What is our problem with a multi-cultural church?

For several weeks now I have been meaning to write about one of my greatest struggles with my fellow Americans, particularly those who recite the same creed as I. When did the statue of liberty get changed to read “give me your white, English speaking, semi-affluent Europeans?” And when did the Catholic Church become an appropriate place to espouse these ideas?

Let me address the later issue. The former is really just people being stupid and I can live with stupid people but I can not tolerate people using the Church to justify excluding others. So the later issue is the one that actually causes me to question what is being taught in churches and homes.

The first issue that brought this to my attention is the planning of bilingual or multi lingual ministry and masses. My first argument is this: are you kidding me? Did we deny the Sacraments to the Polish, the German, the Italian, the Spanish when they came to the United States and didn’t speak the language? No instead we had in some major US cities 4 Catholic Churches with 2 blocks of each other so each of these communities could live their faith deeply rooted in their culture. Granted for a large number of these communities the Latin mass was still the norm so nobody knew what was going on anyway, except the priest and maybe 15% of the congregation but still the culture and the language of our ancestors was embraced and accepted as being completely acceptable.

At the risk of sounding like an evil temptress who is out to destroy the Church I will publicly recognize Vatican II for the good things it brought to the Church. The first of these good things was a call to bring the mass, thereby the most real experience of the divine we have, into the vernacular of the people. I know it is an odd concept, although the graces where there all along actually letting people hear and understand what was going on. I mean what would these people do now that they actually get to hear the words of Christ and hear the words they pray in their own language? Certainly the benefits did not include people now being able to fully, actively and consciously participate in the liturgy.

So now we have the problem of discerning what the vernacular was. It certainly was not Latin, since again nobody speaks Latin in their homes and daily life. But what to do about these cultural churches that had popped up all over. The answer was clear in the Polish Church speak Polish, in the Italian Churches speak Italian, etc, etc. But oh no this is another problems people start getting married and having kids and those kids are not Polish or Italian or Irish or German they are products of America. These children of the melting pot speak English and the language of their ancestors. These children have both a Polish and an Irish identity. They are for a lack of better word Americans.

Now we add to the confusion of people no longer being defined by ancestry the diminishing number of priests. We have to start combining parishes and having priests ministering to larger communities. So these priests start offering masses in English and what ever language people still speak. We have problems with this like all other things. We got used to things being a certain way and now they go and change it all up on us. Darn these people!

All that rant is meant to do is illustrate that this is not a new phenomenon, developed in the last 5 years. What is so different about the current situation where we as a Church need to reach the needs of multiple communities with our limited resources? I have a lot of theories that don’t bode well for my respect for humanity so I am just going to assume because people have forgotten the past and don’t understand the present. I will avoid too many theories of racism or classicism and I will even avoid my most tempting theory and the one that gets my ire up most that people have exchanged their Catholic identity for a political affiliation and don’t even know it.

There is a reality we face as an American Church. We are the universal Church, we are not a European church or a United States church we are the universal Church. We were not called to speak only to those we understood, but to go forth and spread the good news to all nations and all people.

The church in the United States is called to minister to her people regardless of what language we speak. We are not all native English speakers and the vernacular of the people does not mean what we think the vernacular should be, but the real vernacular of the people. Wouldn’t mass be prettier if it were spoken in Latin? Yeah so why not have it in Spanish or Italian, those are Romance languages, and they are closer to Latin than American English could ever claim to be? The answer isn’t clear to me why people get so upset when they hear a bishop speak Spanish. I just don’t understand where this indignation comes from.

It makes perfect sense for me to hear and see the Church speak as many languages as possible, especially here in the United States where we really are called to embrace the call our country brides itself on. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

We as Catholics, especially we who are blessed to live in a place that’s principles speak so powerfully the message of Christ, are called to be the light beside the golden door and the light of Christ to the tired, poor huddled masses longing to breath. We are called to light the path to Christ and not hide our light under a bushel basket but put it on a lamp stand for all to see.