Hispanics changing face of Catholicism

Leading the choir at the Spanish-language Mass at St. Rose of Lima on Sundays gives Zacarias Sarita the chance to use his music academy-trained skills in worship of his God. Yet he is the first to admit that the program, typically featuring songs of praise such as "Qué Alegria Cuando Me Dijeron Vamos a la Casa del Señor" (roughly, "How Happy I Was When They Told Me We Are Going to the House of the Lord"), would race the heart of English-speaking Catholics.

"The rhythm, the beat when you play the music, is a little bit faster," said the 37-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, who came to the United States two decades ago.

If it takes some adjusting for non-Hispanic ears to get used to the language of Latino religious practices, the reverse is even truer. As Hispanics are an exploding presence in both the general population of America and the base of its Catholic church, too few priests with Hispanic worshipers are fluent in Spanish, said the Rev. Terence Moran, Sarita's pastor at St. Rose in Chelsea, who does speak Spanish.

America's burgeoning Hispanic population is remaking everything from our preference for condiments (salsa has surpassed ketchup in popularity) to worship. Catholicism, which is gaining its strongest foothold globally in places such as Latin America, is accommodating its new face in the Boston area, as well. To cite one example, Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted School in Waltham plans to start comprehensive Spanish classes next fall.

Yet Hispanic demographics are generally outrunning the church's embrace, according to Moran, who participated in a panel discussion on the topic last month at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge. Another panelist, Hosffman Ospino, who coordinates Hispanic ministry at Boston College, grades the American church's Hispanic outreach with a B.

"In the '80s and '90s, the bishops began to write documents praising the presence of Hispanics and saying Hispanics are a gift to the United States [and] the Catholic Church, but there was not much preparation, in terms of leadership and resources, to face the reality that the Catholic population was changing," Ospino said.

Americans can balkanize themselves, losing sight of their commonalities; all Catholics, after all, need the sacraments, and Catholics of any color can live in poverty. But Hispanics face the language barrier and pose particular challenges, including the fact that many are poor.

Of course, there is a shortage of priests in general with the collapse in ordination numbers. But the anemic numbers of Spanish-speaking clergy owe not only to the absence until recently of serious recruitment of Hispanic clergy, but to the explosion in the number of Hispanic Catholics, whose population growth went too fast for the church to keep up, Ospino argues.

Hispanics have some distinctive rituals, not all of which always go down smoothly with non-Hispanics. Even Moran has had differences with his parishioners over the quinceañera, a celebration of a girl's 15th birthday, considered by Hispanics a milestone in maturity. To Moran, it is a holy pain, an event featuring "all the bad stuff about a wedding . . . without anything serious [theologically] to back it up."

"I think very often it gives the wrong message [that] all of a sudden, you're 15 and a woman," inspiring in some girls rebellious behavior, sexual promiscuity, and even teen pregnancy, he said.

Moran keeps the ones he celebrates low-key, with a simple blessing of the girl at Mass, offending parishioners who want a more elaborate event with a special Mass and rented hall.

Other Hispanic worship habits, while hardly controversial, "reflect what Catholicism was like in the United States in the 1940s and '50s" and are not as common as they once were, said Ospino. He cites the novena, a prayer said over nine days.

At the Weston Jesuit forum, Ospino called for the church to integrate rather than assimilate its Hispanic believers. By that, he means that home-country language and culture should not be scrubbed away in the process of becoming American. Already, Hispanics whose families have been here several generations show the same bleaching of culture, he says.

"Yes, we need to learn about what it means to be American [and] a Catholic in the United States, but my culture, my language, my traditions can be a source of richness," he says. "Most Catholic churches or services in English, there isn't much difference [whether you're] Italian or Polish or Irish."

Catholics in Latin America, Africa, and other areas in which the church is flowering tend to be more conservative than their American counterparts on issues such as gay rights. Ospino sees no sign that that will produce schism, but he says Hispanics may need to adjust in a culture that is increasingly revisiting assumptions on such matters.

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