New thrust for unity drives hope for
cross-cultural encuentro in 2000
By AUTHUR JONES
In July 2000, U.S. Hispanic Catholics are having a meeting. But
unlike previous encuentros (encounters) -- the Hispanic
Catholic national gatherings of 1972, 1977 and 1985 -- the U.S. bishops are
inviting the entire church by focusing on American parishes, all 20,000 of
them.
The question before the U.S. church, suggests Ronaldo Cruz, who
directs the bishops Hispanic Affairs Secretariat, is How do you do
community when the parishioners come from so many varied cultural, ethnic
and linguistic groups?
What the secretariats recently issued parish guide,
Many Faces in Gods House: a Catholic Vision for the Third
Millennium, offers (in English and Spanish) is a program for a series of
six two-and-a-half hour parish sessions that can draw into a single discussion
Catholics of differing cultures.
There are Hispanics in parishes where five years ago there
wasnt a Latino in the town. Theyre in the poultry industry and auto
industry in Kentucky and Tennessee, Cruz said. Theyre in
Saginaw, Mich. and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
But its not only the mobility of [31 million] U.S.
Latinos. Its Asians and Eastern Europeans and Africans, too, he
added. Many parishes are no longer homogeneous when only a few years ago
they were. So its this reality that created the focus for the next
encuentro.
The new thrust for unity, however, is not limited to North
America. The idea of inviting all dioceses, parishes and small faith
communities to participate, said San Bernardino Bishop Gerald Barnes,
and the vision of Encuentro 2000, is right in line with the [1997]
Synod of the Americas call to be one church.
The Hispanics, now around 10 percent of the U.S. population, are
attempting an answer that -- if the program succeeds -- will itself be a
sign of unity, said Barnes, who heads the bishops Hispanic Affairs
Committee.
Each session in Many Faces in Gods House provides a
six-part methodology (with theological underpinnings) that pulls on several
strands in the Catholic tradition, including the see, judge and act
of the Jocists (Belgian Cardinal Joseph Cardijns Young Christian Workers
movement), which is also the skeleton of the U.S.-founded Christian Family
Movement.
So, for example, the first session, Many peoples, one
Catholic church, takes its scriptural foundation from First Corinthians
12:13: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews
or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one
Spirit.
The format is one Catholics understand: a 15-minute welcome and
prayer, then three 40-minute segments that include sharing our
experience, scriptural foundations, proposing steps for taking actions, a
gathering in of ideas and a closing 25-minute faith
celebration.
By getting out the parish guide now, the secretariats hope
is that well before the July 2000 proposed national meeting, U.S. Catholics in
parishes will look around in the pews, recognize their differences, decide
their faith common bonds, override those differences and begin to make it
so.
National Catholic Reporter, August 27,
1999
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