H
Hesychios
Guest
There is that, to be sure. It is the sin called phyletism, and must be guarded against.
Truthfully, I have seen the same problem elsewhere.
In Chicago Archdiocese there were, at times, conflicts between ethnic groups which had to use the same parishes. One or the other could not wait for the chance to establish a parish of it’s own. That pattern repeated for 150 years around Chicago, and was part of the impetus for growth.
We had, a few years ago, a case where the Archbishop decided to consolidate two parishes into one. The one was an historic and very beautifully restored church originally founded for Irish, then became Italian and was finally predominantly African-American (unfortunately, there were too few parishioners to keep up the building). The other was a Mexican-American parish, actually the ‘mother’ parish of many others in the city, and it had plenty of parishioners that the bishop thought should move into the other one down the street. It required some pastoral sensitivity, but I do not doubt that both ethnic groups were experiencing ‘phyletism’, while the Cardinal was just applying ‘good’ business sense, probably assuming all Christians are the same in the eyes of God and they should not object. Emotions ran very high, the dispute hit the media and eventually the Archbishop relented.
This kind of thing was partly what caused problems like the schism of the PNCC. Having a common bishop with the other ethnic groups did not prevent abuse of the community by the bishops, nor intolerance on the part of the faithful.
Because of that tragic schism there seems to be an informal formula in place in Chicago, there is always a Polish Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese.
Long ago in the local parish around here, I can remember an Asian girl at Mass, she looked Chinese to me. She must have felt completely out of place because she looked it. She fumbled trying to get past some inconsiderate people who would not slide down the pew to make room for her and then she seemed to forget where she sat after communion. I wanted to help her but she was a few pews away (and I was stuck in the middle of my pew). Before I knew it she was running out the door!..I felt so bad for her. Yes, I was probably staring at her although I didn’t realize it at the time, I could be one of many worshipers whose eyes on her made her feel uncomfortable. Little did I know that years later I would run into that same situation from time to time.
More recently, some Cistercian priests from Poland took up residence in a suburb near here. I wanted to go for a Mass, but my dear old priest friend, Father G (who also happened to be Polish, and spoke the language well) advised me not too, because they were operating outside of the bishops permission! In his opinion they were trading on the ethnic connection to support their community, attracting people from the surrounding parishes.
Nevertheless, the place has drawn new immigrant Poles like a magnet, and they have erected an awesome edifice of a church building on their property. I called, the priest answered the phone in Polish. I asked for the Mass times in English and he said, “you realize that this is a Polish church, don’t you?” I said “yes”, but I was surprised by this brusque response. Eventually, a few years ago, I was driving by on a Sunday morning and saw everyone filing in so I pulled into the lot too (I was looking for a more reverent Mass at the time), and even though the place was brand new and big, it was standing room only!
I am of Polish descent myself (but don’t speak the language) and I felt like a complete outsider, I am a suburban whitebread American in every way but my name. What made it worse was the way I felt so many mutely stared at me. You can chalk it up to my imagination of course (that could be the case), but it’s that kind of misapprehension that contributes to the problem of different sorts of people with different languages going to Mass together.
Among the Eastern Catholics in the USA, the problems between the UGCC and the Ruthenian Greek Catholic church are legendary. The two groups were being forced together and they knew it. From the outset one group didn’t like the fact that the sole bishop was from the other group. Rome tried to have one hierarchy for both nationalities in the United States, but actually had to give up on that idea.
(More recently there were problems in the Czech Republic of a similar nature. Mainly between the Ukrainian immigrants and the native Czechs, there were a few hi-jinks being pulled that caught peoples attention on the net.)
In the Eastern Churches that kind of problem can seem more acute, because canonically we are supposed to only have one Divine Liturgy, we are compelled to show up together as one community. There should theoretically not be a 9:00AM Amharic liturgy and an 11:00AM Swahili liturgy, so there is a tendency to bud off new parishes at an accelerated rate to accommodate the growing needs of the community.
This nationalism does happen in Orthodoxy, I will say, but it is in no way happening only there. It is part of the human condition since the Tower of Babel. It is always wrong. We know it’s wrong, and we challenge it, our bishops and Patriarchs preach against it. We can do better.
The church should always be welcoming and warm to newcomers of whatever background. It’s not just my church, and it’s not just your church…it is our church. We are the Body of Christ.
