Audio only:
Deacon Charlie Echeverry from the Living the Call podcast joins us for a discussion of the opportunities available to better serve the Latino Catholic community. He explains how an apostolate such as ours — and maybe yours — can help bring the Church together in the US and make things less difficult for Catholic families in the future.
Cy Kellett:
You know what’s weird in the American church? It’s getting more Latino while Latinos are getting less Catholic. Deacon Charlie Echeverry from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And thanks for being with us. Here at Catholic Answers, we’ve had the benefit of an association with Deacon Charlie Echeverry from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for quite some time.
Cy Kellett:
He’s been a member of our board for quite some time. And he has many insights into the needs of the Latino community, and within the church and outside of the church here in the United States. And he’s been very, very helpful to us. We think he can be helpful to lots of people. His ideas can certainly be helpful as we consider our future as a Catholic church here in the United States.
Cy Kellett:
And on a kind of self-serving note, as we consider our future as an apostolate of the Catholic Church here at Catholic Answers and other apostolates doing their work, we thought it’d be helpful to talk to Deacon Charlie and hear what he has to say about integrating the church, all of us together, integrating that Anglo and Latino aspects of the church to have a healthier Catholic Church and maybe one that won’t lose quite so many members in the coming decades. Here’s what Deacon Charlie had to say.
Cy Kellett:
Deacon Charlie Echeverry, thanks for being with us.
Charlie Echeverry:
Great to be here, Cy. Thank you very much for the invitation.
Cy Kellett:
You frightened me recently. I watched your OSV Talk on Hispanic Catholics.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And you said it’s a powder keg. And then you defended that position. I mean, you made clear what’s going on with Hispanic Catholics in the United States. So, here we have one of the statistics you gave, 60 of all U.S. Catholics are Hispanic.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
So if that’s a country, that’s Italy.
Charlie Echeverry:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
And really in the coming decades, a question about just how Catholic and what kind of Catholic community that will be, that’s what you are getting at.
Charlie Echeverry:
For sure. And that 60 million would equate to about the 14th largest economy if you’re going to look at it in those terms, and the second largest country that’s Spanish-speaking if you were to look at it in those terms, next to Mexico. So, it’s a significant population. And yeah, look, the idea of the powder keg … I mean, some portion of it is just to get people’s attention maybe, but to really articulate the fact that there’s both an opportunity and a risk in the development, evangelization and support of this community.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Well, I mean, living here in Southern California, I’ve grown up with the Church that has two calendars. It’s like the Spanish-speaking calendar and the English-speaking calendar, Spanish-speaking masses, English-speaking masses. Sometimes these communities pass each other as one’s coming out of the church and the other’s coming into the church. Is this a problem?
Charlie Echeverry:
It is. And I think it’s one of the sad byproducts of something that is objectively a good thing which is to try to minister and provide liturgies for a community in their native tongue. But one of the unfortunate byproducts of that is the fact that you have this dynamic oftentimes of two churches in one parish. And as I noted in that particular talk that you’re referencing, the idea of outside of the fact of bumping into people in the parking lot, there’s really not a lot of integration that happens.
Charlie Echeverry:
And I think that that tends to create like a siloed experience as a Catholic that if we look at it as Catholics is not an ideal setting. The whole idea of us being in community with one another especially in a parish context should be the order of the day, but nevertheless, it does create that experience. And it also leads to this other dynamic which if you consider the younger generations that are being born into this dynamic, this idea which, for lack of better terminology, I called kind of spiritual and liturgical orphancy because you got people who are kind of in limbo between the two worlds.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So you have a kind of silo, Spanish silo, English silo or Hispanic or Anglo, however you want to put it.
Charlie Echeverry:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
Because I want to be clear about this. Is it always a language difference that leads the Hispanic person to go to Spanish Mass? Do you see what I’m saying? Well, they don’t speak English. That’s why they go to the Spanish mass. Or are there other reasons why you—
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. It’s super great question because the answer is no. It’s not just comprehension. And we’ve actually studied this. I have a firm that does some of this work. And what we found with respect to the Spanish liturgy is it has a high affinity among all the different types of Latinos who are in the US.
Charlie Echeverry:
So whether you’re young, you’re old, middle age, it doesn’t matter. You have an affinity to the Spanish language Mass for a lot of reasons. Some of which because I only understand one language. In other cases, because it refers me nostalgically to the way that I was brought up. Or even more simply, people don’t know the prayers in English even though they might not even speak Spanish. So there’s a language component. And there’s also a cultural component. That’s the reason that draws people to …
Cy Kellett:
You mean like the Our Father.
Charlie Echeverry:
The Our Father.
Cy Kellett:
You might know the Our Father in Spanish because that’s how it was taught to you as a child.
Charlie Echeverry:
Absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
Even though you don’t speak Spanish.
Charlie Echeverry:
Even though you don’t speak Spanish.
Cy Kellett:
How interesting, yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
I mean, it’s crazy. I have a buddy of mine who is a youth minister up in Orange County. And he told me that when he does youth retreats, the youth retreats are almost 100% Latino young people. And the entire retreat is in English. But when it comes to praying and singing, he does that part in Spanish. And to me, I was like, “Wow, that’s genius in a way.” It’s so simple but it’s genius in a way to communicate with them in a way that’s really relevant and mean something to them, but actually delivering the material to them in the language that they use for their friends.
Cy Kellett:
So, two things then. We want to consider how to break down the silos because language is a very large barrier in the United States. In many places, like if you’re in Quebec, if you speak French or you speak English, it doesn’t matter. They’re going to speak to you. But we’re not really that way in the United States. I mean, we almost have a joke about being … I never learned a foreign language because I’m an American. They should all speak American.
Charlie Echeverry:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
And so, that is a big barrier in the United States. So, give me some ideas on breaking down the silos and curing the sense of orphanhood that I don’t really fit at the English mass, I don’t really fit at the Spanish mass.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. And that insight in particular came to me by way of a conversation I had with an altar server in the sacristy, just getting ready for mass and all the altar servers that are part of my parish are young Latinos. I serve at both masses, English and Spanish because I’m bilingual and bicultural. And I asked one of these young guys like, “Hey, why don’t you come to the earlier mass because there’s not a lot of people there at the English mass?” I mean, that’s the sad reality in our parish which is emblematic of other parishes.
Cy Kellett:
Many Southern California parishes.
Charlie Echeverry:
Many Southern California parishes. And even other parishes in other parts of the country that the English masses tend to be a bit older, tend to be a little bit less attended especially in areas that have this higher population of Latino. And so I said, “Why don’t you come to the 9:00 mass?” And he was like, “I just don’t see myself there.” And even though this young man that I was talking to barely spoke any Spanish, but what he was referencing was this idea of feeling sort of out of place, of not actually feeling a sense of connection with that liturgical and parochial experience.
Charlie Echeverry:
And that’s when it hit me. That’s like, “Wow, this is going to be a problem.” It’s already a problem, but it’s going to be an even bigger problem as we go down the path. Now, look, some of the gap closers to me are pretty simple. One of them is just accompanying people and getting to know them. Pope Francis, famously, the line gets quoted from him more often than not is about smelling like your sheep.
Charlie Echeverry:
Well, the reality of it is is we’re growing up, we’re coming up in a country as Catholics right now that 42% of the church is Latino and 65% of the young church is Latino. And so, it stands to reason to me that you should get steeped in that in one way or another, that goes a long way just by itself. And so, I give as an example, people who don’t speak Spanish or who are Anglo, just in general, go to a Spanish liturgy, go to Spanish mass.
Charlie Echeverry:
It still counts for your Sunday obligation. You’re not going to get excommunicated by going, but it will expose you to people who live in your own community right there who park the car in the mass before you and you see in the parking lot, but you get a chance to actually interact with them, be steep with them. And the statistics on this, 86% according to the census of Latinos in the US speak English. They’re bilingual on some level.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, it’s not like you’re not able to communicate in a way, but just simple things like that go a long way for the average person engaging.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay. So, I’ll give you a hard one here.
Charlie Echeverry:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
Because it seems to me so easy to go to the Spanish mass and then just learn to say, “Te alabamos, Senor,” and then everybody will be like, “What [crosstalk 00:09:13] say?”
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. I like that.
Cy Kellett:
But I think there’s a lot of people who don’t want to go to Spanish mass.
Charlie Echeverry:
Of course, yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And I hate to say that about our Catholic community, but they don’t want to associate with Mexicans or with this Hispanic population or whatever.
Charlie Echeverry:
Sure. Or there’s more even pedestrian reasons like, “I like my pew at the 5:30.” So, yeah, that’s the reality. And look, the solution to this if there is a solution is a very multifaceted solution. I bring up the idea of going to a Spanish mass only as a way to solve for that part about accompaniment. In other words, if I’m not ever going to run into these folks another way, that might be a way to do it.
Charlie Echeverry:
But the solutions are across a whole host of different things. Liturgically, interestingly, just to touch on that, Archbishop Cordileone very recently commissioned a mass called the mass of the Americas.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, Frank LaRocca.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s right, Frank LaRocca who’s going to be on my show actually next week.
Cy Kellett:
He’s great. I have to talk to him one time.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. He’s a super, super interesting guy. But anyway, so Archbishop Cordileone commissioned this beautiful liturgy called the Mass of the Americas that had two stated purposes. And number one of those was to actually be part of bridging the gap between the Anglo and the Latino community. Now, that mass has mass settings in English music and Spanish. It has a variety of different things, but it’s this beautiful kind of amalgam of these cultures.
Charlie Echeverry:
And so, that could be another way of closing the gap. There’s a variety of different ways to do it. But I just think the very first step is the recognition that we’re in a time and place for a reason. So, I’m definitely not suggesting that people should just get used to this Spanish mass. In fact, I actually think that the Spanish mass in a way has a way of driving a sense of cultural Catholicism for second and third and fourth generation Catholics who only …
Cy Kellett:
Right. It’s not a connection with Jesus or even with the church, it’s that, “This is what my community does so I go to that mass.”
Charlie Echeverry:
I’m telling you, Cy. I do baptisms all the time. And there’s baptisms in English at 11:00 and in Spanish at 1:00 on Saturdays. So I’ll sometimes do both of them. And the parents of the kids who are coming to baptize their kid in the Spanish liturgy … I’m doing air quotes. In the Spanish one, after the liturgy is over and they all gather for pictures, guess what they’re talking to one another in, English.
Charlie Echeverry:
And so I go to him and I say, “Well, why don’t we just do this in Spanish? I’m confused.” They’re like, “Oh, well, that’s just the way we want to … It’s church. Church is in Spanish.”
Cy Kellett:
Church is in Spanish, how interesting, wow.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, there’s a lot of nuance in this. It’s actually really fascinating to me.
Cy Kellett:
Right. One time, I’m in a parish and the … I don’t know who the pastor was. But they had a thing on this Sunday where the English-speaking community cooked for the Spanish-speaking community after mass. And then after the English mass, the Spanish-speaking community had food for the English-speaking community. I thought that was very clever.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That was really like, “Do something for each other,” instead of that like, “I don’t even want to look you in the eyes as I’m leaving the pew that you’re entering.”
Charlie Echeverry:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
That kind of thing.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. That principle, broadly speaking, is this idea of changing your watering holes a little bit. So, we kind of get used to doing the same thing, talking to same folks, going to the same locations and just having a conscious moment of saying, “Hey, there might be this opportunity to sort of integrate, this opportunity to share an experience around food, around music, around a church experience that maybe the Anglo community isn’t as familiar with.”
Charlie Echeverry:
For example, not that we’re not familiar with Our Lady, of course, we’re all familiar with Our Lady. But the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12 is like a monster thing for the Latino community. And there’s these great processions and all this other stuff. But for the most part, at least in my experience, a lot of the Anglo community doesn’t necessarily participate in those. Well, that’s part of your patrimony, too. Our Lady of Guadalupe is …
Cy Kellett:
She’s our patroness.
Charlie Echeverry:
… is the patroness of the Americas. And so, there’s things like that. Or during Christmastime, Posadas which is the recreation of Mary and Joseph going to the inn and walking and there’s all this like we knock on doors and see if we’ll get let in. That’s a beautiful tradition a lot of parishes have. And there’s nothing that says that the rest of the community can participate in those as well.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, I think it definitely goes both ways. But it’s sort of looking for those points of connection I think that are interesting to at least consider.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But the thing is so many of the ethnic groups that came to the United States like say the Italians and the Irish … I love that movie Brooklyn. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but it’s about like in the 1940s, Irish and Italians mixing in a parish.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s the recent one, Mother of Brooklyn or whatever it was?
Cy Kellett:
No, it’s been a while. It’s maybe 10 or 15 years old.
Charlie Echeverry:
Okay.
Cy Kellett:
And at my age, 10 or 15 means probably 30. I always think, “Oh, yeah, that was 10 years ago.
Charlie Echeverry:
My wife reminded me the other day, it’s like, “You know, 20 years ago wasn’t the ’80s.” I was like, “Yeah. Okay.”
Cy Kellett:
But there was a … At a certain generation, everybody spoke English.
Charlie Echeverry:
Correct.
Cy Kellett:
Are you saying that among the Hispanic community, that’s also the case now that they’re speaking English?
Charlie Echeverry:
Yes, it is. They already do.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not as big a problem as you think it is.
Charlie Echeverry:
It isn’t. But the question of immigration is a really interesting one because there are major differences between the Hispanic call it immigration journey and previous waves of immigration like the Polish and Irish in these communities. There’s a number of differences. One of them is the size, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yes. You talked about this in the … I was amazed at what you said.
Charlie Echeverry:
I was amazed by that. And I hadn’t actually looked up the stat. But if you take basically all the waves of Ellis Island immigration over the highest point over a half a century, 50 years of immigration through Ellis Island and you take that number of immigrants from all these different countries, it’s not even 20% of the Latino population in the US right now. So, the size is very different.
Charlie Echeverry:
The other aspects are the reality of being in 2021 which is we got a lot better technology that enables us to stay connected to these cultures of origin.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Charlie Echeverry:
If I was getting on a ship from wherever, Poland or something, it was …
Cy Kellett:
That’s that.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s it. You’re kind of cutting it off. And maybe there’s some local Polish paper in Queens, wherever I land. But the reality of it is is there’s not really that point of connection. So there’s more technology. There’s more media. And there’s easier travel. The combination of those three things plus the fact that it’s a much bigger community means that this idea of acculturation or assimilate … We used to be called assimilation, which happened with previous waves.
Charlie Echeverry:
I mean, it happened with your family. It’s happened with everybody. But that is, A, prolonged. It takes a lot longer. And it’s more about layering in American culture. And you don’t forget the original one. So, it is a little bit of a different dynamic where Latinos are taking on more of this stuff, but they’re not losing what they came with as fast as maybe previous waves of immigration did.
Cy Kellett:
But then, there’s the immigration thing, too, where immigration is a political hot potato in the United States. And then which of my identities am I going to act out of, my Catholic identity or my maybe somewhat anti-immigrant, not even anti-immigrant so much as anti-Hispanic immigrant American tendency.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. It’s such an interesting point. I just had Martha Hennessy who’s Dorothy Day’s granddaughter on my show. And in preparation for that episode, I did a ton of research on Dorothy Day. I knew about Dorothy Day, but I never actually had dive a lot into her work. And I read her memoir, Union Square to Rome, and a bunch of other things.
Charlie Echeverry:
And it really reminded me of this idea that we have a tendency to do more now than ever is of kind of framing our Catholicism in or through a political lens on someone else. My line is always I try not to look left or right, I look up. So that’s my little go-to line.
Charlie Echeverry:
But the immigration issue especially as it relates to questions of the faith and our solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout the world, we’re in like a weird place right now where that’s been really politicized. And from a Catholic context, I think it’s led folks to maybe on either side doing things that, in a true sense or not, are not truly Catholic.
Charlie Echeverry:
And what I mean by that is the church’s teaching on immigration is pretty clear. And it’s number one is people have a right of fundamental right given to them by God to seek what’s best for them and their families even if that means going somewhere else. That’s one. Number two is countries have a right to actually defend and protect their borders and protect the safety of their citizens. And then thirdly, that protection of their citizenship should be done compassionately.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, that is a Catholic understanding of what immigration is. Sadly right now, there’s so much volume on either side of this. Kind of like the border is open and that’s terrible. And it is, it shouldn’t be open if that’s truly the case. But then on the other side like, “Well, immigrants are taking our jobs and immigrants are bringing crime.” And I think both of those polls are a politicization of a true Catholic vision of what immigration should be.
Charlie Echeverry:
We should support our brothers and sisters seeking a better life. We should protect our borders and protect the safety of our citizens and take real steps to do that. And those steps should be done in a compassionate way. I think if we can do that and focus on that, we can take a little bit of the temperature down in terms of this conversation because it is very polarizing. And I’ve definitely experienced that more so in the last few years than ever before in my life.
Cy Kellett:
But it does affect the parish in that like when that is happening at my parish.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
The Spanish mass folks are coming in as the English … I often have the sense of a kind of almost defensiveness on the part of especially people who are clearly immigrants to the United States, that I don’t actually know how these Anglos feel about me. Like if you wave and say hi and say, “Oh, let me get out of your way,” there’s a sense of, yeah, I’m not so sure maybe because lots and lots and lots of other experiences. What do you think of that?
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. Well, I think it happens on both sides, too. I think that maybe the … And certainly, the more recent immigrants might look, I don’t know, suspiciously might not be the right word but might be a little bit tentative of the experience of interacting with the other community because maybe there’s concerns about a variety of things. I think a lot of that is again at least the help part of solving that is this idea of accompaniment and this idea of really getting steeped in understanding one another.
Charlie Echeverry:
And that applies also for the Latino community. They don’t get a pass on it. The Latino community tends to. And again, this is big tendencies. These are not specific things, but tends to be more collectivistic from a cultural standpoint.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
It tends to be like Catholics are about solidarity and subsidiarity. That’s what makes us Catholic. The bias on the Latino community is set more to solidarity than subsidiarity. I would say in the Anglo community, the bias is set more to subsidiarity than solidarity. Now, if we’re being Catholic, we’re living both of those. But it’s where the speedometer is on those.
Cy Kellett:
Right. That North American individualism at least from … The only real Hispanic culture I know very well is Mexican family and town and community.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. And so, that can be a point of potential friction where it’s like, “Hey, I’m coming in. I’ve got my whole family in tow.” There’s 10 people who got out of a minivan. Here, I’m walking. And walking out is this impeccably dressed couple and getting into their Tesla or whatever. There’s some of that that happens there but I think it’s incumbent on both communities. I think the Latino community also has to do a better job of trying to integrate and bring into their community, and also learn more about other Catholic communities.
Charlie Echeverry:
This is one of my kind of pet homily things that I bring up in a lot of homilies is the richness of the Catholic traditions that exist liturgically like the Eastern Rites. And I brought this up in a Spanish homily recently. And it was like, “What?”
Cy Kellett:
There’s other rites?
Charlie Echeverry:
There’s other rites. And that happens to some degree in the Anglo community as well. But it was more pronounced here. It was like, “Wait a minute, there’s another kind of Catholicism. Is the Pope okay with that?”
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Does the Pope know about this thing?
Charlie Echeverry:
“Does the Pope know?” And so, Latino culture can also itself be rather insular about certain things. So, I think it takes effort on both sides. And we have to be able to do that. Go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
I was going to give you some of your own words here. But …
Charlie Echeverry:
Oh, boy.
Cy Kellett:
No. You’ve mentioned some of them already. You talked … There’s basically four guides that you’ve given of ways that we can break through this. Shift your watering holes. And that’s partly when you say, “Go to Spanish mass.” That’s what you mean. Shift your watering holes.
Charlie Echeverry:
And it also means … It depends on whoever it applies to. So, I talk a lot to people in ministry, people who run apostolates like Catholic Answers, etcetera. And when you talk to people, they have a way of operating whether where they hire from, who they look to, the schools that they’re associated with, all that stuff.
Charlie Echeverry:
And I think that take into consideration other watering holes as part of what you’re currently doing is part of the solution. Because in looking at other watering holes, you may come across other people, maybe specifically in this case Latino who can be part of whatever you’re doing, apostolate ministry or whatever. But represent that community in a way that can give authenticity to what you’re doing.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, the question of like, “Wow, this is hard. I got to now learn Spanish. We got to translate everything. Now, we got to do slideshow in Spanish.” It’s a reasonable concern, but it’s also overstating it. It’s really not about this hard job that needs to be done. It’s about where are the places that I’m going to look for employees, partnerships, vendors, all of these things, and making an intentional effort to bury those watering holes. If we do that, that’s part of this idea.
Cy Kellett:
Wonderful. Yeah. Okay. So, number two, voiceover language. What does that mean?
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. That’s a bit more nuanced one. But it addresses this idea that there’s a bit of a kneejerk thought on the best way to address Latino communities is to translate everything. And again, noble, good effort. I understand it. It’s not that it’s illogical. It makes a lot of sense. But the reality of it is is that language is table stakes. It really is because … And especially for younger people.
Charlie Echeverry:
I mean, I’m giving you the example of the second, third generation. I mean, even myself, I’m fully fluent in Spanish, but the language of my friendships for the most part are English. That’s just how I grew up. We’re talking in English. And so, the idea of actually finding people, connecting with people and recognizing that it’s not just about in language but in culture is what I mean by that statement. The idea that you can speak authentically in a Latino voice which I’m doing now, but I’m speaking in English.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Charlie Echeverry:
And so, putting an emphasis on that. And that means … One of the examples I make and I don’t know if you know him but Father Agustino Torres who’s one of the Franciscan friars of the renewal in New York. And this guy’s a dynamo. I mean, he was born in South Texas, lives in Brooklyn, Mexican ancestry, fully bilingual, bicultural.
Charlie Echeverry:
But if you watch this priest’s connection with a group of young people who happen to be Latino, even though the entire thing is an English, it’s off the charts. I mean, the way that he engages with them because he knows how they view the world.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, it’s not in Spanish. He’s doing all this in English. But the way he’s doing it is in this authentic Latino voice. And that’s what I mean. So, it’s recognizing that it’s not just language but it’s also culture that’s a part of this. And we can all become more adept at the culture even if we never learn the other language. And I think that’s what I mean by that.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Even as you’re saying that because we’re going to get to the other two, but how might that apply? And this is a totally self-serving question. How might that apply to an apostolate like Catholic Answers which is a media apostolate? We don’t speak Spanish by and large, but you’re saying, “Well, language is not as important as voice.” Just give me an insight in how we might answer the questions of a young person who’s coming from that bilingual, bicultural background.
Charlie Echeverry:
Well, let me give you a couple. These are just some examples. So, one might be thinking of bicultural apologists, bilingual, bicultural apologists. They could be talking about everything. I mean, the same stuff other apologists talk. But the way that they’re going to approach their descriptions might be more oriented to connecting with this particular audience.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Charlie Echeverry:
Here’s another example. And I had a recent conversation with a pretty significant Catholic publisher recently about this. And they told me that their Hispanic effort had failed because they translated this book and it didn’t sell. And then I asked the question, I was like, “Well, what book was it?” And it was like The Theological Premises of Dietrich Bonhoeffer or something like that. I was like, “Well …
Cy Kellett:
That didn’t sell, really?
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. I was like, “Well …
Cy Kellett:
How did it do in English?
Charlie Echeverry:
I was like … Well, that’s another question. But I was like, “Well, what made you think in particular that this particular subject matter was something that would interest a Latino community, A? B, how did you get the word out about this? And what you find is if you ask enough of these questions, it’s like, “Well, there wasn’t really much done behind it.”
Charlie Echeverry:
So, maybe a figure like, I don’t know, Bishop Oscar Romero or somebody else, you could still talk about theology or you could still talk about whatever. But you’re featuring a voice, a person, a personality, a culture that might resonate more with that given population. The importance of particular saints in the calendar, the importance of particular cultural moments throughout the Catholic year that you can talk about in English, but you’re actually making a point to address them because you know that they’re culturally very relevant to that particular population.
Charlie Echeverry:
So there’s like 1001 small ways to do it, but that’s just an idea.
Cy Kellett:
Is some of it in the design or the art that is presented in churches themselves?
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. I think that’s also part of it. I mean, there’s some particularly strong devotions and I call it a sort of aesthetic milieu that tends to permeate a lot of these things. Just an example from my own life is our liturgies are beautiful in my parish. I’m blessed to be able to participate. Extraordinarily beautiful orthodox liturgies with incredible preaching, unless I’m preaching in which case it’s a hit-or-miss thing.
Cy Kellett:
I got to visit your parish. There’s not many parishes you can say those things about.
Charlie Echeverry:
Shout out to St. Gerard Majella in Los Angeles, a great, great parish, a Redemptorist parish. It’s actually a religious parish now. It just became religious from a diocesan one. But anyway … Now, I forgot where I was going because this happens all the time.
Cy Kellett:
Well, I was asking you about architecture and art …
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. So, the example there is the 9:00 mass is beautiful, solemn. This is the English one, beautiful, solemn, great music. We got chant. We got Latin. We got Greek, awesome. Spanish mass comes and you’ve got guitar and mandolin players up in the choir loft. You’ve got the grupo de oracion which is the prayer group that’s one of the ministries inside the church. And they bring their big standards in procession. It’s folkloric and it’s colorful and it’s all these different things.
Charlie Echeverry:
And so yes, it is different. And at the same time, I wonder … This is why I love the Mass of the Americas so much is because it kind of was an ode to this dynamic. But I wonder, well, could we have the same music? Could we have the same estandartes which is what they’re called, these big, beautiful banners that come in procession with the saints on them? Could we have all of that in English?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
That, we haven’t done yet. Not us, I’m talking about anybody hasn’t done yet.
Cy Kellett:
But often in a Southern California parish, you’ll see a physical difference between the Spanish mass and the English mass in very small things. Like often at the English-speaking mass, you have the ushers.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And they’re just ushers. They’re dressed like everybody else. At the Spanish speaking-mass, they’ll wear a vest that’s the liturgical color. If it’s Lent, they’re wearing the purple vests. If it’s ordinary time, the green vest. And it’s very small but I think … I mean, from my perspective, I think, “Well, the Spanish speakers are doing it better.”
Charlie Echeverry:
There is, I mean, a sense of regalia maybe that’s a little bit more prominent. I know that our ushers, we recently gave them these little Jerusalem cross pins to wear and it was like you’d given them the Nobel Prize or something. I mean, they were so, the Latino ushers in particular, so just blown away by the idea of now wearing this.
Charlie Echeverry:
If you’re part of a ministry, you’re more apt to wear a metal, the colors of your ministry. There’s a lot of colorful aspects of it. So yeah, so there is a different aesthetic in some cases. But it’s something that again is part of the patrimony of us as Catholics. It’s not something that’s just reserved in these little pockets of the world.
Cy Kellett:
I think a lot of it got ruined in North America because we had this kind of vicious like getting rid of statues and getting rid of paintings and getting rid of garments and we got so minimalist.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That I actually think if you had gone to an Italian parish in the 1920s, the colors and all of that would have been much better than at an English-speaking mass today. But even as you walk into a church, that minimalism, not so many statues, not so many stained glass, not so much ornate, to me if I come from Mexico to these American …
Charlie Echeverry:
It looks stark [inaudible 00:31:15], “Where am I?”
Cy Kellett:
I’m in a Protestant church actually is where I am.
Charlie Echeverry:
Let me check the sign outside.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, like maybe … I actually think maybe that could be something that parishes could … It would be opening up something that’s maybe a little more familiar for the Hispanic.
Charlie Echeverry:
For sure.
Cy Kellett:
But it would be really good for us Anglos, too, to get over our minimalism.
Charlie Echeverry:
And I can affirm that specifically in the case of our parish community. One of the little nooks that we’ve created, sort of like side chapels that we have has been dedicated to the Mexican martyrs during the Cristiada situation in Mexico. And so you’ve got Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio and all the different martyrs there. But that side altar is viewed by everybody, Filipino, Anglo, whatever.
Charlie Echeverry:
And I know from personal commentary I’ve gotten from parishioners like, “I had no idea the story was even there.” It’s like, “Well, yeah.” And that’s your story. That’s the thing is like, “That’s your story.” I think it also ties into a broader context, Cy, which is … And this I got directly, totally lifted it from Archbishop Gomez who’s my bishop and also kind of like the Nation’s Bishop right now to the extent that he’s a president of the USCCB.
Charlie Echeverry:
But he says that the Latino community here in the US can be the spiritual heirs of San Juan Diego. And I confess, I’d never heard of that expression but it really struck me because this idea of Our Lady of Guadalupe being the patroness of the Americas, that Juan Diego was led to the conversion of an entire continent. And that continent includes us even though we haven’t necessarily done as good a job some would argue in America and Canada as perhaps has been done south of the border.
Charlie Echeverry:
But that’s part of our patrimony. That’s part of our story as Catholics. And I think that that’s important for everyone to want on some level to recover, and not be as maybe suspicious or resistant, too.
Cy Kellett:
Well, just the history between the US and Mexico frankly is very fraught history.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah, it is.
Cy Kellett:
I mean, this was Mexico for an awful long time where we’re sitting right now.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s right.
Cy Kellett:
So, it’s a lot to overcome.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
I mean, a couple of hundred years of sometimes we’re friends, sometimes we’re not friends.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah. That’s very true. And I can’t speak to it expertly. I know that Chris Check who runs this apostolate certainly can and others.
Cy Kellett:
But he always takes the sides of the Mexicans. I’m like, “No.” But that’s how … If you look at as a Catholic, a lot of it is anti-Catholicism.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That we tax on Mexico. A lot of it is …
Charlie Echeverry:
For sure.
Cy Kellett:
… this kind of Anglo anti-Catholicism. I want to get your other two points.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah, go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
What does it mean to say, “The inside is like the outside?” What are you talking about?
Charlie Echeverry:
Okay. So, that also applies in this context of all of it relates to accompaniment. But the idea of inside like the outside is we’re all, by God’s providence, being brought up as people in a time and place. That’s basically it. We could have been anyone. We could have been born in Europe in the Middle Ages. We could have been Asian and whatever.
Charlie Echeverry:
There’s a time and place that we’re in right now. And it’s part of God’s salvific plan. Okay. In a way that it won’t be known to us fully until we get to the other side of the veil. And so, recognizing that and recognizing who’s around us, who the church is in our time and place is important. And right now, for reasons, a variety of which are good, a variety of which are neutral, a variety of which are maybe negative, we have the church we have right now which I’ve already described incontrovertibly is increasingly a majority Latino church.
Charlie Echeverry:
So, if that is the people that we’re ministering with, to, etcetera, it seems to me that part of the solution would be to have the inside, meaning whatever that means to you, your ministry, your apostolate, your work life, your business, whatever it is, be like the outside of the church that we’re ministering to, supporting, loving, etcetera. And that means, again, incorporating that perspective, that lived experience in a variety of different ways.
Charlie Echeverry:
I mean, the simplest way might be in terms of people that, I don’t know, you hire into a business. And having that perspective, that lived experience represented in the work that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis, and having that inside of whatever the inside of your particular thing is kind of more resemble the sheep that are on the outside. I mean, because that’s the sheep we have right now.
Charlie Echeverry:
And frankly, a counter to what some people may think, I actually think it’s a very bad thing if the existing trends continued. Because the trends if they continue so mean that we have in the US, and this is just data, we’re going to have a small, almost entirely Latino church. That’s what the trend indicates.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
And that’s not ideal. That’s not what we should have.
Cy Kellett:
That means the loss of many, many families that are Catholic now, the next generation and the next generation.
Charlie Echeverry:
100%.
Cy Kellett:
And that’s all of us. So, you could think of the Anglo Church, the Hispanic church, whatever, but no, all of us are going to suffer.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s right.
Cy Kellett:
A terrible loss.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s right.
Cy Kellett:
That’s the future.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah, that’s the future. And right now sadly, the church is shrinking across the board. And it’s growing in composition made up of Latinos, but Latinos are also the group that’s leading the defections from the church. So it’s this really weird dynamic where I think there’s a lot of leverage and better understand that dynamic, and doing it for the purposes of the mission of the gospel here in the United States.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. I forgot how you put it, but there’s more Hispanics leaving the church and there’s more Hispanics coming into the church.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
At the same time, you’re ruining it and you’re saving it.
Charlie Echeverry:
Exactly. You’re ruining it. Very well put. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it’s a weird thing. It’s one of those data points that you have to look out a long time to study like, “Wow, is this really true?” But the statistic is that every day out of 100 Catholics, more are going to be Latino. And every day out of 100 Latinos, less are going to be Catholic at the same time.
Cy Kellett:
At the same time that these two dynamics are happening.
Charlie Echeverry:
And so to me, I look at things a lot like a business person. I’m going, wow, that seems like a big opportunity to do something about this because at one point, you’ve got all of this growth and you’ve got this potential leverage to use business terminology. And at the same time, you’ve got a crisis that’s happening. So, maybe you could the proverbial killing of two birds with one stone by leaning into this community in a different way.
Cy Kellett:
All right, the last one.
Charlie Echeverry:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
This is, oh man, you caught my attention, creative apologetics. That seems to speak to us.
Charlie Echeverry:
That comes right from Evangelii Gaudium which I know I’ve heard quoted in a lot of Catholic Answers’ materials oftentimes. And my take on that from Pope Francis is that recognizing the way the transmission of the faith, defending of the faith, explaining of the faith has evolved over time. And the responsibility that we all have as Christians, A and B, specifically something like Catholic Answers, to look for ways that are innovative, inventive, obviously a sign of time in light of the gospel, always Orthodox, always clear, always correct.
Charlie Echeverry:
But that are taking into account these various things and really adapting our approach to transmitting, defending, protecting in a way that is illustrative of again, the people that we have around us at that particular moment. Just one quick example of that. Young people, young Latinos, and we’ve already talked about it. They go out into the parking lot. They’re texting to their friends in English. They’re on Snapchat. These are not people that are going to have a problem understanding English.
Charlie Echeverry:
But nevertheless, they are interacting mostly with the Spanish liturgy just because of all this cultural background that they have. And so, when I think about issues that come up in the popular culture whether it’s transgender stuff, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, immigration issues, all these kinds of political hot buttons which young people, and particularly young Latino people, are completely over index in their interest around these subjects. Where are they getting the answers to those things in a way that’s culturally relevant to them?
Charlie Echeverry:
They’re not going to get it from home because oftentimes, their parents are immigrants and they’re like, “What are you talking about? Who’s George Floyd? What are you talking about?”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
They’re not going to get it in the liturgy because the priest again is kind of like another version of their parents.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Charlie Echeverry:
Right. So, it’s like you think about, well, how are we going to deliver and transmit what the Church teaches about these issues that requires a creative apologetic? That requires like saying, “Okay, we’ve got this idea of the dignity of the human person. We’ve got this idea of the anthropology that Catholicism teaches. How do we relay that to these people who have this unique experience as children of immigrants, etcetera, and living in this world? That requires creativity in how we convey this. And that’s what I mean by a creative apologetics.
Cy Kellett:
Boy, it’s inspiring but it’s also challenging to us.
Charlie Echeverry:
Of course.
Cy Kellett:
I’m glad for the opportunity to have the conversation because we could … There’s no question that we as an apostolate could do much better with that, much better at that. And I’m grateful for your prompting and always for your participation in all that Catholic Answers does.
Charlie Echeverry:
I mean, I think, Cy, this show is an example of a lot of those principles. So, I applaud it. There’s a lot of things we could talk about. We could talk about a variety of things. You’ve got interest. I’ve got interest. But the fact that we’re focusing an episode on this I think is evidence of exactly what we’re talking about. So, I would give you higher marks perhaps and you might, but I think it’s an important step.
Charlie Echeverry:
And it might not be or hopefully not the only time that this kind of subject comes up, but it is important that it has. So, I definitely appreciate it, for sure.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I don’t want to leave you with any false impression. So, “te alabamos, Senor” is pretty much my only Spanish.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s your only Spanish?
Cy Kellett:
Almost my only Spanish.
Charlie Echeverry:
That’s pretty good. How about “Amen”? That’s another good one. Don’t sell yourself short, Cy. Come on.
Cy Kellett:
I can do all that. I can do “Amen.”
Charlie Echeverry:
You can do “Amen.” Yeah, very good.
Cy Kellett:
Deacon Charlie Echeverry, thanks very much.
Charlie Echeverry:
Pleasure to be with you, Cy. Thank you for having me.
Cy Kellett:
One of the great things about talking with Deacon Charlie Echeverry about the Latino experience as Catholics here in the United States is he knows it. He knows it from the inside as a person who has lived it, as a Catholic and as a deacon in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. And he knows the numbers and the statistics. And they are a bit concerning. We have a reason to be concerned.
Cy Kellett:
So, we’ve got to do a better job. Maybe there’s something a little bit self-serving in us asking Deacon Charlie to break it down for us here at Catholic Answers Focus because as an apologetics apostolate, there’s a lot of things we could be doing better here at Catholic Answers as far as reaching out to the Latino community. Maybe there are things that could be done better at your parish, in your diocese, at the apostolate where you work, the ministry that you are part of. So, I thought it’d be helpful to you as well.
Cy Kellett:
If you want to know more or get more from Deacon Charlie, you can listen to his podcast Living the CALL, Deacon Charlie Echeverry Living the CALL. He does a lot of great interviews over there and you can get more of his very, very solid insights. Also, if there are aspects of what we’ve begun to talk about with Deacon Charlie that you’d like us to explore, send us email, focus@catholic.com. That’s our email address, focus@catholic.com.
Cy Kellett:
As always, if you’re listening on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or any of the other podcast services, don’t forget to like and subscribe so that you’ll get updates when new episodes are available. And if you’d be kind enough, please give us that five-star review, a few nice words. That always helps. It certainly helps to grow the podcast.
Cy Kellett:
If you’re listening on YouTube right now or watching on YouTube, it’s because you found us at our new YouTube channel and we’re really, really glad you did. Maybe you could help spread the word a little bit of that there’s a new Catholic Answers Focus channel. And we’ll see you next time, God willing, right here at Catholic Answers Focus.