"We forget where we came from, not just as the early Christian church, but also as a country."

The only answers that mattered, some argued, were the ones offered by people who attended Mass weekly or more.

“It’s not just, ‘I’ll pray for you.’ We need to do something personally for them.”

Twenty-five years after “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a study to discern its implementation and reception. The results of that study painted a disheartening picture of the church’s relationship with the black community.