PITTSBURGH – Educators from Catholic schools across America browse the vendor area at the NCEA convention in April. (CNS photo/Chuck Fazio, courtesy NCEA)

By John Franko
PITTSBURGH (CNS) – The new evangelization is not a new Gospel, but refocuses the faithful on the good news of Jesus and involves the renewal of faith and the willingness to share it, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington told the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA).

“We bring a fuller vision,” Cardinal Wuerl said of the Catholic faith during his keynote address at NCEA’s annual convention. “We need to admit that and be proud of it.”
Hosted by the Diocese of Pittsburgh in partnership with the NCEA, Catholic Library Association and the National Association of Parish and Catechetical Directors, the convention drew about 6,000 participants during its April 22-24 run at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, including four representatives from the Diocese of Jackson.

Karla Luke, operations and support services coordinator for the Office of Education in the diocese, said the conference was a wonderful opportunity.
“The sessions I attended included Joy in the Vocation of the Educator, which focused on the demands of teaching and how to bring joy to our vocations by contemplating Christ,” she said. “I also attended two sessions on Advancing the National Standards for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools. There was robust discussion among school administrators, teachers and diocesan administrators using self-assessment as a means to school improvement and strategic planning,” Luke added.

As a bonus, the conference introduced a smartphone app allowing attendees to bring resources and some presentations to their home dioceses.
Cardinal Wuerl, a native son and former bishop of Pittsburgh, presented his remarks in light of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel” (“Evangelii Gaudium”) and the pontiff’s call for a new evangelization within the church and around the world. In the exhortation, the cardinal noted, the pope invites people to focus on the blessing that is the love of God in their lives.

“His energy is a bright ray breaking through the secular darkness,” Cardinal Wuerl added. While the church is the home of the new evangelization, he said, Catholic education is an instrument of it.

The cardinal explained that it can involve “ordinary” areas of evangelization, something as simple as teaching a child the sign of the cross and that it can focus on outreach to those who have fallen away from the church.

“The church brings to our world today an invitation to faith, an encounter with the Lord Jesus and a whole way of living,” he said. But the secular world is often overwhelming, Cardinal Wuerl noted, and many markers of the faith have been taken away. He expressed concern that secularism has also diminished appreciation of the faith.

Passing on the faith highlights the importance of Catholic schools and religious education programs, he said, explaining that if the new evangelization is to be successful, children must be firmly grounded in an authentic faith. Only then will children be able to live their faith and daily existence with Christ, he added.

Expressing his belief that Catholic education must present a real vision of what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, Cardinal Wuerl said the authentic proclamation of Christ begins with a clear declaration of who God is. The faithful, he noted, must understand how essential the church is in their lives. The work of building the kingdom as just the beginning, he said.

Cardinal Wuerl said that evangelization involves the work of disciples who share the good news. It involves a bold new courage, a connectedness to the church and a sense of urgency that reminds people it is their time to pass on the message of Jesus.
“Our message should be one that inspires people to follow us,” he said.
(Franko is a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Catholic Review, newspaper of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.)Maureen Smith contributed to this article)

SOUTHAVEN – Members of Christ the King Parish celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in December 2013.

By Patricia Zapor
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. (CNS) – Training of pastoral leaders and provision of most other resources for Hispanic ministry aren’t keeping up with the fast-approaching time when Hispanics will make up the majority of Catholics in the United States, according to a new report.
“Hispanic Catholics have reached critical mass in the church,” said Hosffman Ospino, lead author of the National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry. He said 55 percent of all U.S. Catholics under the age of 30 are Hispanic and Hispanics account for 71 percent of the growth in the U.S. Catholic population since 1960.
“Ignoring the growth of Hispanic Catholics in the United States would be self-defeating for our churches and schools,” he added.
Ospino, assistant professor of theology and ministry at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, presented his findings from the first major survey of how parishes are handling the rapid demographic shift May 5 at the college. The Office of Hispanic Ministry for the Diocese of Jackson participated in this study.

Hispanics currently account for about 40 percent of all U.S. Catholics and their share of the population is continuing to increase. Nationwide, 4,358 parishes – almost one-quarter of the U.S. total – were identified as having some sort of organized ministry to Hispanics.

Children share a cultural dance during a celebration at Christ the King Parish in Southaven.

The study cited many signs of vitality in parish Hispanic ministry – including youth, a strong permanent diaconate system and thriving apostolic movements. But other areas require urgent attention, it said.

Among the “urgent dynamics” of parish Hispanic ministry that are in need of attention, it listed: disproportionately limited financial and human resources, a “disquieting gap” in Hispanic enrollment in Catholic schools, and a cohort of pastoral leaders who are approaching retirement age with too few people in training to replace them.

The study pointed out that the oldest Catholic parishes under the flag of the United States were and continue to be Hispanic.
In the Southwest, a vibrant Catholic Church existed long before the United States acquired parts of Mexico, making for Hispanic-dominated parishes that predated the development of “national” parishes. National parishes were created in the 19th century to minister to European immigrants such as Germans, Italians and Poles, intended to be a temporary system for helping newcomers maintain their faith connections while they integrated.

As the study notes, “when absorbing the annexed Mexican territories, long-standing Hispanic parishes were typically treated as ‘only’ national parishes,” although many different nationalities fall under the cluster of Hispanic.

JACKSON – A confirmation celebration at St. Therese Parish from 2013. (All photos file photos from the Office of Hispanic Ministry)

The report is a summary of the findings of a national study, conducted by the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry in collaboration with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate of Georgetown University. Several future reports will delve into angles such as education and leadership training, Ospino told Catholic News Service.
The study is based on responses to surveys sent to diocesan and parish leaders who work in Hispanic ministry. Parishes were counted as offering Hispanic ministry if they offer Mass or religious education in Spanish, for example, even if they don’t formally have a Hispanic ministry program, Ospino said.

Other elements in the report include discussion of leadership structures and leadership development; apostolic movements such as Cursillo and Communion and Liberation; and programming and education for children, youth and adults
In an event at Boston College where the study was released, Mark Gray, of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, said one conclusion he draws from the study that should catch the attention of church leaders is “if you don’t do Hispanic ministry well, then you face an uncertain future.”

Unlike past generations of immigrants, he said, people today have many more choices in where they can go to worship, whether another Catholic parish that offers something different, a non-Catholic Christian church that is welcoming or even the growing phenomena of dropping all religious affiliation.
“We call them drive-bys,” Gray said, because people will drive by a church that doesn’t offer what they need and go elsewhere.

It will be important to the future of the church for the more established parts of the church, where there is more money and power, to think of the growing sector of less-wealthy Hispanics as deserving of their support as part of the same church, Ospino said.

Ospino told a story to illustrate how that’s relevant to meeting the pastoral needs of a working-class or poor group of newcomers. He described a parish with a high level of immigrants that was in financial crisis. The parish was administered by a religious order that also ran three wealthier, nonimmigrant parishes in the same region. The religious order leaders went to the three wealthier parishes asking for support to keep the immigrant parish open. “They said no,” Ospino said.

In a subsequent interview with CNS, Ospino said perspectives such as that of the nonimmigrant parishes in that story illustrate a basic flaw in how many American Catholics think about the growth of Hispanics toward dominance in the church.
“We need to shift the language in the church,” Ospino said. “We can’t simply treat Hispanics as a subgroup of the church anymore. In many parts of the country, to speak about Hispanic Catholics is to speak about the majority of the church.”
To see the survey results, visit the Office of Hispanic Ministry page on the diocesan website, www.jacksondiocese.org, under offices.