Will the bishops’ new anti-racism committee make a difference?
While he was growing up in Detroit, Michael Trail’s parish offered him many role models.
His grandfather was a permanent deacon, and the parish where he worshiped, which was predominantly black and Hispanic, had other black people in leadership roles he could look up to. But later, when he left home, he encountered an attitude that said that to be Catholic in the United States means being white.
“It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my experience of church wasn’t universal, and it was a bit of a shock,” he recalled. “But at the same time, I knew that the Catholic Church was my home and that there was nowhere else I was ever going to go.”
While he was growing up in Detroit, Michael Trail’s parish offered him many role models. His grandfather was a permanent deacon, and the parish where he worshiped, which was predominantly black and Hispanic, had other black people in leadership roles he could look up to. But later, when he left home, he encountered an attitude that said that to be Catholic in the United States means being white. “It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my experience of church wasn’t universal, and it was a bit of a shock,” he recalled. “But at the same time, I knew that the Catholic Church was my home and that there was nowhere else I was ever going to go.” “It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my experience of church wasn’t universal, and it was a bit of a shock,” he recalled. “But at the same time, I knew that the Catholic Church was my home and that there was nowhere else I was ever going to go.”