The turning of a tide

The Turning of a Tide, marks a important contribution to the study of relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the African-American communities of the Southern States. In many respects the members of the Society of African Missions who worked in the U.S. faced conditions as severe as those endured by their colleagues working in tropical Africa. Indeed the challenge was arguably greater given the strong opposition to their work from elements within the White community and, more disturbing, from within the American Catholic Church itself. Showing remarkable resolution and no mean courage, Ignace Lissner and his companions stuck to their task. Their achievement would have been impossible without the support of some far-seeing American Church leaders and by remarkable Americans, not least Saint Katherine Drexel. And behind all, orchestrating the whipping-in of an often reluctant American Church's to conformity with the Gospel, stood a group of no-nonsense prelates in Rome, the Prefects of the Propaganda Fide, the agency responsible for Missions. A passionate, stubborn, outspoken man, Lissner, frequently crossed swords, not only with the bishops in whose dioceses he worked, but with his Society Superiors in Europe. Yet in all cases, behind the frustration and exasperation of such relationships, there remained intact an admiration for this Alsatian-born apostle to America's Blacks.