By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
On Wednesday, Feb. 25, Archbishop Thomas Wenski delivered two talks concerning immigration to a meeting of men and women superiors of Passionist communities in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean. The meeting took place at Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center in Palm Beach Gardens. The first talk concerned immigration policy; the second concerned the implications of immigration for Church life. Here is the second talk:
Tensions and opportunities have always been the daily bread of pastoral workers within the Church – and not just in the area of new immigrants. However, the arrival of new immigrants poses particular challenges to the receiving Church. These challenges, while certainly opportunities, sometimes nevertheless lead to certain tensions.
In trying to deal with these tensions – that often seem inevitable given the difficulties of communication across linguistic and cultural barriers – I suggest that we call to mind the ecclesial reality of the primitive Church as described in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles tell us how the Church born in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday grew and spread to Rome, the center of ancient civilization. If the Church succeeded in bringing the Good News to all nations, she succeeded because she did not allow the tensions of intercultural interaction to distract her from the opportunities to plant the Gospel.
In Acts, we learn that the biggest issue that faced the early Church was not dissimilar to the issue we face today in ministering to the new immigrants. Indeed, a careful reading of the Acts of the Apostles might even bring some light to the challenge we face today in integrating the new immigrants into the Church here in the United States. Of course, that “big issue” of the early Church was: “What do we do with these Gentile Christians?” Growing numbers of non-Jews, many of whom had no prior contact with Judaism, gave the Church her first real crisis. The tensions surrounding this crisis led to the first council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem. As would happen in succeeding years, a crisis helped the Church to discern her true identity. In Jerusalem, the apostles with their advisors authoritatively ruled that these believing Gentiles did not have to become Jews. We are not saved by the Law (i.e. adherence to the Torah and the religious and dietary practices of Jewish tradition); rather we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. This decision assured that The Way, as this new faith was first known, would be indeed a “catholic”, i.e.., universal, Way.
At the same time, while the Greeks did not have to become Jews to be good Christians, they were not happy when they felt slighted by those who had preceded them into the Church. They complained that their widows and orphans who did not speak Hebrew were being neglected. Whenever people are unaccustomed to living together, there are inevitable tensions. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see that the Church faces the problem – or better, the challenge – of diversity in a very creative way: the deaconate was established in such a way that the needs of the Greek-speaking converts were attended to.
Jumping from the Acts of the Apostles to late 19th century America, the struggling Catholic Church was no stranger to tension – from a hostile culture and from the demands of the influx of poor immigrants during the era that immigration literature characterizes as “The Great Wave.” There were efforts both within and without the Church to “Americanize” her. Yet, to their credit, the great bishops of that time presided over a Church that remained very much “Catholic” while integrating new immigrants into American society. And just as the early Church showed its creativity in the development of the deaconate to resolve the complaints of the Greek speakers, the complaints of the newly arrived immigrants were answered with a similar creativeness: the national parish.
This invention, the national parish, was really a fruit of American genius which is the purview of not only those born here but those who come to live here and experience the creativity that freedom unleashes in the human heart. While today many like to discredit its achievements, the national parish was the institution that successfully integrated the immigrants into both the Catholic Church and into American society. The national parish worked – and it worked as a vehicle of integration because the national parish intuitively knew that people integrate only from a position of strength.
'We cannot think that our present parish structures which have evolved to meet the needs of middle-class American Catholics will necessarily well serve other Catholics who are not yet Americans, and who are in many cases far from being middle-class.'
Today, new immigrants from Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe present the contemporary American Church with new tensions. Yet, hopefully, even while recognizing the tensions, we can discover new opportunities especially in the light of Vatican II.
Vatican II has given us a renewed ecclesiology: Today, the Church is once again seen as a communion. Vatican II has given us a renewed missiology: We appreciate better that just as the Word became incarnate in a particular way, the Church in order to successfully evangelize must also enflesh the Word in a particular way. Jesus did not just become “man in general,” he became a Jewish man, a Jewish man of his times – for he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. So too the Church must incarnate herself to the times and cultures of the peoples she evangelizes. Thus, the ecclesial parallel of the mystery of the Incarnation is Inculturation. The Gospel is not inherently alien to any culture but we are called to inculturate the Gospel in each culture. The Gospel is to be like yeast, which in becoming one with the flour at the same time transforms it.
National parishes could only be created by special indult. The 1913 Code of Canon Law reflected the ecclesiology of its time: The parish was defined geographically as a certain territory. The national parish of the late 19th century was, as stated above, an American innovation. And in many ways, it anticipated the renewal of ecclesiology of the Council and thus defines the parish as a community. Indeed, just as Vatican II gave us a renewed ecclesiology and a renewed missiology, Vatican II has also given us a renewed Canon Law, a canon law that provides much room for creativity if only we would have the imagination to envision more effective ways of welcoming the newcomer. Besides allowing for “personal” parishes which can be established for certain communities, ethnic or otherwise, the new Canon Law makes available several possible structures for the cura animarum of people on the move. These possible structures include special chaplaincies and pastoral centers.
Creative options are opened to us. We do not have to be trying to put “new wine” into “old wineskins.” Newcomers have special needs. We cannot think that our present parish structures which have evolved to meet the needs of middle-class American Catholics will necessarily well serve other Catholics who are not yet Americans, and who are in many cases far from being middle-class.
The Council of Jerusalem assured that the Church would be Catholic and not Jewish. New converts would not be circumcised. How can we demand that people change their race, culture, language, ethnic traditions in order to be considered good Catholics in the United States? To say that we will welcome the immigrant only to the degree that he becomes like us is to fall into the heresy of the Judaizers. To paraphrase St. Paul: To be a good Catholic, Jesus does not ask us to change our language, our nationality, or our social class. He only asks us to change our hearts.
The Church in America, which began as an immigrant Church, after World War II moved up into the middle-class – and out to the suburbs. As a result, this Church, now middle-class and suburban, has become invisible to many newcomers – who are not middle-class or suburban. The challenge is to make the Church visible to the new immigrants at the same time we make the new immigrants more visible to the Church. It is curious to note that while we Catholics invented the “national parish” during the last wave of immigrants, we seem reluctant to recognize its usefulness with the new immigrants. At the same time, our Protestant brethren have adopted our invention to great success. They are visible within the immigrant communities with ethnic congregations sprouting up wherever there are even small concentrations of immigrants. Their names: L’Eglise de Dieu Haitienne, Iglesia Hispana, etc. tell the newcomer quite unambiguously: Welcome!
A subtext to the whole issue of immigration is class. America has always pretended to be unconscious of class. America’s ambiguity towards race is more openly acknowledged. Yet, the key to understanding race relations in America lies in the acknowledgment of the underlying class conflict that so often influences the interaction between racial and ethnic groups.
A pastoral approach that works well in middle-class America will not necessarily correspond to the needs of immigrants who have not yet “transferred” into the middle-class. One size does not fill all. To give a hypothetical example say, in a suburban Michigan parish, the two or three Peruvian cardiologists who may live there may have no problem in feeling at home with their American-born neighbors. Indeed, if asked, they might not even feel any pressing need for Spanish language liturgy. Yet, say within the territorial limits of this same suburban parish, there is a migrant labor camp of Mexican farm workers. They would probably not feel at home in the parish. For many reasons: One, perhaps, they are not as bilingual as our hypothetical cardiologists. But perhaps more importantly, class differences between middle-class denizens of suburbia and these possibly undocumented farmworkers would mitigate against their successful integration into the life of that parish even if the parishioners bent over backwards to welcome them. Given factors beyond the control of people’s best intentions, to count on that parish being a vital force in the lives of those Mexican farmworkers would be very Pollyannaish. In reality, they would most likely remain invisible to the wider Church and the Church would be invisible to those farmworkers. They simply would not see the Church as “theirs.” Without providing for ecclesial structures as outlined above, which would allow those farmworkers a sense of ownership that would make them stakeholders in the Church, all our talk about the preferential option for the poor, remains just that – talk.
My 18 years of experience as a pastor in South Florida’s Haitian communities have taught me that. Notre-Dame d’Haiti in Miami, a mission church designed on the national parish model, has no English Masses but five Sunday Masses in Haitian Creole. The parish is entirely made up of Haitians, many of whom fled to South Florida in rickety boats. Perhaps, 50 percent of the parish is still without permanent legal status. Perhaps 60 percent are illiterate and 90 percent still economically poor. There are many Haitian professionals who live in Miami – doctors, nurses, accountants, etc. – but they don’t go to Notre-Dame. If they go to church, they go to the parishes in the suburbs where they live. They integrate very well there because they are already the social and economic equals of the Americans who sit side by side with them in the pews. They perhaps don’t need a Notre-Dame – at least, not to the extent that the 3,000 or 4,000 people that attend Notre-Dame every week need it.
Notre-Dame gives these Haitians a sense of belonging in a society that has often proved hostile to them. It gives them a place that allows them to do for themselves. They are the ushers, choir members, youth group leaders, catechists, readers, sodality leaders, etc. etc. Six days a week, they are reminded that they are foreigners, and unwelcome ones. At least on Sunday (and of course, not only on Sunday) at Notre-Dame, they can feel at home. This is the “position of strength” that assures successful integration both into the Church and into the broader society. This cannot be easily duplicated in the territorial parish that, because of Mass schedules and other activities for the “real” parishioners, assigns the newcomers to a 3 p.m. Mass. And, of course, “be sure to be finished by four and pick up after yourself!” A Cuban proverb says it thus: “If you want a man to walk with you, make sure he has comfortable shoes.” We can lament about how Hispanics, or Haitians, or other newcomers are defecting to Protestant sects. The problem is not with our theology. It is with our sociology. We don’t need so much to adapt our theology but our pastoral structures. That is, to make sure that they have comfortable shoes.
Evangelization to be successful must really take root within the culture to which the Gospel is brought. So when evangelization is successful, it is enculturation. When unsuccessful, at best you’re left with syncretism. What is voudou, santeria, New Age spiritualism, or even “cafeteria Catholicism” but evidence of the failure of an effective, incarnated evangelization?
Culture is like the skin that envelops our bodies. The task of enculturation then is to have the good news of Christ penetrate and become one with a people’s skin. We don’t evangelize or preserve the faith of those already evangelized in their home countries by undermining or even ignoring all that constitutes a people’s culture. To strip away a people’s culture by forcing assimilation is to expose their society to shock, then disease and death.
In fact, research among children of immigrants bears this out. Those most comfortable with their ethnic identity, those more at ease with the parents’ language and culture, do better academically and socially in American society than those who, because of shame or pressure to conform, Americanized themselves too rapidly. The mean streets of too many American cities underscore the fact that rootless people tend to become also ruthless people.
Of course, the trauma that brought these people to the United States in the first place – civil war, oppression, grinding poverty – and the difficulties of adapting to U.S. life – learning a language, immigration status, family separation – all can conspire to weaken or injure the “skin": that is one’s culture. These wounds present real dangers, and they require the opportunity to be healed. Without the specialized pastoral structures allowed by present day Canon Law, structures that reflect the ecclesiological and missiological insights of Vatican II, these wounds would go undiagnosed and untreated because the wounded would remain invisible.
The psychologist Carl Rogers, in training new counselors, insisted that no counseling relationship would be successful unless the counselor had “unconditional positive regard” for his clients. If Peter and Paul and all the saints of the primitive Church labored and struggled and suffered martyrdom to bring the Gospel ad gentes, it was because they felt that these souls were worth being saved. As God revealed to Peter in Cornelius’ house: God is no respecter of persons. They preached the Gospel then to the non-Jewish. They preached uncompromisingly – but with unconditional positive regard for the pagans they sought to save for Christ. The new immigrants will find their place within the Catholic Church in America in the measure we can communicate that same unconditional positive regard through welcoming structures that allow their experience of the Body of Christ to be rooted in their own culture. The Gospel must be enfleshed within their own skins.
Hispanics are already the largest minority group in the United States. They have become the largest constituency of baptized Catholics in the U.S. They also make up the largest proportion of the more than 40 million immigrants that have reached these shores – legally or illegally - since the mid-1960s when the 1920-era immigration restrictions were lifted.
Taken as a whole, they represent great opportunity and great hope for U.S. society and the Catholic Church in America. (Already, more than 20 percent of priests ordained in the U.S. each year are foreign-born – and a significant number of these are, of course, Hispanics.)
St. Peter in Acts 10: 34-35 says: “In truth, I see that God shows no
partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is
acceptable to him.” God shows no partiality but sometimes we do. We like our
own kind and we mistrust or are suspicious of the one whom we see as the
stranger. Diversity – rather than being seen as a gift – is often feared and
sometimes blamed for the discord that divides the human family.
But what divides us is not our diversity. What divides us is sin. As Catholics
we belong to our world’s first truly globalized institution. Our Church is a
universal church that embraces men and women of every race and nation – since
all are children of the one Father, all are brothers and sisters to one
another. Our unity is not founded on
race or language or nation of origin but on Christ: We acknowledge one Lord, one Faith, one
Baptism.
Indeed the diversity of languages, cultures and races within the Catholic Church witnesses to the “catholicity” of the Gospel message of salvation and enriches all. God shows no partiality – nor should we. We cannot be remain indifferent to the human suffering caused by our current inadequate and antiquated immigration system. As Pope Francis says, the antidote to the “globalization of indifference” must be the globalization of charity.
