Six months ago, a mere handful of people were showing up for Saturday- night home services conducted by Jorge Alvarado, a Mexican-American upholsterer and part-time evangelist in Houston. But soon so many people were coming that Alvarado had to move his congregation to a small commercial building, and then to a large house, where some 80 worshipers now regularly attend his meetings. These two-hour gatherings feature testimonies, rousing hymns accompanied by electric guitar, and high-energy sermons (“The Lord gives strength to the weak!”).
Alvarado’s Spanish-language mission is one of 61 begun in the U.S. in the past year by the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination. Recruiting immigrants soul by soul, zealously evangelistic Protestants like Alvarado are making rapid inroads among U.S. Hispanics, a group that is traditionally Roman Catholic. Though there are no nationwide statistics, a 1982 New York Archdiocese survey found that 10% of local Catholic Hispanics had defected to other churches. Hispanics currently account for nearly one-third (some 15 million) of U.S. Catholics.
U.S. Catholicism, which has provided a spiritual home for millions of immigrants over the past century, has a shaky hold on Hispanic newcomers. A survey by Chicago Sociologist William McCready shows that 30% to 40% of Catholic Hispanics are not involved in parish life. One problem is the supply of priests and nuns. Unlike European arrivals of the past, Hispanic immigrants do not bring their own clergy with them. Only about 4% of the 57,000 Catholic priests in the U.S. and less than 2% of the 115,000 nuns are Hispanic. Until 1970 the church did not have one U.S.-born Hispanic bishop. (Today there are nine out of a total of 17 Hispanic bishops in the U.S.) The Catholics have also been slow to provide Spanish-language Masses and bilingual education.
As a result, U.S. Catholicism often seems unfriendly and unfamiliar to Hispanics. Says Xavier Murrieta, a Mexican immigrant in the Protestant Centro de Amor Cristiano in Phoenix: “In small Mexican villages the local priest is a family counselor, the doctor, the lawyer. That ingredient is missing here.” Roberto Martinez, who owns a Chicago restaurant favored by Hispanics, believes that U.S. priests do not mingle enough. Says he: “I’ve never met a priest in my restaurant, but I’ve met a hundred reverends.”
Another explanation for Protestant gains among Hispanics is effort. Spanish- language preachers blanket the radio dial in the Southwest. Researchers in conservative Protestant seminaries analyze evangelistic strategies. Personal contacts are stressed. Says Catholic Archbishop Robert Sanchez of Santa Fe, N. Mex.: “They’re out there ringing doorbells and going into people’s homes. That’s hard to beat.” The Rev. Tony Arango, pastor of Florida’s growing East Hialeah Baptist Church, whose membership is heavily Cuban, says, “Our witnessing is done by all our members. We believe in the aggressive approach.”
Pastor Jose Castillo of Houston’s Iglesia Bautista Nueva Jerusalen runs 13- week classes to instruct members in door-to-door witnessing. “Patience is the key,” he says. “It’s a slow process.” Templo La Hermosa, a Pentecostal church in the Los Angeles area, sends lay teams out to conduct street-corner services. Templo Calvario, an Assemblies of God church in Santa Ana, Calif., evangelizes in jails and among youth gangs. Such pastors as Rigoberto Escalante, who runs a small storefront church in Los Angeles, preach direct, impassioned religious messages. An additional attraction: Hispanics can establish their own congregations and run them as they wish, under their own leaders.
The U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, which will sponsor a national conference on Hispanic evangelism in August, is beginning to respond to Protestant challengers. Bishops and priests are taking cram courses in Spanish. The pulsating music of “mariachi Masses” is heard in Southwest parishes. Dioceses air Spanish-language broadcasts. Hispanic groups in the Catholic “Charismatic Renewal,” 35 of them in Houston alone, bring Pentecostal-style fervor into staid parishes. In Corpus Christi, Texas, the Roman Catholic diocese has just completed a Spanish-language ministry program to instruct more than 500 lay members in the Bible, doctrine and church leadership. St. Vincent De Paul Church in Los Angeles trains its Hispanic laity to bear witness to the faith, door to door. In Chicago’s new Para Servirle (At Your Service), 500 trainees fan through Hispanic neighborhoods, offering aid in locating social services and inviting people to Mass. San Antonio-based Father Pedro Villarroya has logged 42,000 miles by car to contact Hispanics in priestless rural areas of Texas.
The competition for Hispanic souls has led to hostility between Catholics and the more hard-line Protestant groups. “Families are being divided,” declares Sister Carla Maria Crabtree, who directs Hispanic ministries in the Galveston- Houston diocese. “The thing that worries me most is that the Fundamentalists are almost making the Hispanics hate their past.” Father Silvano Tomasi, director of migrant ministries for the U.S. Catholic Conference, charges that many Protestant evangelists have “no respect for substance. There’s no concern for the poor, no sense of collective responsibility. They just want bodies.”
The Catholic Church’s Hispanic problem has been long in the making and will not be overcome quickly or easily. Says Auxiliary Bishop Donald Montrose of Los Angeles, who spent 13 years in a Hispanic parish: “We had better be conscious of this problem now, or we’ll wake up in a generation or so and a great percentage of Hispanic Catholics won’t be Catholic any more.”
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