DELIVERANCE NEWSLETTER
Vol. 5 Issue 6
BLIND FAITH
“The devil is trying to destroy our church”, said a
black woman who spoke at one of the thirty forums convened by the Catholic
Lawyers Guild in
There are thousands of black Catholics in
the Archdiocese of Chicago, but at the two sites visited that evening, there
were only a half dozen at one, and a dozen at another. (We understand that about forty people
attended a third site located in a predominantly black parish.) It was not clear why so few black Catholics
attended, but perhaps the comment of one black man who said “the same people
who committed the offenses and covered them up, are now going to establish
policies on how to deal with the problem they created” gives us a clue. It was a hard line taken that suggested lack
of trust in the whole process. “God will
take care of all of this” was one conclusion reached since God is the only one
to trust in troubled times like this.
But the problem remains that Christians are suppose to mediate as
proactive agents of God in the world – and that this theology of complete
surrender just doesn’t fit the prominent history of liberation struggle of
black Christians.
If a town hall meeting were set to discuss
plans to build a vibrant Catholic church in the black community, black
Catholics might be more visible and active – but they aren’t. On April 21st, Bishop Joseph Perry
and the Black Catholic Convocation Implementation Team held open meetings for
two vicariates in
Fifty people from a handful of parishes
did not empower the influence and leadership capacity of Bishop Perry and the
Convocation Team with the Pastoral Center that day – and did not empower
themselves during this time when the church is emphasizing the role of the
laity. The thousands of black Catholics
who decided not to engage in discussion and planning, however, may have ensured
that “they can do whatever “they” want when “they” want to do it.
The following article by Rev. Michael Mulhall, O. Carm,
takes a closer look at some of the issues surrounding the story of Perpetua and
Felicity and why they were so important to the church and society at that
time. Many of the concerns and questions
expressed in the article continue to be topics that many of us struggle with as
they relate to the church almost two thousand years later. This is the fourth in a series of articles on
Early Christianity in
EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN
AFRICA : PART IV
THE THIRD CENTURY: THE PASSION OF PERPETUA AND FELICITY
Rev. Michael
Mulhall, O. Carm.
Once it was thought that Tertullian
prepared and edited one of the earliest works that has come down to us, The
Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. This is no longer held to be the case. What seems to be the case is that we have two
independent works joined together by an editor who was not Tertullian. Yet he had this work in his collection of
manuscripts. This work dates from the
early third century and is one of the earliest types of this kind of
writing. It brings us the voice of women
martyrs from this period of persecution, and also allows us to see how
Tertullian and his contemporaries were viewing martyrdom.
Martyrs were the true heroes of the early church, as much as saints of
various kinds are for us today. The act
of canonization consists in a complex series of judgments and decisions which
the official church decides to support.
Today canonization is a highly institutionalized affair. It is governed by a church commission and
overseen by officials of the highest ranking within the power structure of the
Roman Curia. But even in the early
church there were official judgments being rendered in celebrating the
martyrdom of a given individual or a given group of people.
Canonization reveals a certain mindset within the church of the time
that such inclusion on the “sacred list” of martyrs and saints is arrived
at. Sometimes the church does not even
explicitly set those sets of judgments forth; they are simply presumed. To go back to an earlier period in the church
and look at the record produced by a given church at a given time can tell us
many things.
Martyrs were viewed as the lifeblood of the Christian community. These were the people who bore witness to the
Rule of Faith with their blood. It was
understood that the grace of martyrdom revealed a deep outpouring of God’s
Spirit upon these people. It was
presumed that baptism made each Christian a witness to God’s power manifested
in Jesus, however, it was also understood that God did not require that every
Christian give up their life for the faith.
This seemed to be a grace reserved for the select few.
We have already seen that Tertullian’s genius lay in his ability to take
everyday understandings and apply them to Christianity. In his interpretation of Scripture,
Tertullian relied on the example of legal jurisprudence, the reading and the
understanding of wills. Caesar’s will
was read out in the Roman forum for all to hear. What would be a private matter for us in our
time was considered a vital public matter back then. Caesar’s divinely given
authority to dispose of earthly realities was being upheld and witnessed by
this action.
Was
a woman allowed to come forward, even for martyrdom…?
For Tertullian, Scripture was God’s testament. In it both the New Testament and the Old
Testament together revealed God’s judgments and purposes. Martyrdom found its meaning in terms of one’s
reading and understanding of Scripture.
When there was a legal doubt about the meaning of a piece of legislation,
it was common in Roman law to turn to sources outside the written text to
determine what the text meant. One could
appeal to the life and witness of the author, for example. Thus, one might make an argument that a
certain way of understanding a text would go against the way we understand the
person who wrote the text.
Today we participate in a rich dialogue that is going on with regard to
such contentious items as the place of women in the church, or the condemnation
of homosexuality in the Scriptures.
Different authors cite different texts, or the underlying assumptions of
the authors. Did the Paul that said, “In
Christ there is no male or female,” also forbid women from speaking or teaching
inside the community? Is this the same
person, or different persons? Did the
Paul that used the argument that it is a shame for a man to cover his head,
whereas women must keep their veils on in church, come from the Jewish
tradition in which all men must keep their heads covered while at prayer?
Today’s authorities tend to balance one text off against another. It would be thought unfair to appeal to
Paul’s honor, or, on the other hand, to shame him and doubt him because he had
once participated in the stoning of Stephen.
His life, one way or the other, would not be allowed to determine the
meaning of the text in today’s world.
This was not the case in Tertullian’s time. Quite the contrary. An appeal could and would be made to a
person’s honor (or lack of honor) in trying to discover the meaning of a text,
or the meaning of Scripture.
Martyrdom was understood as a confirmation of Scripture, and
particularly of Christ’s words that those who succeeded him would be persecuted
and killed just as he had been. Thus,
those recognized as Christian martyrs occupied a special position in the
church. This is all well and good until
we come to the issue of power and governance.
Who bears Christ’s authority within the Christian community? Is it those who hold the title of overseer, or those who give their life up for the sake of the
Gospel?
Tertullian held that those who claim to have an office passed down to
them in a simple line of descent find the Rule of Faith in those who fulfill
the words of Scripture by giving up their lives. True authority rests with the authentic
prophets of the church, not simply with the institution leaders. When there is a conflict, the testimony
of the prophets takes precedence over the rulings of
the overseers.
Understood from this point of view, we can now look at the Passion
of Perpetua and Felicty from another perspective. Official hagiography (that is, the officially
sanctioned account of a “saint’s life) contains within it official notions of
what constitutes holiness and also who has the right to recognize a
given person to be a saint. Who has the right to put someone on the official
canon of saints. Is it God’s Spirit that makes a person a
saint? Or is it the official leadership
of the Church which makes a person a saint?
And conversely, who is it that excludes a person from sanctity? Who is it that has the power to declare a
person heretical?
Perpetua and Felicity make an interesting case inside the context of the
Roman world and the Christian adaptation of the customs of that world. Perpetua and Felicity both come before us in
their own right, against the protestas patruum that governed
the Roman World. Was a woman allowed to
come forward, even for martyrdom, without the permission of her husband or her
father? Was a woman to be allowed to
make a decision about her life, even of becoming a Christian with all the risk
that entailed, on her own? The case is
made even more explicit in the fact that Perpeua has just given birth to a
child, and Felicity will give birth to her child within three days of her
death. Can a woman decide to forsake her
newborn children on her own authority?
Can she really claim to authentically have Christ’s authority behind
her? Are there not passages in the
Scriptures that would clearly show that Christian women cannot act on their own
authority? That they cannot claim to be
or to represent in any official way the person of Christ?
If
a woman is allowed to act on her own, then what about slaves?
Can a slave act without permission?
Can a slave convert on his or her own authority? When Onesimus fled to Paul and became a
Christian, was it right for Paul to allow him to be baptized?
In his letter to Philemon (or
perhaps to Archippus), is not Paul claiming to be his rightful superior or father in Christ? Is this
not the reason Paul brings forth to persuade the one who “owns” Onesimus to
take him back “as a brother”? Does
Felicity, a slave woman, have the “right” to make a decision that will leave
her newborn son unattended, or even brought up in the religion of his father
(whoever that was)?
The account of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, then, is not
simply an account of a trial and a death.
It stands inside the North African community familiar to Tertullian and
his contemporaries as a testimonia, an “official
account” of the place these two women hold inside the faith community of
Caesar’s will proclaimed Octavian to be his (adopted) son. It said nothing of the child he had by
Cleopatra. Caesar’s will has the force
that the historical, living Caesar has.
What he “proclaims” to be the real state of things will be accepted in
the public arena as such. There, though
in modern eyes Caesarion, his Egyptian son by Cleopatra, would be accepted as
his “only true son” by our legal standards, it is Octavian who is able to proclaim
himself the “only true heir: to Caesar by the very fact of the public reading
of his will. No other (publicly unnamed)
child of his counts. If a child is not
named in the public forum, he does not exist so far as that forum is accepted
as the only true, legal forum.
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, then is not to be read as a newspaper account, or as an
edited autobiographical account of their personal thoughts and judgments. Rather, the Passion must be understood as a public account, a public
proclamation which recognizes the role of Christ’s Spirit in leading these two
women to public martyrdom. At the same
time this account is making the argument that it is just such people, and not
merely appointed officials, no matter what historical line they may represent,
in whom the continuation of the Rule of Faith is based. One cannot trust appointed officials to be
true witnesses; one can trust martyrs.
It is the church of the martyrs that holds the authority in determining
just what the faith is, not the church of officialdom.
Taken in terms of the passions that were flaring up in the second and
third centuries, we can see that this particular Passion carries with it an immense theological position. This argument will be fought in the public
arena of the African church for generations to come. Eventually the divisions will result in
tearing the churches of
A SPRING IN THE WILDERNESS
Laura S.
Washington, reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times did a little research and found that in all of the turmoil
of the Catholic Church, “the sisters may be the silver lining in this
disaster”. (
The positive
influence of religious sisters on the growth and development of many black
Catholics, both male and female, deserves recognition and remembering. Deliverance Newsletter will pay tribute to the many sisters
belonging to religious congregations who have served in the black community as
part of Vespers: Common of Holy Women to be held in conjunction with National
Black Catholic Congress IX. Special
tribute will be paid to those black women like Mother Mary Lange foundress of
the Oblate Sisters of Providence, Mother Henriette Delille, foundress of the
Sisters of the Holy Family and Mother Theodore Williams, Foundress of the
Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary who formed religious
congregations during slavery and in the early 1900’s to service black
people. The Vesper Service: A Spring in the Wilderness is scheduled to
begin on
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