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PDF versionCatholic faces at Mass
by Mario T. García on Dec. 29, 2010
On Christmas Day, my family and I visiting relatives in the San Francisco Bay area attended Mass at Holy Spirit Church in Fremont. We have done so on previous Christmases. This is a nice suburban church partly reconstructed a few years ago so that Mass is celebrated in the round.
We sat in the new part looking toward the older part of the church. But what really impressed me on this visit was the significant ethnic diversity of this parish.
It is an older Portuguese church but its parishioners are mostly Asian -- those whose families descend from India and East Asia -- and Latinos. I only saw a sprinkling of white people presumably Portuguese, Irish and Italian. Although I detected some foreign accents among some of the adults what was noticeable was the American accent of the younger people.
The Mass was celebrated by a priest from India and aided by a Chinese-American deacon. The prayers and songs were all in English.
I couldn’t help but think how much this Mass reflected the demographic transformation of not only in the church in the United States but throughout the world. Third World people now form the majority of the universal Catholic church. This change rather than threatening the viability of the church has instead infused it with new energy and creativity as Catholic rituals reflect this new diversity.
This energy is not only the result of ethnic changes but of generational ones as well. As I looked around at Christmas Mass, I also was conscience of how many young people in there 20s to infants were present. All of us were there as Catholics but we were all of many ethnic and generational backgrounds and you could feel the vibrancy of this presence.
My good friend Fr. Virgilio Elizondo observes that the future of the U.S. church is mestizo, meaning an ethnic hybrid church and he is correct. I saw this plainly at Christmas Mass.
Thank you for this wonderful,
Thank you for this wonderful, sacred glimpse and your insightful, promising reflection on its significance, and kindly permit me to bore you now with my clumsy yet loving impression of a few of the faces in the cathedral here in Ciudad Juarez the Sunday the bishop blessed the Christ Child of each family.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesjscanlon/5275216437/
Father Elizondo is right in
Father Elizondo is right in expecting a mestizo church, meaning non-European Anglos and a mix of something else. Educated Anglos are leaving by the tens of thousands. Aren't we willing to recognize that?
Coming Home. Interesting
Coming Home.
Interesting that this article prints today. Today my family and I have just returned from visiting our local parish as our first meeting to come back to the Catholic church. Why? because we WANT to. I was born and baptized in a Catholic family but not raised in the church. After 17 years of severe drug addiction and misery I surrendered my life to Christ. Kind of a suicide bed conversion you could say. Anyway that was almost 20 years ago. After giving my life to Christ I continued to use drugs for some years --but slowly my vices were retreating and my relationship with God growing. Then I married, moved, have two beautiful daughters, one who is now a teenager. I am now three years into a new career as a college professor. All this from a intravenous using hard-core drug addict of almost 18 years.
Now in all the past 20 years of my sobriety and working and raising children I have been involved with ministry. Prison ministry for the most part --but youth, Sunday school, you name it, I helped where I could. And all this was in Protestant churches. I have been involved with Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Church of Christ and Lutheran, just a few churches over these many years.
After all that I find myself WANTING to go back to the Catholic church. I want the disciplines. I want the traditions. I want the sacraments. I want the mass. I want the rules and rigidness. I want the love. I want all the pomp and circumstance that goes with it. I want all of that. I say this from the perspective of one who should have died years ago from drugs and alcohol, one who has ministered to hundreds, one who has been to many a different church, one who has led many services and consoled many souls, one who has a successful career and a happy, healthy family. I believe that the catholic church IS a GOOD true living church. I can't wait to go back.
"I want the love." I hear
"I want the love."
I hear that.
"Demographic changes"... "New
"Demographic changes"...
"New diversity"...
"Generational changes"...
Sorry, but all I see at the church's website is the same-old, same-old patriarchal boys club in leadership roles.
India, East Asia, and the Latin and Central American countries all still support patriarchal male-superior culture over a more progressive and enlightened gender-neutral inclusive culture. So it's no surprise at all to see that these are the ethnicities that are now taking over the RCC pews.
Ignoring half the human race and calling it "diversity" simply proves again that there is yet no church home for American Catholic women who refuse to relinquish the dignity and autonomy that our citizenship grants us at birth.
There is a Catholic church in Fremont where I DO feel the joy of my faith, and where I feel a deep sense of support for half the human race - it's the chapel of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose. This chapel, and the women of this order, have helped me sustain my faith in an inclusive environment. This is one of the orders that was named for further investigation in the "Apostolic Visitations", so it makes sense that I would feel a sense of a true church home there.
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