RBWords - Volume 24 - Number 5: May 2011
Something to Think About
My ministry as an itinerant preacher enables me to visit a wide variety of Catholic parishes, large and small, rich and poor, rural and urban. It is an experience of unity within diversity. Each parish has its own “quirks” – especially in regard to the ways things are organized at Mass! The continuity is also remarkable in terms of the kinds of services and programs that are offered. The increasing role of Lay Ecclesial Ministers is a feature of all of this as well. Every place has its Youth Minister, Director of Religious Education, etc. etc. One can go online to each parish and see the list that is there. One element, however, that is growing and impacting the life of the parish (as it did back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) is immigration. The Catholic Church in the USA is rapidly becoming much more Latino.
A recent widely-discussed study by the Pew Center showed that Catholics of Anglo-saxon descent in this country have been leaving the church and that if these were counted as one church by themselves, they would be a major denomination! Those who stay also show a lower birth rate and are not “replacing themselves.” Yet, demographically, the Catholic Church still remains at about 25% of the general population. How is this possible? It is happening through the immigration of Latino (Hispanic) populations to the United States. My own experience is bearing that out as I encounter more and more parishes with Masses in Spanish, which are filled with standing room and much less well-attended Masses in English. At a parish in Orange City, CA, last February, the three Masses at which I preached in Spanish totaled more than 3,000 attendees! According to a remarkable book, entitled AMERICAN GRACE – HOW RELIGION DIVIDES AND UNITES US (by R. Putnam and D. Campbell, [N.Y, Simon and Schuster, 2010]), “Latinos comprise roughly 15% of Catholics age fifty and above. That percentage increases to 34 percent for those ages thirty-five to forty-nine (roughly the overall average), and then rises to 58 percent among Catholics under thirty-five. In other words, among young Catholics in today’s America, six out of ten are Latinos!” The Southern Dominican province, to which I belong, comprises 11 states in the South from Texas/Oklahoma to North Carolina/Florida. The membership of the Catholic Church in that area is now at least 50 percent Latino!
The pastoral challenge represented in this picture is very big. Many Bishops do not have sufficient Spanish-speaking priests and deacons. The clergy who have been coming to serve in this country to help meet the general scarcity of priests are not necessarily from Spanish-speaking countries. In the course of my parish mission and retreat ministry I meet priests from India, Africa and the Philippines as often as I meet those from “south of the border.” I began to learn Spanish back in 1979, when I was at the University of Arizona, and I am glad I did! But it is more than a matter of speaking a language. There is a whole different cultural approach to Catholicism involved. I learned that as a pastor of a Hispanic parish in San Antonio. Furthermore, it is not a matter of the common notion: “Why don’t they just learn English!” Worship and ordinary business dealings are not the same thing. One doesn’t learn to pray in a new language very easily, even if one can cope with other aspects of life in the USA. We are going to have to pray hard for more laborers in our abundant Catholic “harvest!” IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
“As we look forward to the future of American Catholicism, sheer demography indicates that the church will only see an increase in the Latino share of the Catholic population. Even if immigration were to end tomorrow, the higher retention rate – not to mention birth rate – among Latino Catholics would ensure that they become a larger slice of the Catholic pie. But with immigration from heavily Catholic nations continuing apace, the Latinoization of the American Catholic Church will only be accelerated. It remains an open question whether Latinos will change the American church – or, simply living in the United States – will change Latinos.”
From: AMERICAN GRACE – How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by Robert Putnam and David Campbell.