Immigration is an opportunity and a key to American renewal because
it helps bring to light the Christian, Catholic missionaries’ “heritage
of holiness and service,” Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles told a
gathering of Catholic leaders and laity.
“America is intended to be a place of encounter with the living Jesus
Christ,” the archbishop said.
“This was the motivation of the
missionaries who came here first. America’s national character and
spirit are deeply marked by the Gospel values they brought to this
land.”
Archbishop Gomez presented his talk Thursday at the Napa Institute's first annual “Catholics in the Next America.” conference at the Napa Valley’s Meritage Resort & Spa in California.
Archbishop Gomez presented his talk Thursday at the Napa Institute's first annual “Catholics in the Next America.” conference at the Napa Valley’s Meritage Resort & Spa in California.
The meeting brought together 300 Catholic leaders, including bishops,
priests, religious and lay people, to discuss the future of the Church
in an increasingly secular culture and to enjoy time for fellowship.
The archbishop said that although America was founded by Christians,
it has become home to “an amazing diversity” of cultures and religions
that flourishes “precisely because our nation’s founders had a Christian
vision of the human person, freedom and truth.”
But America is changing because of globalization, threats from abroad, and internal cultural forces.
“We have an elite culture — in government, the media and academia —
that is openly hostile to religious faith,” he continued.
“America is
becoming a fundamentally different country. It is time for all of us to
recognize this — no matter what our position is on the political issue
of immigration.”
The Los Angeles archbishop described the country’s immigration
situation as part of a set of larger questions about America’s national
identity and destiny.
Catholics must answer these questions “in light of
God’s plan for the nations.”
The archbishop said immigrants are “people of energy and aspiration” who are “not afraid of hard work or sacrifice.”
“The vast majority of them believe in Jesus Christ and love our
Catholic Church. They share traditional American values of faith, family
and community,” he said.
“That is why I believe our immigrant brothers
and sisters are the key to American renewal. And we all know that
America is in need of renewal — economic and political, but also
spiritual, moral and cultural renewal.”
The archbishop said that Americans have largely forgotten their
history or only know an incomplete version that leads to “the wrong
assumptions about American identity and culture.”
While the New England-focused American history tells the story of
“great men” like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
and also of “great documents” like the Declaration of Independence and
the Bill of Rights, it is not the entire story.
“When we forget our country’s roots in the Hispanic-Catholic mission
to the new world, we end up with distorted ideas about our national
identity,” Archbishop Gomez said.
“We end up with the idea that
Americans are descended from only white Europeans and that our culture
is based only on the individualism, work ethic and rule of law that we
inherited from our Anglo-Protestant forebears.”
The “whole story” about America starts in the 1520s in Florida and in
the 1540s in California.
This story also centers on New Spain and
teaches that “before this land had a name its inhabitants were being
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“The people of this land were called Christians before they were
called Americans. And they were called this name in the Spanish, French
and English tongues,” Archbishop Gomez said.
“(L)ong before the Boston
Tea Party, Catholic missionaries were celebrating the holy Mass on the
soil of this continent … Immigrant missionaries were naming this
continent’s rivers and mountains and territories for saints, sacraments
and articles of the faith.”
“Before there were houses in this land, there were altars,” he
continued. “This is the missing piece of American history. And today
more than ever, we need to know this heritage of holiness and service —
especially as American Catholics.”
Archbishop Gomez contended that forgetting these other roots has lead
to bad episodes in history, such as the mistreatment of Native
Americans, slavery, outbreaks of nativism and anti-Catholicism.
He worried that the political debates over immigration signals a new period of nativism.
However, he urged American Catholics to make their own contributions
to America through the way they live their faith in Jesus Christ.
“The ‘Next America’ will be determined by the choices we make as
Christian disciples and as American citizens. By our attitudes and
actions, by the decisions we make, we are writing the next chapters of
our American story,” he said.