, and “resources of womanist resistance” in response to that suffering, including the spirituals, memory, and sass. “[From] the anguish of our people rose distinctive religious expression, exquisite music and song, powerful rhetoric and literature, practical invention and creative art. If slavery was the greatest evil, freedom was the greatest good and women and men struggled, suffered, sacrificed, and endured much to attain it” (110).

¹²⁰ I hope the evaluation here conveys my sincere attempt to be intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. The critique is an immanent one, highlighting a tension to which Copeland herself gestures between memory as a liberating power (Metz's dangerous memory) and the “self-poisoning” dynamic of ressentiment. In the latter, memory functions “dangerously” (i.e., pathologically, as in neurotic bias) by imprisoning persons or groups in a broken past and crippling their capacity to imagine a more open future (e.g., Mystical Body; Reign of God; Beloved Community).

¹²¹ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 19.Google Scholar

¹²² Cone, , “Looking Back,” 249.Google Scholar

¹²³ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 20Google Scholar; referencing Lorde, Audre, “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984), 114–23.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ While Copeland acknowledges that absolutizing difference often produces a regrettable silence in whites, she seems less inclined to grant that whites may feel “swallowed up,” “erased,” and “racially lumped” by black speech (“Theology of Solidarity,” 18, 25).

¹²⁵ Not unlike the essay on South Africa cited above, Copeland's meditative riff on “the master” comes dangerously close to positing the ontological dilemma in reverse: “white/male/heterosexual” bears ontological status and, more to the point, ontologically evil status. It is not that such language is new—witness Malcolm X's “white devil” and James Cone's “whitey”—nor whether it delivers a striking political statement (it does). The question is whether such language does not finally cripple Copeland's appeal to solidarity in the Mystical Body of Christ. In a word, theology should be wary of adopting rhetoric that offers little allowance for the possibility (and reality) of conversion in particular persons, groups, or structures.

¹²⁶ Sobrino, Jon, Spirituality of Liberation: Toward Political Holiness, trans. Barr, Robert (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 31.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Springsteen, Bruce, “Mansion on the Hill,” Nebraska, Columbia, 1982.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Cornel West, “Black Theology and Human Identity,” in Hopkins, 18. To be clear, West uses the phrase as an indicator of solidarity and insists it “has nothing to do solely with skin pigmentation.”

¹²⁹ Copeland, , “Theology of Solidarity,” 17.Google Scholar This is the chief complaint against the rhetoric employed by James Cone: “The difficulty with Cone's position is that it leaves ‘whitey’ very little room in which to make gestures of friendship and solidarity with black Americans. One is, so to speak, condemned for doing nothing or condemned for doing something” (Elshtain, Jean Bethke and Beem, Christopher, “Race and Civil Society: A Democratic Conversation,” in Hopkins, , 213Google Scholar).

¹³⁰ Shipler, pp. 23–226; Elshtain and Beem, 211–16.

¹³¹ Cone, James H., Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 80.Google Scholar

¹³² Phelps, 672–79.

¹³³ I realize that to speak too facilely of the “integration of churches” could be dismissed (by both blacks and whites) as liberal naiveté or racist hegemony. On the other hand, the United Church of Christ has made it integral to its mission to transcend the color line. As Leonard Pitts, a nationally syndicated African American columnist for the Miami Herald, puts it (5 December 2004), “[The UCC] was the first church I'd ever seen that seemed to take seriously the idea that inclusion is a Christian value.” Would that more Christian churches would take the UCC as a model for imitation. So also I think the task of the theologian is not only to proclaim what is, but to put before the Christian communal imagination what is possible in the light of grace.

It should be noted in the Catholic context that the once-normative model of national or ethnically homogenous parishes is dying, and would appear unsustainable. Many urban parishes have been forced to “integrate” or assimilate with other parishes; some have adjusted quite successfully, others less so. This breaking open of assumed horizons of “being Catholic” may very well be a Kairos or liminal moment, though painful, a path to grace. Too often white flight from the city renders the issue moot, an opportunity lost.

¹³⁴ Cited in Hayes, Diana, And Still We Rise: An Introduction to Black Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist, 1996), 122.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Gutierrez, 82.

¹³⁶ I speak here from my experience as a high school and college teacher in predominantly white schools. To the degree this analysis rings true for many (certainly not all) whites, surely it applies to many non-whites also, since everyone living in the United States (i.e., “the master's house”) is subject to the same dehumanizing ideologies, albeit, to be sure, in radically different ways.

¹³⁷ Thus Schleiermacher, Friedrich writes, “Any man who is capable of being satisfied with himself as he is will always manage to find a way out of the argument” (The Christian Faith [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989], 69).Google Scholar

¹³⁸ On the paschal dimension of solidarity, see Gutierrez, 118; also Nickeloff, James B., “Church of the Poor: The Ecclesiology of Gustavo Gutierrez,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 512–35, at 528–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On solidarity as a “personalization of grace,” see O'Meara, Thomas F., “Toward a Subjective Theology of Revelation,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 419CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Gutierrez, xxvii.

¹³⁹ See Pramuk, Christopher, “O Happy Day: Imagining a Church Beyond the Color Line,” America 189/4 (18 August 2003): 8–10.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ Unless, of course, I am a white politician who just comes to visit “'round election time,” as Stevie Wonder put it so trenchantly in his song, “Big Brother,” Talking Book, Motown, 1972.

¹⁴¹ Merton used the term “sapiential” or “sophianic” to refer to a deeply christocentric, incarnational way of seeing, “a kind of knowledge by identification, an intersubjective knowledge … a wisdom based on love” (The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, ed. Hart, Patrick [New York: New Directions, 1981], 108).Google Scholar

¹⁴² Merton, , New Seeds of Contemplation, 72.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ While I have focused here on personal conversion in overcoming the evil of white racism, this is not meant to diminish the need for power analyses of inequities at every level of society, nor the need for people of every social location to organize politically to deal with systemic injustice. Jonathan Kozol, e.g., documents the bleaker side of survival in America's urban landscape with special attention to public education, housing, and healthcare, especially through the eyes of children. See Kozol, Jonathan, Amazing Grace: the Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (New York: Crown, 1995)Google Scholar; Savage Inequalities (New York: Crown, 1991); Death at an Early Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).

¹⁴⁴ Copeland, , “Racism and the Vocation,” 26.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 156.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Ibid., 156–57; emphasis added.

¹⁴⁷ See above 109. I would like to thank a particular colleague at the University of Notre Dame, whose critical feedback and willingness to engage in frank conversation with me regarding race issues was invaluable in preparing the final draft of this article.