[A talk given at the annual meeting of the National Pastoral Planning Conference as part of the session on pastoral planning and cultural pluralism.]
Right now I’m the administrator of a parish in the South Bronx, actually part of a team in pastoral ministry there, and before that I was Director of the Spanish-speaking Apostolate of the New York Archdiocese. Because of these experiences I was invited to speak to you, and it was suggested that I share some specific examples, both of successes and failures, in these experiences of ministry in the Hispanic community in the Archdiocese of New York.
In 1953 Cardinal Francis Spellman had appointed a priest as Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action. After the Second World War there were many Puerto Ricans arriving in New York City, at least a couple of hundred thousand, especially in Manhattan. Archbishop John Maguire, the vicar general, persuaded the Cardinal to do something about it. Although there wasn’t a plan all that formal, the idea of appointing a responsible priest at the diocesan level with the mission of developing the Church in the Puerto Rican community was a big step in those days; after all that was twenty-five years ago. A lot of things were born from that decision.
Fiesta
An interesting thing happened the first year: They said, let’s observe the feast of St. John the Baptist, San Juan Bautista, to give some identity to Puerto Ricans. So in St. Patrick’s Cathedral a pontifical, solemn Mass was celebrated in Spanish. Now that doesn’t seem like too much right now, but in 1953 that was really breaking the ice! And that was done for the next two years too—and the Cathedral was full each time!
Someone had a visionary idea: it was a priest named Ivan Illich and a fantastic Puerto Rican lady named Encarnación Armas. They said, look, if you really want to capture the imagination of the Hispanics, you’ve got to make it more of a fiesta. Puerto Ricans don’t celebrate a fiesta just by going to Mass. They have the Mass in the church, and in the plaza, in front of the church, there’s all kinds of fun going on. So Cardinal Spellman—who was really an adventurous soul at heart—said okay to their plan.
Fordham University has a lovely campus up in the Bronx, so they said—in 1956—let’s put the fiesta outdoors on the Fordham campus and let’s do some typically Hispanic things: have a piñata with little children to break it; roast a pig—lechón—and serve a meal, a barbecue, and stuff like that. So they transferred the San Juan Fiesta to the university, and great crowds of people came. When the time came to break the piñata, of course everybody ran to get one of the pieces of candy that fell from it. So many thousands of people converged on the scene that the Irish-American police instantly threw a security ring around Cardinal Spellman presuming that the “crazy natives” were about to mob him, and the thing got really almost out of control! But it was a great success actually, because thousands of people came to the campus of the university.
So, thinking big, next year we rented a city stadium on Randall’s Island and announced the fiesta there. As stadiums go, it’s out of the way. If you know New York, it’s on the Triboro Bridge approach, and although it’s near Manhattan it’s hard to get to. Well, about thirty or forty thousand people turned out for the fiesta in Randall’s Island in 1957. And, it was a great, old-fashioned Catholic spectacle: hundreds and thousands of Hijas de María—Daughters of Mary—in white dresses marched, rosaries were recited, great floats with tableaux of the mysteries of the rosary passed, other people marched with their Santo Nombre—the Holy Name Society—and their Sagrado Corazón—the Sacred Heart Society—banners. And then a pontifical Mass was celebrated al aire libre. A huge procession escorted Cardinal Spellman into the stadium. He was greeted by shouts of Viva el Cardenal! Viva la Iglesia! and great roars of applause. Of course the Cardinal liked it, and he was convinced we were on the right track!
But, you know, that fiesta was a very important thing, because it corresponded to a deeply Puerto Rican value, which I would call respeto—respect. You see, at that time all anybody knew about Puerto Ricans in New York was that they were poor, they didn’t speak the language, and they were the ones that were ruining the city and destroying everything. Of course that’s the story of every immigrant group! They said that about the Irish, the Italians, the Blacks, and everybody else. Well the fiesta offered an opportunity for a demonstration of the values of the Puerto Rican community, for they had no visible expression of their culture or language or dignity. It was the first city-wide event that gave presence to the Puerto Ricans, because there was nothing else. And so that fiesta, with its Mass and its religious spectacle and its refreshments and everything else, was very important. For several years it was the only expression of Puerto Rican culture and religious values in the city.
Then in later years it began to decline. Right now it’s not so significant anymore, because since then we have the Desfile Puertorriqueño—the Puerto Rican Day Parade—when about a hundred thousand people march up Fifth Avenue. That’s a show of power! Then we have the Fiesta Folklórica Puertorriqueña in Central Park which is to show Puerto Rican culture and art and music—and that’s a great midsummer picnic with another hundred thousand people. So there’s no need anymore for the Church to be the vehicle of expression of presence and culture, and the San Juan Fiesta now has come down in scale.
Now that was an example of something innovative—I don’t want to say precisely of pastoral planning, but of something happening.
Spanish-Speaking Clergy
A very big step that Cardinal Spellman took in 1956, which was very much a matter of pastoral planning, was when the new priests were ordained. They got a surprise, because, when the week after ordination they all went down to get their assignments from the Cardinal, half of them found they were to be assigned to Georgetown University in Washington for the summer where they were to be oriented. They were exposed to the conversational Spanish techniques developed by the Foreign Service Institute for the State Department. So for seven or eight hours a day they had spoken Spanish beaten into them! And they spent the whole summer down there. When they came back they were assigned to Spanish-speaking areas in the diocese.
Well, the Cardinal the next summer made an even bolder move with the newly ordained, because when they came down for their assignments they found out that half of them were leaving a few days later on a plane for San Juan, Puerto Rico and then for Ponce, Puerto Rico! They went down there and had the same things in spades, because then they were going to live in Puerto Rico while they learned conversational Spanish. And so for several years, half of the newly ordained class of priests were “Puerto-Ricanized!” It was an experience.
I remember—I was ordained in 1958—I remember going down to Puerto Rico. First of all, it was before jets. We’d have the sending-off ceremony at midnight when we all traipsed out to the airport and the Cardinal was there for the despedida. They packed us into a plane, jam-packed with all the people returning home to San Juan, sweating, squeezed, tired, and we stayed that way for about seven or eight hours. We landed in San Juan, and this unusual Yugoslavian monsignor called Illich grabbed us, rushed us to a church in Hato Rey so that we could all celebrate our Masses, rushed us up to the governor’s palace in Old San Juan for a formal reception with drinks and refreshments, and then they piled us into little, tiny aircraft with about eight or ten people to each. We went flying over the central mountains of Puerto Rico, the plane going like crazy. We landed in Ponce, we were rushed off to residences in some kind of old barracks behind the Catholic University, which is really a couple of buildings in an old cane field, and that’s how we got initiated.
Illich was great on exposing us to Puerto Rican customs and culture.
Every weekend when you were exhausted from studying Spanish, you were sent out on “pastoral assignment.” He’d say, now, go up to Orocovis. You’d say, how do you get to Orocovis? He’d say, you go down the plaza and find out where the public cars leave from; they’re bound to take you there. When you get to Orocovis, the pastort says, ah, help! I can take a break and go away this weekend! Go hear confessions, preach, say Mass, baptize the babies, and everything else! My God, what’s happening?. . . Actually it was great! It was a very good program, because it forced you to experience and interact with the language and the culture. Believe it or not, in two months of this type of training you do begin to speak the language!
Bilingual and Bicultural Parishes
So a very radical program that Cardinal Spellman had begun was this. Behind it was a philosophy. He said, the Puerto Ricans are not going to stay in one place and they’re too numerous, so we’re not going to use the old method of national parishes to take care of them. We’re going to make every parish where they go to live in any numbers bilingual and bicultural, so that that parish will begin to serve their needs. It was a very ambitious plan; now we have over a hundred parishes in the diocese, out of four hundred and some, that operate that way. It was a very bold step, not to encourage the creation of ghettos and national parishes but to accommodate the Puerto Ricans wherever they go in their own language.
Now, many years later, we can look at this decision and say, maybe it wasn’t enough! There are things in practice not quite anticipated in theory. For example, fresh back from Puerto Rico, the newly ordained priest is assigned to a parish with a large population of Hispanics. Let’s say that in the parish the pastor’s an old Irish-American monsignor who maybe doesn’t give a darn. Sure, you can work with those people, only do all the other regular duties too. And if anybody knocks at the door and the Irish receptionist opens the door and says, oh, you want the Spanish priest! Now, sit over there! And, if the “Spanish priest” isn’t home, well no other priest is about to take care of them, because after all the others aren’t the Spanish priest! And the Mass for those people is going to be in the basement church, because you can’t offend the sensibilities of our regular parishioners by putting them in the main church.
So, it doesn’t always work! You see, if the pastor of.the parish is bilingual and bicultural you have a fighting chance; but, New York twenty-five years later has just begun to have that kind of pastor. And so the plan has its limitations.
Another limitation is that the traditional ethnic parish, the national parish, was the center for supporting the culture and the identity of the immigrant groups. The danger of the bilingual, bicultural parish is that it proves to be not quite so bilingual and bicultural as it seems. Often the main attention is for the, whatever you want to call them, the English-speaking, and the secondary attention is for the Hispanics, and they’re urged to accommodate as quickly as possible to the other groups in the parish. It’s very hard to have a total respect for another person’s point of view if you aren’t immersed in that culture and even then there are limitations.
This leads to another of the needs that became clear for us over the years, the problem of Hispanic leadership in the Church. It’s not enough to have priests who speak Spanish, even very well. You still need models for people to identify with. You have to have visible Spanish leadership.
Vocations
Cardinal Terence Cooke, and Cardinal Spellman before him, has been very concerned about vocations. I think if you say vocations to the Cardinal you can get his support for almost anything, because he’s really deeply concerned about the future of the Church; but there’s a blind spot in the concern for getting vocations too. We’re willing to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in preparing Spanish language materials and brochures and go around to talk to Spanish kids urging that they become priests and everything like that, but there may be a more serious and less obvious problem with seminary formation.
For the point is, there is some change needed in our seminaries, and with the best of intentions there’s a thing called institutionalized cultural bias that creeps in—it is this. For example, you have a seminary: It’s started by the Sulpicians and continued by predominantly Irish-American diocesan clergy. You’re kidding yourself if you think that the seminary’s style is truly catholic and attractive to every type of person—it isn’t! Because its customs, its traditions, its way of doing things are really designed according to the cultural patterns and needs of a certain period and a certain kind of people, necessarily so. If you come from a German background or Irish background, perhaps you can deal comfortably with it; the students who come from an Italian background, often become accommodated to it at the price of many of their cultural values, but the Puerto Ricans don’t. We don’t have in our whole diocesan clergy of New York more than two or three priests with somewhat Puerto Rican background. After all these years! And we have about a million Spanish Speaking in our diocese.
There are two ways of looking at it: You either can look at it and say there’s something wrong with those people because they won’t become priests. Maybe it’s impossible for them to be celibate—that’s an argument we’d all like to use!—or maybe they haven’t enough faith! Or, maybe they don’t have enough religious formation, or they never had enough priests down in Puerto. Rico, so how are they going to have priests up here. Or, it’s not a value in the Hispanic family; but these are terrible points of view! It’s a great insult to persons and a culture that are deeply Christian!
If you don’t question the quality of the people, maybe you need to question the Holy Spirit! But, it can’t be that the Holy Spirit is not working in half the Catholic population of New York City. Maybe the right point of view should be to question how well we discern the Spirit. Maybe we don’t know how to recognize the legitimate call that many people have concerning the ministry, because we are insisting on perceiving it according to certain criteria which are traditional for us, not for them.
Is it a solution that we create two seminaries, one for English-speaking and one for Spanish-speaking? I don’t know. The problem is a subtle thing in the mentality we have. For example, a few years ago I was asked to give a course in our seminary concerning intercultural communication and the Hispanic population of the city and its reality. After much planning of the course, it was decided to present it as an elective on an off-hour, because it was a specialty item! At a later date the seminary accepted that the students be obligated to study a pastoral language, either Spanish or Italian.
Since working in Spanish neighborhoods is considered a special interest and since seminarians are given a lot of scope to develop their own preferences, most of them opt to work in the suburbs where they have a situation that they’re familiar with. Almost nobody wants to work in the inner city because they’re unfamiliar and uncomfortable with it, naturally. I wouldn’t have worked in the inner city, except in the old days nobody asked you—you were just sent there! Yet I ended up spending most of my life to date with Puerto Ricans and being immensely enriched and made happy by it. The problem of mentalities is subtle.
Another example of New York’s successes and failures in planning: We started a permanent diaconate program several years ago. For a couple of years everyone kept asking why aren’t there Hispanics in the permanent diaconate program? It’s a natural for them! And I said, well, I can give you two good reasons: one, the courses are at the major seminary two nights a week and you can’t get there without a car, and, two, the courses are in English. Still for a long time the non-participation of Hispanics remained a puzzle. When, after two or three years it became so distressing to have no Hispanic candidates, a Spanish language program with sessions in the city was established—with immediate participation by qualified persons.
Culture and Religion
A couple of years ago there were some workshops for priests, religious, and Hispanic lay leaders about comunidades de base. A lot of the lay leaders, men and women, felt that a representative group of them should talk to Cardinal Cooke—but to talk to the archbishop was a big step, so they spent five or six months and a few preliminary meetings just to get ready! Not to hatch plots, but out of their great respect for the person they wanted to see. When the Cardinal was appraised of their request for a meeting, he was alarmed—most groups want to complain or protest; but it wasn’t that at all.
You see, personalism is a very important value for Hispanics. If you obey your bishop, you just can’t get letters from him and deal with his staff. You have to see him and talk to him; you have to have the chance to open your heart to him and share your hopes and fears and aspirations with him; you even need the chance to pat him on the back and hug him!
What else to say? On the local level in the average parish there’s a real attempt to use the language and accommodate to the customs and style of the Hispanic people. For example, it’s wonderful to share the enthusiastic liturgies incorporating typical music, instruments, and songs. It’s great when there’s a full participation of ministers too; but sometimes there are snags because we’re not altogether aware of what’s typical of our own mentality. A lot of people who come to Mass don’t come every Sunday. Not missing Mass is a very high value in American Catholicism, but it’s not so high a value in Latin American Catholicism.
I have all kinds of really good people in my parish who don’t come to Mass every Sunday. I wouldn’t think of criticizing them. They’re obviously good Christians. A lot of the kids love to serve Mass; but when they don’t serve, they don’t come to Mass at all in some cases. Well, I guess I don’t raise a question about that either. If it’s not interesting enough to grab them, then we priests have to do something!
Another example: In Puerto Rico, common-law marriages are very common, and its not uncommon to have good families that are not married by the church. Now this is becoming a general problem in American culture too—Puerto Ricans were a little bit ahead! What should your attitude be? Are you not going to let the kids in when they come to go to the parochial school, and you say to their parents, well, let me see the marriage certificate, are you married by the priest, and they’re not? Now I’m not saying that it’s not important to be married in the Church, but maybe we don’t all have the same cultural tolerance of not doing it.
The best way to avoid cultural bias is to involve Hispanics in the pastoral planning process itself. In 1969 when Cardinal Cooke decided to reorganize the Spanish-speaking apostolate of the archdiocese, a dozen or so working committees were formed of experienced and interested lay leaders, priests, and religious, Hispanic and non-Hispanic together. There were groups for catechetics, liturgy, ecumenism, lay formation, lay apostolates, mass media, priests, religious, linguistic and cultural formation, community relations, and research and planning!
We went through a very elaborate planning process, studying needs, setting goals and priorities of action, and developing new programs. Each group had its own responsible coordinator, I guess you could say—and they met together as a kind of central coordinating committee with the priest delegated by the Cardinal for the Spanish-speaking Apostolate. A lot of things came out of that.
Since 1960 the diocese had the Cursillo de Cristiandad movement. It’s a powerful instrument of formation for lay persons; it motivates them to live out the sacraments and to become involved in the life of the local parish. Now two new programs were added to it: one for young people, the Movimiento Juvenil—Youth Movement—and one for married couples, the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano—the Spanish Christian Family Movement. In the planning process both had been identified as areas where little was being done; most parishes were more child-centered and concerned with sick, aged, and dependent people.
Another need and priority set by the committee was how to reach people who come from a Catholic background, but who hardly know anything about their religion. They decided to try to develop a series of themes that could be discussed at home in small groups and that would help people be introduced to a better understanding of their faith. Well, it turned out to be a series of 12 or 15 topics, and teams of Hispanic lay leaders began to use it all over the diocese—it’s called Luz y Vida—Light and Life.
Pastoral Planning
I guess I could go on and on with experiences that we’ve had in New York. In fact you’re probably wondering, is there any thread that ties all this together? I’m wondering too! But, seriously, I think it’s the idea that under the label of “Spanish Apostolate” a tremendous amount of pastoral planning has been going on for years. In fact it’s in the Hispanic part of the Church where the most pastoral planning has been done.
Maybe it’s because Hispanics found themselves in a new place with strange customs and they had less resistance to change. Maybe, too, it’s because the hierarchy and clergy has had to face such a massive and rapid migration of Catholics of another tradition. Whatever . . . They say, necessity is the mother of invention. Well, the challenge posed by the Hispanic reality in the Church did produce a response—both unplanned and planned!
In fact, in 1972 when the first national Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral was convoked by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and held in Washington, it confidently and explicitly declared its purpose was to draft pastoral plan for the Hispanic Catholics of our country. And, in New York, I remember my own experience as Spanish-speaking apostolate director, very consciously about the business of a pastoral plan for the diocese.
In conclusion, it’s been a great thing to be invited to meet with pastoral planners, and a good thing that the association is aware and appreciative of the pastoral planning that Hispanics and other Spanish-speaking church personnel have been engaged in. I hope that this new collaboration and sharing can continue and grow and develop.
Thanks for being such good listeners!
(Published in
Clergy Report,
communication among the priests of the Archdiocese of New York,
8:9, November 1978)