Guest editorial

Historically, the normativity and privilege of whiteness have allowed the U.S. Catholic Church to treat the presence of Black Catholics as an anomaly or an embarassment, to borrow a description from the African American historian of religions Charles Long. [...]it is not surprising that Black Catholic retrieval of our presence, our history, and our contributions to the Church constitute a crucial dimension (perhaps, even a phase) in the development of Black Catholic theology. [...]when we Black Catholic theologians commit ourselves to fidelity to the authority of tradition, we take as our task the formulation of a critical theology that mediates between Black Catholic communities of witness and worship on the one hand and the racist religious and cultural matrices in which they exist on the other. On the one hand, Black Protestant theologians have given little sustained attention to doctrinal questions as these are articulated from within their respective confessional or religious traditions. [...]history compels us to be wary of White Catholic attempts at integration and inclusion.