He wrote a note to his mother saying our cause is defeated. In all things i must see his will be done. My greatest regret in leaving this world is to leave you and the rest of the deer was. The dear ones. The other children will be more comforting to you than i have been, but none will love you more. That is charles minnegerodes death letter to his mother. A surgeon finds him on the battlefield, operates on him removes the bullet and saves his life. In the end, he does not die on the battlefield at appomattox. But we have covered today are just some of the high points at the park. There are many more stories, buildings, and exhibits to see if you come and visit her yourself. Appomattox is often forgotten by the American Public or overlooked but is one of the most significant events in american history. This is a place where the killing of americans by americans to the tune of over 700,000 ended. It is also the place where we decided we would be one nation instead of two. The events at the mclean house on april 9, general grants generosity to general lee and his men and the events on the richmondlynchburg stage road during the stacking of arms set a positive course for the nation and allow for a stronger country to emerge. Please pay us a visit or make a special pilgrimage to visit our site. You can watch this or other programs at any time by visiting our website. Next, a discuss and only challenges catholic immigrants have faced in america as well as their efforts to adapt to their sometimes unwelcoming homeland. This conference is about 90 minutes. Julia young i am a professor here and in interested in migration to the United States and involvement of the u. S. Catholic church. I am excited to be moderating our second panel on culture and religious life where we will talk about the similarities and differences between late 19th and early 20th century and the migration happening today in regards to the last Panel Focused on legislation and policy. Now we will be focusing on the experience of catholics and the Catholic Church at the grassroots as different waves of immigrants came into the United States. How did Catholic Churches deal with successive waves of immigrants . How did that present challenges and opportunities . We have three wonderful panelists talking about that. Our first is a professor of religious studies here. He is also a fellow at i. P. R. He received his phd in 1983 and has been on the faculty for 32 years. His recent interests include a variety of topics, religion in america, religious movements fundamentalism and religion ecology. He has published many articles on these topics. He also has a longstanding interest in catholic traditionalism and was a contributor to the project by the academy of arts and sciences. He taught me when i was an undergrad here, a class i still remember well and loved. We are happy to have him here. Next is a dominican priest who serves as the executive director of the africa and face network. He is also a professor at the Extension Program and fellow at i. P. R. He has taught here, at the university of talent or net california davis, and in nigeria. He served as coordinator of catholic ministries at the conference of catholic bishops and was cochair of breakout sessions. He is the coauthor of International Priest in america. He is a frequent guest at the voice of america t. V. Program and is currently studying practical ways of using catholic social teaching to inform societies in africa. Finally, we have Jaime Hernandez is the audiovisual production specialist at the department of the interior. The reason he is here is he is a Like Community member of the church of the road in Silver Spring where he has been a member of the Parish Council president of the hispanic committee. He is working on developing best practices for parishes, working on a new parish plan for saint camillusas so he is deeply involved in this parish which is a renowned multicultural parish. They offer Spanish Church services. They minister to multiple different immigrant communities. They have an Hispanic Service that attracts 1400 people, and English Service that attracts 1000, and a French Service that attracts or serves 800 people every week. The spanishspeaking community is predominately from el salvador and guatemala. The frenchspeaking community is from africa and other french speaking countries like haiti. So he is an excellent person to talk to us about parish life and the immigrant experience. I will stop talking and let the panelists take it away. We will do what we did in our last panel. Everybody will talk individually and then we will have a conversation amongst ourselves and with the audience. Thank you, julia. I am delighted to be here. I want to thank julia, tim, and maria for the invitation to participate in i am basically the old immigrant guy. I will talk about the old immigration. But we should remember the old immigrants were once themselves new immigrants. These were people who became your all americans who were primarily from southern and eastern europe, most of were catholics and jews. This is an incredibly complex issue. We all recognize that. I cannot possibly do this justice in 15 minutes. I am going to give you something akin to a kind of academic version of speed dating in relationship to my comments. I want to start with three overriding foundational issues. They are as follows. It is important to recognize in relationship to your all American Catholic immigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century there was not a homogenous or singular catholic immigrant experience. There were multiple experiences of different catholic groups. 20 different nationally every nationality groups by the turnofthecentury. There were commonalities these groups experienced. But there also were some keen differences. Im going to make a lot of generalizations, but i dont want it to seem i am working with the assumption this was a Homogenous Group anymore than talking about latinos today we should not assume that is a Homogenous Group. There were more able multiple subcultures. Even groups like the germans consisted of various groups. I am fourthgeneration volga dutch and volga german. You have differences. In thinking about the Catholic Church in relation to immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the institutional structures and in terms of the ministries of individuals within the church multiple things were done in relationship to these immigrant communities. The overall issue i would like to accentuate is the fact that what the church did was basically to help or enable catholic immigrants to negotiate the dynamics of assimilation or americanization which also involved the dynamic of separation in relationship to their native lands. It enabled them to do this so they could negotiate this process from a position of strength rather than a position of weakness. The Church Helped immigrants to adjust to the complexities of American Life and culture. It helped to anchor and stabilize the life of many immigrants. It played in mediational role in helping these immigrant populations with the cultural and social transition into american citizenship. An analogy is like thinking of a family. My sense of a Healthy Family in relationship to what mothers and fathers ought to be doing is you create a life circumstance in your family so your children can negotiate life from a position of strength rather than weakness. Im going to argue the Church Helped immigrants to negotiate the process of assimilation more from a position of strength than weakness. The third point i would make is the church as an Institution Group relatively knowledgeable malleable in terms of embracing different cultural groups lifestyles, while moving in a certain direction of uniformity and maintaining organizational coherence in the face of dealing with all these different Catholic National and ethnic groups. This meant there were certain elements of ethnic and National Divisions that had to be overcome. In the face of this diversity, the church had to foster lay attachment to the church itself and consolidate catholic identity. This process included elements of internal conflict, notably over issues of ethnicity and nationalism. This is one of the circumstances that led to war was a factor in the creation of socalled national parishes as a way of mediating the tensions of this ethnic and cultural conflict. The National Pairs was a way to institutionally preserve the religious life of many of these ethnic groups in terms of their old country. It was also an instrument to remedy any declines in the religious actresses of immigrants. It had a twofold purpose. National parishes continued into the 20th century. By 1936, about 50 of catholics in chicago were worshiping at national parishes. About 80 of clergy had assignments in parishes that matched their national background. It was not just a late 19th century phenomenon. Those are my three starter premises. With regards to specifics, what were some things the church did for this immigrant catholic population . What are things four things merit attention. One is obviously the church worked in different ways, institutionally and by virtue of individuals in it to provide material needs through various benevolent societies, charities, hospitals, asylums, orphanages and so forth. In other words, it provided these services at a time when there was little national, federal, state, or governmental social services as we know them today. The church played a very Important Role in providing these services. Secondly, it also worked to provide multiple Educational Opportunities to the development of what became a massive infrastructure of Catholic Schools and institutions of this nature. This also included fostering vocations. There were many in those days. These locations also came with educational benefits in terms of advanced degrees and so forth. I also want to make the point that in terms of providing social services, as educational needs, that so much of this was done by women religious. Sisters were the overwhelming workforce in relationship to these efforts, and by that fact had a trauma this impact on the people laypeople had a dramatic impact on laypeople and we need to acknowledge that. The third thing the church did was counter the xenophobia and nativism arrayed against immigrants and their cultural patterns. I think sometimes younger catholics today do not appreciate the fact america was in many ways and for a long time a very hostile place in relationship to roman catholics in the 19th and well into the 20th century. As the church got longer larger anticatholicism got larger. Growing bigotry in the 19th century were with the ku klux klan in the 1920s. There were all sorts of charges made about catholics being a population that could not be absorbed because their liberal values are antithetical the lash were antithetical to liberal democrat ideas. Some arguments were based on racist ideology in relation to national types. Some was based on pseudoscience of the day. Anticatholicism was driven not only by religious prejudice also by class ethnic, and sometimes racialist animosity. This had to do with concerns about issues like crime, social problems, political rival wasnt radicalism, and so forth. A lot of americas anticatholicism was an expression of being antiirish. In many ways, the class structure of catholic immigrants worked to reinforce many negative stereotypes. This fed prejudice and discrimination against catholics. I just make the point that in terms of understanding the hostility, this is not just derivative of religious prejudice. There were social, class, and other factors at work. My fourth point is the church worked to build a specifically catholic religious culture that was vibrant comprehensive, and relatively consolidated. This was accomplished not exclusively, but many ways through the instrumentality of catholic parish life. Purchase parishes in many ways for the powerhouses of immigrant culture. I think of them as analogous to the fullservice megachurches of our own time. That is to say, they provided an institutional setting not only for what was taken in terms of their devotional and liturgical life as real encounters with the sacred that is to say they met spiritual needs, but they also met needs for social solidarity, education, and so forth through the parish and so forth. So the parish loomed large in terms of the vibrancy of catholic culture. In larger areas, when people asked where you are from, they would name a parish as a way of identifying themselves. They still do. Im happy to hear that. I want to focus on one issue that proved problematic. This also relates to my own research interests. This is the role of catholic piety and devotion was devotionalism during the immigrant era. I mean nonliturgical forms of prayer,n novenas, stations of the cross, rosary, pilgrimages benediction, particular saints, and so forth. It is important to remember these euro catholics brought different types of catholicism to america. By way of analogy, we can say latinos can also bring different types of catholicism to the contemporary american experiences. In terms of old immigration, there were stark contrast between irishAmerican Catholicism and italianAmerican Catholicism. Many of the irish recoiled at what was taken as some of the pagan and casual practices of catholic immigrants from southern and eastern europe. Italian catholicism had a deepseated distrust of formal institutional religion and church hierarchy. One group was quite anticlerical. The experience in southern italy was that of a landlord that extracted high rent, exercised power that retarded italian unification, and so forth. In the latter regard, it is also important to recognize these different ethnic groups brought different forms of devotional piety to the United States or what we refer to as religiosity. Although this was rooted in the immigrant experience, it was not until the 1930s and 1940s that we see what was considered the heyday of this kind of activity. Two important points to remember about this piety and devotional ism, one was popular piety and the liturgy itself was both a cause and expression of the othering of catholics in American Culture. I made the point that catholics were and in bitter embittered minority here for a long time. One of the most distinctive cultural markers and boundary mechanisms between catholics and noncatholics had to do with these forms of piety and devotional isism. Over time, catholics come to look more like many middleclass americans. One of the ways in which they seemed weird had to do with how they prayed, how they prayed publicly and privately. This is something that made catholics very different. Obviously, protestants were not noted for devotions to the blessed virgin or the cult of the saints. This is one of the ways catholics were distinctively different. The subtext is this is also one of the reasons why they would be more reduced the less resistant to assimilation. Would be more resistant to assimilation. I cant summarize it. [laughter] ok. There are pressures already in the 19th century within the church itself to rein in elements of this piety and devotional is. Devotionalism. This becomes more intense in the 1920s with the advent of the Liturgical Movement. I want to accentuate that what was problematic with regard to the Liturgical Movement about much of piety and devotionalism was not the fact of it per se, this was a reality in church life. But what was problematic was its place in the context of the liturgy which the liturgical reformers were trying to transform. During this time, lay catholics were in many ways radically disconnected. There was a radical disconnect between what was understood as the authentic nature of the liturgy, what catholics ought to be doing when they go to mass in terms of this being a corporate collective, active expression of who we are as a people of faith and the reality of many of them not having a clue of what is going on at the altar and instead spending that time praying privately, saying the rosary, doing various different kinds of devotionals and so forth. That issue is still being played out. Sometimes we hear talk of a twochurch meaning one of a more affluent, upper social class, and another church in america of a lower social class. This is also along ethnic, racial lines. But there is also the question given the complexity of this relationship between liturgy and popular religiosity a question of what it means to talk about or do we talk about two churches in which there is a different understanding of the place and role of popular piety vis a vis the liturgy, and what happens if that gap gets too great between these two churches. [applause] i want to say thank you again for the opportunity to be here. I want to touch on four points. The first is about what he just said and the earlier panel that had a lot of the things we want to talk about here. One is new immigrants. Secondly, the challenges they faced. Third, the Church Response to their presence. What does this mean for the church . Im going to play prophet here making predictions on what that means. Most of the new immigrants here are basically noneuropean. Most of the new catholics we have our noneuropean. They do not live in catholic clusters such as he just explained about a church that served not only as a Religious Center but also a civic, legal orientation, and culture ration center culturation center. They do not have that. When you compare the educational level, there are quite a large number of professionals among the newest immigrants. It is common in washington or new york that you take a cab and struck up a conversation with the cabdriver. Where are you from . Nigeria, ethiopia. How long have you been here . What were you doing . I used to be a doctor, a professor. In other words, they are here and hustling in the good sense of the word to make a living. But taking jobs they are far overqualified for. Also, the basic devotional differences described a minute ago still exist. In other words, you have different flavors of devotions coming with the new forms of catholics from asia, the latin population, or from africa. There is that flavor. The other thing is they live in two worlds. It took three weeks or longer in those days to arrive to america. Once you are in, telegram or anything would be even longer to get to the home country. Now with modern technology, it is easy. You have cell phones, all kinds of gadgets. To connect you back home. So people have less. There continue to meet some demands from extended family back home. Thanks to modern technology, western union. Money gram. [laughter] people are able to do that transaction. With in a way happens that very often, people stay here and because of the atmosphere, that they settle here, also back home. That is what i mean by living in two worlds. Often the also places stress on the families here. The factors i just mentioned. And the lack of extended family, even though they stay connected, they are not here physically. They need childcare or sharing that is not there. Because of that also, the children get caught between two worlds. These families, new catholic families, faced challenges. Some of the challenges, i will draw my examples from african communities in this case. We find the lack of catholic clubs and residences, we find some immigrants develop an interesting liberal economical spirit. What do i mean by that . They also go sometimes to festivals and churches that dont seem to be catholic. Because sometimes they feel a lack of sense of welcome from the welcoming parish community. Or sometimes they find the liturgical expression to meditative and solemn. They try to get something with life and action. So they go to other festivals and churches, mostly operated by pastors who are from other backgrounds. They dont deny their catholic faith. They still come back. Theres also the challenge of being recognized. This happens a lot with many african catholic communities. Although parishes have sent immigration centers, i once worked at the u. S. Catholic conference, you have the secretary for Cultural Diversity in the church. That is not a lot of welcoming for new immigrants. Sometimes some of these immigrants faltered the cracks. African immigrants, for example, sometimes the line is blurred between people of african descent born here and those who have just arrived. Because of the cultural differences and the immigration needs of the people, when they are lumped together, in one office, the needs are not the same. So people fall through the cracks. I want to talk about identity issues. Other catholics in the past, had an identity. They had a place of reference. They had their parish. In fact, when i lived in boston, you ask somebody, where are you from, they say im from saint anns or saint ambrose. That is how they identify themselves. They still do. That is not there. For example, african immigrants come here, convenience nigerians, congolese, and suddenly they become black. Black catholics. Many of them say, what is that . [laughter] how many times have you heard, im nigerian. That is an identity issue. It is something that we need to observe very carefully. Sometimes people misunderstand that and becomes very sensitive. They are not immigrants they are immigrants and have an original identity. With this categorization, it tries to render it null and void. It is not a question of rejecting or belonging, they tried to maintain an identity. We know that, when somebody tries to change your you are you pull back. Also, research has shown over and over that people adapt better to new contexts when they are voluntarily embrace what is there. Not when it is forced upon them. Research has also shown that children of immigrants fare better when they are allowed to embrace the culture of their parents and then move into society from there. Cultural challenges of negotiating in between shifting is something that we must attend to. I want to also referred to devotions. Among new catholics. In fact, i remember when i was at the office of ministries at the bishops conference, we had this immigrant family from vietnam arrive. As they unpacked everything, over 50 of the luggage they brought was a devotional stuff. Bibles, statues of mary, rosaries worried over 50 . What does that mean . He means that devotions and religious value is very strong among them. And they want to keep that. They want to maintain that. They want that to be a part of who they are. Because they dont have a vietnamese church, or african church, nigerian church, hispanic church, sometimes when they are together, there is a clash of devotions. And that is something that one needs to be aware of. Lets take for example devotions to mary. It is the same blessed mother. But we have our lady of our lady of guadalupe, and so on. If we are in the same church and if it is not well handled, it becomes, whose mary Takes Center Stage . Finally, i want to also emphasized that that devotion issue is a big part of many catholics. And has to be carefully promoted and elevated. One thing that is different now is that among new immigrants within the church today, as a population that is very, the new immigrant priests in this country. 98 of them are of that 70. They are all very actively involved. So they come with a new flavor of preaching, a new flavor of devotion. A new flavor of ecclesiology. We need to recognize they are hereto. Finally i want to make some predictions. The first is that, when the doctor and i were doing research on International Priests, we went back to 1900 entries the history of catholic populations and ratios. What we noticed was very interesting. Mainly that each time there was a shock in population, a generation or two later the number of clergy bumps up. That happened. So my prediction is that we nearly need to attend to these new immigrants because we are going to find a lot of vocations among them. We are. Perhaps they might bring some solution to the clergy shortage. Admissions is already coming up in terms of childrens of younger families, new catholic families, showing up in seminaries. I will stop there. Thank you. [applause] good morning, everyone. I want to thank everyone for allowing me to be here today. I want to thank julia, maria and tim for inviting me to share my thoughts. Since we are running out of time, lets get straight to what we came here to talk about. Let me tell you about immigration. The first immigrants to the United States where the native americans from asia. The pilgrims followed them from england. There was a great conflict at the beginning over whose land america was. The immigrants who followed in the next century come from europe, most immigrants to enter now are coming from latin america. The immigration have two factors. The push factor are things that drive our push people away from the place. The pull factors are the forces that attract or pull people towards a specific place. Why would you immigrate to the United States . To push and pull factors, we had conflict. People are forced to emigrate, we were or conflict. These are usually called refugees. One example of this, is in ivory coast, where the conflict has forced more than one Million People to flee to america in the last few months. Government push. People are fleeing the governments who are ruling in the interest of the people. Example is millions of people have left burma for fighting for religious democracy. Freedom of religion is basic human right, but some do not recognize that. Nowadays, many christians are living in the arab countries people from iran, iraq, egypt coming to the United States. You have opportunities. There is a pull. Young people in particular i looking for new opportunities. For many years, immigrants have been leaving mexico to come to the United States to look for new places and more money for their families. We have the family, which is a pull. Economical opportunities in a country he or she will have to have a family united with them. That was my case when my parents came to support me and pulled me to come to the United States. Young people seek better education and opportunities, better places to live. Stuff that is not available at home sometimes. Nature like climate change. Access to water or food. Factors facing many people to leave their countries. There will be more immigration in the next couple of decades if we dont start acting on climate change. One example is in malta, one man might have to look for land elsewhere because it is country drowns since it is an island. Now we talk about the immigrants from past and present, i dont see much of a difference. The reason why we are here is pretty much similar to the 19th century. What immigrants bring to the usa . Most of them, with devotions. That can create a positive impact to the american Catholic Church. We can encourage people going to mass on sundays to be more active. The immigrant culture has a sense of ownership of trying to live in the church. They try to be part of parish life. Same for people from Different Countries in different parts of the world, worshiping in the same location. We talk about difference. It brings life to the church. It brings energy. Spiritual retreats, they are what we create, and we get 700 people coming, and it is a symbol of people working together. It is the need of the immigrant community. They need a spiritual life. Also, Catholic Values. The community life. Family life. Even though we immigrate, we came from different places, and we come alone, we still try to create a family life. That is where we go with the community. Most of the people who, along, they still feel that to feel alive and whole, they have to create a life in the church. Be part of prayer groups getting together once a week. That is the way that they can contact with the people in their home countries. We also bring a new model of hospitality. I have been going to churches, all types of churches, and the way they would do it is ask who they stand up and applies, and thats it. In my country, we try to bring them back, talk to you, give you a hand and a hug, look for you at the end of the service to see what can we do for you. That is the model we practice in our church. We bring life to the mission of the church. The participation in sunday service is something that we have implemented since we were born. It is part of our lives. We generate lay ministers. In the different services, one in french, english, and spanish. All services are only 30 minutes apart. We create a new ministry to be able to allow 4000 people coming in and out of the parking lot without too many issues. Trust me, its not easy. [laughter] the communities, after we do retreats, they get together in small groups. The holy spirit they get, they keep going on a weekly basis to keep putting more flavor in their faith. We have apostolic groups like cursillo. We have many different languages, spanish, english, french programs. Most of the french programs, we have frenchspeaking people teaching. The spanish information is and english, 30 are immigrants. 30 of the people teaching English Programs are immigrants. We get involved in that as well. We bring authentic marian devotion. We had persistent love for the church. We believe it is our house and we have to protect it. That is the way we always feel from the beginning. We have the wilderness to will to build ranges between different cultures and ethnicities. When we came along, we filled the hole, and we know the need for people who are looking for some type of community to work together. They would have to bring those family values. Lent is totally different for us. When i came the first time, the only thing we did in our church was go on fridays to stations of the cross for 30 minutes. Now what we do is we get three communities together, and we do an act of the stations of the cross, which is more than two miles walking. You have close to 4000 people walking on the street. It takes a lot of work and meditation, but it is the type of traditions that we bring to the church. The future of the Catholic Church in the usa, that is one of the things that is more difficult. I see them as opportunities or challenges. It is up to you to choose what they are going to be. For some people, that can be opportunities for others challenges. I personally think initially it will be a challenge. Over time, that can turn into opportunities. Because the church has always been fickle about change. Change often brings resistance. Progress within certain groups in the catholic faith are not being embraced, these changes to attract new people with the same mindset. For me, one of the big challenges is language. Another is shared parishes. They lack priests, or laypeople working. Shared parishes is something very natural nowadays. Our parish is shared. We have three big communities in the same building. For the same reason that we dont have enough priests, another challenge would be parish without pastors. But that can also be an opportunity, because we can start creating new parish structures. For example, and our parish, the way it works is i compare it to a regular business. The pastor is like this eeo. Then you have 45 laypersons in charge of different areas of the church. You dont have to be a priest in every Single Ministry to see what they are doing. He can have people working with him in charge of different areas of the church. That is the way it can work. We talk about the parish structure and lay ministers little bit. Another opportunity would be the multicultural and multilingual services. One of the most difficult, because of the language barrier, not everyone speaks the same language. We finally were able to do seven services a year that would do Multicultural Services at the same time. It takes a lot of work but it is not impossible. Another opportunity is being able to learn different traditions from different places, from peru, venezuela korea. The skys the limit. We can share it with the whole world. Our parish has close to 80 Different Countries represented on sundays. When we share the gospel, we can go into the gospel with different people for their countries. We are able to touch people that way. One opportunity is the number of hispanic priest and seminars. They are growing. The problem is, there backgrounds are hispanic. So who is in charge of bringing them in in the United States the American Youth . They dont fit in the society as a whole American Culture, but only into the latino culture. This new generation is what will be the most difficult challenge they will have, to be able to get priests to relate to people. It does bring us to the average. Right now we have a priest who can speak spanish and does services and spanish, and i love it because he does how we dude devotions. But i have my daughter and son they just dont get it because they did not grow up with the same devotion i did. The devotions in the American Church is different as well. A big opportunity we have, to outreach to the whole world. The world is coming to us. Which means, we can reach people from almost every corner of the planet. If we are able to share it the gospel with these people, we will be able to like somebody told me, teach them the beauty of the Catholic Church. Our traditions. But they decide to go back to their country, they already have these Catholic Values to be a will to spread the word. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I have a question for the three of you. And i will go ahead and ask it and then we will open it up for questions. I guess it is a twopart question. It is about the challenges and opportunities of for immigrants, in adapting to parish life. The first is, when we talk about immigrants, what we are talking about today, what has come up is that immigrants are not necessarily one group. Just because there are immigrants does not mean they have much in common. I think if you went back to the late 19th century and talk to somebody irish and whether they felt solidarity with somebody in italian, you might not get a positive answer. Was that overcome, and how . And how has the church dealt with some of these divisions between immigrant groups in the past, and cannot be a model for it seems to me we are dealing with its more successfully in the present. If you look at saint camillas, there are successful models in the present. But these divisions have been issues, have existed in the past and present. The second challenge is the challenge of the second and Third Generation. And this also i think was a challenge historically. How do they immigrants particularly the national parishes that have a constituency from immigrants how do they deal with the Second Generation and Third Generation where people are not speaking the native language anymore . How did they deal with that in the press than what is the challenge in the present in the past and what is the challenge in the present . Even speak about the second and Third Generations. That is a big challenge in that latino communities, where people coming are catholic and there is a big question of whether the next generations will stay catholic. That was a broad and open question, but lets have a discussion about that. My own attempt would be the easy answer, in relationship to european American Catholics, the dynamic of ethnic differences in terms of how this played out there are certain things that, over time ethnic sensibility became increasingly less relevant in terms of their own self understanding. This reflected everything from social mobility, increased levels of educational attainment, and document our marriage exogamous out marriage. Im fourthgeneration, i know more about my familys ethnic cultural background then my parents do. I made a conscious effort to try to recover that and understand that and so forth. I can more or less play my german card, in terms of accentuating how much i want to make an issue out of that. But i think generally, assimilation played a huge role. Also, to the degree that the church work if we take these forms of devotional piety as an index of differences between ethnic groups to the degree that the church moved more in the direction of a standardization of practices, i think that also affected the ethnic sensibility. Regarding divisions especially where you have many communities in the same parish. What has worked is one model, in that. What might prove challenge it is sometimes you find out that a new immigrant group comes in and out of not really coordinating well, they might be very sympathetic to the new group such that the one group feels too much attention is given to them and a react. It is important when the new group comes in, while ensuring that they dont feel alienated that that time for them is not 10 00 at night. You give them time that they feel a part of the church. That is important. It is also important that when new groups coming to take leaders from that group to be part of the Pastoral Council and actually take leaders who represent the group. Sometimes we say, that persons african. Lets take into the african representative. That happens. Make sure that who is being picked is actually representing the people. That is important in representing communities. As far as second and Third Generations, i think this is where the church really needs to invest resources in. I was talking about the implications. That can happen if we invest in young people. Sometimes devotions at home, are not only play out in parishes, but the family needs to practice in the home. Praying together, doing together. I think that fosters real religious identity. Not just limited to the church. Secondly, Youth Ministry is very important. The point is, what are the resources that the parishes commit to attending to the needs of youth of the new immigrants. That is very important. Practice has shown time and time again that a parish that is that has a very strong Youth Ministry is a very strong parish. Take of the children, parents will follow. It doesnt work the other way. If you focus on the children you show the children, the parents can come. That is something that i think we can double up efforts and take care of the needs of the second and Third Generation. How do we attend to them . That is important. The second and Third Generation, i just started the huge challenge we have. The history where the attendance. 70 of the people going is immigrants. They came over in the last 10 years. We need to put that effort in the youth. But there is a gap. Because we bring youth until they are 14 years old until they finish the sacrament of confirmation. We dont see youth must of the time until they get married. This gap between 14 years old until 26 or 30 years old is nothing the Catholic Church is doing about it. What we are trying to do, is we have a youth group, mostly hispanic, called cristo joven. They played soccer games, go to parties, share the word. They are part of the life of the church. But there are some kids that grow in here. They are able, and they are blessed enough to speak to languages. Those are the people we need to target for them to be able to bring the other youth. So they can bring other youth doesnt understand spanish. I work with the youth group. All of them all of their parents are spanish. The class that we have, is in english. Because they cannot we cannot teach a face in a different language. They need to be able to understand the gospel and homily coming from the priest in the language they can relate to. I agree with you. It is the youth, we need to put more effort and be able to find key people to work with them is a very important issue for sure. Take questions from the audience. My name is steve from Catholic Charities usa and im a member of holy trinity in washington dc. My question, what saint camilla always a multicultural parish or did they move from being monocultural to multicultural . If they did make that change how did a single culture and brief becoming multicultural embrace the coming multicultural . I was blessed that there was already a spanish service. But we do now have French Services. The Parish Council realized there was a big french community. They used to have a Small Service in a little chapel. The community was growing, and there was a discussion we sent to the Parish Council to talk about how to find and Facility Needs of this community. What happens was the in the priest went to the archdiocese and asked for permission to bring a priest from the congo. You have to be able to serve the new immigrants at the beginning with somebody with the native language. You dont want a priest that is an american and going, give me a service in spanish with it doesnt match. They dont have the same backgrounds. That is the way we approached it. We went to the Parish Council and then we started talking to the different communities to see their needs. We also have a service right now in bangladesh. That is one of month because there are not many priest who speak that in the area. It is about doing outreach and knowing who is in your parish and being open to helping. And welcoming. Question . This is probably more directed at you, but father, you are from nigeria . The greatest ambassador you ever sent was hakim olajuwon. The greatest ambassadors are from sports. Im probably the leading authority in this United States on gaelic football. My dad taught me my dad taught me to embrace what he knew, and by the same token he told me to embrace american. My dad loved american sports. Can you talk about sports and cyo . Not really. [laughter] you may know more about this than i do. I read an abstract of a dissertation is this working . Can you hear me . Ok. I read an abstract of a dissertation a number of years ago. Im digging deep here, but as i recall this, it was a study of irish boxing clubs in the late 19th century. One of the things that was striking to me, as i remember it, the argument was being made that these this was particularly referenced in relationship to black people and the way in which sports has been a modality of making it in american society. The argument in this dissertation was that these irish boxing clubs was not about assimilation. This was about asserting irish identity. We are tough and we can whoop you. It was not an assimilated kind of dynamic. It was a way of asserting an ethnic distinctiveness. An ethnic prowess, if you will. I want to make a comment on that about youth and being together. Young people, the young people from different immigrant groups share a lot more in common than their parents. The youth ministries focus on them, having them do things, coming together promotes an integral christian community. That is why i keep seeing that we need to focus more on the young people to ensure a more healthy and integral future. In fact, you find out, i like the analogy you drew that the children of hispanic parents some of them come to mass and are not quite relating to the spanish. And that happens with the french speaking, others begin because they go to school together. They have the same experience of a generation. If we focus on them as an entity per se, and have them have common programs, we are promoting a more integral church in the future. A couple of issues. One that was mentioned before about sports. I think one of the things bill mentioned, the change in generations and the assimilation wedding ethnic distinctions away. But what also have been happened at that time for second and third irishamericans, is the boundary between protestants and catholics was very powerful. Anticatholic feeling in the ku klux klan reestablished in the 1940s and 50s. He keeps the people within the church. I would argue Irish Catholic and the children of salmon immigrants at the turnofthecentury were disciplined were more disciplined than their parents. Probably true for german immigrants as well. The religiosity those up peaks. There was an enormous peak and the 1950s. The use of sports as i have seen it in irish parishes, they are where using sports as early as the 1880s. Baseball, track and field, all those things. Younger people can participate. Theres an uncertainty as to whether young kids want to play sports in college. Eventually they figured out those sports also become as you say, they had a dual function. You are in kind of conflict with other groups. For example when holy cross beat hartford for the first time, virtually the entire station goes down and takes the team back on their shoulders because that is the triumph over the heretical enemy. [laughter] so the way in which notre dame has achieved this status. And also to certain degree ourselves, Catholic College football has this kind of support. It was a marker of identity. Through the 1930s and 1940s. I guess i want to on the one hand you talked about the way in which this in an Al Qaeda Group dynamic in and out Group Dynamic kept immigrants in the church. One of the things im curious about is antiimmigrant sensibilities within the church itself. I think about this in two ways. The 19th century, the irish coming over, they are catholic and poor. Kind of like three strikes you are out there it correct me if im wrong, but one of the ways in which they tried to gain access to American Culture was how they became white, the pursuit of whiteness to get their foot in the door and allow them to maintain some third of an american identity that gives them access to think they were looking or. One of the ways they asserted that was by turning against italians. And becoming kind of opposed to a italian immigration or Eastern European immigration, so forth. Im wondering about that dynamic. Antiimmigrant sentiment within the church as a way to, or older immigrants, get access to the American Culture. And in a related sense, the way in which antiimmigrant sentiment within the church in more contemporary times plays out against latinos. All you have to do is turn on the tv and watch anything about comprehensive Immigration Reform and the debates about legalization. And also towards africans in different ways, are there any parallels . Am i way off base . So on. I just want to say, i teach here at catholic university. Many of my students are the children and grandchildren of italian and irish immigrants. Actually most our greatgrandchildren. Teach a lot about global migrations and we always talk about new immigration. You would think that because these kids are children or greatgrandchildren of immigrants themselves that they would be automatically kind of that they would have sort of an empathy with new immigrants. They dont always. They often want to draw out differences and distinctions. They want to say, these new people are different. First of all, they are coming in illegally. They have this concept. And my greatgrandparents came and legally. If you are a historian you know, there was no coming in legally back then. There were no papers or visas. One of my goals as a professor is due to draw out some of the similarities. Because they dont automatically occur across generations. That is to get to the contemporary point. One of the reasons, when we were talking about sports. When ireland made the world cup, soccer divides people. Everybody that follows soccer, moves the way. There was an irish guy who immigrated, he said i came the night he broke his leg. He actually identifies himself that way. So italians and irish yogi berra. His father hated baseball. This goes to the issue of assimilation. Anyway, ive said enough. There is obviously literature that, in sociology and ethnic studies, that shows a firstgeneration that makes it relatively quick in terms of assimilation, and then you that a second or third wave particularly if this comes from a different cultural background that this can cause conflict and tension within that particular group. In part, because of the way that firstgeneration embarrassed by elements of the second and Third Generation. So is the case with jews in the United States. Those that came in the mid19th century assimilated relatively quickly, had a fairly difficult time with jewish populations that came later. The tension between irish and italian catholics, that may have been related to assimilation dynamic, although i dont know that the irish were necessarily any farther along than italians were at that time. I think it had to do more with deepseated religious differences in terms of self understanding of what it meant to be catholic. Many of the irish came here and, before that there was a kind of devotional revolution in ireland. That very much kind of fixed their sense of being what it meant to be catholic. Also, the irish dominated the clerical infrastructure of the church. Italians on the other hand, had a very different experience with catholicism and a different kind of devotional piety. I suspect it had more to do it religion per se, if youre talking about irish and italians than it did irish having made it and wanting to dump on italians in order to be american. There is a point as well that you made earlier, that i think is significant. This may sound terrible, but there is an old sociological axiom. External threat, internal cohesion. To the degree that catholics were in a minority defensive posture in American Culture for a long time, this worked to solidify at catholic identity. To the degree that that is no longer the case, to the degree that catholicism has become phenomenal eyes and an american religious denominalized, and become an american religion. You dont have this complex social ecology of catholic identity, that becomes much more unstable. Should we take one more question . Lets do one more. Thank you. This is a question for father. You mentioned something that resonates in my experience. A pastor in three parishes in baltimore. Many of our community is from various countries throughout africa. One has just come from guinea, an anesthesiologist who cant get a job at a hospital. He is working at a restaurant at the airport. My question would be, do you have any efforts that are happening within the immigrant communities, organizing around the issue of trying to change the way licensure and certification is done for professionals . I was a priest. I know that is not just for Health Safety will bar of society. It is also gatekeeping about who gets in and who does not get in. Unfortunately, i do not know of any existing effort to address that. Its a very serious problem. You hit it on the head. Some of it is gatekeeping. Eventually when some of those make it an intercom you see its really topnotch in many of them. There is history of an african young female doctor in texas, i think it was texas. For a long time they would not let her, and eventually she got it. That brought a patient to the hospital