Catholic Churches

[ilovechrist]

our parish is now 1/5 Korean, 1/5 Spanish... and everything else combined! plus, as Seatbelt said, 1/2 of Africa is now Catholic, under the Pope's supervision, which he allows them to hold special ceremonial dances that are accustomed to their culture etc..... very cool

[luciana]

My parish is pretty mixed ethnically and so is the Catholic school I teach at. of course, we are in a diverse area of the US. Like, mentioned before the parishes will usually reflect the population area they are in.

Regarding the Spanish in Latin America, though some of the conquistadors did use force, many did not. Here again the common knowledge of the history isn't the full truth. For ex, the story of Cortez and the Aztecs is always told w/out the important fact that many native tribes helped the Spanish conquer the Aztecs whose leaders practiced human sacrifice, killing many people from the other tribes. Not all the natives were all "good" and not all the Spanish were all "bad" You can't make generealities about groups of people. Have you ever heard of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe? priests were members of the first exploration teams they served the spiritual needs of the explorers and evangelized the natives of the area. Many of the natives had not converted from their paganism after many years, obviously then it wasn't "forced". one native Aztec who had become a Catholic Christian( Juan Diego was his Christian baptismal name) receved an apparition from heaven. I won't go into any details here about it, but because of the apparition maillions of the previously unconvinced natives believed in God and converted. It's an awesome story I can send you to more info. if you like.

God Bless and I'll be praying for you.

[the_rev]

In our diocese here in Wisconsin we have 2 African American Priests, 1 Chinease Priest, and 1 other race, in which I can't recall what it is.

All the rest however are White.

[Crusader_4]

Especially in Africa as well as Asia the Church has begin to grow astronomically. The main reason that i can see is for the most part these are areas that have not been sucked in by the evils of secularism. For example in Europe its not only Catholics but Lutherans especially in the Nordic countries that have suffered. This is due to the rise of secular culture. Ashley one thing you would find really interesting to check out just because its really fascinating is the Travels of St. Francis Xavier he travelled to China and the orient and had amazing success not since Paul had anyone spread the message as far as he had. However, due to persecutions the church was virtually martyerd...but his spirit of missionary continues to live in these areas today and recently has been shining with great esteem. Africa i remember readin somewhere that vocations were up by 200-300% again as i have mentioned before North American and Europe we have got our ideals really screwed up lately and i think this has been really an important reason to the decline in Church Numbers regardless of denomination. In My city we are so multicultural that really i am white and sometimes feel like a minority depending on what Church i go to in the city.

[M.SIGGA]

In America it all depends on where you live because this is a nation of immigrants.

In Louisiana and South Mississippi there is an extremely large Afro-American Catholic population b/c these were former slave states with heavy Catholic populations. There are lots of black Catholics in Detroit and Chicago because many blacks primarily from these 2 states migrated to these 2 cities during Reconstruction. The same can be said for Oakland and Los Angeles.

Since America isn't a "Catholic" country, the ethnic background of Catholics depends on who migrated there and from what country and whether or not there was slavery, or near the Mexican border, etc.

For the record majority of Catholics are South-Latin American, African, Oriental, or Pan Indian - not Anglo/white.

In Louisiana I didn't know hardly any Baptist people that are white, but since they had to convert the blacks at some point I knew they were somewhere!

[mom25angels]

Ashley,
One of the things i love sooo much about our parish is that there are people of many ethnic backgrounds.....Lebanese, African American, Latinos, Anglo, Indian.
It's great to see the universal church here.

Also we have a priest staying in our parish who is here from Kenya. He is visiting and staying to represent the Kitui Missions. They have so many young men wanting to become priests in his diocese in Kenya that the have a hard time finding the resources to educate them in their seminary. He uses our parish as his home base for visiting other parishes in order to raise donations. He has generously agreed to help as an assistant to our pastor untill the Bishop appoints a new assistant.

so, is the Catholic Church mainly Anglo..........naw.

[BLAZEr]

THe Churches in Asia, South America, and Africa are our most vibrant churches . . . and our healthiest Christian cultures . . . perhaps becuase they have not suffered the effects of a destructive protestant mentality like Europe and America have . . .

[M.SIGGA]

I would say Westernism and Americanism in general - which is extremely violent and selfish.

[immaculata]

WASP=white anglo saxon protestants

WASC just doesn't sound as cool

[thicke]

Well, I already mentioned my parish, now for the rest of Diocese....

We have two parishes that have large Vietnamese groups, one of which have two weekly Masses in Vietnamese (that's a total of three in the Diocese every week). We have Filipino Masses twice a month (yes, in Tagalog - the language of the Philippines). We have one Mass in Korean. There are many [url="http://www.cdom.org/wtc/wtc_pages/spanish_mass.html"]Masses in Spanish[/url] here.

As for priests, we have (some of them are obvious by the previous paragraph) 2 priests from Vietnam, 2 priests from India, 1 priest from Mexico, 1 priest from Croatia, 1 priest from the Philippines, 1 priest from Korea and a priest from Africa.

I just can't agree with you Ashley, based on my personal experience of the Church here in my hometown. Keep in mind too that I am just down the road from you in Memphis. Also, when I go to my mom's parish there in Nashville, I see many non-white faces.....

Edited April 16, 2004 by thicke

[cmotherofpirl]

THere are 200 million black Catholics in Africa.

[marielapin]

When I lived in Alabama (a very segregated state), I went to a Methodist Church where there was one black family out of about 2000. Then after I converted I was suprized to see many more black, asian, indian, etc families in the Catholic Church that was just down the street. We even had a black priest who was one of the best I have ever met. You should have seen the little old ladies hugging him. It was such a sweet site.

Now I live in Northwest Florida and my bishop is black. My parish is very diverse, with Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Indians (from India), Jamaicans, and other Latino groups. So I guess it really depends on the part of the country you live in as to how diverse the parishes are. For example, my husbands family lives in a predominately white part of Kentucky. Therefore most churches are all-white.

And as for the history of Mexico, South America, etc. It is true that the conquistadors did use force to an extent (which was wrong), but it is wrong to say that all that converted did so by threat of death - after all many missionaries followed after them and ministered to the people, most of whom were not converts. It was not until the miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe (which was posted on earlier) that millions started to convert. I would be interested to see any documentation proving the sword was the only, or even widespread method of conversion (because even in my very anti-Catholic biased European history classes, the books did not accuse the spanish conquistadors of forcing the indians to convert).

[Ellenita]

A perspective from one UK parish....My church has four different Mass times on Sunday and I've attended at different times and have learnt that you have to get there early if you want a seat, otherwise you have to stand in the aisles for the whole Mass because it's packed! It's quite a sizable church with a balcony. I know the statistics seem to suggest that church attendence in the UK is going down, but I don't see it in my church!
We have a really wonderful mix of people, from various parts of Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Carribbean and Asia and I always love the part of the Mass when we give the sign of the peace - it seems to be truely reflected in the ethnic mix of the congregation!


In terms of 'forcing people to convert by the sword' in latin america. There were most certainly some abuses carried out by men in the name of religion, just as there always has been in the name of all religions. However the Catholic church is alive and strong in latin america. If there had not been conviction of the heart conversions, I doubt the church would have been as strong as she is today. The latin american people I know love their catholic faith, it's a living faith in every aspect of their lives - their anger about the past history in their country is (quite rightly) directed towards Spanish imperialism, not the Catholic church.

[Seatbelt Blue]

The Diocese of Richmond has no less than three Vietnamese-language parishes, at least two Korean-langauge parishes, and numerous bilingual English-Spanish parishes.