Raising the Roof for
White People

Today we literally got a ‘new roof over our heads’. The roofers we hired finished putting new roofing on our house. Pat and I hope to stay here as long as our health is okay and it is best to get a new roof while Pat is still working. We are blessed to have a house, two cars and no debts. It is easier to live simply when you have wealth and you owe no money.

Sadly this will not be the case of our St. Vincent de Paul which should be an organization simply serving people in need, person to person. Instead leaders are trying hard to dump a 3.2 million loan on us to purchase and renovate a thrift store serving the suburbs. Purchasing this building, renovating it as well as operating it will place a tremendous debt on the poor, especially low income African Americans in North Central Milwaukee. Instead of making money for poor as organizers of store say it will, it will probably doom the organization and it is ability to serve persons in need with clothing, beds, furniture and appliances.

Attempts at dialog, arguments based on facts, common and business sense, Catholic Social Justice are falling on deaf ears. No one wants to hear how a Society of good people with good intentions can commit a ‘racist’ act, furthering the discrimination against Blacks the Catholic Church in Milwaukee is noted for.

We hear stories about a thriving Black Catholic community, small but growing, in the beginning of 20th century. The Catholic Church responded to growing number of African American Catholics by just ignoring them and closing Churches so African Americans needed to look to other faiths to serve their spiritual needs. A pastor once told me that when he was a young priest in a changing neighborhood in North Central Milwaukee his pastor asked the bishop of the time what to do about serving the increasing number of African Americans moving in the area. According to the pastor the answer from the Archbishop was to stick with serving your own people (white) and let the them (Blacks) go. The two Catholic parishes left in the great North Central Milwaukee where there was 17 Catholic Churches are called ‘black churches’ although they both have a white pastor and significant white membership.

Black Catholics in Milwaukee got their own Church, school and hospital at St. Benedict the Moor at the beginning of 20th Century, “Separate but Equal”. When they outgrew this neighborhood and moved north the Catholic Church refused to put a ‘new roof over their heads’ so many wandered away from the Catholic faith. Now we say we do not have Catholics churches in Milwaukee because “blacks are not Catholics”, a code phrase for racism. We need to spend millions at a St. Vincent de Paul Thrift store in the suburbs so “we can make money to help blacks” in North Central Milwaukee, more code words for racism.

I am collecting the new Jim Crow code words for racism but unfortunately there are so many and the list is growing each day. In the meanwhile we have put holes in the roof of poor and marginalized, especially people of color, and are investing our money in a new “roof for white People” as a way of helping poor blacks. Racism is going wild in Milwaukee and all we do is avoid the words “racism” and use code words while putting more holes in the roofs over our brothers and sisters. God forgive us.

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