ARTICLES
September 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
The Latest Challenge
Storefront "Catholic" Churches Draw Latinos
By Jonathan Fierro
The first thing that hits you is the smell. It's the sweet, smoky, charred whiff of Catholic incense that fills the air.
Here, in this small, makeshift, storefront temple, about thirty people, all of them immigrant Latinos with their children, are ready for Sunday Mass. As Father Miguel De Soto, a middle-aged man with a full, dark, beard, with bespectacled, inquisitive eyes beneath a large forehead crowned with a mane of hair, comes out from behind the veil of a white curtain, he starts swinging an old, rusty censer among the two rows of seven small pews.
More incense. Incense before the Gospel reading. Incense before the consecration.
After Mass, parishioners line-up in this Echo Park church on Sunset Boulevard to kneel on a sole kneeler in front of a table-turned-altar. There, the priest anoints their foreheads and their elbow joints with holy oil.
What's this? A scene from a Latino Catholic past? No. What's going on here is one of the most interesting religious phenomena in Los Angeles.
De Soto and his parish, San Miguel Arcangel, belong to a movement of independent "Catholic" churches that are growing at amazing speed among the Latino community. Some of them belong to Old Catholic denominations, splinter groups that separated from the Catholic Church after the First Vatican Council in 1870. Others, like San Miguel, call themselves Orthodox Catholics, though they are independent from the Greek Orthodox or any other Orthodox jurisdiction, acting by and large on their own. Mostly confined to storefronts or swap meets, these independent chapels are sprouting up all over Los Angeles, especially in the Spanish-speaking areas. According to lore, a large number of the clergy are former Roman Catholic priests who left the Church, often because they married. Nobody really knows how many of these independent chapels exist in Los Angeles. But chances are that at least one can be found in every area where Latinos live.
Needless to say, these independent churches are not looked at in a very good light by the Los Angeles archdiocese. In fact, archdiocesan officials warn that the likes of Father De Soto and his parish are not Roman Catholic. But most who flock to these independent churches seem to pay little heed to archdiocesan warnings. Some are divorced Catholics who joined an independent church, where it is easier to remarry. Others say that sacraments like baptism, confession, marriage, and even cultural celebrations like Quinceañeras, are easy to receive in independent churches, whereas, in archdiocesan parishes, it's a mammoth undertaking to get past all the red tape.
Leonardo Marin-Saavedra, an Anglican bishop from Colombia (belonging to a group that broke from the Episcopal Church), who officiates at Mass at San Miguel and at other independent parishes, says that many Latino Catholics go to these churches because they find that they don't have to show endless, hard-to-get documents, or put up with grouchy rectory secretaries. He adds that Roman Catholics who go to these chapels complain that, for the most part, Roman Catholic priests seem distant and cold, whereas at churches like San Miguel, priests welcome them with open arms. "Did John the Baptist ask Jesus Christ for his records before he baptized him? Of course not!" said Saavedra. "Roman Catholic priests act more like politicians than priests. Latinos are sick and tired of being mistreated by society, by their bosses, and now even by their own church and priests!"
Despite complaints by conferences of Latino bishops about the growth of evangelical Protestant churches among Latino Catholics, the archdiocese of Los Angeles has good reason to fear the likes of Father De Soto and his parish. They exemplify the latest challenge to the Church as far as Latinos are concerned.
Saavedra said that the independent Catholic churches are filling a void in the Latino community, especially among immigrant Latinos, who often feel lost in archdiocesan churches, given the more progressive pastoral style of archdiocesan priests and the lack of Latino cultural mores and devotions that have been dropped for more modern mores like group therapy or liturgical dancing. "We are a threat to the archdiocese because our priests are doing the job Roman Catholic priests should be doing," Saavedra said. "Most Latinos don't get the attention that they need in American Roman Catholic churches or they feel that their priests are too bureaucratic, that they are more like CEO's than priests."
The brunt of independent Catholic church growth was felt at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, or "La Placita," in the historic center of Los Angeles, said Simon Hernandez, a former sacristan there. Father Arturo Vasquez, the fixture priest who was for decades La Placita's pastor, complained in the late 1990s about the many clone-like Catholic chapels that drew in immigrants allegedly by claiming they were under the archdiocese.
Hernandez said that by promoting devotions to the Virgin of Guadalupe, by building a grotto to Santo Niño de Atocha, and by encouraging adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Vasquez managed to keep his flock and thousands of immigrants faithful to their Roman Catholic heritage. But, he added, since Vasquez was reassigned elsewhere, La Placita's new pastor has striven to do away with Mexican devotions, leaving many of his flock to go to the independent churches for spiritual guidance.
"Latinos from all over Los Angeles would come to La Placita for Mass and to confess, before receiving communion," Hernandez said. "But the new pastor did away with that." (See "Devotions of the Blood," March 2003 Mission.)
One of those that left La Placita for an independent church is Jose Diaz, a former Roman Catholic priest who used to be La Placita's liturgy director but now works in an independent chapel on Alvarado, not far from San Miguel, Hernandez said. Using old school techniques, Diaz would train acolytes beyond what is expected of altar servers today, teaching them the fine art of serving a solemn High Mass. That means using the rich, Catholic rituals that include, among other things, censers, processional crosses, and candlesticks. Diaz would also train lectors and Eucharistic ministers.
"But now that all that is gone, many of the faithful feel that what they are receiving in their parishes doesn't resemble the Catholicism they grew up with," Hernandez said. "I have seen many people, including friends, who have left their parishes to go to these other churches."
Cecilia Martinez, a 50-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, said she is one who left La Placita to join San Miguel four years ago, when she arrived to Los Angeles from New York. Alone, with no family in this town, she said that she would often find archdiocesan Masses distant and without substance. "Here, in this country, the common denominator among people is to be cold to others," Martinez said. "The [archdiocesan] priests said Mass without reverence. I found their sermons very cold; they said very little that was worth something."
Instead, Martinez said, at San Miguel, De Soto and Marin-Saavedra take time to explain the readings of the day. She added that their sermons are full of common sense and that they administer sacramentals. "Some people would call them old fashioned, but we believe in the power of God," Martinez said. "Many people have been cured after they were anointed with holy oil. A man that was on the verge of death recovered after Father De Soto administered the sacrament of Extreme Unction to him."
Martinez said that another convincing aspect about the independent chapels is that priests there are hard-working and make many sacrifices just to get by. De Soto pays about $1,000 per month just to rent his chapel -- a huge amount of money for a poor flock to provide.
San Miguel -- in comparison to most archdiocesan churches -- definitely seems in need of money. Frameless, cheap posters depicting saints adorn the walls. The votive, one-dollar candles are of the cheapest kind. Most of the statues of the saints are small, just like the makeshift chapel.
But San Miguel is big on faith, said Martinez.
On the first Sunday of August, Father De Soto read the Gospel (after incensing it, of course) that tells the story of a group of people that followed Jesus across a lake after He multiplied the bread and fed thousands. Jesus told them that they were only following Him because He fed them. "We should look to feed our bodies with good food, not with food that gives us cholesterol and diabetes," De Soto told his flock. "Likewise, we need good spiritual food. Why worry about problems when we have God? Worrying only gives us stress and heart attacks. We should trust in God."
Saavedra said that, despite some of the more relaxed norms in independent chapels, most of these churches tend to have more conservative homilies than do archdiocesan parishes. The Anglican bishop made news among his fellow priests back in Colombia for publicly defending an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that had been exposed to the elements in a shrine outside of the Our Lady of the Angels cathedral in Los Angeles. "Does this mean that I am more Catholic than Cardinal Roger Mahony? I guess so," said Saavedra. "I pray for the Roman Catholic Church every day. It seems to be in a very bad shape."
The bishop added that the fact that a steady stream of Latinos are leaving Roman Catholic churches for independent chapels undermines the common belief that Latinos depart to evangelical churches due to their more lively services. He insisted that what Latinos really want is a Catholicism more akin to what they grew up with.
"The independent churches are growing everywhere," Saavedra said. "Who knows? Perhaps one day, we might become even bigger than the Archdiocese."