This just in… at least in my world.
I don’t normally talk about ministry here—it’s true—and maybe I should more often, but this was too amazing for me to pass up. I wanted to share with “the world” (that is, all 3 of my faithful readers) what I learned this past week. According to Instituto Fe y Vida (Faith and Life Institute, a highly useful clearing house for information about Hispanic ministry): the majority of Catholic Youth in the United States (ages 0-30) are Hispanic.
You might be thinking big deal, but consider it again. The majority! And they are growing. Seriously. They generally have larger families and their numbers increase continually through immigration. Regardless of what you think about immigration laws in this country, this is a huge deal for the Church. The reality is there, and a lot of organizations have a lot of great stuff on paper (all of our seminarians are supposed to learn Spanish, for instance) but is that happening?
There’s a wonderful opportunity in all of this, for the renewal of religious congregations and their ministries as well as for the possiblity of an influx of vocations—if only we can encourage them before it’s too late. Consider all the Irish vocations in the U.S. Church of the past, where every 3rd priest was named McDermott!
I’m doing some research about all of this… and hopefully I’ll have some more to say as the semester progresses.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of All the Americas… Pray for us.
I’d love to hear what your research turns up. I’m a firm believer that, in the future, we will need to embrace diversity in the Church like we never have before. We can’t go back to the old ethnic parish model — we need to find ways to accommodating a variety of cultural expressions of the faith without devolving into a crass pluralism and without watering down the Gospel. It’s an exciting time to be Catholic!