The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2000 Glenmary Challenge.
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Unexpected Guests
Glenmary missions learn to welcome
Spanish-speaking newcomers.
By Danny Duncan Collum

Father Steve Pawelk baptizes a young Hispanic woman during the 2000 Easter Vigil at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New Albany, Miss. Photo by Lynn West

“Imagine you invited two people to dinner at your home, but they showed up with family and friends, and you suddenly found yourself with 20 guests. You want to be hospitable, but there is bound to be tension in this situation.” 

That’s how Glenmary Father Steve Pawelk sums up the recent experience of his two mission congregations in Northeast Mississippi. In the past few years, both Churches, like many other Glenmary missions, have been surprised by large numbers of newly arrived Spanish-speaking Catholics. This wave of immigration has created Hispanic majorities in a significant number of Glenmary missions in the South and Southwest. 

History has not prepared Southerners for the experience of welcoming immigrants who don’t speak English. Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the South attracted few newcomers. 

While Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were transforming the demographics of the North, the South remained mostly Anglo-Celtic and African in origin—and solidly Protestant in religion. Only along the coasts and in the river ports could significant numbers of immigrants be found. Catholics who ventured into the rural areas often found no Church close by and were quickly absorbed into the dominant Protestant culture.

At the turn of the 21st century, the South is not nearly so isolated as it once was. Many Southern communities now depend on factories that are tied to the global economy. In other places family farming has given way to poultry and forestry industries, creating a new demand for low-wage workers. National and multinational corporations now make many of the decisions that affect life in rural America, and sometimes those corporations decide to import workers. 

Glenmary Challenge checked with a sampling of Glenmary missions and missioners to see how Southern Catholics are coping with the shock of this new multicultural reality.

 Perhaps nowhere have the changes been more dramatic than at Good Shepherd in Russellville, Ala. In the spring of 2000, Glenmary Home Missioners returned this parish to the Diocese of Birmingham. But until then, it was pastored by Glenmary Father Bob Dalton. 

When Father Bob came to Russellville in 1995, there was already a small and growing Hispanic community. Good Shepherd was offering Mass in Spanish once a month. 

The growth of the Catholic Hispanic population accelerated as the first immigrants were joined by extended family members and friends. In 1996, Father Bob went to San Antonio to learn Spanish. Soon he was celebrating Mass in Spanish every Sunday. 

“When I left the parish this year,” he says, “we had three Masses every Sunday, two in Spanish and one in English. About 400 people usually attended the two Spanish Masses and about 100 came to the English Mass.”    

Eupora is the county seat of Webster County in the red hills of east central Mississippi. Eight years ago Glenmary lay pastoral coordinators Gene and Mary Helen Grabbe arrived to try to revive a dying diocesan Church. “When we came,” Mary Helen says, “there were six households in St. John Church. Today there are more than 40 families in the parish.”  

Eight years ago the Grabbes were told there were no Hispanics in Webster County. And, after a few years of work, they had discovered only one Hispanic family. Then a national furniture manufacturer that employed mostly Hispanics closed a plant in California and expanded operations in Eupora. The company promised jobs to any of its California workers who came to Mississippi, and many of them did.  

Today, Mary Helen says, “The total membership of our Church, counting children, includes about 95 Hispanics and about 45 English-speakers.” Due to the small size of the congregation, St. John has not instituted a separate Spanish Mass. Instead, the community meets together for a bilingual liturgy every Sunday. The Gospel and the homily are in both Spanish and English, with a mixture of Spanish- and English-language songs.

At St. Christopher Church in Pontotoc, Miss., Spanish- and English-speakers also stay together for bilingual liturgy in which some readings and parts of the Mass are done in English and others in Spanish. The Gospel and homily are in both languages. 

“Bilingual liturgy is very hard for everyone,” says pastor Father Steve Pawelk. “But surprisingly few have stopped coming. There’s a strong desire to be together.” In Pontotoc, Hispanics make up at least 60 percent of the congregation.   

Glenmary Father Vic Subb has served Spanish- and English-speaking Catholics for more than 10 years, first in Arkansas and now in south Georgia. He was pastor of Holy Cross in Crossett, Ark., for eight years. He recently became pastor of Holy Trinity in Swainsboro, Ga., and Holy Family in Metter. Both of the Georgia congregations have Spanish and English Masses every Sunday. The Swainsboro mission usually has about 70 people for English Mass and about 60 for Spanish.

Holy Spirit Church in Hamburg, Ark., which Father Vic also pastored, was developed to meet the needs of the large number of Hispanics in that area. “The first Hispanics were migrant men who came to cut trees for Georgia Pacific,” he says. “Then families came. There is a large permanent population now. Many of them work in the Georgia Pacific plant.” Many Hispanic migrants also work on that area’s large tomato farms.

In Ripley, Miss., the arrival of Hispanic Catholics coincided with the 1997 founding of the Tippah County Catholic Community by Glenmary lay pastoral coordinator Polly Duncan Collum. That’s when Benchcraft Furniture, Tippah County’s largest employer, opened up 400 new jobs in Northeast Mississippi and began recruiting Hispanics to fill them. 

Rick Hill, a Tippah Countian and a Catholic convert, was confirmed in Ripley’s storefront mission in 1999. Says Rick, “Our little Church has been predominantly Hispanic from its very beginnings. That has been a blessing....But it has also strained our resources and our minister.”  

Less than three years after its first meeting, the Tippah County mission has identified 105 Catholic households, 79 Hispanic and 26 English-speaking. Weekly attendance at services is about 70 percent Hispanic.

St. Francis of Assisi in New Albany, Miss., was already a well-established parish when Hispanic Catholics began to arrive. The first Spanish Mass was offered in 1996.

“We knew of about 18 Spanish-speaking Catholic migrant workers in the area, and one bilingual family,” pastor Father Steve Pawelk recalls.

“The people we knew about came, plus about that many more. The next month we did it again. Our 18 original migrants had all been deported, but there were still twice as many people as there were at the first Mass.” Immigration has continued to grow, and now New Albany holds Masses in Spanish and English every Sunday.

Ken Sanchagrin, director of the Glenmary Research Center, reports that increased ethnic diversity is a growing reality throughout the South. “The real influx of Hispanics is actually urban,” he says, “with some movement from urban to rural areas following.” But because the Hispanic population in many rural areas was nonexistent for so long,” he continues, “rural areas are more likely to notice what appears to be a large increase in Hispanics. And often it is large percentage-wise.”

In much of Glenmary’s territory, those small increases in the overall Hispanic population might quadruple the number of resident Catholics overnight. Such sudden change has brought the need for adjustments, and it has brought some inevitable tension.

Members of one culture may expect Mass to start promptly at 11 a.m. and be irritated if it doesn’t. Other cultures have a more free-flowing concept of time.

In one congregation, the English-speakers are mostly older people with children long gone. The Hispanic newcomers are mostly young couples with small children. Not surprisingly, Mass is no longer as quiet as it once was, and everyone isn’t pleased with the change. 

Perhaps the most painful tension some Glenmary pastors report concerns the identity of the small-town Southern Catholic Church. “Most of our non-Hispanic Catholics in Russellville were also newcomers in some way,” Father Bob Dalton says. “Whether from other countries (such as the Philippines) or from outside the South, they are understandably concerned about gaining acceptance in the broader community. Being seen as going to the ‘Hispanic Church’ did not make that any easier.”

Father Steve Pawelk notes that St. Francis of Assisi in New Albany enjoys an exceptionally positive reputation in that community. “Many of our people have worked very hard to have the Catholic Church understood and accepted in this small Southern town,” he says. “They’ve tried very hard to present the Catholic faith in a way that is understandable to their evangelical neighbors. And they fear losing the results of that effort. This comes out, for instance, over things like where we put Our Lady of Guadalupe in the church.” 

In the rural South Catholic devotions to Mary have often been perceived by some Protestants as idol worship or placing Mary ahead of Jesus. Correcting this misperception, while upholding the truth of Church teaching, is a task that faces every native-born Southern Catholic. Hispanic immigrants, of course, come from a traditionally Catholic culture and, for many of them, Marian devotions are central to their faith. 

The smaller Mississippi missions at Pontotoc, Ripley and Eupora have opted for bilingual liturgies rather than separate Masses. This is partly because the size of the congregations and the available resources won’t support two services and partly from a desire to keep the communities together. This, too, comes with some cost. 

“Bilingual liturgy can be tedious,” says Rick Hill of Ripley. “It lacks the rhythm of Mass in one language. You miss parts of it, even if you are reading along in your own language in the bilingual missal. For me the reward of having us all together is well worth it. But I can also see that this makes it harder to attract new folks from our local community.”  

Father Bob Dalton agreed, saying, “It is harder to attract  native-born people in North Alabama to become part of what’s seen as the ‘Spanish Church.’ Also, for the last couple of years in Russellville, my outreach to the native-born unchurched fell off simply because of the time consumed by Hispanic ministry.”

Father Vic Subb also identified this tension. “Time with Hispanic ministry can take away from outreach to the local community. Hispanics are often invisible people,” he notes. “So work with them isn’t seen by the community.” 

Glenmary’s challenge, he says, is “to make the Church a place where both Hispanic and Southern cultures feel at home. This requires some patience and adjustments. We have to open our hearts to one another.”

And hearts are being opened. “Some of our people see this as a chance to really live our faith,” reports Father Steve Pawelk. “They say, ‘This is what being Catholic is all about.’”  

St. John Church in Eupora received three native-born converts into the Church this Easter. “They were drawn by the integrated, multicultural nature of our Church,” Gene Grabbe points out.

Convert Rick Hill says, “When I walked into the Catholic mission here in Ripley and saw all God’s people there together—African-American, Hispanic, Filipino, white, middle-class and poor—I knew that this was what the Church was supposed to look like.”

Father Bob Dalton also sees signs that the newcomers are being integrated into Southern small-town life. “There was a Spanish-speaking lady in Russellville—SeÏora Vidal—who died suddenly in January of this year. She didn’t speak any English. So when she died, I was stunned at the number of our English-speaking Catholics who came to the wake. 

“And I was really astounded at the number who came to the funeral, in the middle of a weekday, when they had to take time off from work. Of course,” he continues, “this is what small-town people do for each other. And here they were doing it for this lady who—despite the fact that she spoke another language—was a part of their community.”

His conclusion: “They were just being small-town people at their best.”

Danny Duncan Collum teaches English at Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss., and is a regular contributor to Sojourners.