Participants agreed that to develop critical thinking skills, students must know about religions in a balanced way, neither emphasizing negative features nor promoting the religion in a devotional style more appropriate to a mosque or church setting.
Saturday, May 10, 2008 By Spero News
The Mid-Atlantic Muslim Catholic Dialogue met on April 23-24 in Washington DC and looked at inter-religious education in the United States.
The meeting, which was convened by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Catholic representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, explored teaching about different religions in private and public institutions. Discussion was guided by the experiences of the Institute on Religion and Civic Values, represented by Shabbir Mansuri and Munir Shaikh.
The discussion follows upon a meeting in 2007 where Safaa Zarzour described the development of a Muslim-Catholic educational exchange by the Council of Islamic Societies of Greater Chicago and the Archdiocese of Chicago. Zarzour chaired a panel of Muslim representatives at the April 23-24 meeting.
Mansuri, Shaikh and Zarzour noted there already is consensus on the need to educate about world religions in public schools, thanks to the work of the First Amendment Center in Washington DC. Discussion at the April meeting focused on the many audiences for inter-religious education: seminarians, university students, school teachers, public and religious school children.
Sandra Keating PhD related the discussion to theological and pedagogical principles. From a pedagogical perspective participants looked at effective ways to educate about other religions, and said the most effective approach should not only provide basic information but also draw attention to the spiritual values of a religion. They said maintaining a positive tone in curriculum content can help correct a bias against religion that exists in some educational and political environments.
Participants also agreed that to develop critical thinking skills students need to know the story of religions in a balanced way, neither emphasizing negative features nor promoting the religion in a devotional style more appropriate to a mosque or church setting. Participants also noted that sensitivity in how one communicates and works with other traditions should be part of any program and stressed particular attention to the training of religious leaders and school teachers for all school systems.
Rev. Gregory Fairbanks presented a curriculum for ecumenical and inter-religious training required by Catholic seminaries and recommended for clergy and lay leaders. He cited documents of the Second Vatican Council and other more recent church documents. He highlighted U.S. pastoral concerns, including inter-religious marriages, social justice cooperation or tensions, and educating non-Catholic children in parochial schools.
Imam Ahmed Nezar Kobeisy offered reflections on the training of imams for U.S. mosques. He highlighted efforts, such as psychological and marriage counseling, that would not be so urgently required of imams in majority-Muslim countries.
In other remarks, Bishop Dennis Madden, co-chair, recalled the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He reminded participants of the pope’s call to achieve what the pope called the "truth of peace" while maintaining "a clear exposition of our respective religious tenets."
The next meeting of this round will be in May, 2009, and focus on “Developing a Strategic Plan on Interreligious Education.” In the coming months, a survey on inter-religious education will be sent to Muslim and Catholic educators.
A Populist Shift Confronts the U.S. Catholic Church
Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
Page one of two...please click on "external link" for complete article
To say she was a practicing Catholic would be an understatement. For years, Maria Aparecida Calazans was a mainstay at her Long Island church, joining dozens of fellow Brazilian immigrants for the Portuguese language Mass on Sunday mornings. She and her husband, Ramon, were married at the church. Their two daughters were baptized there, and every Friday she attended a prayer meeting that she had helped organize.
But six years ago, her husband went to a relative’s baptism at a Pentecostal church in a warehouse in Astoria, Queens, and came home smitten.
The couple made a deal. “We would go to the Pentecostal service on Thursdays and to Mass on Sundays, and then we would decide which one we felt most comfortable with,” Mrs. Calazans said.
Within 40 days, they had given up Roman Catholicism and embraced Pentecostalism, following the path of the estimated 1.3 million Latino Catholics who have joined Pentecostal congregations since immigrating to the United States, according to a survey released in February by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
“I feel whole here,” Mrs. Calazans, 42, said one recent Sunday in the Astoria sanctuary, the Portuguese Language Pentecostal Missionary Church, as she swayed to the pop-rock beat of a live gospel band. “This church is not a place we visit once a week. This church is where we hang around and we share our problems and we celebrate our successes, like we were family.”
As Pope Benedict XVI completes his visit to the United States on Sunday with a Mass at Yankee Stadium, in a borough that has been home to generations of Latinos, he does so facing something of a growing challenge to the church’s immigrant ranks.
For if Latinos are feeding the population of the church, many have also turned to Pentecostalism, a form of evangelical Christianity that stresses a personal, even visceral, connection with God.
Today, it has more Latino followers in the United States than any other denomination except Catholicism; they are drawn, they say, by the faith’s joyous worship, its use of Latino culture and the enveloping sense of community it offers to newcomers. As the Pew survey revealed, half of all Latinos who have joined Pentecostal denominations were raised as Catholics.
They are part of a global shift. Pentecostalism, the world’s fastest-growing branch of Christianity, has made such sharp inroads in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, that in an address to bishops there last year, Pope Benedict listed its ardent proselytizing as one of the major forces the Catholic Church must contend with in the region.
Catholic leaders and experts on the church in the United States say that the impact of Pentecostalism has been less dramatic here. Still, the pope has urged the nation’s bishops to make every effort to welcome immigrants — “to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials, and to help them flourish in their new home.” And any number of Catholic clergy and laypeople have conceded that the church needs to work harder at reaching, and keeping, its Latino flock.
“That some of the newly arrived Latinos are drawn to Pentecostalism is certainly reason for concern,” said the Rev. Allan Figueroa Deck, the executive director of the Office for Cultural Diversity, which was created last June by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to help the church adjust to its changing ethnic makeup.
“But we can counter that with the kind of music we use, with the sense of celebration that we bring to our worship, the spontaneity and some of the popular customs that are not part of the official liturgy of the church. We’re doing some of that, but we could do better.”
The Pentecostal church in Astoria vividly shows what Catholicism is up against. It offers enough activities to fill a family’s calendar: services on Sunday and Thursday, youth group meetings on Friday, a Bible study group on Wednesday and all-night prayer vigils throughout the year. Then there are the birthday and engagement parties, to which every congregant is invited.
The church, on the second floor of a stucco building opposite a nightclub and three blocks from the subway, is half house of worship and half community center. It ministers primarily to a single immigrant group, Brazilians, in the group’s language, Portuguese — much as the ethnic urban parishes founded by European Catholics did more than a century ago.
Diverse religious, political strains to greet pope
By Sharon Schmickle Tuesday, April 15, 2008
When Pope Benedict XVI lands at Andrews Air Force Base today, he will be welcomed by a nation that is teeming with religious intensity surpassing anything he could hope to find in Europe.
A good share of the religious rhetoric has as much to do with politics as with spirituality in this highly charged election year. And a good share of the religious tension comes within the ranks of Catholics themselves, who disagree with Rome and each other over birth control, the role of women in the church and other issues.
But this pope already has taken bold strides into broader issues that are roiling America in its pews and in its streets. Catholics and non-Catholics alike will be listening for his message on the Iraq war, the environment and the moral state of the nation.
Pope Benedict has consistently opposed the Iraq war from its beginning. On Palm Sunday this year, he thundered, "Enough with the bloodshed, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq!"
The pope's main reason for visiting the United States is to speak before the United Nations on Friday, said the National Catholic Register.
Still, pundits don't expect to see the pope launch a direct broadside against President Bush's foreign policy or to comment on the U.S. election, said the Associated Press.
The pope's itinerary also calls for him to address leaders in Roman Catholic higher education, pray at Ground Zero and hold Masses in the new Nationals Park in Washington and Yankee Stadium in New York. His 81st birthday is Wednesday, and a party is planned in Washington.
The environment
At the United Nations, the pope also is expected to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a moral cause for Catholics, The Independent of London reported.
Benedict has earned the title "green pope" for his emphasis on a duty to "protect creation" and safeguard the poorest on the planet from the effects of global warming.
"Before it is too late, it is necessary to make courageous decisions that reflect knowing how to re-create a strong alliance between man and the earth," he told a youth audience in September.
Vatican City recently became the world's first carbon-neutral state, offsetting its carbon footprint by planting a forest in Hungary and installing solar panels on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Clergy sex abuse
Some Catholics are disappointed that the pope isn't visiting the Archdiocese of Boston, where the clergy sex-abuse crisis erupted in 2002 and then spread nationwide, the AP said.
However, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — the Vatican secretary of state — told the AP that Benedict will address the scandal during his trip and "will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation." A likely forum could be when Benedict speaks to priests during a Saturday morning Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
Diverse voices
By several measures, the United States is one of the most devout nations in the developed world. But the faithful often disagree vehemently. And, whether or not he sees it, the full flavor of that diversity will greet the pope. Groups advocating a stronger role for women, gay marriage and peace are prepared to demonstrate along the papal route.
Some Catholics also will urge the pope to remonstrate against mass consumerism, rampant free enterprise, and the neoconservative agenda for global democratic revolution, said the feisty American Conservative magazine.
They may not be disappointed. The Conservative predicted the pope will speak to such issues, reflecting themes of a forthcoming social encyclical, which is expected to be published on May 1.
"The document may touch on subjects that make many conservatives blush," the Conservative said.
In the remote village of Chimayo, where the mountains of New Mexico swell up out of the desert scrub, the faithful pray for miracles, and offer a clue to the pressures and influences helping to reshape modern American Catholicism.
One of the faithful gathers "holy dirt" - believed to have mystical powers
The ancient tribal peoples of the region believed that the fine, sandy soil from the local hillsides had mystical powers to heal broken bodies and broken lives, and there are plenty of 21st century American Catholics who agree with them.
The soil is kept in a small, dry, shallow well in a side chapel of the church, and the faithful queue to collect it, using a children's plastic beach shovel to pour it into containers brought from home. They touch samples of the soil to affected areas, they offer it to dying relatives, they ask priests to bless their sample. And they believe.
"I definitely felt the Holy Spirit in there; the presence is everywhere here, whether the healing is spiritual or physical," she told me.
Folk beliefs
Hispanic immigrants bring with them a vitality and a tradition of folk beliefs
Like many other churches across the south and west of the United States, the decor at the church of Chimayo and the tone of worship are set by Hispanic immigrants, who bring with them not just the Spanish language, but a vitality and a tradition of folk beliefs that are very different from the values of Catholics in the colder cities to the North.
Immigration from Latin-American countries though (and the high birth rates among those groups) are more than making up for the decline. About a half of all American Catholics under the age of 40 are Hispanics, and that proportion will continue to grow.
"Church of immigration"
Luis Lugo of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that is simply evidence of an old historical pattern repeating itself in a new community.
"The growth (of Hispanic influence) has really been since the major changes in US immigration policy in the mid 60s, so it really would once have been very much a European Catholic church: Irish, Italian, German influence," he says.
The truth is that while Chimayo creates an awkward dilemma for the modern Church (several people there told me of miraculous cures, but there's no sign that the Catholic authorities intend to start to promoting or publicising them).
On the one hand, it inspires claims that might be difficult to substantiate under the scrutiny of modern science. But on the other, there is a spirituality to the place that helps to bring a much-needed vitality back to a Church over which the priestly child sex abuse scandals of recent times still throw a long shadow.
Damaged confidence
The crisis created difficulties at many levels, chief among them, of course, is the trauma suffered by the many victims whose suffering was eventually publicised after years of secrecy and shame.
For the Church, the cost of compensating those victims is crippling and will continue to be a drain on resources for years to come.
But perhaps more importantly, it damaged the confidence of ordinary Catholics in their priests and bishops.
Even Father Funtum, an engaging and convincing spokesman for the spiritual energy at Chimayo, had his story of being falsely accused of perversion by a parishioner who happened to see him pat a small child on the head at a church social.
That charge was absurd but it is a demonstration of the extent of how almost every conversation about American Catholicism (like mine with Father Jim) ends up being dominated by the issue of abuse.
We will know soon the extent to which Pope Benedict intends to address the subject, but it's highly unlikely that he will get through the visit without it being raised.
We already know that the Pope won't be heading for Chimayo - not this time around anyway - and in a way, it's a shame.
If he wanted to get a feeling for how the American Church will look in the future - more Hispanic, more charismatic, more populist and perhaps more mystical - he could do worse than to travel into New Mexico's mountains to see for himself.
Few enterprises know the marketing challenge of attraction and retention more profoundly than the God business, the churches, religious denominations and faiths and cults and Obama worshipers.
It was sort of easy in the old days. Your parents were some sort of Presbyterians or something, you burst from the womb — and a new Presbyterian was born.
The latest national survey on religion from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests a marketplace more akin to fast food and cars. The general market leader, Protestants, is losing market share faster than Ford and General Motors. Protestants will soon be less than 50 percent of the American market.
Even among Catholics, where brand loyalty was pretty high, Hispanics are gravitating to the evangelical products — and remaining Catholic customers are calling the 1-800 number and demanding to speak to a manager.
Disgruntled Prayer People
The Catholics did a major brand overhaul a while back, modernizing and updating the product line and sales pitch. As you might expect, many of the existing customers were furious. They don’t want no suburban, guitar-strumming, banner-waving Mass with a cool, new post-Vatican II liturgy and a with-it priest.
There are few barriers to entry in the American religion market; the Hindus and Buddists can open up a church on the corner with much the same ease as more mainline American faiths — and even among the mainline Protestants, there is a casualness among the faithful as to where they attend and to what degree they claim allegiance to one denomination or another. Crest and Colgate receive more loyalty than that.
The Pew survey suggests that about half the adult American population has changed religious affiliation.
The need for sharper marketing among the mainline Protestants has been apparent for years. A poll in 1996 indicated that the only thing most Americans knew about the Lutheran faith, for example, was that it was some sort of religion.
Some of this loss of marketing focus and denominational identity was intentional, of course. One suspects that many students at Wesleyan University in Middletown don’t know why the school is, or was, called Wesleyan — and at Trinity, students might be somewhat fuzzy about why the Book of Common Prayer was the volume of choice in the Trinity College chapel. Yale recently dropped the chapel’s formal United Church of Christ affiliation, without prompting a religious war or even a whimper.
The turmoil in the religious marketplace may or may not be a “crisis.” Many of the Founding Fathers encouraged such competitive energy, to avoid the tyranny of a dominant faith. James Madison praised America’s multiplicity of faiths, “for where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”
There’s a hint of anti-trust law in that. Praise the Lord.
Streaming video on Internet seen as new way to spread Gospel
By Franz Klein Catholic News Service
LA CROSSE, Wis
Streaming video is all the rage on the Internet, and some people are starting to realize how valuable a tool this technology can be in reaching out to young Catholics.
If St. Augustine were alive today, he "would have done his 'Confessions' in video and streamed it on the Internet," Travis Boudreaux, the tech-savvy Louisiana Catholic who founded Catholic-Tube.com several months ago, told The Catholic Times, newspaper of the Diocese of La Crosse.
On his Catholic-Tube blog, Boudreaux posts daily some of what he considers the best Catholic videos and podcasts uploaded to major sites such as YouTube.com and GodTube.com, as well as smaller Catholic operations such as LoveToBeCatholic.com and SQPN.com.
A veteran Web watcher, Boudreaux believes that video is the future of the Internet.
"There will always be room for audio and the written word, but video provides a dynamic that's not there otherwise," he said. "Imagine if you could see St. Augustine's emotion. There's so much that's lost without voice inflection and hand gestures."
YouTube.com was created in 2005 and was bought by Google Inc. in October 2006. According to Alexa.com's statistical analysis, YouTube is currently the third most frequented Web site on the Internet.
On YouTube, users can upload, view and share music videos and television clips, as well as video content of their own creation. More than 65 million videos have been uploaded to date. While no pornographic or nude videos are permitted, YouTube relies on its community of viewers to identify and flag such uploads, meaning there is a definite time lag before they come down.
A quick search of YouTube's contents for "Christian" will return a staggering 329,000-plus videos, while a search for "Catholic" will yield 21,000-plus results.
Several bishops use the site, including Philadelphia's Cardinal Justin Rigali, who posted a series of reflections, and Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, whose monthly "Lectio Divina" meditations have been watched by thousands of viewers.
But nearly half of the videos on the first page of search results for "Christianity" portray the faith in a negative light. And while a search for "Catholic" will yield an inspirational video by "KaterinaMarie" called "Why I am Catholic," and a clip of a Mass with Bishop Fulton Sheen in 1941 among its initial results, there's also a video parodying the church sex abuse scandals, as well as many others that are anti-Catholic or contain salacious material.
"That's why we believe biblical topics need to be discussed in a forum that is respectful of the Word," GodTube.com co-founder and chief executive officer Chris Wyatt said in a Catholic Times interview.
With its first version launched last January, GodTube's quick growth has been phenomenal. The site, which recently added an alternative to the secular networking site Facebook.com, already contains more than 48,000 videos. Wyatt said the site logged more than 10 million visitors by the end of 2007.
But accusations of anti-Catholicism have plagued GodTube, as some users have posted videos that try to discredit the church's teaching on the priesthood, the sacraments, the papacy and other things.
Wyatt, a Baptist, said anti-Catholicism would not be tolerated. "We don't stand for that," he said, although he admitted there were some anti-Catholic videos on the site until a recent string of articles brought them to the company's attention.
Even with these videos removed, clips claiming to discredit elements of Catholic teaching remain on the site, including a John MacArthur lecture series on "The Pope and the Papacy."
Thomas Hall, founder of LoveToBeCatholic.com, believes he has come up with a better alternative.
"About a month ago, I typed 'Catholic' in on YouTube, and six of the first 10 responses were anti-Catholic propaganda," Hall told The Catholic Times. "I felt Catholics needed an equal voice and a safe environment to learn about their faith and to evangelize."
With a background including Web work with Fortune 500 companies, Hall, who just moved from Chicago with his family to Minneapolis, naturally turned to the Internet.
At the end of October, he launched LoveToBeCatholic.com as a test. Like YouTube and GodTube, LoveToBeCatholic is a Web platform for people to post videos. But unlike them, LoveToBeCatholic is specifically Catholic, and Hall works to ensure that nothing anti-Catholic gets posted.
Hall said the online Catholic community has embraced his site. "In the first month I went from zero to 3,000 visitors per day," he said. "I immediately ran into bandwidth problems. I've had to upgrade the servers twice, and I'll have to do that again this year. But that's a really nice problem to have."
Videos range from priests' sermons to humorous skits and church events. Some of Hall's favorites are vocations videos that show young religious in habits engaged in sports or other activities with youths. "You can't capture that in text or audio," he said.
Changing religions or denominations is growing phenomenon today in United States
By C. Samantha McKevie Saturday, February 02, 2008
Please click on External link at the bottom to read the whole article, including personal stories of faith-journeys from one religion to another, and one denomination to another.
Kelley Culver grew up in Houston as a Southern Baptist; Fatima Khiyaty was reared Catholic just outside of Cleveland; and Sonja Ozturk was brought up in a Lutheran family in Green Bay, Wis.
Mr. Culver made a pit stop as a Methodist before converting to Catholicism six years ago.
Mrs. Khiyaty and Mrs. Ozturk left Christianity altogether and are now Muslims.
They are not alone.
Although some people live their lives content with being part of one denomination or faith, others change denominations or switch to a different religion altogether.
Changing from one denomination to another within Christianity is not that unusual, said the Rev. Don Saliers, a Methodist minister and an adjunct professor of theology and worship at Emory University.
"Because of the ecumenical context in American Christianity and a lot more social mobility, shifting from one denomination to another is very different from 50 years ago, though in radical conversion experiences, there can still be great personal trauma," he said. "But shifting denominations is quite common. There is much more 'church shopping' when a family now moves to a new city.
Steve Tipton, a professor of sociology and religion at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, said there is "a lot more denominational switching going on now than a few years ago and indeed a generation ago."
"The rates increase with education and age together, and in particular with intermarriage," he said. "If the Christian woman or man marries a Muslim, one of them is likelier to convert.
When switching major religions -- such as Christianity to Muslim or Judaism to Christianity -- a lot more is involved, the Rev. Saliers said.
"The conversion from one religion to another requires a much deeper change of relationships -- family ties, cultural setting and context -- than does most inter-Christian conversions or changes," he said.
LOOK AT THE CHANGES
Barry Kosmin is co-author of Religion in a Free Market, a book that presents the results of the American Religious Identification Survey. The survey tracked adult Americans by their religious traditions and ethnicity from 1990-2001.
In its chapter on religious switching, the book states that "about 16 percent of the nation's population reported that at some point in their lives they had changed their religious preference or identification."
WHO'S MOVING WHERE
Catholics, Methodists, Protestants in general and Jews were among the groups that had significantly higher percentages of people switching out of their faiths.
General Christians, Pentecostals, non-denominationals, evangelicals, Muslims and Buddhists had higher percentages of people switching into their faiths.
The biggest trend he found, though, is a switch to no religion at all, which was the choice of many of the people who left Catholicism, Methodism and Islam, he said.
"The other big trend is mainline, the old people, becoming born-again and joining evangelicals, non-denominational or Christian churches.
In two thirds of marriages where one person switched to the other's religion, it was the woman who switched to make the accommodations, he said.
The switch to Islam occurs mainly among black men and among women who marry Muslims, he said.
Young and restless, tenuously connected to their faith
Please click on "External source" for complete article, and interviews with three "millenials."
By GREG RUEHLMANN
Justin Brandon has been weighing his options. The 25-year-old San Francisco resident recently applied to Stanford’s highly competitive MBA program, but even if admitted, he isn’t sure he wants to leave his job at Better World Books, the promising dot-com where he has coordinated online marketing since June.
Brandon isn’t used to feeling so content about a job. In the three years since he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, he has done extended volunteer work in Puerto Rico, served as a video production assistant at Notre Dame, shot documentary films in Ghana and Haiti, and worked as a search quality technician for Google in Silicon Valley.
“Every year,” he said, “part of me wants to move cities or switch jobs.”
Brandon and his restless ventures represent a generational trend among some young college-educated men and women who are free to choose flux over stability. Some social scientists have dubbed these post-college years the “odyssey years” -- a nomadic period when young adults move from one job to another, from one city to the next, delaying marriage, children and permanent career tracks longer than previous generations. Spiritually, they tend to be seekers, a characteristic that applies even to many with deep roots in a traditional religion such as Catholicism and no great desire to venture too far from the fold.
“Catholicism was a deep part of my experience at Notre Dame. It is what opened my eyes to the wider world. It sparked [my journey] and has influenced my way of going about it,” Brandon said.
According to a number of studies, the same holds true for a significant proportion of other young Catholics who belong to the so-called “Millennial generation,” the still-forming group that follows Generation X and includes those born in the period from the late 1970s to the late ’80s. These include 29-year-olds Nicole Shirilla and Ed Fians. Shirilla began medical school this fall in Pittsburgh after teaching in Baton Rouge, La., working in South Bend, Ind., and traveling to Rwanda and Sri Lanka as a filmmaker. Fians plans a springtime move from Chicago to New York City -- his second stint there, and the fourth time he will have decamped for a different state since 2001.
These three Millennials -- unwed at an age their parents are likely to have been married, and still discerning a career path several years after graduation -- believe that Catholicism has informed their journeys. And vice versa: Their journeys have informed their faith. In the fluid world of the odyssey years, their stories split and converge in fascinating ways on issues of religious practice, commitment, community and convictions -- all those things, in other words, that relate to their identities as Catholics.
Their stories reinforce the view expressed recently by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Citing the work of Princeton University scholar Robert Wuthnow, Brooks wrote that today’s children “graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself. Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing about recent encounters with Millennials still in college, noted, “I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.”
According to another recent D’Antonio study (coauthored with Vincent Bolduc), the Millennial generation mixes “personal autonomy with new-found concerns for the common good.” More than other generations, they are likely to rely on individual conscience when making moral decisions than on the church’s teaching authority. But the church’s social teaching, particularly its exhortation to help the poor, strongly resonates with 91 percent of Catholic Millennials.
Millennials are demonstrating their altruism through ever-increasing involvement in community service, but they are also integrating it into their shifting career choices.
Indeed, wonders Darrell Paulsen, a church professional well acquainted with Catholic Millennials, what will they find if and when they decide it’s time to engage more deeply with their church? Paulsen, who coordinates marriage preparation at the University of Notre Dame, hears frequent complaints from the young professional couples he directs. He knows that the Millennials are unlikely to hang around if they don’t find what they need, and parishes will be the losers.
“Lots of parishes put up walls to participation for young people,” he said. Among other problems, “they give them trouble for being away from the church, or for cohabitating.”
Yet, Paulsen insists, parishes can’t afford not to welcome these Catholics at a significant moment of “settling,” such as marriage, baptism of a child or the decision to put down roots. “People are out there,” he said. “They’re spiritually hungry, but they want a place where they feel nurtured, not just where they’re told they are wrong. If they think they’re going to be yelled at, or put to sleep or just asked for money, they’re not going.”
That, Paulsen suggests, makes for one of the few easy choices in a Millennial’s young life.
Communist party now believes faith can restore social harmony
By Edward Cody Washington Post
BEIJING — There was Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese Communist Party, warmly shaking hands at a party-sponsored New Year's tea party with one of the country's main Christian leaders. To make sure the message got through to China's 68 million party faithful, a large photograph of the moment was splashed across the front page of the official party newspaper, People's Daily.
Hu's display of holiday courtesy to Liu Bainian, general secretary of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, was one in a series of recent signals that China's rulers, despite the party's official atheism, are seeking to get along better with the increasing numbers of Chinese who find solace and inspiration in religion. The shift in tactics does not mean the Politburo has embraced religion, specialists cautioned, but it indicates a desire to incorporate believers into the party's quest for continued economic progress and more social harmony.
The move away from traditional Marxist attitudes evolved from Hu's campaign for what he calls "a harmonious socialist society." The concept, in effect an appeal for good behavior, was designed to replace the moral void left when the party long ago jettisoned historical Chinese values and, more recently, loosened the zipped-tight social strictures of communism under Mao Zedong. Religion, the party has decided, can also be useful in encouraging social harmony because it urges its followers to hew to a moral code.
Hu presided over a special Politburo study session last month on the expanding role of religion in China. Two of the party's religion specialists were called in to explain the phenomenon to China's 25 most powerful men, most of whom grew up with the Marxist idea that religion is a hostile force and, in China, foreign infiltration with ties to the colonial past.
In a speech to the group, Hu seemed to break with that tradition, suggesting the moral force of religion can be harnessed for the good of the party. "We must strive to closely unite religious figures and believers among the masses around the party and government," he said, according to the official account, "and struggle together with them to build an all-around moderately prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism."
Liu, the Christian leader shown in the photo with Hu, noted that the president also for the first time included discussion of religion in the party's 17th National Congress in October. Religion should no longer be considered sabotage of the party's economic and social plans, Hu told fellow party members, but rather a positive force that can be enlisted to help put the plans into effect.
The number of religious believers in China has long been difficult to determine. Faced with the party's traditional hostility, many believers have kept their faith hidden. But a government-sponsored survey last year found the number may reach 300 million, nearly a quarter of the population.
Most of those professing belief said they identified with China's traditional religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. But those identifying themselves as Christians accounted for as many as 40 million, the survey found, most of them Protestants. Specialists have estimated the number of Catholics at 12 million, divided between those in Liu's government-sponsored Patriotic Catholic Association and those in informal churches who look on the pope as their leader.
Anthony Lam of the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, who has studied the church in China for two decades, warned that the current warming is a tactic that could easily be reversed. "For me, it's a good thing, but it doesn't mean very much," he said.
Over the years, he added, the party's treatment of believers has varied, but its overall attitude is that religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, is a portal through which foreign ideas and loyalties can make their way into Chinese society.
In the same vein, Ren Yanli, a religion specialist at the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the party's recent overtures were aimed at enlisting religious beliefs as a force for economic and social progress. Nowhere did the party acknowledge faith and religion as ideals to be pursued in their own right, he said.
Nonetheless, government controls over religious activity have loosened markedly in recent years. Political connotations, such as those attached to Buddhism in Tibet or Islam in the autonomous Xinjiang region of northwestern China, have become the major targets of police surveillance in most areas.
Despite the trend, China and the Vatican have been unable to renew diplomatic relations, with China holding firm to the power to name bishops. Hu himself led a special committee in 2005 to end the hostility; at that time, progress was so rapid that a bargain seemed within reach. Those hopes fell through, however, with the appointment of several bishops who did not have Vatican approval.
In recent months, the momentum toward friendly Vatican ties seems to have revived. Two bishops were ordained with papal approval last month, following the appointment of a Vatican-approved bishop for Beijing in September. Regular quiet contacts have been made between Vatican and Chinese diplomats.
But behind the scenes, Patriotic Catholic Association churches and local religious affairs bureaus have proved to be formidable obstacles, according to a knowledgeable religious source. Their positions — often including state salaries, apartments and prestige — would be endangered if the church fell under Rome's authority. Moreover, the source added, some local jurisdictions have been involved in land deals with compliant bishops in arrangements that might be disturbed by Rome.
Pope Benedict XVI displayed eagerness to mend the split soon after taking over the Vatican. But his zeal seems to have waned, Lam observed. Meanwhile, conservatives in the Chinese party leadership, backed by local bureaus, have prevented a final deal because they are hesitant to abandon the doctrine that the Vatican is a foreign power that should have no authority in China.
Only a strong Chinese leader willing to take a bold initiative could shake the situation loose, Lam predicted, and Hu has never been noted for that kind of leadership.
The handshake in the tea-party photo, he noted, was with a leader of the government-run patriotic church, not a Vatican-approved bishop.
A look at the religion's theological roots and how the faith took hold in the region.
By Sarah Miler Llana from the December 17, 2007 edition
Modern Pentecostalism, whose name comes from the biblical term Pentecost commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, grew out of the Holiness movement at the turn of the 20th century in the US.
Pentecostals place strong emphasis on personal experience with the "Holy Spirit," such as speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesying. In the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey in 2006, most Pentecostals said that they had experienced divine healings or received revelations from God.
"Renewalists," a term that includes those belonging to Pentecostal denominations and "charismatics," who have adopted the expressive worship services of Pentecostals but belong to Catholic or mainline Protestant churches, now make up an estimated one quarter of the world's Christians, according to the World Christian Database. That number was just 6 percent 30 years ago.
For decades, Pentecostalism remained on the margins of US society, even as missionaries poured into Latin America. Pentecostals now account for 13 percent of Latin Americans. When accounting for "charismatics," the number shoots up to 30 percent.
Scholars say there are many reasons why Pentecostalism has attracted so many adherents. Aggressive evangelism, led at first by US missionaries, has certainly played a role. So has urban anomie and economic crisis. But each country has its own set of factors too, from civil war to natural disasters.
A 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, for example, brought a current of US Christians to Central America, says Paul Freston, a leading expert on religion in Latin America. Today the country has the highest percentage of Protestants in Latin America.
Pentecostals across the region, most of whom considered themselves Catholics before, say they converted in order to tackle their problems, for a sense of community, or simply because Pentecostalism offered something that the rituals of the Catholic mass did not.
Pentecostals have been particularly skilled at reaching out to the region's poor, providing answers to the overwhelming problems their poverty provokes each day. The Catholic answer, in the 1960s, came in the form of "liberation theology," a Marxist-tinged approach to addressing the needs of the oppressed. It had enthusiastic supporters across Latin America, but soon got wrapped up in cold war politics. Religious scholars often quip: "Liberation theology opted for the poor, and the poor opted for Pentecostalism."
More Americans believe in the existence of hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a nationwide poll.
Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of US residents polled said they believed in a literal hell and the devil, 60 per cent said they believed in the virgin birth.
Only 42 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “natural selection”. Some 39 per cent of respondents said they believed in creationism.
Broken down by religion, the survey found that only 16 per cent of born-again Christians (or evangelicals) compared to 43 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Protestants believed in Darwin’s theory.
Meanwhile, 60 per cent of born-again Christians, but only 43 per cent of Catholics, believed in creationism.
Overall, the poll reflects the centrality of faith to American life, politics and culture, with 82 per cent saying they believed in God.
Three quarters agreed there is a heaven while 72 per cent believed Jesus is God or the Son of God and 79 per cent believed in miracles.
The question of faith is proving a key issue in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.
The poll, by market researchers Harris, involved 2,455 US adults from across the country selected to reflect the national population in terms of age, sex, race, education and household income.
It also found that significant minorities of Americas believe in ghosts (41 per cent), UFOs (35 per cent), witches (31 per cent), astrology (29 per cent) and reincarnation (21 per cent).
Born-again Christians were more likely to believe in witches (37 per cent) while Catholics were found more likely to believe in astrology and re-incarnation
Ethical, scientific breakthroughs seen in new stem-cell studies
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Scientists, ethicists and church leaders hailed as a breakthrough two studies showing that human skin cells can be reprogrammed to work as effectively as embryonic stem cells, thus negating the need to destroy embryos in the name of science.
Separate studies from teams led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and Junying Yu and James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison were published online Nov. 20 by the journals Cell and Science, respectively.
By adding four genes to the skin cells, the scientists were able to create stem cells that genetically match the donor and have the ability to become any of the 220 types of cells in the human body.
Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, welcomed the news, expressing gratitude "for scientists who took up the challenge of finding morally acceptable ways to pursue stem-cell research, and for government leaders who have encouraged and funded such avenues."
The new technology "avoids the many ethical land mines associated with embryonic stem-cell research: It does not clone or destroy human embryos, does not harm or exploit women for their eggs, and does not blur the line between human beings and other species through desperate efforts to make human embryos using animal eggs," he added.
The White House also praised the breakthrough Nov. 20, saying that President George W. Bush's June 2007 executive order expanding stem-cell research using "ethically responsible techniques" was "intended to accelerate precisely the kind of research being reported today."
"The president believes medical problems can be solved without compromising either the high aims of science or the sanctity of human life," said press secretary Dana Perino. "We will continue to encourage scientists to expand the frontiers of stem-cell research and continue to advance the understanding of human biology in an ethically responsible way."
Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, said, "While it is still early days for this research, it is a very promising discovery which will help scientists to fight serious diseases without resorting to the deliberate destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells."
In Great Britain, the head of the pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said the new stem-cell studies "show that one can be both pro-life and pro-science."
Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist who created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996, told the London Telegraph that he had decided in light of the new findings to abandon his efforts to clone human embryos and would instead concentrate on research involving the new reprogramming techniques.
Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, Scotland, chairman of the United Kingdom and Ireland Joint Bishops' Bioethics Committee, welcomed Wilmut's announcement, saying: "The Catholic Church has constantly supported the work of scientists who use adult stem cells, research which has produced much more promising results and avoids the ethical dilemma involved in creating and destroying human life."
The National Catholic Bioethics Center said Wilmut's change of heart "flowed largely from practical considerations" but that the scientist also had acknowledged that the new approach was "easier to accept socially."
However, Thomson and the International Society for Stem-Cell Research called on scientists to continue research involving the destruction of human embryos. More study is needed to ensure that the newly made cells "do not differ from embryonic stem cells in a clinically significant or unexpected way, so it is hardly time to discontinue embryonic stem-cell research," Thomson said.
"These findings do not obviate the need for research using human embryonic stem cells," said the society in a Nov. 20 statement. "Rather, the different avenues of human stem-cell research should be pursued side by side providing complementary information."
In light of that stand by some scientists, Mailee Smith, staff counsel for the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, said: "The need for states to pass legislation that bans all forms of human cloning remains."
Increasingly, it seems the only thing U.S. Catholics confess these days is that they rarely if ever confess. In a 2005 survey by the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 42% said they never go to confession. Only 14% said they go once a year, and just 2% said they go regularly. The fading away of one of Catholicism's best-known traditions has finally gotten alarming enough that bishops have begun turning to modern marketing tools to reverse it. "Confession isn't about rationalizing or explaining away the wrongs we do," says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who has used radio commercials and billboard ads to promote the sacrament in his archdiocese. "It's about having the courage to admit them and experience the healing forgiveness that's waiting."
Any revival effort has a long way to go. Confession has been in steady decline for decades. Reasons range from long-standing doubts about church teachings to the current obsession with public mea culpas that have largely supplanted the confessional booth. One oft mentioned cause is Vatican II, the 1960s church council whose reforms stressed what Pope John XXIII called "the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity." Since confession, with its accompanying penances, is all too often associated with the latter, many Catholics use Vatican II as a cue to scratch the sacrament from their to-do list. Some also cite Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which reaffirmed the church's ban on contraception. Because few U.S. Catholics consider birth control immoral, Humanae Vitae has led to a wider re-evaluation of what constitutes sin--and whether confession is really necessary.
The church's sexual-abuse scandal has also taken its toll. Catholics felt that the bishops--many of them accused of enabling pedophile priests--were arrogantly evading the same kind of penance they demand from their flocks. "The very teachers of the sacrament of confession seemed to be ignoring a constitutive part of that sacrament," says the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Jesuit-run magazine America. "It made the confession crisis worse." Wuerl, who in fact was praised for taking a hard line on abusive priests, concedes that those are "significant issues." But he also believes that Catholics are tired enough of America's no-accountability culture to make the rite of owning up appealing again--as long as it involves, he adds, a "spirit of gentleness." A campaign Wuerl ran this past Lenten season--dubbed "The Light Is On for You"--made confessions available on Wednesday evenings as well as the traditional Saturday afternoons. Priests were instructed to create warm and well-lit atmospheres at their churches.
Some parishes reported the effort a bust, but many others got results. At St. Patrick's in Rockville, Md., the Rev. Adam Park took a book along the first evening, but instead of reading it, heard confessions for two hours straight. "I think folks rediscovered that getting rid of that weight in a confidential setting can be a freeing experience," he says. Mary Ellen Gwynn, a nurse in Upper Marlboro, Md., who often drove by one of the campaign billboards, agrees: "It reminded me that while telling mistakes to a friend can be cathartic, this seems to do something deeper to help me fix them."
Dioceses in Philadelphia, Phoenix and Toledo, Ohio, say they're planning similar Lenten campaigns for 2008--and some priests are even hearing confessions in venues likes shopping malls. Church watchers like Martin applaud all this as a sign that "the church, like Jesus, is capable of being creative about getting these things across to people." Others, like Gregory Baum, emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, call it a belated Hail Mary pass. "Traditional confession," he says, "just isn't part of Catholic spirituality anymore." Maybe, but for now the church is keeping the light on, just in case.
Pope lauds Christian presence in Saudi By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 6
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI lauded the contributions of Christians in Saudi Arabia — a kingdom that embraces a strict version of Islam, restricts worship by other faiths and bans Bibles and crucifixes — in the first meeting ever Tuesday between a pope and reigning Saudi king.
Benedict and the Vatican's No. 2 official raised their concerns during separate meetings with King Abdullah, the protector of Islam's holiest sites.
The Vatican counts 890,000 Catholics, mainly guest workers from the Philippines, among the estimated 1.5 million Christians in Saudi Arabia. Christians are barred from opening churches in the desert kingdom where Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are located.
Benedict greeted the king warmly, grasping both his hands before heading into 30 minutes of private talks in his library.
At the end of the meeting, Abdullah presented Benedict with a traditional Middle Eastern gift — a golden sword studded with jewels — and a gold and silver statue of a palm tree and a man riding a camel. The pope admired the statue but merely touched the sword.
He gave Abdullah a 16th century print and a gold medal of his pontificate.
Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and the kingdom requires all Saudi citizens to be Muslims. Only Muslims can visit the cities of Mecca and Medina.
Under the authoritarian rule of the royal family, the kingdom enforces Sharia, or Islamic law. It follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism that rejects the possibility of diplomatic relations with a Christian entity. This interpretation would prohibit a Vatican embassy in Saudi Arabia on the grounds it is equivalent to raising the cross inside Islam's holiest places.
The Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with 176 states and institutions, including many in the Islamic world. Before the king's meeting with the pope, a Saudi official said the Vatican has not asked to have a diplomatic mission in the kingdom or to have diplomatic relations.
It is forbidden to practice Christianity publicly inside Saudi Arabia, and it is illegal to bring symbols from religions other than Islam into the country. Bibles and crosses are confiscated at the border.
Some Christian worship services are held secretly, but the government has been known to crack down on them, or deport Filipino workers if they hold even private services.
The Vatican has said it wants to pursue a dialogue with moderate Muslims after the pope angered the Muslim world in 2006 with a speech linking Islam to violence.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the Vatican hoped the meeting with the Saudi king would produce a "sincere" dialogue on Christian worship in the country.
The Vatican said the talks were "warm" and allowed a wide discussion on the need for inter-religious and intercultural dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews "for the promotion of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values, especially in support of the family," a statement said.
Benedict has said he wants to reach out to all countries that still do not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Those countries include Saudi Arabia and China.
Abdullah had visited the Vatican twice before, as crown prince and deputy prime minister.
Science and reason provide good answers By Sheri Glowinski Matamoros
I grew up in a Catholic family. Although I tried hard to be a good Catholic, I knew early on that Catholicism, despite its many beautiful rituals that still to this day influence me, wasn't what rang true for me.
I've explored many different "brands" of religion along the way. Although many parts of many religions appealed to me, I felt frustrated with feeling that I had confined myself to any one particular "whole" of a religious doctrine that didn't resonate completely with me. I could never understand how there could be so many different belief systems - most exclusively claiming to be the one true answer - and only one of those really be the correct "answer."
How could so many people worldwide who gently believe so deeply and honestly in their religion - be it Christianity, Buddhism, Islam - be wrong? If there really is one true answer, isn't it possible that there are many different, yet equal, paths to that answer?
These questions give sustenance to my own spiritual quest. I personally look to many sources to explore life's transcending mystery of which I am a part.
I believe that science and reason are appropriate conduits to answer the essential "hows" of life and it is exciting to me to explore these types of questions in a scientific, systematic manner.
I also feel that to have science without a sense of spirituality, or vice versa, is to have tunnel vision.
A system of "checks and balances" is needed to provide depth of vision. And so I also find truth in the rhythms of the natural world. In this realm, I feel the pulsing of life, a connection to everyone and everything on some level.
We all share the same atoms, after all, albeit in beautiful unique combinations. Here I find retreat and replenishment for my occasionally weary soul. Here I find soothing when I need reminding that death, in all its forms, is a natural part of the rhythm of life.
It is also here that I am constantly reminded that I am not separate, either from the earth upon which I depend or from my neighbor. Indeed I am responsible for every step that I take, whether that step be toward something productive or something harmful, to myself or to others.
What I do here on Earth matters, and I try to live my life with this as my guiding principle.
And so, in summary, this is what I've come to believe in my search for truth: There is one underlying source of life that makes itself known differently to different people and that ultimately, it's not so much in what (or who) a person believes, it's what that person does with her beliefs that really matters.
Researcher points to effectiveness of parochial schools in lifting academic achievement of youths
By Rebecca Rosen Lum CONTRA COSTA TIMES
The White House has embraced a researcher whose work suggests religion can do what ample federal nourishment has not -- narrow the achievement gap between white and minority students.
The gap narrows by 25 percent in religious schools, said William Jeynes of Cal State Long Beach in the current issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
When the student comes from an "intact family" and professes religious commitment, the gap disappears.
Jeynes says his research results support the idea of school vouchers. "It once again appears illogical and potentially racially oppressive and discriminatory to deny minority students the right to more fully reach their potential via a school choice system," he said.
Religious educators cheered the findings, but some researchers debunked the study, saying Jeynes omitted critical factors and cited himself in a roundup of social science perspectives. Jeynes drew data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey, which tracked a national sample of students from eighth grade through high school. The survey provided information about religion, school culture, curriculum, race relations, discipline, exposure to violence and homework.
The critical factor is a private or parochial school's freedom to choose its students, said Marc Egan, director of federal affairs at National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. "He just didn't address the private school being able to screen out at the front end and at the back end," he said. "They can unceremoniously show the students the door."
And they do.
"I don't want to use the word luxury, but we don't accept just anyone," said Sister Liam Brock, principal of the inner-city St. Elizabeth's High School in Oakland. "We have criteria. We can also say, if you are not going to abide by our rules, take advantage of counseling, mentoring, we can ask you to leave."
East Bay parochial schools admit students based on grades, test scores and other factors, but administrators say they also welcome some students who have performed poorly in public school.
De La Salle High School in Concord and Sacred Heart in San Francisco devote 5 percent of their slots to students on full need-based scholarships. Sacred Heart's funders established a middle school for the poor in the Tenderloin district as a feeder for Sacred Heart.
Both the study's findings and its critiques resonated with Brock.
"There is tuition, and you have parents who, because they are paying, keep on the kids," she said. "A lot of our students are sponsored by outside people. They will set up stipulations -- you must maintain an A, B, C average. You must keep up your attendance. You must get involved in things."
Still, small class sizes allow staff members to focus on each student. The school's religious nature allows St. Elizabeth's teachers to talk extensively about values.
Few track students by race or ethnicity, but principals say most students excel.
"I don't know if I could say I see the gap disappear, but the way we approach things allows us to approach them holistically," said Brother Christopher, principal of De La Salle. "You're talking about the whole individual."
For instance, the melding of Catholic religion and culture spurs achievement for Latino students, he said.
Jeynes' study cites "caring" teachers and "an overall more disciplined lifestyle" as pivotal traits in religious schools.
Peter Imperial, principal of St. Mary's College High School in Berkeley, said he doesn't necessarily agree with that assessment, but he said frequent communication between students, teachers and administrators ensures students don't fall through the cracks.
"There are a few more safety nets in place," he said. "The economics of public schools are that the money is tight," he said. "At a Catholic school, anonymity is a tougher thing to achieve." Jeynes, who has written extensively on religion, family and schooling, said stereotypes are informing his critics' judgments.
Most religious schools usually can't afford to weed out candidates, he said.
"Yes, there are some (schools) who only allow students in who pass certain tests, but for a lot of religious schools, it's a nail biter economically," he said.
And most who send their children to religious schools are not the wealthy elite, but working people who sacrifice.
That's just it, Bracey said: "The motivation of parents who pick a private school and pay for it is a big factor."
But Jeynes said the nationwide data, which encompassed urban, suburban, inner city and rural schools, show an undeniable consistency.
"I was surprised by the robust nature of the results," he said.
The results point to school vouchers as public policy, he wrote. That earned high grades from the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group.
Whether his findings hold water, policy analysts said the political momentum for vouchers has dissipated.
"The issue is dead," said Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley. "Maybe not 6 feet under the ground. Maybe 2."
Rebecca Rosen Lum covers religion. Reach her at 925-977-8506 or rrosenlum@cctimes.com.
Hispanics Leaving Imprint On Religion In Dallas, Across U.S.
12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, April 26, 2007 By JEFFREY WEISS and DIANNE SOLÍS / The Dallas Morning News
A major study released Wednesday offers a close look at how Hispanics are changing the way religion is practiced in the United States – and how American culture is affecting the faith of Hispanics.
There may be no city in the country where Hispanic influence is felt greater than in Dallas. Among the American cities with the 10 largest Hispanic populations, Dallas is second only to New York in its percentage of Hispanic immigrants, according to census figures.
Since most Hispanics are Catholic, the local diocese may be the most transformed. The Dallas Diocese has swelled from about 200,000 in 1990 to about a million members today. And most of the newcomers are Hispanic.
But Catholic leaders are hardly the only religious officials concerned with Hispanics. About 20 percent of Hispanics nationwide are Protestant, according to the survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. And 18 percent of American Hispanics have changed their religion – mostly from Catholicism.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the two largest state Baptist groups, each have significant Hispanic outreach programs. And myriad nondenominational Hispanic churches can be found in storefronts and larger sanctuaries.
The Hispanic population of this country grew by 28 percent from 2000 to 2005. So sheer numbers mean that American church leaders want to integrate the newcomers into existing traditions. But the Pew survey identifies some ways that Hispanics do not fold smoothly into the non-Hispanic religious culture.
Many Hispanics bring a different approach to religion than can be found in many Anglo or black American churches, the survey indicated. They generally are more religious than non-Hispanics, are rooted in a more mystical, experience-driven understanding of their faith, and have powerful links to the language and customs of their homelands.
Hispanic identity is more tied up in community than the Anglo tradition that emphasizes the individual, said Mr. Reyes, president of Buckner Children and Family Services. An American church that wants to reach out to Hispanics must provide some link to that community identity, he said.
The Pew study, based on bilingual interviews of about 4,000 Hispanics nationwide, identified some broad differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanics:
• Denominations – About 68 percent of Hispanic adults identify themselves as Catholic, compared with 22 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 4 percent of non-Hispanic blacks.
• How they experience their faith – About 29 percent of Hispanics who attend worship services say they speak in tongues – a hallmark of Pentecostal or charismatic worship – compared with only 11 percent of non-Hispanics. About 45 percent of Hispanic Catholics say they have seen or received divine healing, compared with 21 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics.
• Where they choose to worship – About 66 percent of Hispanics who attend church say their church has a Spanish-speaking priest or pastor, a Spanish-language service, and a predominantly Hispanic congregation. Even for Hispanics who are third-generation or higher, about 42 percent report attending a church with all three characteristics.
That preference for Spanish language and culture fits the experience of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The convention counts more than 1,200 Hispanic churches as members. Just over half are Spanish-only and most of the rest are bilingual, with only a tiny fraction offering English-only services, said Rolando Rodriguez, the convention's director of Hispanic ministries.
The depth of the Mexican immigrant influence on Dallas religion can be seen and heard in the festivities around the Dec. 12 feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The night before, Ross Avenue frequently fills with Mexican immigrants who begin the pilgrimage carrying the Guadalupe banner to the Dallas shrine, much as they sojourn to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a hill named Tepeyac in Mexico City.
According to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared repeatedly to a Mexican Indian named Juan Diego in 1531 on Tepeyac Hill. Processions and other celebrations celebrating the tradition are annual affairs in Mexico – and now in Dallas.
Elizabeth Villafranca is a Guadalupe parishioner whose favorite piece of jewelry is a gold necklace with the Virgin of Guadalupe's image. Her preference for a Spanish language-friendly church matches the Pew survey results.
A visiting priest from Morelia, a central Mexican town, told her last year, "Siento que es un sucursal de Mexico," ("I feel like this is a branch of Mexico.")
The cultural connection is particularly important to Ms. Villafranca as she raises her 7-year-old daughter Natalie, a singer in the cathedral choir, she said.
"Every generation born in the United States starts to lose some tradition, but for our family it is important that she always have that connection to the roots," Ms. Villafranca said.
That search for connection can also be found in non-Catholic Hispanic churches.
When Vincent Gonzales, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, started his North Dallas Family Church, he made bilingual services his specialty.
He uses a PowerPoint presentation when reciting the Scriptures, preaching a bit in English with Spanish translations on the big screen, then preaching in Spanish while flashing the English translation. Songs of praise such as "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" carry an echoing line of "Sí, Cristo, me ama."
"The older Hispanics still prefer Spanish, but their children speak English and sometimes only English," the pastor said. "We have to speak to two worlds. We have to minister to two cultures."
Xerpi