The Good, Segregationist Catholics: A Meditation on John R. Connolly’s “Revelation as Liberation from Oppression”

Horizons 379 others from different social locations, and to become familiar with African American culture. 161 John Connolly possessed a very good grasp of the challenge that black theology posed for American Catholic theology, Catholic ecclesial life, and American society.There is much to value and admire in this article, but two omissions strike me-the lack of a discussion of responsibility and the absence of a discussion of conversion.Connolly did not discuss the notion of responsibility, 162 although he did use the word "commitment."Still, a clarifying analysis of the oppressor's responsibility for and connection to the oppressive situation that entangles Blacks, Indigenous peoples, Hispanic/Latinos, women, and poor people of all racial-ethnic cultural backgrounds would have been a significant contribution.On Bernard Lonergan's account of conversion, Connolly himself experienced moral, religious, and intellectual conversion.This three-fold conversion manifests itself to this reader in Connolly's serious critique and acceptance of black theology and his move to rethink American Catholic theology.Indeed, Connolly understood and took on the challenge that James Cone put to American Catholic theology.Connolly wrote:In the final analysis American theology's omission of the category of liberation from oppression from its definition of revelation is not just a minor theological flaw but a serious threat to the very essence of the Christian message. ... Whenever theologians neglect to include the notion of liberation from oppression in their theologies, not only do they fail to do Christian theology, but they are doing the work of the antichrist. 163 This was and remains the challenge for American Catholic theology.As Cone and Connolly insist, whether we meet this challenge is a matter of the essence of the gospel.