Walkabout: You’d Have To Be A Saint To Put Up With This, Part 2

Read Part 1 of this story.

African American Catholics have not had an easy time of it in the Church. Historically speaking, black folks have been Catholics since Catholics have been in the Americas, although certainly not sitting as equals in the pews.

A few black Catholics have had a great deal of influence in the American Church, in spite of racism and intolerance, and in the last installment we met Pierre and Juliet Toussaint of New York, and, a century later, the Healy brothers, originally from Georgia. The 19th century ended with little progress being made in the Church to integrate black Catholics into the growing fold of American Catholicism.

In 1916, a group of African American Catholics came together as the Committee for the Advancement of Colored Catholics. They were seeking equal care by Catholic organizations such as the Knights of Columbus, for black veterans returning from World War I.

The group was interested in opening a dialogue with American bishops, who administered Church policy, to urge them to denounce discrimination, and to meet with black Catholics. They stated in their appeal: “at present we are neither a part of the colored world (Protestant), nor are we generally treated as full-fledged Catholics.”

It would take the actions of a few extraordinary people to bring the Church around. One of these people was here in Brooklyn, and this Walkabout is his story. He was Monsignor Bernard J. Quinn.

Bernard Quinn was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1888. He attended college in Baltimore and in New York, and got his seminary training at St. John’s College, here in Brooklyn. He was ordained in 1912.

During World War I he enlisted as a chaplain, and was with the 333rd Machine Gun Infantry Regiment. During the course of the war he was gassed in France, and returned home to resume his pastoral duties in Brooklyn. He was assigned to Our Lady of Mercy, which was in downtown Brooklyn.

One of Brooklyn’s largest African American communities up until the 1930s was the Downtown/Vinegar Hill/DUMBO area, most of it now demapped and gone, replaced by MetroTech, the projects, and the exit and entrance roads to the bridges and the BQE.

Today, very few of the actual buildings even remain, but the names of prominent black Protestant Churches, now removed to Bedford Stuyvesant and other locations are still with us.

Bridge Street AME Church and Concord Baptist Church are named for their former locations. Fr. Quinn’s posting at Our Lady of Mercy put him in contact with black people in general as well as black Catholics. He soon became a champion for Negro rights, a very unpopular stance at the time.

His first move was to petition the bishops for permission to establish an African American Catholic Church. He told them that black Catholics were being excluded from worship at Italian, Irish, and German churches, but instead of agreeing, the bishops sent Fr. Quinn to a series of unrelated assignments.

African Americans were not high on their priority list. But Fr. Quinn didn’t give up the idea, and kept petitioning the bishops. Finally, they authorized the founding of Brooklyn’s first African American Catholic Church, St. Peter Claver Church, in 1921, and to boot, they elevated him to monsignor, and put him in charge of it.

St. Peter Claver is the patron saint of African peoples, whose tale was told in the first chapter of this story. Msgr. Quinn would need saintly intervention, because his task was not an easy one.

The first services for the new black church would be at Our Lady of Mercy, which was on Schermerhorn Street. A year later, they moved into their new permanent home, on the corner of Ormond, now Peter Claver Place, and Jefferson Avenue, in the increasingly black community of Bedford Stuyvesant.

There they occupied a church building that had been built for other denominations, but would suit this new church well.

There were members of the Church who were quite outspoken in their racism, anti-Semitism and general intolerance. The Depression years certainly didn’t soften their outlook. In 1929, Msgr. John L. Bedford wrote in his church newsletter for his parish in New York City, that “Negroes should be excluded from this Roman Catholic Church if they become numerous.”

Msgr. Quinn wasn’t having it, and wrote back that, “It seems to me that no church can exclude anyone and still keep its Christian ideals. The Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and this, plus the fact that church property is tax exempt, ought to mean that anyone can go anyplace to worship.”

In 1929, Msgr. Quinn founded the Brooklyn Diocese’s first orphanage for black children in a farmhouse in Wading River, Long Island, which at the time was still part of the diocese. That summer, the orphanage burned down in an arson fire which was attributed to the Ku Klux Klan, which was very active in Long Island at the time.

The orphanage was rebuilt, and then torched again, in the same year. Father Quinn rebuilt the orphanage yet again, this time in stone and brick. The Brooklyn Eagle announced this with a headline, “New Fireproof Orphanage Will Defy Incendiary.”

The KKK gave up, and the building stood. The orphanage was called the Little Flower Orphanage, in honor of his patron saint, St. Thérèse. Today, that organization is still the Little Flower Children and Family Services of New York, which still operates in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, offering adoptions and other social services.

By 1931, St. Peter Claver’s was in need of a school. Most Catholic churches are accompanied by a school, and if they are large enough, a convent, as well. St. Peter Claver’s was growing fast, as Brooklyn’s black Catholics were attracted to a church that didn’t just tolerate them, but welcomed them with open arms, and encouraged them to participate in all the lay aspects of the church.

The church celebrated black people for the first time, with murals of early black saints, and of St. Peter Claver’s work with enslaved Africans in Cartagena, Colombia.

Fr. Quinn began a daily novena, a series of prayers, to his favorite saint, St. Thérèse Martin, called the Little Flower Novena. It soon became one of the most popular novenas in Brooklyn, drawing the devout of all ethnic persuasions to the parish.

It was estimated that 10,000 people a week poured into St. Peter Claver’s, so much so that nearby white Catholic churches were complaining, because it was mostly their people attending. The attendance was so regular that the drivers of the city bus line that ran near the church would announce “Little Flower Novena stop,” as they drew to the church.

The money raised by the novenas would help build the school, the orphanage, and all of the other projects of the parish.

The school began in a nearby brownstone, then grew to another building, and needed more room. A new $300,000 school building was designed by Henry V. Murphy, in a modern Art Deco style, with Gothic detailing.

This school, directly across the street from the church, would house a convent, elementary school, and recreation center. Father Quinn was very adamant that this new recreation center become a focal point for the community, and would be open to all. The building opened with much fanfare in 1931, and was extremely successful for almost sixty years, closing in 1988.

Monsignor Quinn loved children and music, and both were a cornerstone of St. Peter Claver’s. Hundreds of children were recruited to play in the band, or sing in the choir. Among them were two young girls named Lena Horne and Pearl Bailey.

The church funded summer camps and missions. Mgr. Quinn was also responsible for founding the mission of St. Benedict the Moor, in Jamaica, Queens.

In April of 1940, Monsignor Quinn went into nearby St. Mary’s Hospital for surgery for an abdominal problem. He never came back to St. Peter Claver’s. He died on April 7th, 1940. Brooklyn’s black Catholics had lost their largest and most vocal advocate.

He was only 52, but what accomplishments for such a relatively young man! His funeral was packed, with a genuine outpouring of grief, as well as thanksgiving for all of his accomplishments. The parish continued, remaining one of Brooklyn’s largest black Catholic parishes for many years. The legacy of Fr. Quinn’s church can still be seen in Brooklyn.

As black communities in Brooklyn grew, many traditionally Irish, Italian and German churches have become black Catholic churches. In Bedford Stuyvesant, Our Lady of Victory, once a very wealthy Irish parish, is now a stronghold in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood.

In Crown Heights North, Irish St. Gregory the Great Church is now one of that neighborhoods largest African American and Caribbean parishes, serving a population from all over the world. Up until recently, the Reverend Caleb Buchanan, an outspoken African American priest, was one of the most vocal advocates for self-determination and for social justice in the neighborhood.

In 1992, a movement to canonize Monsignor Quinn took hold, and if successful, he will be Brooklyn’s first Catholic saint. The process of sainthood in the Church is long and complicated, and not taken lightly. Father Quinn was certainly a stubborn, brave and determined man of faith, one dedicated to the cause of equality for African Americans, especially in the Church he had given his life to.

He probably would have thought that sainthood was unmerited, as he was only doing what God had called all of us to do; love our neighbors as ourselves. In this world, often one does need to be a saint in order to achieve that. Brooklyn certainly benefited from having this man among us. GMAP