At the bend of a small country road, the church appears in the middle of the cornfields. Cars piled up along the sides, the parking lot looked full. Still, it’s a Sunday like any other, with mass in Spanish at 11:30 am. When pick-up time comes, woven baskets fill up quickly. But mostly $1 bills.
After Father Mark’s sermon, originally from Baltimore but familiar with Spanish after more than three decades spent in Puerto Rico, we have an ice cream in the sun, between the cars. A small man pulls a refrigerated truck, as in village squares more than 1,500 kilometers away, south of the Rio Grande.
Until the mid-1950s, the Catholic parish in Newton Grove, a small town in North Carolina, was called St Mark. Since then it has been Our Lady of Guadalupe, named after Mexico’s patron saint. And on Saturday, like Sunday, there is a mass in English and one in Spanish. The crowds are not the same, and neither is the average age. “I’ve been here eight years and I can count on the fingers of one hand the baptisms I’ve celebrated among Anglos, non-Latinos,” Father Mark explains.
Fewer than one in two Hispanics say they are Catholic
The arrival in numbers of Latin Americans to the United States since the second half of the XXe century, working in the field or in the factory energized the Catholic Church in the United States. But until when? In April, a Pew Research Center study noted the rapid decline in faith among Latinos living in the United States: less than half of them now call themselves Catholic (43%), compared to 67% in 2010.
If the evangelical churches are making little progress among Latinos—15% today versus 12% in 2010—it is “without religious affiliation” which is on the rise, rising from 10% to 30%. “It does not surprise me”, responds Andrew Chestnut, an anthropologist of religion at the University of the Commonwealth of Virginia and an expert on the Latin American world. “This development corresponds to other Latinos, in Brazil or elsewhere. However, this trend is not synonymous with the growth of atheism. The detachment of the Catholic Church is happening in favor of different beliefs, more or less New Age or esoteric. »
Mass in Spanish, but not only
For Mgr Luis Zarama, bishop of Raleigh, a diocese whose faithful are half Latino and on which Our Lady of Guadalupe depends, it is first important to curb this trend, to give them a place in the church. “It goes through the use of Spanish, of course, but not only”, insists this native of Pasto in southern Colombia.
There is, for example, the issue of donations. “Latinos are often criticized for not contributing enough,” explains Agata, a Polish woman who arrived twenty-five years ago in Clinton, another small town in the Diocese of Raleigh. After devoting herself to her children, she was employed in the parish a few years ago. “Americans Write Checks, Latinos Give Small Bills”, she explains and reminds that these checks, which she registers, give rise to tax deductions. “But the Latin Americans organize celebrations in the parish, especially around food, to collect money. It’s different, but it’s very effective. We have to let them! »
It is particularly difficult to find a place for the youngest. “The challenge is to keep the generation born in the United States, acknowledges Bishop Zarama. They are no longer necessarily very comfortable in Spanish and they have cultural habits specific to their generation. » More American than their parents, they share the values of the other young people around them. About abortion, e.g. A survey last year found that 41% of Latinos born outside the United States thought abortion should be legal, compared to about 60% for those born on American soil.
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A National Plan to Advance Young Latino Catholics
Months after a Pew Research Center survey showed the number of Hispanic Americans identifying as Catholic dropped dramatically over a decade, the nation’s bishops overwhelmingly adopted a national pastoral plan to overhaul the U.S. church’s approach to Hispanic ministry.
At the vote on June 16, at the end of their plenary session, this roadmap places great emphasis on the engagement, support, mentoring and leadership training of young Spanish-speaking adults.
