Latin-Americans Influencing Roman Catholic Style of Worship

[Amelia]

Latin-Americans Influencing Roman Catholic Style of Worship

By ANTHONY FAIOLA

The Washington Post

May 26, 2007

NEW YORK - For a glimpse into the future of the Roman Catholic Church in America, peek inside St. Benedict's in Queens on a Sunday after the Matsons, Mays and Cassidys have all gone home and Joan Overton has shut down the pipe organ following the sparsely attended 8:30 a.m. Mass. That's when the pews fill up with the Durans, Lopezes and Fernandezes and the spiritual thermometer turns up a notch.

"Everyone on their feet!" cried Gladys Cardenas, a stout and fiery Puerto Rican, as a band struck up behind her. "Come on," she shouted in Spanish. "Get ready to celebrate God!"

On cue, Monsignor John O'Brien emerged in brilliant white robes for the 10 a.m. charismatic Mass - now the most popular in a parish where attendance has declined for every other Sunday service. As the band played a religious hymn tinged with a merengue beat, Aurora Duran, an 82-year-old Dominican, fell to her knees in throaty "hallelujahs." A man in the front row lifted his hands toward the heavens and began to speak in tongues. Shouts of "Glory!" and "Christ lives!" echoed through the church.

Such scenes were once rarely witnessed in any language inside U.S. Catholic churches, long known for relatively solemn celebrations that eschew the more vivacious religious devotion of evangelical Protestantism.

But as waves of Latin American immigrants alter the fabric of life in much of the United States, they are leaving one of their biggest imprints on the Roman Catholic Church.

REINVIGORATING

Their arrival is reinvigorating the U.S. Catholic Church's charismatic movement, which had been in decline since peaking in the 1980s. In recent decades, the movement - a type of worship that includes faith healing and prophesying - has swept across Latin American countries such as Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, where Catholic leaders are using rock-star priests and beachfront Masses to stem the defections of their flock to born-again Christian faiths.

American Catholic leaders say the church here has not made a conscious effort to promote charismatic practices. Rather, it has embraced them as a pragmatic response to the growing number of Hispanic Catholics.

With one in five Hispanics having left the church over the past 25 years - many of them to Pentecostal churches - the newly energized movement could be a saving grace.

"We're responding to a genuine movement of the spirit," said Bishop Robert J. Carlson, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for Catholic Charismatic Renewal. "Especially over the past five years, the charismatic movement is where our growth has been."

In the Archdiocese of Washington, about 5,000 Hispanic Catholics worship regularly at charismatic services at 16 parishes, twice as many as offered such services four years ago.

Because many new immigrants work on weekends, the archdiocese also encourages small charismatic prayer groups in private homes.

Rather than representing a shift in the articles of faith, analysts say, charismatic Catholicism is transforming the nature of devotion as well as putting new emphasis on "personal experiences" with God. The Catholic Church has traditionally used its clergy as the conduits of divine interpretation, but increasingly, charismatic Catholics are being energized by lay ministers in small prayer groups and are employing methods such as speaking in tongues as independent and direct spiritual channels.

EFFERVESCENT STYLES

More effervescent styles of devotion, analysts say, are also a reflection of the popular custom of religious feast days as well as the ancient influences of indigenous and African spirituality in Latin American cultures.

"Immigration is changing the nature of the American Catholic, making worship more lively, more intense," said Monsignor Joseph Malagreca, moderator of the National Hispanic Committee of Catholic Charismatic Renewal. "We are accommodating the desire for a deeper and more personal relationship with God."

Hispanics now make up a third of all U.S. Catholics, and they are projected to constitute almost half within 25 years. A landmark study released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicated that 54 percent of Hispanic Catholics describe themselves as charismatic Catholics.

Though the Catholic Church does not keep official statistics on its charismatic flock, church leaders and academics say the study, considered alongside trends in the Hispanic population, suggests the number of Catholics embracing at least some aspects of charismatic devotion has almost doubled over the past 20 years to more than 10 million adults.

Without doubt, their influence is rippling across the church, with the strongest impact felt at the thousands of Catholic Masses said in Spanish from coast to coast. While those Masses began decades ago as celebrations fairly similar in tone and style to their English-language counterparts, many have grown increasing spirited, incorporating aspects of charismatic celebration.

FUTURE OF THE CHURCH

The sprawling diocese that includes Brooklyn and Queens - in which the percentage of Hispanic parishioners is already over 55 percent - offers a window into the future of the church as immigrant populations rapidly grow in other urban and suburban areas of the United States. At St. Benedict Joseph Labre, in a working-class neighborhood in Queens, for instance, sharp differences now divide the 10 a.m. charismatic Mass and the more traditional - and less attended - Spanish Mass said at 1 p.m.

A significant number of active charismatic and younger Catholics celebrate at the morning Mass, spontaneously shouting out praise, lifting their hands skyward and clapping in time to the rhythm of moving hymns played on electric guitars and synthesizers. By comparison, the more traditional Spanish Mass held later is, like St. Benedict's English-language Masses, more tranquil, with hymns sung to serene pipe organ music and no demonstrative devotion.

As Hispanic immigrants have become the majority of parishioners at St. Benedict's, more emphasis is also being placed on the mystical rites of the church. St. Benedict's has in recent years revived once-dormant practices such as Monday adorations of the Eucharist encased in a large gilded vessel called a monstrance, as well as "healing Masses" in which priests lay hands on the faithful for cures and inspiration. Across the diocese, leaders have noted increases in demand for healing prayers, house blessings and even exorcisms.

To be sure, not everyone in the church - from the leaders to the flock - is comfortable with that shift. Even at the 10 a.m. Mass at St. Benedict's, many parishioners in the back remained solemn as charismatics in the front pews expressed their faith with great animation. Some charismatic practices remain controversial, including a devotion known as the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." The ritual, which varies greatly among charismatic groups, often starts with weeks of reviewing the gospel and culminates in a prayer to "release" the Holy Spirit from inside the soul. At that point, some participants express extreme joy and might begin to speak in tongues.

"We know there are some people in the church who don't fully trust it, who feel that this is a type of worship that cannot be controlled," Malagreca said.

"But not embracing this would mean ignoring the wishes of Catholics, and that we cannot do."

[Halfstep-Denise]

Thanks, Amelia!

I can guarantee that my in-laws won't go along with those changes! Currently, they are attending the 7 a.m. Mass that doesn't include music, but they are getting a taste of Power Point thanks to the new younger Priest! They're not liking it!

Halfstep-Denise :llama