Patrick W. Carey

This book is the first of its kind. I know of no other book in which
African-American scholars jointly address issues related to the Afri-
can-American Catholic experience. I know of no other book in which
Catholic theology and theological education is discussed in light of
the African-American experience. I know of no other book in which
African-American Catholic scholars have published their collective
concerns about the state of Catholic higher education.

Some might think that the African-American Catholic is a minor-
ity within a minority in the United States. There is much truth in
that generalization but, like most generalizations, it gives a false im-
pression--at least from the demographic perspective. Recent surveys
and opinion polls indicate that there are about 2.5 million African-
American Catholics (about 3 percent of the total Catholic popula-
tion and about 9 percent of the total African-American population).
That number seems insignificant until one realizes that there are more
African-American Catholics than there are members of a good many
American Protestant denominations. There are more African-Ameri-
can Catholics, for example, than there are Adventists, Disciples of
Christ, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites, African Method-
ist Episcopal Zion Church members, and African Methodist Episco-
pal Church members.

African-American Catholics, too, have been a significant part of
the history of American Catholicism and the American religious tra-
dition, although until most recently they have received little atten-
tion in the major histories. At the end of the eighteenth century,
twenty percent of American Catholics, as John Carroll indicated in a
report to Rome, were African-Americans. ¹ That percentage decreased
significantly in the course of the nineteenth century with the influx
of European immigrants. Nonetheless, the story of African-Ameri-
can Catholics is a significant part of the American Catholic tradi-
tion. It was a history of slavery and oppression, but also one of Afri-

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