Padre Serra Young Adults at 5205 Upland Road, Camarillo , CA 93012-2598 US - What color is God's skin?

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Though he was just a young child in the late 1940s, Oliver vividly remembers when Father John McShane, SSJ came to town.

Passing through Oliver’s small, southern Louisiana town on his way to his new assignment, Father McShane spent the night in the local rectory. As a courtesy for his lodging, he offered to say six o’clock Mass the next morning. Yet upon entering the church, Father McShane’s eyes fell immediately upon the Colored Only signs perched at the entrance to the last rows of pews.

Angry, he turned to a parishioner and asked, “What is this?” The man didn’t understand his question. “What is this?” the priest demanded as he tore one sign from its perch.

“Why that isn’t anything, Father,” came the confused reply. “That’s always there.”

Still holding the sign, Father McShane left the church and walked across the lawn to the rectory. Interrupting his host’s morning routine, Father McShane demanded, “Monsignor, I have studied theology for years, and I don’t recall any reference to God’s color. Maybe you can tell me. What color is God?”

“I don’t know,” said the monsignor, continuing to read the newspaper and sip coffee, “and I’m not going to get into that now.”

“Monsignor,” Father McShane replied. “This sign has to come down. It is desecrating the house of God.”

“That’s just the way we do things around here, John,” the monsignor replied calmly.

“Then you’d better get over to the church,” Father Mc Shane replied. “Because it’s full of people. And you don’t have a priest to say Mass.”

Oliver smiles at the memory. “Understand, this was before six o’clock Mass, and by 9 a.m. almost everybody in our community knew what had happened. The domestics who worked in the rectory told their families and friends.

Father McShane did go back into the church that morning. He asked if anyone had a home he could say Mass in, and one of the black families obliged. After he had said Mass, he used their telephone to call his superior. ‘Superior General,’ Father McShane said, ‘I have found a flock in need of a shepherd. May I have your permission to stay here?’

“It was grace,” Oliver says simply. “This gift that came into our midst accompanied us for many years. He built a church, an elementary and high school. Before then, we did not have a high school for blacks. The grade schools that did exist for us were substandard and overcrowded, with multiple levels in one classroom. The books handed down to us were torn – destroyed by former owners before they came to us.

“Even though we were Baptist, my mother sent me to Father McShane’s school, and I was educated there. When I graduated, I took the Army entrance exam and scored high enough to get into their special training school for electronics.

“Growing up, I had a great-aunt who used to tell me, ‘Oliver, you will make a great pastor some day.’ She made a point of telling me this every time we got together, and it made me pretty nervous. I loved my aunt, but I knew I did not want to be a pastor. In fact, I was thinking that maybe I did not want to be Baptist.

“I saw the changes that occurred within the community because of Father McShane. So I talked to my mother about becoming Catholic. ‘Mama,’ I told her, ‘this priest is living a life touching people as people. Not knowing what color God is. I want to be part of that.’ My mother told me she would honor my decision, but I would have to get my uncle’s and my aunt’s blessings first.

“My uncle was blind, but he could see right into my heart. He asked me, ‘Oliver, if you want to be Catholic, are you going to become Catholic, or be a Catholic in name only?’ ‘Become Catholic,’ I told him. He must have known I was speaking the truth, because he gave me his blessing.

“I had only to get my aunt’s blessing now. When she met me at her door that day, she offered me some of her sweet-potato pie and ice-cold milk. She asked me to sit down next to her like she always did. ‘Tell me, Sweetie,’ she said, ‘if you become Catholic, are you going to become Catholic or will you be a Catholic in name only?’ I told her the same thing I had told my uncle.

“Then she told me something I’ll never forget. ‘Then, Oliver, I give you my permission on one condition. Be Catholic. Don’t be a pew warmer.’ And every time I went home after that day, she would ask me what I was doing to live my faith.” Oliver smiles. “I couldn’t be a pew warmer if I had to answer to my aunt!”

Throughout his career in the U.S. Army and state government, Oliver Washington encountered many opportunities to live his faith and had many stories to tell his aunt. With his wife Charlan’s blessing, Oliver even embraced a portion of his aunt’s wishes and became a deacon in his adopted faith.

Whether as chief warrant officer or the Rev. Mr. Washington, Oliver has encountered the face of God in countless ways over the years. Serving in the Clinton County jail ministry program for approximately 10 years, he has seen God in the countless faces of those he serves.

“We are all embossed with the image and likeness of God,” Oliver states simply. “When I sit across from you, I see you. But I also see our God. The Bible says, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you say you love and you truly love, you share it equally with all people.

“You take that love with you into the prison system, and you don’t see the men and women there as prisoners; you see other children of God.

“In my role as deacon, I coordinate and conduct services for prisoners in the Clinton County Jail. Every Wednesday evening, a Communion service or Mass is held in that facility for the prisoners,” Oliver explains. “My service is truly catholic, because I stress the participatory nature of the service. Volunteers read the Scripture and choose the hymns to be sung. A priest or I read the Gospel and give the homily. Residents of all faiths are welcomed, but we ask that only Catholics come for Communion. Non-Catholics may come forward for a blessing.

“I also mentor, model and coach residents along their journey. One night when I arrived for services, I buzzed in to announce myself and heard locks immediately clicking open along the corridor. The guard said, ‘We need you, if you don’t mind, on a suicide watch. Would you talk to him?’ I replied, ‘I will talk to him only if he will receive me.’

“Well, he did talk to me, and I learned he was hurting because his loved ones were being taken from him. I told him, ‘You’re only here for 12 months. Do these things and I promise I will help you.’ He petitioned the judge and earned parole. Since he was released indigent, my wife and I bought him a round-trip ticket home on the condition that he check in with local law enforcement and a local church when got to his hometown. He went back and was able to stop attempts at having his parental rights terminated. When he returned to Michigan, he got a job as a chef and is now living a productive life that includes his children.”

In his younger years, Oliver once met a tow truck driver who pulled his truck from the mud of a rural Missouri highway. The man was beginning his morning routine when he got the call to rescue the stranded motorist, but he came without delay. After Oliver’s truck was cleaned, gassed and ready to go, he insisted on paying the man for the tow. The driver looked directly at Oliver, paused and replied, “What you have received freely, pass on to someone else on your journey.”

Many years and miles later, Oliver thinks back on his advice and smiles – grateful for another gift of grace from a God whose color we do not know.

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workshops available
from the Office of
Black Catholic Ministry

• African American Christology
• Athletics and the Gospel Mission
• Cultural Mythology
• Culture, Race & Real Estate-The Real Difference!
• Diversity Training-“Culture and Me and You and Us”
• The History of Black Catholics
• Interracial Dating
• Ministry, Media & Marketing in the New Millennium
• Pluricultural /Multicultural Ministry
• Recovery from Everyday Racisms
• Race & Culture: A Business Primer
• Race and Religion: Practicing our Preaching
• Sports and Spirituality
• Strings Theory of Relational Ministry (S.T.O.R.M.)

For more information, contact:
Ronald Landfair, M.P.S.
Dept. of Catholic Charities
517. 342.2496
rlandfair@dioceseoflansing.org

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Are you called to minister to troubled youth? Your presence could stop a young offender from turning into a lifelong criminal. Mentors for juvenile offenders have been proven to reverse the pattern of incarceration for troubled youth.

The Diocese of Lansing is seeking volunteers to become part of an initiative working with offenders who are under age 18. Volunteers will work at detention facilities in their local counties. Training, formation, information and direction will be provided by the diocese.

For more information, contact Rory Hoipkemier at 517.342.2469 or rhoipkemier@dioceseoflansing.org.

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6 rules of engagement:

There is a need to engage each other in open, honest discussions about race/culture. To do so, follow these tips:

1 Self-initiative: There is a need to overcome personal fears and individual prejudice(s) to begin a discussion/dialogue.

2 No presumptions: You must have an open mind and be willing to learn – about others and particularly yourself. Don’t presume you know everything about the other person/people, based on your specific experience of one or even a group of people from an ethnic group or culture not your own.

3 Have a willingness to hear others: Don’t rely on “objective sources (e.g. nightly news or newspapers) for information; talk with people of various ethnic and geographic backgrounds (blacks, Hispanics, whites, Latinos, Africans, Colombians, Irish, Germans, etc.).

4 Acknowledge the individual and his/her identity: Don’t see the other person as the spokesperson for his ethnic race or cultural group; don’t pretend to be “color-blind” either. Don’t reduce the other person to her race. Ethnic makeup, like gender, is part of one’s historical experience of “being” in the world. Be yourself, and recognize the valid authenticity of the other person.

5 Truly listen: Don’t just wait for or expect confirmation of your fears/anxieties or what you think you already know. Don’t blow off the other person’s concerns.

6 Respond honestly: Say what you really think, believe or feel, and recognize that each individual’s context of understanding is specifically his or her own, including yours.
– Ron Landfair, director of the Office of Black Catholic and Multicultural Ministry for the Diocese of Lansing

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