Tapestry of Faith

Catholics of Polish heritage will pay homage to their patroness, the Black Madonna. Korean Catholic immigrants will celebrate the Chusuk rite honoring ancestors with the dance known as hwa gwan mu. African Americans will share a provocative documentary on the little-known struggle by the Josephites to admit blacks into the priesthood in the United States.

And Tongan immigrants will perform a penitential ceremony with people wearing leis of ifi leaves, a symbol of their desire to repent their sins.

Yet when more than 4,000 Roman Catholic leaders of myriad races and ethnicities gather at the Los Angeles Convention Center next week for the four-day multicultural celebration “Encuentro 2000,” the question will remain: Can there be unity and understanding?

As the Roman Catholic Church in America struggles to incorporate multitudes of diverse immigrant groups into its fold, the national Encuentro gathering, which begins Thursday, will seek to provide a place where people can learn about different cultures and voice the concerns of their communities.

“Encuentro means ‘discovery,’ ” said Humberto Ramos, associate director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s office of Hispanic ministry. “The goal of this conference is to discover each other. It’s hard enough to discover each other as Latinos, when we have Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and a whole list of other countries. Going beyond that can be overwhelming.

“I like to think of this as similar to the Pentecost experience, with everyone coming together and speaking their own language,” Ramos said. “But, in reality, it’s the language of faith that brings us together.”

Racial lines cut through Catholic churches across the country. Ramos said that although most parishes now have diverse congregations, members often do not mingle with congregants of different ethnicities. Instead, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, many churches divide along ethnic lines, with separate services and activities for different ethnic groups.

Louis Velasquez, director of the archdiocese’s office of Hispanic ministry, said the problems created by ethnic divisions in churches will not be solved during the Los Angeles gathering. He sees Encuentro as marking the start of a process in which leaders can develop new models for the church in America.

“This is tough, and we had no illusions about it,” he said. “We targeted the leaders of the churches to come to this conference, the movers and shakers. The people who decide on budgets and staffing of priests. If we can’t persuade leadership to change, there is little hope of moving forward.

“This is not just another gathering,” he said. “It’s a process. The problem is not over after the lights go out. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want Sunday to continue being the most segregated day of the week?”

Broadening the Focus

Encuentro 2000 is the fourth gathering since 1972 in what began as a series of discussions among Latino priests and leaders, sponsored by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The previous Encuentros--in 1972, ’77 and ‘85--targeted only Latinos. But for Encuentro 2000, the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Affairs decided to reach out to all ethnic and immigrant groups that make up the church in the United States.

Though Irish and Italian immigrants built the foundation of the Catholic Church in this country, about a quarter of the United States’ 62 million Roman Catholics trace their roots to nations outside Europe. Latinos constitute the largest minority group, making up about 30% of the U.S. Catholic population. African Americans constitute 3.7%, Asians 2.6% and Native Americans 0.5%.

As the second-largest non-European ethnic group in the church, African Americans hope to stress inclusion and greater visibility.

Beverly A. Carroll, executive director of the Secretariat for African American Catholics in Washington, said there is a feeling among blacks that the church has spent too much time, energy and money providing basic social services to new immigrants, and that as a result, African American culture has been shortchanged.

She called for more catechism programs to give children an Afrocentric perspective and for aggressive recruitment of black priests.

“We’re talking about factoring culture into teaching, like what’s done with Hispanics. Even though African Americans speak English, it doesn’t mean we don’t have our own culture,” Carroll said. “For me, this is planting the seed. People are going to be telling their stories, and everyone will be immersed in it. I think it’s going to be an eye-opener for many of us.”

Even so, Velasquez of the Los Angeles Archdiocese admitted that there was difficulty getting people involved in Encuentro, especially those of European descent. Part of the confusion, he said, stemmed from use of a Spanish word to name the conference.

“At first, many thought this was just a Hispanic event,” he said. “But the problem is that even after we explained that [it wasn’t], there was little interest.”

Questioning the Impact

Others questioned the impact of Encuentro. Sister Lucia Tu, the outgoing director of ethnic ministries in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said she is not expecting a large turnout of Asian Americans at the gathering, for reasons including the $175-per-person registration fee and language barriers. Indeed, those are among the factors that have left some Asian immigrants in U.S. churches feeling excluded.

“Many aren’t sure what going to the various workshops will do for them,” Tu told the Tidings, the archdiocese’s weekly newspaper.

Stewart Lawrence, a research analyst who completed a national study on Latino Catholics, said a key weakness of Encuentro 2000 is that the bishops have failed to articulate a specific agenda for change that would ensure promotion of more minorities to leadership positions. He suggested that the church approach diversity as businesses do: with an audit of hiring practices, priest recruitment and selection policies.

“There have never been adequate mechanisms in place to ensure that important pronouncements made by the bishops at the national level trickle all the way down to the faithful,” said Lawrence, founder and president of Puentes Inc., a research organization based in Washington, D.C. “Each bishop decides what he wants to do, and then you still have to convince his pastors, and that’s where a lot of the resistance is.”

The conference will offer prayers, Eucharistic celebrations, a film festival and speakers addressing five main themes: “Encounter With the Living Jesus Christ,” “Conversion,” “Communion,” “Solidarity” and “Mission.” Other sessions will focus on a variety of topics, including “Men, Machismo and Mutuality,” “Racism Wears Many Faces” and “The Unfinished Business of Welfare Reform.”

Next Saturday night, a world food festival will offer delicacies from quesadillas to Italian sausage to crab Rangoon with sesame soy ginger dip.

On July 9, leaders will discuss how to take the information back to their own parishes. But Carroll and other leaders are not expecting miracles.

“We’re all sisters and brothers of the same father. If we only learn that from Encuentro, I’d be satisfied,” she said.