Making a Tri-Lingual Parish Work

The new pastor at St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Steven O'Hala, was (and still is) a professor at a seminary before being assigned to this parish as its priest. As I understand it, this is his first job at a parish. He is doing a conscientious job and undertook a parish survey to assess the needs and moods of the congregation. The results shed light on the difficulties of trying to build a parish when there are so many cultural and linguistic differences.

One major issue is holiday masses on Christmas, Easter and Maundy Thursday. It is logistically impossible to schedule separate masses for each language group in one church. There can only be one midnight mass on Christmas Eve. As a result, holy day masses are often tri-lingual, a solution that satisfies virtually no one. For me as an English speaker, this means that Christmas mass, whose music and liturgy I love, loses two-thirds of its meaning, because it is conducted in languages I don't understand. I have resolved this problem for myself by attending these services at another church. No doubt other church members are quietly doing the same thing.

The language difficulty is a good argument for a return to the Latin mass. Of course, no one understands it any more, if they ever did, but that problem could be solved through proper education.

Mass scheduling is the visible tip of what seems to be a much larger iceberg. One of the major differences between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholics place a higher value on community. A language barrier and its attendant divisions are more painful to faithful Catholics than it would be to Protestants. Because I was raised Protestant, I didn't notice any sense of division at all and, on an emotional level, have a hard time understanding the strong reactions many people have to this issue. Cradle Catholics, on the other hand, are very aware of this issue. Those people most active in the church are the ones most distressed by it.

Other concerns include an increase in vandalism and thefts of small items from the parish kitchen that are blamed on some members of the Haitian community.  I hasten to add that I have taught hundreds of Haitian students and have found most to be scrupulously honest.

Most distressing to me was Father O'Hala's statement that some of the comments on the survey were so hostile they had to be "sanitized." O'Hala expressed shock that these unloving remarks would be made in a Christian community. This people in the church are generally accepting of cultural differences and willing to give money to help people of different races. If this church has problems with multiculturalism, there is even less hope for te rest of America, which may not share the general ethos of love of neighbor and the view of charity as an ethical requirement.

As an aside, the pastoral team we have now is the best it has been since Father Gabriel Vigues left. He went to the church that used to be pastored by the priest who was photographed snuggling on the beach with a woman. After him, we had an administrator who was, unbeknownst to us, going through the laicization process. His loss of interest in the priesthood showed in his attitude and we had a strained relationship. Now however, the church has the leadership it should have. In spite of the difficulties, this church is a much better place than it was and will continue to improve under Father O'Hala and Father Bellonce.