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Simpler services lure some Hispanics
| Friday, Jan 12 2007 6:55 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 12 2007 6:59 PM
Forget transubstantiation and the Seven Sacraments. Emotional altar calls and direct experience of God are much more fun.
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And edifying.
Hispanics traditionally have been of the Catholic faith. But that's beginning to change as more American Hispanics let out their sacred sails to join Pentecostal and charismatic churches.
David Stepp, senior pastor at the evangelical Bakersfield Hispanic Church, said that 95 percent of his 1,700 weekly parishioners are former Catholics.
In contrast to the Catholic Church, Stepp said, evangelical churches offer a personal relationship with Christ. "We don't offer a litany of saints, Mariology and the Seven Sacraments. People are confused by all that," he said.
Though membership in the Catholic Church has grown slightly in recent years, among Hispanics, membership has decreased 13 percent since 1990, according to the Center for Applied Research at Georgetown University.
Some churches have canceled Spanish services due to lack of interest. A representative of Our Lady of Lourdes in California City said the church's Spanish service was dropped because there were "not enough people for it."
"You need the Holy Spirit to come in your heart to fill that emptiness, and the Catholic Church didn't fulfill that for me," said Lorena Avendano, who now attends Bakersfield Hispanic Church.
Maria Pena of Bakersfield left Catholicism because of its rites and rituals. "It's nothing but kneel down, get back up," Pena said. "Same Scripture over and over."
Church leaders say the shortage of bilingual priests may be contributing to Hispanics' dissatisfaction.
The Rev. John Schmoll of St. Augustine in Lamont said that Hispanics typically leave because evangelical churches simplify theology more than the Catholic Church does.
"The church teaches faith and reason," Schmoll said. "It's not all black and white. There is a lot of gray."
Even so, Hispanics continue to profess the faith in large numbers. According to the U.S. Census, 37 percent of the 67 million people in the Catholic Church in America are Hispanic.
Moreover, priests of mostly Hispanic churches say a number of Protestant Hispanics have joined in recent years. A cross-pollination, rather than a one-way exodus, may be closer to the truth.
At St. Augustine, weekly attendance has remained at nearly 2,000 over the last 10 years, Schmoll said.
At St. Joseph on Baker Street, attendance has almost doubled over four years, from 2,200 families to 4,000, St. Joseph parish manager John Kauffman said. St. Joseph added a third Spanish Mass six months ago.
"Any decrease in Hispanics in the Catholic Church is not reflected at St. Joseph," Kauffman said.
Stepp, of the Bakersfield Hispanic Church, said that the evangelical and Catholic faiths are not battling to win souls from each other.
"Some Hispanics are radical after they leave the Catholic Church and go against it," Stepp said. "Some say they have left darkness for light.
"But I don't feel that way," he said. "That's not right. We have the same God, the same Jesus."