Let Him Use You: Southern Womanism, Utterance, and Saint Katharine Drexel's Educational Philosophy

Berlisha Roketa Morton

doi:10.46303/jcsr.2022.3

Abstract

As a theoretical perspective and methodological tool, Southern Womanism continues the life-long work of Father Cyprian Davis by acknowledging the African roots of Catholicism and the existence of a Afro-Catholic diaspora. This scholarship invites readers into the Afro-Catholic Diaspora where the histories and experiences of Black Catholics are not isolated incidents, whimsical memories, or anecdotal musings. Instead, they are testimonies to the presence of socio-religious agency in the Black Catholic Community. In the Afro-Catholic Diaspora, Mother Katharine is neither hero nor villain; she is a beloved witness of the movement for self-determined Black Catholic education. And, as a witness to this self-determination, Mother Katharine experienced a shift from being a missionary to unchurched black souls to becoming an accomplice to the holistic survival of Black people -- mind, body, spirit.

Highlights

Just over twenty years have passed since the woman born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as Catherine Mary Drexel was canonized in Rome as Saint Katharine Drexel
In the Afro-Catholic Diaspora, Saint Katharine Drexel is a beloved witness to the beautiful, mystical, and complex nature of self-determined Black Catholic education intermingled with the magical spirituality of New Orleans, Louisiana
For Black Catholics living in communities where Drexel and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament built churches and schools, she is known as Mother Katharine

Summary

Introduction

Just over twenty years have passed since the woman born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as Catherine Mary Drexel was canonized in Rome as Saint Katharine Drexel. Drexel scouted locations, purchased land and buildings (often under assumed names), picked out materials, crafted floor plans, and designed buildings for the sole purpose of creating spaces for Black and Indigenous people to self-actualize in ways which honored their ancestral memories, histories, and expressions of Catholicism. For Black Catholics living in communities where Drexel and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament built churches and schools, she is known as Mother Katharine. A simple reference of “Mother” will evoke a communion of warmth among African ascendants in the Afro-Catholic Diaspora. This term is deliberately used to describe Black Catholics in the United States because they continue to exist and persist in a country where their contributions to Catholicism have been marginalized to the point of near invisibility. Black Catholics in the United States are not anomalies; they are African ascendents within the AfroCatholic Diaspora

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