POINTSOFVIEW | FAITH UNPACKED The Blessing of Sister Thea
By David Dault, PhD
David hosts the weekly radio show Things Not Seen: Conversations about Culture and Faith. He also cohosts The Francis Effect podcast with Father Dan Horan, OFM. He lives with his family on the South Side of Chicago.
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LEFT: ZHEKOS/FOTOSEARCH (2); RIGHT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER
David Dault, PhD
s we embark on Black History Month, I a video of a speech she gave to the US have been thinking a good deal about an Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1990, shortly amazing woman who did much for the cause before her death at age 52. Though her body of African American Catholicism and indeed was wracked with cancer, her voice was afire for the Church as a whole. That woman is with energy and passion. Sister Thea Bowman. Her speech focused on economic justice. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in the dead More than this, it focused on the way that povof winter in 1937, Bowman was the granderty and racism intertwine to become systemic daughter of slaves. Her father was a physician, injustices. and her mother was a schoolteacher. The fam“For so many of us,” she said to the bishops, ily was Methodist, but the “being black and Catholic young Thea (then Bertha) means having come to the Bowman felt an early call Church because education to the Catholic Church. opened the door to evangeliAt age 9, with her parents’ zation.” permission, she converted to She praised the priests Catholicism. and laywomen in Mississippi Her conversion was who refused to be limited inspired by her teachers, by the bigotry of their time who were Franciscan Sisters and offered Bowman and her of Perpetual Adoration and classmates the opportunity to the Missionary Servants of learn and grow as children of the Most Holy Trinity. At the God, rather than as secondage of 15, Thea discerned a class citizens. call to religious life. With the Holding up a photo of support of her parents and Sister Thea Bowman, Walsh University, 1989 a group of bishops, she her teachers, she joined the reminded the gathering that Franciscan sisters and took the name Mary “to be black and Catholic means to be intensely Thea. The first name was in honor of Our aware of the changing complexion of the Blessed Mother and the second in honor of College of Cardinals. In the world Church, a Bowman’s father, Theon. lotta folks look like me!” After receiving her MA and PhD in English, Sister Thea spent nearly two decades A NEW PERSPECTIVE teaching at several Catholic colleges before This is the blessing of Sister Thea. The story of the bishop of Jackson, Mississippi, invited her life has opened for me the rich and varied her to become a consultant on intercultural world of the Church. Her work illuminated issues for his diocese. Sister Thea took on the the extraordinary variety to be found in global new role and, over time, the scope of her work Catholicism and the many ways to mix rich spread across the Americas (from the Virgin cultural heritages with robust faith. Islands to Hawaii and Canada) and overseas At her funeral Mass, Cardinal Bernard Law (in Nigeria and Kenya). of Boston remarked: “She challenged us to own Sister Thea opened space for African our individuality, yet pleaded for us to be one American voices within Catholicism, espein Christ. This was her song, and no one sang it cially in the realm of music. Her influence was more eloquently than Sister Thea Bowman.” central in the publication in 1987 of a new Her case for canonization has been brought Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The forward, and in 2018 the US bishops’ conferAfrican American Catholic Hymnal, the first ence unanimously approved the advancement such work directed to the black community. of her cause. She has been designated a Servant of God as a first step in that process. A POWERFUL INTRODUCTION Sister Thea Bowman, inspire us and pray for us, this and every month! I was first drawn to Sister Thea through
TOP LEFT: PHOTO COURTESY OF CHICAGO SUNDAY EVENING CLUB/KHIEM TRAN; MIDDLE: CREATIVE COMMONS/KATIE HUTCHISON
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