Our Sunday Visitor

One man, one nation

By Glenn Ellen Duncan

Father George Clements, 63, is one of the most famous black priests in the United States. Founder of both the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus and the African-American Police League, in 1981 Father Clements became the first Catholic priest to adopt a son, despite disapproval by Cardinal John Cody of Chicago, who did not specifically forbid the action. He subsequently adopted three more sons. The organization Father Clements started, "One Church, One Child," has helped 60,000 children become adopted in 39 states.

More recently, he has sought to apply that model to other scourges in the black community -- drug abuse and crime -- helping to launch two more organizations, "One Church, One Addict," and "One Man, One Inmate." The priest is known for his traditional theological views and his radical politics.

He is a supporter of both Pope John Paul II and Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, and participated in the Million Man March in October. He has spoken up against what he sees as elements of racism in the American Church, yet he said recently that what keeps him going is his faith in Jesus and His Church.

"I believe very much in the Eucharist; I believe in the breviary; I believe in the Bible," he said. "I believe in the beautiful teachings of this beautiful religion that I belong to. Catholicism sustains me. I love Catholicism." He spoke recently with Our Sunday Visitor.

Visitor: How would you assess the current status of race relations in the United States?

Father Clements: I feel that race relations in America have reached a low ebb. We really have to be extremely conscious of where the right wing is taking us right now. While very few people in this nation want to be labeled as racist, the things that the conservatives are doing are causing pain to minorities in general, and blacks in particular.

Visitor: You're saying conservatives are racist?

Father Clements: They may not want to be called racist, but the effect of their actions are indeed racist because we are suffering. When I'm talking about pain, I'm talking about scholarships that had been available to black students, student loans to various colleges, programs such as Head Start, which had been so effective in helping us get a jump start in our eduction for our children, programs they had for pregnant moms. All of these programs are being cut back or eliminated.

Visitor: If you could influence current political leaders, what would you ask them to do?

Father Clements: What I would have them understand is that an intelligent, well-educated black population is the best ally they can have in this nation. If they really want this nation to progress, then they have to take care of the weakest link in the chain, which is us, African Americans.

It's one thing to talk about the relatively few black people who have been able to get through the system -- myself included -- and have been able to make certain marginal changes in this nation. But what about the millions of us who are undereducated, who have very low-paying jobs, who have relatively few skills, whose family lives have been devastated, and those who are in jail? What about them? Who is going to come to their rescue?

Visitor: What helps black people?

Father Clements: The main thing that is going to help us is education. And if we are able to get educated, we are able to compete. So much of what is happening to black people today certainly is a result of the family structure having broken down. But the family structure broke down at the same time we were not able to compete in these complex urban settings that we found ourselves in after we left the rural South.

Visitor: Many people think Catholic schools have helped minorities by holding them to higher standards. And yet some of the liberal

efforts to relax standards, in the long run, have perhaps hurt minority children.

Father Clements: No "perhaps" to it. They definitely do hurt. I had a school in Chicago, Holy Angels, known throughout the nation for the fact that it had been a model in that direction. We have 1,300 students. The University of Chicago did a study on us over several years. It turns out that 80 percent of our students went on and got their degrees. Strong emphasize on discipline. Strong emphasize on fundamentals. We start teaching foreign languages in kindergarten. We have a very heavy dress code. It just goes on and on. And all of these things have been documented. And we have been successful. We_re not any strange breed at Holy Angels. We were surrounded by public housing. Children came from very poor backgrounds. But what we did have were people who were determined that these children were going to learn.

So many of these white liberals have come into our community and have preached their brand of liberalism, which is a kind of "do-their-own-thing." To that extent they have caused a lot of problems, but they are not going to be the ones to help solve it. The only ones that are going to do that again are black people themselves, who have made up their minds that enough is enough.

That's why Farrakhan strikes such a note in the black community. One of the most interesting things about him, and you don't hardly see this in print anywhere, is that Farrakhan is harder on black people than any white person hardly that you've ever known. He comes down hard on the things in the black community that are causing our community to become weak and to fall apart.

Visitor: What things does he talk about, specifically?

Father Clements: Black-on-black crime. Farrakhan says that any black person that comes in the black community and snatches a women's pocketbook or burglarizes a home, what a community should do is get up and lynch them themselves because all that they're doing is doing the work of our enemies. They are the enemy. We should not tolerate them. We should have swift justice.

And then there is promiscuity. We have never spoken out loudly enough about men in our community who will come in and generate a child and then walk away from his responsibility. Our men have to stand up and tell the man you're wrong and berate them publicly, loudly and clearly. Let them know we are not going to stand for this foolishness, and we're not going to keep blaming the women for it.

The whole question about jail. What we need to do is rescue our people from these jails, and the way we do that is to let them know they have someone on the outside who really cares about them. What we should do is go to these jails and visit with these guys and let them know when they get out that someone is waiting for them with a job and waiting to try and give them an education. Mainly, somebody who has a family and is willing to incorporate him in his family.

Visitor: Isn't Farrakhan a segregationist?

Father Clements: In that sense, segregation is absolutely necessary because it is foolish to expect white people to do things we are not willing to do ourselves. It is ridiculous to think that white people are going to take in our homeless children. We've got to do that. If that is segregation, OK. Instead of us continuing our own self-help programs, we allowed the government to take over these programs.

Visitor: How do you bring the black family together again?

Father Clements: The only people who can save us from us, for us, is us. And that' s true. I really do believe, in the final analysis, that our family lives are going to be brought back into focus only by ourselves. That is why the Million Man March was so very, very important, because it showed us that we do have decent, honorable black men throughout this nation who are concerned about themselves, who are God-fearing, moral people. Don't believe the lies. So many people in America are trying to say we are all a bunch of rapists, we are all on dope and we're all in jail. We are not that way.

Visitor: What welfare reform would be positive to the black community?

Father Clements: The best welfare reform that I know of would be the kind that would give a solid education to those people in our society who are very much in need of it. Take away the inequities of the educational system as it is now. So often what happens is that the schools in the black communities are the ones which are the worst equipped, with the least number of computers, the ones which have physical standards that are deteriorating, and the ones with quick turnover in teacher personnel.

Visitor: What would you do to correct the welfare problem among single, black mothers?

Father Clements: If I had the power, what I would do is offer an option to pregnant mothers, and the option would be to allow them to be scattered around this nation. To go to small towns, go to places in Oregon, or Washington or the Dakotas -- places that are not heavily populated. Start raising their families in an atmosphere where the family is not going to be subjected to all of these pressures that are in New York or Chicago. If I had the power, I would certainly start a massive program of decentralization, getting people out of these horrible areas where there is nothing but despair.

Visitor: You seem to place more emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their lives instead of on collective action by the state.

Father Clements: The frustration that I've had trying to get people to move collectively is that I found when you did that most people kept saying, "Somebody ought to do something," and then kept on looking over their shoulders, wondering why doesn't someone do it.

I finally decided that everything had to start with me first. I said, "Look, let me start with myself. Let me start with Father Clements. I should do something. I can't expect other people to do it until I do." And, yes, I went out and I adopted a child. And, when I did that, then another family decided, and then another family, and another one, and then we started a program based on that. Today we have 60,000 children who have gotten homes because of that program. As long as you keep saying that there has to be some collective entity that would take responsibility, then nobody is going to take responsibility.

Duncan writes from Southern California. Get 26 weeks of Our Sunday Visitor for only $14.97. Call 1-800-348-2440.

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Get 26 weeks of Our Sunday Visitor for only $14.97. Call 1-800-348-2440.