Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights: 1800-Present
Matthew Daniels and Roxanne King
(Ignatius, $18.95, 205 pages)
In Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights Matthew Daniels and Roxanne King profile 16 Catholics who championed civil and human rights in different parts of the world (although mostly the United States) and in different eras. What all 16 men and women have in common is that their heroic actions were all rooted in their Catholic faith. Many overcame adversity to advance justice for various groups of people who themselves faced adversity, often in the form of the denial of their basic human and civil rights. We meet numerous saints (Teresa of Calcutta and Katherine Drexel) and lesser-known heroes (Fr. Augustus Tolton, Nicholas Black Elk) who helped those on the margins of society: pre-Civil War blacks, indigenous peoples, exploited workers, the poor of India and El Salvador. Pierre Toussaint became a wealthy black New Yorker in the early 1800s as a hairdresser and investor after being freed from slavery, and he used his fortune to purchase the freedom of other slaves, aid needy Haitian refugees, care for the sick during outbreaks of illness, and educate black orphans. He did this because, although he “never felt … a slave to any man or woman,” he was “a servant of the Almighty God who made us all” and thus, in the words of Daniels and King, “lived the beatitudes” as fully as he could. Julia Greeley was “born into slavery between 1833 and 1848” and lost an eye to her master’s whip as a child. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, she became a domestic servant, but more importantly, a daily Mass-goer who called the Eucharist her “breakfast.” Each first Friday, despite suffering from arthritis, she walked more than 20 miles to each of Denver’s 20 fire stations to give firefighters Sacred Heart badges and the Apostleship of Prayer pamphlets – tracts she did not know herself how to read. She called them “tickets to heaven.” There are more than a dozen such stories highlighting the themes of freedom, perseverance, hope, justice, and conscience. While some have become saints and others are on their way, they all lived saintly lives in service to others in order to serve God.
