C
Contarini
Guest
Hispanics are, in many cases, “really into” being recruited. Many immigrants aren’t going to Mass anyway. Catholics often blame nefarious outsiders for things that are really their own fault.Yeoman ,your right, the evangelicals are really into recuiting hispanics.
Admittedly, my perspective is skewed by the fact that the two denominations I’ve had the most dealings with in the past 10 years or so have been the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church. Neither of these are aggressive proselytizers, and neither of these go around telling people that Catholics aren’t Christians or nonsense like that. Both disclaim any desire to “sheep-steal.” When I have encountered Spanish-speaking ministries of these two ecclesiastical organizations, I have expressed serious concerns, and have consistently been told that the purpose is to minister to people who aren’t going to church anyway.
I don’t dispute that many of the more aggressive evangelical groups do actively proselytize and in some cases do so because they think even devout Catholics aren’t likely to be “real” Christians. But even those churches that don’t find themselves in a position where, if they want to reach out to their neighbors with the love of Christ and proclaim the Gospel to those who have no active connection with any Church, many of the people who seem to have most need of such a ministry are Spanish-speaking.
In short, there are two issues with regard to proselytization. One is active sheep-stealing in which members of one church go around trying to persuade committed members of another to change their allegiance. I should note that many Catholics on this forum regard this behavior as praiseworthy when they do it but contemptible when others do it to them. The other issue concerns people who are either disgruntled with or simply disconnected from the church of their ancestors. Obviously there’s a spectrum–there’s a difference between wooing a divorced Catholic with the promise of laxer standards (though even there the initiative usually comes from the Catholic, not the Episcopal Church) and preaching the Gospel to unchurched and unbaptized people whose grandparents were Catholic or Orthodox, and most of the activity I’m thinking of comes somewhere in between.
One final factor: many Hispanics feel very disconnected to the Anglo (or perhaps Irish)-dominated church in North America. I know a Hispanic Pentecostal who claims that in many ways Latin American folk religion has more in common with Pentecostalism than with the forms of Catholicism dominant north of the border. I’m not necessarily defending this opinion, just passing it along.
Edwin
