The Babelonian Captivity of Hispanic Ministry

The United States America is, and almost always has been, a true “melting pot”, a society which has always been a mix of diverse ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. This arrangement has not been without its struggles. Although most immigrant groups are largely integrated today, the waves of immigration from Ireland and Italy, let alone those from Germany, Eastern Europe, and even Scandinavia, have almost always stoked tendencies to nativism, causing tension and conflict. The only thing that has succeeded in ‘solving’ these problems is time: as the original immigrants die, the second and third generation typically find a way to synergize their own heritage with the existing culture. Almost inevitably, at least in the United States, what emerges is widespread assimilation, which largely does not happen in the first generation of immigrants, even if they are able to adapt to the culture and language of the country.

The Catholic Church in America has by and large been the beneficiary of these waves of immigration, as the majority of them have come from Catholic areas of Europe, and now Latin America. Much like the wider culture, our approach has oscillated between assimilation and accommodation, to ghettoization and suspicion. For the most part, however, even though the liturgy for most of our country’s history was the same language, Latin, it was largely deemed convenient and beneficial to not mix parishes of distinct nationalities. Therefore, it was quite common to see in the same town, and even on the same street or intersection, multiple Catholic Churches, some of them quite large, each of a different nationality. This phenomenon was widespread across the country.

What was in yesteryear a necessity in many of our older Dioceses is now a liability. Multiple Churches, now aging, struggle to exist, especially in rural “flyover country”, where towns increasingly become empty due to a lack of employment and other opportunities. This is also a phenomenon concurrent with the drop in Priestly Vocations. In these places, it is not uncommon for one Priest to be Pastor of these multiple ‘worship sites’, each of them with thousands or millions of dollars worth of deferred maintenance. This problem is also occurring in the major US cities, as neighborhoods rapidly change, and the practice of the faith declines both among the native population and the immigrating ones.

So-called Hispanic Ministry is a product of immigration from Latin America, largely beginning after the acquisition of Puerto Rico as a US Territory following the Spanish-American War, and accelerating after the Cuban Revolution in 1953. In some cases, these immigrants arrived in areas which were, as far as the Church’s infrastructure was concerned, a tabula rasa. Others arrived in major US Dioceses like New York, Boston and Philadelphia, where they found existing dioceses and parishes. To meet their pastoral needs, in several places the Church designated existing Churches and Shrines where they could worship. Yet it was comparatively rare, especially in the major cities, to see Hispanic populations found an entirely new Church or Parish.

By the 1970s, it was increasingly clear that this trickle would become a flood, especially in the south and southwest of the country, where net immigration from Mexico and Central America were yet to hit their peak. Facing the decline in the practice of the faith by Catholics already living here, many Bishops in the United States, and especially the USCCB, met this influx with enthusiasm. The robust piety and cultural conservatism of Latin Americans made them seem like a leaven that would lift the whole Church, and certainly this was true where they have been, and are, the majority of the Church.

Yet even in the beginnings of the immigration waves from Latin America, problems began to emerge. Unlike the other immigrant groups, like the Irish and the Italians, the Hispanics largely did not produce in sufficient numbers vocations to the Priesthood which were necessary for their pastoral needs, especially in the Church after the Second Vatican Council, and its increasing vernacularization of almost every facet of her life. Taken together, this caused an acute crisis, as Bishops scrambled to find clergy (of widely divergent suitabilities) from Latin America to fulfill these needs. Dioceses urged their own native clergy to learn Spanish, but comparatively few Priests acquired more than intermediate levels of fluency; most certainly did not acquire the level of fluency needed to hear Confessions and speak extemporaneously.

Although we would be tempted to believe that Hispanic immigration did in fact create a sea-change in terms of providing people in the pews who practiced the faith, this is, and was, mostly true in the south and southwest, where Hispanic Catholics make up a majority of the Church. However, these groups, much like their predecessors, are following trends well known by sociologists who study immigration. By the second generation, if not earlier, Catholic practice has either ceased altogether or has met a serious decline. Even among the first generation, many of even the most devout Hispanic Catholics evidence a severe deficit of catechesis, caused by, but not exclusively reducible to, the weaker (when compared to the United States) influence of Catholic Parochial schools and other centers of education. This has only become worse, as the quality of religious education has continued to worsen. Especially as the 20th century advanced, this problem was exacerbated by the instability present in so many immigrant Hispanic families, where the struggle to make a living (including servile labor on Sundays) and to evade immigration authorities discouraged full participation in existing parishes. The old American tool of parish registration, which helped to quantify the Pastoral need at hand in the past, has proved utterly inadequate for providing an accurate number of the faithful due to their mobility and their unfamilarity with the practice.

All this has brought Hispanic Ministry in the United States to a serious crisis. Protestantism, especially of the Fundamentalist and Evangelical type, is ascendent in much of Latin America and among the Hispanic peoples residing south of the Rio Grande. Because Priests are so few, and there are so few fully Hispanic Parishes, especially in the Northeast, many of the Church’s children are slipping away. In mixed parishes, it is extremely difficult to meet the multi-lingual sacramental needs of the faithful, but also to find the support staff, such as secretaries and Directors of Religious Education, who can assist with integrating these populations.

As a Priest with over a decade of experience in Hispanic Ministry alone, I have seen the problem personally. Many of my Priestly colleagues, due to their own cultural and linguistic restrictions, do not, and quite frankly cannot, grasp the situation outside of facile problem solving, often reducible to their political persuasion. This problem can be truly infuriating if you have a chancery and episcopal bureaucracy which derives its insights from government diversity programs so much in vogue. In an average parish, I have received memos from chancery bureaucrats who ask me to write multi-page reports on my communities, replete with political jargon. For instance, these men and women have asked me to report how I am “celebrating diversity” and “bringing unity in diversity”, with an almost exclusive emphasis on their temporal needs and how they are being fulfilled. In these and other situations, my Priest brothers and I have often wondered if our chanceries and the USCCB care more about the green card status of my people than the salvation of their immortal souls.

There is also the problem of how so many of our bureaucratic Brahmins, supposedly more enlightened regarding “cultural ministries”, speak of Hispanic Ministry as a monoculture. In one instance, the chancery demanded numbers for sacraments done in Spanish, noting a huge number of parishioners from Latin America; what they still fail to notice, even after so many years, is that a substantial minority of my people do not speak Spanish but an indigenous American tongue. The demand that these people “make their sacraments” over and above other considerations has meant that in some cases, I have arrived in parishes where the people had Sunday Liturgies of the Word led by a lay ‘minister’, and so never attended Mass. I understand the desire to pray in one’s own tongue, but what I do not understand is why, after my ancestors faithfully attended Mass in a foreign tongue (Latin) for hundreds of years, the unavailability of a Priest to speak a vernacular language meant that somehow their obligation to follow the Third Commandment is suspended. If anything, in these communities, the necessity of a common liturgical language is more necessary, not less.

Another problem which the USCCB does not seem to appreciate is the speed with which children are becoming integrated with the dominant anglophone culture: this year alone, I had to personally teach several adolescents to prepare them for Baptism, because they did not understand their catechists who spoke their parent’s tongue. In some cases, this meant that these children were due to receive First Holy Communion and Confirmation, only to discover that they did not understand, and so retain, any of their catechetical formation. In some extreme cases, this meant that children had even been presented for their first Confession, without ever having been baptized! In these cases, the argument among more conservative clergy makes sense: if these children are in America and going to school in English, they should be instructed in English. Interestingly, these children develop a sort of split personality in regard to their instruction, viewing their parent’s language as “Church language”, and not really relevant to their daily lives outside of the dinner table or Sunday School. I remember once, after a few days of instruction, I had to explain to children that confesión was confession, and eucaristia was the Eucharist, even though they are clear cognates! This problem is worsened by the fact that in so many places, the Catholic school system, which has had so such success in the past in integrating the Church’s children into her life, simply does not exist, or is prohibitively expensive.

In mixed parishes, these problems have caused a resurgence of old aberrations in Church governance such as trusteeism. Because almost all Priest presence to these communities is temporary and contingent on their visa status, having a common sense of parish identity is extremely difficult. Let’s say a mixed parish has three or four Sunday Masses in as many languages. It is not uncommon that their collections will not go to the parish, but to a community bank account, whose management is not done by the Pastor, but by their ‘pastoral councils’. So instead of one Finance Council or one Pastoral Council, a parish may have two, three or even four, and the general account of the parish may be in a net deficit, while the community accounts are in the black. Not only is this situation financially untenable, it also means that a Pastor is expected to chair several ‘councils’. Sometimes these councils are hostile to the presence of a Pastor, and their financial and administrative independence creates suspicion and conflict. This creates absurd and frustrating situations where even a Church sacristy has three or four sets of sacred vessels, vestments and liturgical goods, all taking up space, all having different people to launder linens and polish thuribles. Even for the most open and friendly Pastors, the stage is set for burnout, and deeply seated conflict.

As the Church calendar presently is approaching Pentecost, my favorite feast of the year, my thoughts and meditations have been increasingly focused on the marvelous and miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. On that day, the Holy Spirit of God united the Church as an entity that would embrace, for all history, every language in culture. But one of the things most miraculous about that day, which is increasingly overlooked, is that when the Apostles spoke, everyone understood them. Some of the most successful moments in our history of evangelization occurred when the Church had ministers who were holy, learned, and were able to speak to the people in the language they could understand, and so incorporate them into one faith. It seems that at present, much of the Church’s cultural ministries in the United States is experiencing a Babelonian Captivity, and resembles more the tower of King Nimrod than the Cenacle of Jerusalem. The Church’s diversity in rites and languages, from Latin and Greek to Coptic and Slavonic, has always served to unite all the Church in a continuity of worship and doctrine. It is discouraging to see our leadership of the Church embrace the idolatry of culture without simultaneously challenging, transforming and integrating those cultures with Christendom as a whole.

The problem of the Babelonian Captivity raises interesting questions for reflection. First of all in my mind is worship and liturgy. A purely vernacularized Church, as the Latin Church has become, is severely limited in her ability to unite the faithful around one altar if she forgets the common tongue of her ancient rites. Some may cynically say that the introduction of Latin in mixed parishes is substituting several unknown tongues for one totally unknown tongue. But this is simply not true. In Africa, for instance, many countries have different languages in every tribe and village. Yet several Bishops, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, wisely have incorporated the use of Latin, at least in the Ordinary of the Mass, to facilitate a common sense of belonging to one Church. If it is well presented to the people, it is not impossible to explain what Kyrie Eleison and Agnus Dei mean. It does not require a degree in Classics to achieve this. It simply requires catechetical zeal. I remember once, a visiting Priest new mixed parishes once began a Mass saying, “In the name del Padre and of the Son e do Espirito Santo.” The people were so befuddled, they did not say “Amen”! There were three Missals on the same altar, as he went from one Missal for the Epiclesis, one for the Memento, and one for the Per Ipsum, even though this practice is forbidden! Such a practice is confused and confusing. Is it honestly better to do this than say Dominus Vobiscum, especially if one can provide a helpful hand missal with translations?

Another question to reflect upon is the question of manpower and catechesis. A program of catechesis in a mixed parish may require special care, in terms of guest speakers and retreats, so that the people’s spiritual lives can be enriched. But if this is taken too far, problems of scale emerge. In some parishes, two or more catechetical “tracks” exist, depending on language. This can lead to the program of having two or more First Holy Communions, First Penances, and Confirmations. This causes a significant strain on Priests, and also on the availability of the Church building for all the different groups. Additionally, this requires several times the necessary number of catechists. It is often quite difficult to find catechists to sacrifice their time to teach children and adults. This problem is compounded when one multiplies languages unnecessarily, and reinforces the idea that the communities are fully independent, rather than belonging to a single parish. Homiletics, admittedly, is a unique difficulty, especially during the Sacred Triduum and other times where it is not allowed to have multiple celebrations in the same parish.

There are more questions which I could raise, which would unnecessarily add length to this article, which is already long and complex. I have sympathy for so many of my brother Priests who minister to people in these diverse and challenging communities. Even for someone who is linguistically gifted, the demands are enormous. Zeal for the evangelization and catechetical formation of the faithful is paramount if the mission of the Church is to be realized. The Church may rightly celebrate the richness of the cultures and languages which her children have. But we can ill afford to allow ‘diversity’ alone to become a measure of our success. Insofar as we are “one faith, one baptism”, the primary goal is how we can encourage unity, because that has been our practice since apostolic times. To deliver the Church from the Babelonian Captivity, we must endeavor to teach and to emphasize what unites us, not what divides us.