A Franciscan Abroad

My fellow Franciscan and classmate Dan Horan, OFM has a nice piece on the changing nature of the Church in the United States and the important role that Latino immigrants, especially from Mexico, play in this change. Dan’s point is that the Church in the U.S. is being revitalized and strengthened by the influx of Latino immigrants and needs to redouble its efforts to welcome this growing and essential population. This should not be a difficult effort. The vast majority of immigrants from Latin America are Catholic, at least culturally, and more often than not want and need the familiar environment that the Church can provide as they adjust to life in the U.S. As several friends of mine have put it, “They are ours to lose.” And if we lose this population, in spite of the all the advantages the Church has with them, it will be because we failed to make the necessary effort.

While there are many things that can be done to effectively welcome Latinos to U.S. Churches I would like to focus on one, language. As Dan points out, the first and most important thing people in the Church need to do, especially ministers and priests, is learn Spanish. This should be obvious, but given the insipid nativism that seems to be infecting large portions of the country it bears repeating. Learning a language, however, is about more than simply learning words and phrases. In order to be complete it also requires gaining a working knowledge of the culture or cultures that underly and define a language. For the U.S. Church this second aspect is as important as the first, if not more so.

In particular, there is a need to learn about the nature of faith and Church life in Latin America, especially the importance of popular devotions and public expressions of faith. This is something that the Church in the U.S. has largely lost, but is still an essential element of the faith life of Latinos. Parishes in the U.S. need to not only be open to these expressions of faith, but to actively encourage them, as they offer an opportunity for us to recover something we once had, but have lost. These rich, and public, expressions of faith can be powerful tools for witness and evangelization when used correctly and have much to offer the U.S. Church.

The U.S. Church has always been a place where the immigrant and stranger has felt at home; indeed, for many years this was the primary purpose of many of our nations ethnic parishes. The continuing influx of Latino immigrants offers a powerful opportunity not only to continue this tradition, but to learn and grow in the process. To fail to embrace this opportunity wholeheartedly would constitute a profound failure to be the Body of Christ in the world and would constitute a deep betrayal of who we are as church. Our call is simple, to be who we already say we are, the Body of Christ in the world, no more and no less.