I know that you believe that the effects of multiculturalism cannot get any more despicable, but today, my community sunk to a new low. Sadly, this came from the one institution that should (and does) know better—the Catholic Church.
This morning, I attended 9:00 a.m. mass on the Feast of Pentecost, one of the twelve Catholic feast days. To my shock and disgust, the second liturgical reading and the general intercessions following the Homily and Nicene Creed were read—as Bob Grant would say; get the digitalis—in Spanish. That’s right. In St. Petersburg, Florida, in a community that is 75 percent white, in a parish where the parishioners are 95 percent white (and many of the rest Asian), they felt it necessary to conduct part of the service in Spanish. For the first time I can remember, I left church in the middle of mass.
Now, do not for a minute think that this was the start of some new outreach program for new parishioners. They have no plans to do the same thing next week in Polish, or the week after that in Ukrainian, or the following week in Korean. No, this was done specifically to placate the Spanish speaking members of the parish—and only them. Furthermore, this was not an entire mass conducted in Spanish, as is done in parishes with large Spanish-speaking populations. This was an in-your-face intrusion of a foreign language into a ceremony otherwise conducted in English.
Before anyone reminds me how inclusive the Church is supposed to be and how the Mexicans are God-fearing people, hear me out. My ancestors (Italian, and Catholic for untold generations) were just as God-fearing, just as hard working, and just as religious as today’s “Spanish-speaking parishioners.” But in the 1910s, the Church in America made no effort to speak Italian. They conducted ceremonies in Latin, and after Vatican II, in English. The Church went out of its way to integrate immigrants into the host society. Today, they promote balkanization and separateness. And the parishioners of today that do not speak Spanish—what about them? Does the Church feel it necessary to conduct a mass half English and half (for example) Lithuanian for them? That’s a rhetorical question, of course.
Four years ago, I rededicated myself to Church and have attended mass every week since. That held true whether I was home or traveling, in the U.S. or in foreign countries, and yes, even in Holland when the mass was conducted in Dutch—as it should have been. I missed only two ceremonies in four years, that when I flew overseas on Saturday night and landed after the last mass of the day. And never did I experience what I experienced today.
The Catholic Church has been outrageous these past few months [LA: just the past few months?], with their argument that essentially no country has a right to exist, since borders are immoral. Now, they have brought this attitude into their service. I do not know whether other VFR readers have had this experience, but if one cannot find consistency in the Church, then all hope is lost.