Posted on 11/03/2010 10:15:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Father Moises Agudo, pastor at St. Charles Borromeo in San Francisco and recently appointed Vicar for Spanish-speaking for the Archdiocese, in conversation with Catholic San Francisco. Interview conducted in Spanish by Jose Luis Aguirre and translated by Marta Rebagliati.
CSF: There is a tremendous demographic shift underway in the Catholic laity in the US, especially in the West. According to the Pew Forum (2008), 54 percent of Catholics in the West were Hispanic, vs. 38 percent white. What are the implications of this shift for the Church in the US and this Archdiocese?
FATHER AGUDO: More than an implication it is a challenge for the Archdiocese to confront the reality of growth in the Hispanic population. And this challenge is to achieve the cultural integration of Hispanics into the Anglo world and vice versa – a process that could be achieved through joint pastoral and liturgical celebrations.
CSF: Vocations from prospective priests from Spanish-speaking countries are relatively few, considering that many of our parishes are predominantly Latino. What’s going on here? Why aren’t more Latino men stepping up? What more could be done to encourage them to consider the priesthood?
FATHER AGUDO: There aren’t few Latino men willing to enter the seminary, there are many but the problem is that they are not legally here. A legal status is implicit for admission into the seminary – it’s not a matter of how few there are but what restrictions are in place at seminaries that hinder their admission. Those who cannot be allowed in are not unwilling but unable. If we could create a legislative path through which we could formalize the way Latino men are let in we would have more vocations. It is a double edge sword because many would use it to legalize their status. There are many vocations but they are inhibited from following their vocation. There are so many legal obstacles in the U.S. Another reason is that in the world that we live in today materialistic forces permeate the youth – before everything was more conducive to hear the vocational call – you were not as contaminated by the world and its pretenses. We need to fight against that which is presented to the youth – to propose something that is attractive. The challenge is to know that what we are offering – they can attain. What was not attainable back home is an open door here. They abandon Church and vocation because what we are proposing is easy. We need to enable an encounter of the youth with Christ through a vocation in this world. We as a Church are falling short – we don’t know how to reach out to the youth and foment a vocation from inside the family – the bosom of vocations.
CSF: This may be part of your answer: Spanish-speaking young people tend to abandon the Church when they reach adulthood. Maybe they do not leave at a greater rate than European-born Catholics, but still it is a factor to be considered. What can we do to reach out to Spanish-speaking youth and young adults?
FATHER AGUDO: It depends. The family plays a fundamental role in education and formation...the youth wants to be autonomous. But it is then that we need to work with the youth presenting them with something that anchors them to the parish. For example, in St. Charles Borromeo we have children preparing for First Communion for one or two years. Then they move on to prepare for Confirmation. We have got to do something to keep them around, so we created another class called Devotions to the Sacred Heart. Two more years of Good News Bible classes, another year of Disciples of Christ, a year of preparation ahead of confirmation. During those years we are filling in the vacuum. It could keep them and their parents in the Church... Let’s help both of them to stay in.
CSF: The Spanish-speaking community is not a community – that’s a fiction. Native Spanish speakers make up a range of communities depending on nationality, economic level and other factors. How does the Vicar for Spanish-speaking manage this diversity? What are the common threads? What are the differences that make the task difficult?
FATHER AGUDO: In the diversity of the culture...the economy...the nationalities as Constantine united his empire by means of religion... it was a divided empire and he knew how to unify through the Catholic religion...unify this diversity with the same legal system...the Spanish, through the language used to celebrate the liturgies in the Church...we could unify all Latinos. We could unify these realities ... this diversity has a unity in the language... that’s how one could forge unity among Latinos.
The challenge lies in the unity of celebration in the diversity of cultures. What is difficult is to know how to conjugate all the festivities, the celebrations in one moment ... Virgin of Guadalupe, Savior of the World, the Immaculate Conception, the Divine Child. How does one form these national feast days into a liturgy with the same language? If we succeed in unifying we will create a tremendous unity among Latinos.
Though we are not a community we are united because we are all immigrants ... to create a pastoral for the immigrant is the unity.
CSF: There is a major problem in financing our parochial schools, especially those in the city, to serve a new generation of immigrants. Those new immigrants are predominantly Spanish-speaking. We know from the Pew survey that Hispanic Catholics, as a group, have far lower incomes and education levels than Caucasians. This makes for some very difficult economic issues that are rooted in even more difficult cultural issues. Parishes are having a difficult time paying for these schools, even though tuition costs are often quite low. It seems to be very difficult for many immigrant families to pay. What can be done about this?
FATHER AGUDO: The Latino community is less likely to enter a Catholic school due to an economic problem. There is also a cultural problem whereby many think that private schools are very costly. Their income is minimal ... and they could never provide a private education for their children.
What to do? It is a social problem that needs to be resolved by the government because making a good education available is to help a society ... Private schools should be subsidized by the government like in Australia. It will be very difficult for the government to subsidize schools so we need to find benefactors that will assist these families with access to schools. St. Charles Borromeo consists of 70 percent Hispanics and they have difficulty in paying tuition. We are trying to find benefactors to be able to help 100 children. The tuition for each student is $4,000 a year. These children will contribute greatly to society in education and labor. We are trying to find benefactors to help these children.
The school is an entity, as the diocese, a very impersonal building. We should get rid of this entity and show their faces to the benefactors so that they can see who they are helping. Instead of telling them to help the school, let’s tell them to help the children that study in the school; don’t help the school but the children.
CSF: If Spanish-speaking Catholics of means value Catholic education, why aren’t we seeing them step up as philanthropists? (Don’t we see here a reflection of the horrific divisions in most Latin American countries – a handful of rich owning everything, hardly any middle class and massive numbers of poor – and no solidarity between rich and poor? We’re the Church – solidarity is crucial, so how can we cultivate this?)
FATHER AGUDO: Because we live in the U.S. and we think that we have everything, that poverty does not exist here and we advocate for the poor in Asia, in Haiti; we advocate for those abroad when there are millions of poor people here. Here the reality is the same. We should turn our faces toward the U.S. so that we can see the reality in this country. We have collections for other countries. The parishes that are capable could sponsor a poor school here. Why send the money abroad if I can help here? There is a problem with the ability to see. We intercede for those outside and we don’t realize that poverty is here, that a family has six people in a room and we pretend we don’t see this. Here in the diocese we have a serious reality of poverty. If we could have the rich parishes sponsor the poor schools we could help solve the problem. These solvent parishes could sponsor the schools.
CSF: A large number of Spanish-speaking Catholics favor the participatory, expressive charismatic form of celebration. How do you see this energizing the Church as a whole?
FATHER AGUDO: Latinos are by far more expressive than other ethnic groups, and each group has a way of expressing the liturgy but all this energy and strength needs to be channeled and directed to celebrate God’s greatness. Latinos tend to speak more with a corporal language than with words and that can be used to benefit the liturgy trying of course to find a balance that is conducive to the liturgy.
CSF: It seems that whenever Hispanic Catholics are spoken of, immigration is mentioned in the same breath. And because the nation – and Catholics, though not Catholic teaching – are divided on how to treat undocumented people living here, there’s a built-in tension when we talk about Spanish-speaking Catholics. How can Catholics on both sides of the question better understand each other? What could the Archdiocese do to bring these two sides together?
FATHER AGUDO: The tension exists between what’s legal and illegal. As a diocese we need to look not only at the legal or illegal side of immigration but we need to look at the person. Our efforts to help the person independently of their immigration status. It is important to begin to humanize the issue because the person is above the regulations and the norms.
CSF: The Catholic Church seems to be fighting a losing battle in Latin America against the encroachment of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. What is going on here? Why is secularization able to move so aggressively in countries that have been Catholic for 500 years?
FATHER AGUDO: Because secularization is like water, it enters wherever there is room and adapts to any object. Secularization enters wherever new forms emerge and the Church is faced with a huge battle in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. The Church needs to create a new way to help the pagan world. The antidote is the announcement of the Gospel with strength, with truth and with courage.
CSF: What is your immediate plan as Vicar for the Spanish-speaking?
FATHER AGUDO: I have resolved – in whatever measure is possible – to visit parishes that have a pastoral for Hispanic ministry or that celebrate Mass in Spanish to be able to celebrate together. My objective is to make them a visible face for the Archdiocese and the archbishop. One of the tasks I was entrusted with was to carry the love of the bishop for Hispanics and the best way to do it is not only by being present for the celebration of the Mass but also to create a pastoral ministry dedicated to those who speak Spanish.
You first.
I've already started and you found fault with it and gave the figure of at least 25 million, give us a credible source for that.
Do something to show that you aren't just making up nonsense.
Your numbers are nonsense. Source them.
Everyone is already aware of the numbers, even you, since you attributed them to government sources that you don’t like, what you cannot do is give the evidence to support that wild, grabbed out of the figure of more than doubling the actual numbers, and claiming more than 25 million.
My, my. Leftist propaganda as tautology.
Come on, man, gimme a reference. Immigration numbers aren't genetic.
You yourself recognized the 11.6 million figure in that graph, and you described it as government figures from the years of Bush and Obama, and that to you they are false and that you claim it is more than double the government figures, in your mind the figure is greater than 25 million, (in your mind).
Do a little web research. Get back to me when you've nailed it all down.
My number is accurate, and maybe low.
September,2010 Pew Research Center
U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade
The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.
This sharp decline has contributed to an overall reduction of 8% in the number of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S.-to 11.1 million in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million in March 2007, according to the estimates. The decrease represents the first significant reversal in the growth of this population over the past two decades.
http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=126
256 posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2010 1:06:05 PM by ansel12
The Famous Bear Stearns Study, now 5 years old. Conclusion: illegals > 20 million. They even found that illegals held 15 million jobs in the U.S., and even conservative assumptions about family size would add 5 - 10 million to that -- and that was five years ago!
Wikipedia review including Bear Stearns and Pew. Here they quantify the Bear Stearns number at 20-22 million. Still low.
The population activist Fred Elbel arrives at a number well over 20 million, and that was 4 years ago. His methods and numbers are sound, and the Border Patrol numbers agree.
The number you recite uses the "Residual Method", which has serious flaws: Reasonable critique here.
There are many other methods, the Bear Stearns study being the more well known. But simple arithmetic and reasonable assumptions should tell you the story: it's not just half a million a year net. More like 3 to 6 times that: 1.7 million apprehensions a year. Assume - conservatively - that they get 1 in 3. That means a residual of 5.1 million. OK! Too high for ya? Say 50% apprehension rate. Then it's 2.55 million. That's 25 million in 10 years, starting from ZERO.
Lots of ways to dice those numbers. But the reality is that the Pew numbers are nonsense, and the real numbers are far higher. Many studies have concluded just that.
It's north of 22-25 million. Easy.
Bear Stearns is not even around anymore, and they are an odd source for the illegal population in America, they are not a credible source. I figured that you would not accept any valid sources, from Pew to the Federal agencies, and I was right.
As for the "federal government", do you consider the Border Patrol to be a municipal police agency? The Census numbers are routinely discredited.
Forget it, sport. You're one of their guys, and you engage in conclusionary statements like "valid sources" - according to who? You simply have picked one or two items that suit your prejudice and won't accept any evidence to the contrary.
25 million. Maybe 30.
Yes Pew is a valid source, and it is in line with Federal agency numbers, and any other widely accepted numbers, You still have not posted any valid sources for how many illegals are in the US today.
What's next, Mexican government "data"?
And as far as federal "agency" numbers, those are routinely debunked on this website. Would you be one of those DU trolls? I'd say so. They're in luv with Fedgov. We aren't.
But let's note that what you said is also a falsehood: I posted the Border Patrol apprehension statistics and then used them in a statistically conservative way. Gee, isn't that one of your precious federal agencies?
Maybe you like to pick and choose only data that supports your assumptions!
In which case, you should get a job as a climate change propagandist. Mr. Gore is looking for you!
Fantasy numbers don’t count, when you get some valid numbers for the number of illegals currently in the nation, then post them.
Let us all know when you plan to stop shilling for the Mexican government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.