Skip to main content

The Many Tongues of Catholics in L.A.: Mass in 42 Languages

In L.A. there is a place of worship on every corner: Baptists, Jewish communities, Mormons, Muslims, Catholics, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses compete for members, attention, and, of course, money. Not a week goes by in which we don't get mail from some more or less known congregation: the Hrock church's flyer assures me that I "don't need to be afraid"; the First Baptist Church Pasadena invites us to a community breakfast; the La Canada Presbyterian Church talks about learning what joy means.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Los Angeles the city is home to the second largest population of Jews in the U.S. (with 621.000 Jews in the metropolitan area and 490.000 in L.A. proper), and the large number of immigrants from Asia make it the city with the greatest variety of Buddhists worldwide. My own cultural background is monoreligious and I find this diversity refreshing.

Hardly surprising for an Austrian of my age, I was baptized Roman Catholic. In 1961, the year before I was born, 89 percent of Austrians belonged to this denomination. Their number has been going down since the seventies but Catholics still make up around two thirds of the Austrian population though only around twelve percent of them attend mass on a regular basis. (Data based on information published by statistics Austria and the website of the Catholic church in Austria.)

Here in L.A. Catholics form the biggest religious group too. The archdiocese of Los Angeles which comprises the counties of L.A., Ventura, and Santa Barbara is the largest in the United States, and as of 2005 about two in five people living in the area were Catholic. Though I could not find specific numbers for the region it is safe to say that L.A.'s Catholics attend mass more diligently than their Austrian friends in faith (according to a Gallup poll around 45 percent of Catholics in the U.S. worship on a weekly basis) and they definitely do it in a more diverse manner. Catholic masses are held in 42 languages every Sunday in the L.A. area. Carolina Guevara from the archdiocese's media department named some of them in telephone interview: Sri Lankan, Hungarian, Cambodian, Nigerian, Arabic... You name it, they offer it.
Labels:

Comments

Mark said…
42 languages?! I worry enough about getting the time right at a new church. Would need to triple check the language in LA. I wonder if part of priest training now is a required second (or third) language?

Mark

P.S. Reese & I were about to respond, and agree, to your comment about UNESCO, but noticed it was gone. You were spot on with your views. Thanks for sharing.
June 29, 2011 at 6:57 AM
Christina Schweighofer said…
Thanks Mark. You're funny.

Many priests in L.A. speak at least a second language because they come from Asia or Latin America. The priest at our church is from India. He says mass in English and Spanish. If I remember correctly he speaks
Portugese too.
June 29, 2011 at 9:02 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ban on Plastic Bags Bugs L.A. County

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about ...
10 comments
Read more

Botanical Gardens Mirror Life in L.A. (The Huntington 1)

Showing off in pinks: magnolia tree at the Huntington Gardens Roses, camellias, cacti; sages, jacarandas, and palm trees: last week a friend invited me to spend an afternoon at the  Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens  in San Marino, an affluent suburb of L.A. The Huntington boasts more than 14,000 varieties of plants in 14 principal garden areas and one section or another is always at its best. Right now the magnolias and parts of the cactus garden are showing off in oranges, reds and pinks. Natural habitat, home base: cactus garden As my companion and I were wandering down through the desert garden, into the Australian garden, and, later, through the Chinese garden it struck me how the Huntington is a mirror for life in Los Angeles. Botanical sections adjoin and sometimes blend into each other the way neighborhoods in L.A. do. To the immigrant from Europe some parts of the Huntington such as the Asian areas and the jungle see...
2 comments
Read more

Lyman, Whitford, Reality Check: A Career in the West Wing?

On a chilly Sunday night in February two young girls in jeans and light blouses were standing in front of the artists' entrance of one of two local art theaters in Pasadena, California. The pathway beyond the barrier, an iron gate, was barely lit. It stayed empty for a long time while the girls, shifting weight from one foot to the other, chatted and giggled. After a while a figure emerged from the shadows. The girls fell silent but it was the wrong actor. When the right man, Bradley Whitford, finally appeared he was wearing a bicycle helmet pushed way up on his forehead. Whitford is best known for playing Josh Lyman in the TV series  The West Wing   but on that night he had performed in the Pasadena Playhouse's production of Yasmina Reza’s   Art.  The girls stopped the actor, told him about their social studies class and how the teacher would have them watch The West Wing.  Whitford smiled, asked, "Which school is it?" and autographed the two print...
2 comments
Read more