A smorgasbord of a spiritual sort

In a conference room at the Anaheim Convention Center, hundreds of Spanish-speaking spectators listened intently to a scholar’s lecture on sex and Catholicism.

Upstairs, a woman meditated on the errors of her life as she slowly made her way through an elaborate labyrinth.

And in a giant room two floors down, hundreds of vendors from across the country sold everything from Bibles to bobbleheads.

Ostensibly, the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress is a four-day training session for catechism teachers. But over the years, the event -- which this year attracted nearly 40,000 conventioneers -- has become one of the largest such gatherings of Catholics in the country.

It serves as a theological training center, a spiritual retreat and a makeshift bazaar for Catholic-oriented products. All at the same time.

“It’s become a smorgasbord” for anyone with an interest in the Catholic Church, said Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “People go to congress for different reasons . . . and that’s reflected in the wide variety of religious, spiritual and even philosophical offerings.”

For vendors, the convention is a chance to hawk religion-themed items to a huge crowd made up of catechism teachers, clergy, church groups and the few lay people who lucked into a ticket.

On sale were plush saints resembling the popular “American Girl” dolls, silver “Bible Bangles” with religious inscriptions, gold-plated Communion chalices and elaborately embroidered vestments selling for thousands of dollars.

At the booth for Meyer-Vogelpohl, which sells vestments, customer service representative Blake Callahan of Cincinnati helped a man try on a dark red chasuble, the outer garment priests wear while saying Mass. The man held his hands out as Callahan smoothed out wrinkles from the shoulders.

Then there was the magician.

Squeezed between a booth for anti-abortion activists and a bookseller, magician Angelo Stagnaro, wearing a bright purple velvet hat and black thin-rimmed Harry Potter glasses, drew a small crowd of children and adults. They watched attentively as he blended sleight-of-hand with catechism.

“Many people think Catholics believe in three gods,” Stagnaro said, pointing to three knots in a rope. “But,” he said as he made the knots disappear, “it’s really one God in three forms.” People smiled and clapped.

“Theology is worse than physics,” Stagnaro said, explaining why a magician was holding court at a training session for catechism teachers. “It’s not easy to understand. Kids need a helping hand,” he told the crowd.

Magic kits with tips on teaching catechism will be available in three months, Stagnaro told onlookers. A few took his business card.

Down the hall, Sister Dolores Velazquez, 45, was taking advantage of a break between workshops to browse among the vendors.

“It’s like a retreat,” said Velazquez, who wore a black habit tied with a white rope.

Velazquez and a group of fellow nuns of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception order carried plastic bags full of handouts and freebies from vendors hawking textbooks, software and Bibles.

She seemed awed by the immense variety of products: ash bowls, incense burners, crosses of gold, candles, CDs and statues of saints. Men in suits sold trips to Jerusalem and others representing toy shops sold bears holding Bibles.

Velazquez, who spends her days teaching first-graders at Santa Rosa de Lima Elementary School in San Fernando, bought a music CD, a children’s Bible and a book on family values to “help teach the children,” she said.

Upstairs, hundreds of conventioneers attended workshops on topics ranging from “Are Natural Disasters Really Punishment for Sin?” to “One-Minute Meditation” and “Is Harry Potter Good News for Our Young People?”

In one session, religious scholar Angel Galindo Garcia discussed the role of the church in an era of globalization. He referenced George Orwell’s Big Brother and critiqued growing inequality between rich and poor nations.

Across the hall, more than 500 Spanish-speaking spectators listened intently as Gloria Cecilia Grimaldo talked about Catholic views on human sexuality.

“Can one be a homosexual without ever having sexual relations with a person of the same sex?” she asked the crowd rhetorically and then answered: “Yes, of course.” Hands shot up and she reminded her listeners to save their questions for later.

Next door, the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, a Lutheran pastor, defended the immigrant rights movement.

“We’re not saying that those who came here without papers haven’t committed a crime,” Salvatierra told the crowd. “We’re simply asking, ‘What’s an appropriate response to that crime?’ ”

On the third floor, convention organizers set up a “sacred space” as a retreat of prayer and meditation for harried conventioneers. A row of makeshift confessionals, shrouded in deep purple curtains, lined a hallway next to a softly lighted room with an altar and the outline of an elaborate labyrinth laid out on the floor.

“It’s not about being inside a church building; it’s about how you communicate with God,” said Claribel Lopez, 45, of Desert Hot Springs, when she finished slowly walking through the labyrinth.

On Sunday, as the four-day mega-event wrapped up, Toni Stone, 53, and Terri Kent, 68, of Fort Collins, Colo., sat on a bench just outside the main floor, preparing to head home.

They said they had spent the long weekend enjoying the immense diversity of the gathering -- from people speaking Vietnamese and Spanish and dressed in the traditional garb of their countries to intensely cerebral theological workshops. On Friday, they attended a Nigerian liturgy, they said.

“This is one of those few places where you can see how diverse and global the Catholic Church is,” said Stone, who attended the convention for the fifth year in a row. “Sometimes you forget that.”

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paloma.esquivel@latimes.com