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Abbreviation | NBCC |
---|---|
Formation | 1987 |
Legal status | nonprofit |
Headquarters | Baltimore, Maryland |
Region served | United States |
Membership | Black Catholic regional delegates |
President | Bishop Roy Edward Campbell |
Executive Director | Valerie Washington |
Executive Assistant | Kimberley Hefner |
Sr Josita Colbert, SNDdeN Bro Cursey Calais, SSJ Bishop Fernand J. Cheri III, OFM Pam Harris (others) | |
Main organ | Quinquennial conference |
Affiliations | |
Website | https://www.nbccongress.org/ |
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The National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC) is a Black Catholic advocacy group and quinquennial conference in the United States. It is a spiritual successor to Daniel Rudd's Colored Catholic Congress movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.
It was founded in 1987 by the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators (NABCA), the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCCC), and the National Black Sisters Conference (NBSC). Bishop John Ricard, SSJ served as NBCC president from its founding until 2017.
Its mission is to improve and enrich the lives of African-American Catholics, operating in close cooperation and coordination with the Black Bishops of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) [1] and receiving funding from the Black and Indian Mission Collection. [2]
Six NBCC congresses have been held as of 2021, occurring every five years (though delayed one year recently, to 2023, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). [3]
The historical precedent for the Congress emerged from the Colored Catholic Congress that took place on January 1–4, 1889. The National Black Catholic Congress was founded by Daniel Rudd, a Black Catholic journalist and activist from Kentucky (though based elsewhere throughout his life). His movement lasted only a few years before folding for unknown reasons.
During the Black Catholic Movement of the late 60s to early 90s, the National Office for Black Catholics (NOBC) emerged, as did a National Black Catholic Conference and National Black Catholic Lay Caucus. Leadership disputes foiled the lay caucus, however, and the NOBC eventually folded as well, giving way to NABCA, an organization made up of all the African-American diocesan front office professionals in the US.
NABCA proposed a revived Congress in the late 80s, after which they brought in the NBCCC and NBSC for further planning.
The first meeting was held in 1987, and featured a series of inculturated "Gospel Masses", an African-American form of the Catholic Mass that had emerged in recent decades as part of the Black Catholic Movement. They also developed a pastoral plan, which was to inform and govern Black ministry in dioceses around the country.
The Congress convened every five years after the inaugural gathering, and in the 1990s funded the construction of the Our Mother of Africa Chapel in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. It was proposed that they instead raise ~$10M for the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at XULA, publishing control of “Lead Me, Guide Me” (the standard Black Catholic hymnal), and an endowment for scholarships for Black seminarians, but Bishop Ricard is said to have nixed that plan.
In 2017, Bishop Roy E. Campbell was elected president of the NBCC, succeeding Ricard.
In March 2021, the NBCC announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 gathering would be pushed to 2023.
One of the main purposes of the inaugural gathering was to discuss and finalize a Pastoral Plan for the Black Catholic community, to be distributed to the country's dioceses and implemented by parishes, priests and bishops nationwide.
Similar documents have been developed at each successive meeting of the Congress. The latest was formulated at the gathering in 2017.
The inaugural Congress was covered in a documentary produced by the Congress, as were subsequent gatherings in a later piece.
A pastoral council is a consultative body in dioceses and parishes of the Catholic Church that serves to advise the parish priest or bishop about pastoral issues. The council's main purpose is to investigate, reflect and reach conclusions about pastoral matters to recommend to the parish priest or bishop as appropriate.
The Society of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart abbreviated SSJ, also known as the Josephites is a society of apostolic life of Pontifical Right for men headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. They work specifically among African Americans.
Joseph Nathaniel Perry is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Chicago from 1998 to 2023.
John Huston Ricard, S.S.J. is an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee from 1997 to 2011 and as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore from 1984 to 1997.
The Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary is an international Catholic fraternal service order. Founded in 1909 by the Josephites and parishioners from Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Mobile, Alabama, it is the largest and oldest Black Catholic lay-led organization still in existence.
Daniel Arthur Rudd was a Black Catholic journalist and early Civil Rights leader.
A Catholic lay association, also referred to as Catholic Congress, is an association of lay Catholics aiming to discuss certain political or social issues from a Catholic perspective.
The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCCC) is an organization of African-American clergy, religious, and seminarians within the Catholic Church.
The Federated Colored Catholics (FCC), originally the Committee against the Extension of Race Prejudice in the Church, then the Committee for the Advancement of Colored Catholics, was a Black Catholic organization founded in 1925 by Thomas Wyatt Turner. It was a kind of spiritual successor to Daniel Rudd's Colored Catholic Congress movement (1889-1904), providing an organized voice in an era of nearly unchecked anti-Blackness and systemic racism. After a hostile takeover, it folded in the 1950s.
The Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians is a U.S. Roman Catholic institution that administers a national annual appeal in support of Catholic mission work.
Catholic laity are the ordinary members of the Catholic Church who are neither clergy nor recipients of Holy Orders or vowed to life in a religious order or congregation. Their mission, according to the Second Vatican Council, is to "sanctify the world".
Joseph Abel Francis Jr. (1923–1997) was an American Catholic bishop. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark from 1976 to 1995.
The National Office for Black Catholics (NOBC) was an organization of Black Catholics in the United States, founded in 1970 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission was “to make the Church relevant to the needs of the black community; to assist generally in the black liberation movement; to assist black Catholics in their efforts to become self-determining; and to become an effective voice in the whole of Church government.”
Roy Edward Campbell, Jr. is an African-American prelate of the Catholic Church who has been serving as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington in the District of Columbia and Southern Maryland since 2017.
Black Catholicism or African-American Catholicism comprises the African-American people, beliefs, and practices in the Catholic Church.
The Black Catholic Movement was a movement of African-American Catholics in the United States that developed and shaped modern Black Catholicism.
The Our Mother of Africa Chapel is a shrine housed in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. It was built in the 1990s after a fundraising appeal sponsored by the National Black Catholic Congress, and was dedicated in 1997.
The Colored Catholic Congress movement was a series of meetings organized by Daniel Rudd in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for African-American Catholics to discuss issues affecting their communities, churches, and other institutions.
The National Black Sisters' Conference (NBSC) is an association of Black Catholic religious sisters and nuns based in the United States. It was founded in Pittsburgh in 1968 by then-Mercy Sister Martin de Porres Grey, following her exclusion from the inaugural meeting of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus earlier that same year.
William Leonard "Bill" Norvel, SSJ is an African-American Catholic priest who served as the 13th and first Black superior general of the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, also known as the Josephites. The society was founded to serve African Americans in 1893. Norvel, ordained to the priesthood in 1965, became superior in 2011—the first Black man to head a Catholic religious community in the United States.