The One Who Loves Finds the City to Come
6th Sunday of Easter
As my days living in Baltimore are now limited with a new assignment in the mountains on the horizon, I am even more grateful that earlier this year I finally got around to reading Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila. This book had been recommended to me on several occasions for offering a concise account of the discriminatory laws, policies, and covenants that segregated and re-segregated Baltimore City, the effects of which can still be seen today.
Of particular interest to me was the story of Saint Bernadine Church on Edmonson Avenue.
I had thought while visiting Saint Bernadine’s once that history is an odd thing. How does a parish dedicated to an Italian Franciscan missionary preacher active in the 15th century become one of Baltimore’s most vibrant black Catholic parishes with a knock-your-socks-off Gospel choir to boot? Well, Not in My Neighborhood taught me that that history isn’t just odd, it’s also ugly, vile, and sad.
As the author recounts, Edmonson Village “was an ordinary place, inhabited by ordinary people. Largely German-descended and Catholic, it was a west Baltimore neighborhood of quintessential red brick houses, owned by fastidious families who bought cheap seats to Orioles games, rooted for the Colts, and during the summer months feasted on steamed crabs spiced with Old Bay seasoning” (159). In the first half of the 20th century, Edmonson Village was, simply, a white neighborhood.
The pastor of Saint Bernadine Church from 1945 to 1967 was Monsignor Louis Vaeth, a towering figure within the Archdiocese and a vocal opponent of racial integration. Looking at the advance blacks were making through the City’s predominantly Catholic neighborhoods, Vaeth assured his congregation from the pulpit: “They will never cross the bridge” — the sole bridge over the Gwynns Falls that ‘protected’ Edmonson Village. When blockbusters finally broke through in 1955, the white residents sold quickly and headed for the county in droves. A priest in a neighboring parish couldn’t help himself from taunting Vaeth and sent him a telegram with three Latin words, Caesar’s words at the Rubicon: “Now the die is cast.”
Vaeth was outraged at what was happening. He frequently preached that blacks were inferior to whites and called those who fled the parish and the neighborhood cowards and sell-outs. By the end of Vaeth’s tenure, life at Saint Bernadine’s had nearly died, and he found himself operating entirely out of step with the Archbishop — at that time Cardinal Sheehan, who was booed and heckled for speaking in favor of the open housing bill before Baltimore City Council.
When all was said and done, Edmonson Village became a black neighborhood and Saint Bernadine’s became a black parish. Thanks to good priests and good people, today, they are proud of who they are and haven’t forgotten where they’ve been. When their website makes reference to “our ancestors in faith on whose shoulders we now stand,” in light of the great adversity they overcame, they truly understand themselves to be “destined under the dome” — the brilliant gold dome that stands atop their beautiful church on Edmonson Avenue.
I tell this story for a few reasons.
First and foremost, it is a story worth telling, not merely for being a page in Baltimore history, but because it is the experience of our brothers and sisters whose crosses we are called to bear with and alongside them. Second, because racism and bigotry aren’t confined to the 1950s and 60s but continue today, and the more we look at the past the more we see the present reflected back at us.
And third, because it is quite impossible for me to imagine hearing today’s Gospel read, taken seriously, and at the same time taken to mean that any form of racial prejudice or bigotry was allowed, much less supported, by the teaching of Jesus. There are many stories in Baltimore and elsewhere of black Catholics being denied Communion at the altar rail and of feeling unwelcome and unsafe to be in a white church. The cognitive dissonance that must have been required for whites to have convinced themselves that there was no opposition between their faith and their practice of it truly astounds me: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandment and remain in his love.” Even more, it horrifies me, and makes me think that, if that is how the church was in the 1950s, there is no reason to be surprised that Catholic life so quickly collapsed thereafter. The branch had long been separated from the vine, and it withered and was thrown into the fire. The Lord’s commandment was not kept, and the church remained not in his love.
What I would like to propose, as we are on the cusp of history with the Seek the City to Come process ready to redefine Catholic life in Baltimore for generations ahead, is that we learn from history and resolve, on the authority of the actual Gospel, not to repeat it. I have wondered whether there might be a journalist or two out there compiling quotes from what has been said about the proposed plan to fashion a spin-off to Not in My Neighborhood that could easily be called Not in My Parish. I do not mean to suggest (necessarily) that racist and racially motivated bigotry are at play. Rather, more generally, the sentiment that my parish cannot survive if that parish crosses the bridge, or if my parish is forced to cross the bridge to join another betrays the love of which the New Testament speaks.
I understand and appreciate that the proposal is difficult to stomach; however, when we look at the New Testament and the life of the early Church, what do we find but God bringing different groups of people together, binding them in his love, and making them one through their common call to love another. So said Peter, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.” So said John, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” So said Christ, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” The love of God, which shows no partiality to us, is the love with which we are to love each other with no partiality. This is the Gospel. This is the truth that will guide us safely and surely in the months and years ahead. If whatever is said whether in public or private and whether from fear or anger, pain or sadness, cannot be said honestly in harmony with today’s readings, it simply ought not be said, for it has failed the test of love and, therefore, does not come from the Holy Spirit.
The “city that is to come” is not a re-envisioned map of parish boundaries, consolidated assets, and re-homed sacramental records — at least not primarily or most importantly. The city of which Scripture speaks, the city after which we are seeking to pattern our own, is the city coming down out of heaven from God (cf. Rev. 21:2), which comes to live in us through the Holy Spirit who enables us to live Christ’s commandment to sacrificial love. To the extent that we love, we will have found the city to come; to the extent that we fail to love, the city will still be beyond us. The difference between whether or not this process will be successful is not whether it gets right which parishes to shutter and which to keep open. Those are decisions for the hierarchy to make. The decision that we can make, and what will make the greater difference in the end, is whether we choose to follow to Christ’s commandment or not. Generations before were not always and entirely faithful. May the Lord grant us the grace to do better now. History — the history of Baltimore without question — is odd and ugly and vile and sad. But in God’s Providence, history can also be redemptive and beautiful. If we take seriously the call to love, then the Lord can and will do something great in our midst and make us, and the City in which we live, one in his love that knows no end.
Homily preached May 4/5, 2024 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish