Not just a black or white issue: all U.S. Catholics are called to participate in the church's mission with black Catholics. (the examined life).

WHEN BLACK CATHOLICS MEET THIS SUMMER in Chicago for their ninth National Black Catholic Congress, they will reflect on the heart of Jesus' mission of the kingdom of God. The Second Vatican Council underscored that the very reason for the church s existence is to be a universal sacrament and an instrument of the communion of human beings with God and with one another.

Though it is common to speak of our living today in a global reality, all too often we do so with "eyes that see but see not and ears that hear and hear not" (Matt. 13:15-17). Many of us are inattentive to the life conditions, history, culture, literature, art, and religious traditions of our brothers and sisters who live in Asia, central and southeastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Not only are we blind to our global neighbors, we are often inattentive or indifferent to our own next-door neighbor as well. Native-born African, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans who are citizens of the United States, along with recent immigrants, often remain a mystery to the European American majority as well as to one another.

Within the U.S. Catholic Church, the presence, history, and contributions of black Catholics receive only minimal reference in recently published histories and sociological research on Catholicism. While the U.S. bishops in recent years have sponsored several national gatherings to celebrate the church's cultural diversity, the vast majority of U.S. Catholics are unaware of this phenomenon.

Despite the historical and statistical invisibility, devaluation, and marginalization within the general U.S. Catholic population, black Catholics over the past four decades have organized several effective new national associations to strengthen black Catholic ministry. They include caucuses, conferences, and organizations of black clergy, women religious, seminarians, administrators, theologians, and laity as well as the National Office of Black Catholics and the National Black Catholic Congress.

These organizations continue a tradition of spirit-rooted creativity initiated in the 19th century by the founding of two orders of black women religious--the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the Sisters of the Holy Family--and the lay initiatives of the "Colored Catholic Congresses" and the Federated Colored Catholics. A third black Catholic order of women religious, the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, was founded in 1929.

Today the Institute for Black Catholic Studies of Xavier University in New Orleans and the Augustus Tolton Pastoral Ministry Program at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago provide graduate theological degrees for black Catholic ministers, bring Catholic theology to bear on the specific questions arising from the context of the black Catholic community, and help develop mission strategies specifically for the black cultural context.

But black initiative, creativity, and ministry within the Catholic Church has largely gone unnoticed, and black Catholics still struggle to make the Catholic Church a stable and permanent home for mediating the black religious experience. Black Catholics look forward to the time when the presence and leadership of black Catholic priests, women and men religious, theologians, catechists, and lay ministers will be acknowledged and supported by cross-cultural ministers as they work together to sustain and increase the ministries and institutions among God's black and nonblack peoples.

There have always been European American Catholics and religious congregations that encourage and support the initiatives of black Catholics in their missionary endeavor. Today we invite our Catholic sisters and brothers of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds to pay attention to and collaborate with black Catholics who struggle to address the needs of the black community in general and black Catholics in particular.

Because the U.S. Catholic Church is a communion, the mission of the church with and on behalf of African Americans and recent black Catholic immigrants is not the sole responsibility of the black 3 percent of the U.S. Catholic population, but rather the shared responsibility of all.

Until the struggle of oppressed groups in this country and beyond becomes the struggle of us all, we will continue to live in contradiction to Jesus' call for a universal communion of divine love made possible by God's indwelling Spirit.

By SISTER JAMIE T. PHELPS, an Adrian Dominican and professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago and the Summer Institute for Black Catholic Studies of Xavier University, New Orleans.