This week marked the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe and it was celebrated accordingly by Chicago Catholics. What is most apparent to me on this occasion is the differences between the non-Hispanic and Hispanic faithful living here. Most non-Hispanic Catholics in the Chicago area – if they are devout – are aware that the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is this week but don’t do much to observe it. It might be comparable to St. Stephen’s Day for a non-Hispanic Catholic… we all see it there on the church calendar as a holy day but it’s not something we really take time to think about, or something we have a great deal of knowledge about aside from the basic gist of why it’s a holy day. For Hispanic Catholics, however, particularly Mexican-Americans, this is one of the most important events of the year and is central to their identity and faith as Catholics… to use an analogy I’ve used before, it would be like Irish Catholics ignoring St. Patrick’s Day. What divides us and what unites us as Catholics? That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.
When I was growing up Catholic in the southwest suburbs, I never heard much about the Virgin of Guadalupe. The first time I ever saw an image of Our Lady of Tepeyac (another title for the Virgin of Guadalupe) was as a teenager, and it struck me as strange and didn’t seem like an appropriate depiction of the Virgin Mary, given that she’s dressed in Green & Pink (rather than the traditional Blue & White used in most Roman Catholic imagery), is glowing, and is being held up by a baby rather than holding the baby Jesus, and she looks like a Latina. I had seen the mural of Virgin of Guadalupe spray painted on various walls in the city of Chicago, which made it even more removed from traditional Catholicism to me. It seems very foreign to non-Hispanic Catholics, in the same way that a solemn eastern Christian icon of the Virgin Mary staring forward at them and being dressed in bright red seems strange to Latin-rite Catholics. But these diverse images of Mary are all legitimate expressions of Catholicism. Non-Hispanic parishes are aware that it commemorates a Marian apparition, but the focus always tend to be on the European apparitions at Fatima and Lourdes.
For the newer generation of Chicago Catholics (a much larger share of Hispanic Catholics in Chicago than ever before), there’s a much greater effort to spread awareness of this feast day. This past Sunday, my parish had a 8x10 painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on display in the nave that people could come up and kiss before receiving holy communion, and for the actual feast day on Monday, CCD classes for grades 1-4 at my family parish were instructed to give two-side handouts (in English on one side and Spanish on the other side), explaining the story behind the Virgin of Guadalupe and traditions for celebrating it. Children took these handouts home to show their parents. In both cases, I would estimate the Hispanic population of the parish to be between 5-10% of parishioners.
Of course, this pales in comparison to what predominantly Hispanic parishes do to commemorate this event. A short 10 min. drive from me is St. Bede the Venerable Catholic Church, located at 4440 West 83rd Street (83rd & Kostner) in Chicago, IL, and home to a heavy Hispanic population. For them, the feast marks a huge weeklong celebration at their church. It began with a Novena for Our Lady of Guadalupe at 7:30 p.m. a few days prior (the Novena was Dec. 3rd, and was prayed through bi-lingual English and Spanish prayers, but was predominately in Spanish). Then the official celebration kicked off at 11 p.m. on Dec. 11, the night before the feast day (to prepare for a midnight mass to mark the event) and continued all day with a mariachi procession, a live band, dancers, a re-enactment of the event, “Las Mañanitas” at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., another Mass at 7 p.m. the following day, and refreshments and a reception in the church hall following the Mass. “Happy birthday to la Virgen de Guadalupe!!!” wrote a Latina friend on her facebook wall this Monday. (this terminology again seems odd to non-Hispanic Catholics, since the Virgin Mary's birthday is officially celebrated on September 8th)
For those who are unfamiliar with the feast day, the history behind the event is this: On December 9, 1531, Juan Diego, a recently converted Aztec peasant, saw a vision of a young woman while he was on a hill near Mexico City. The lady asked him to build a church exactly on the spot where they were standing. He told the local Bishop about the vision, and the Bishop asked for proof. Juan Diego went back later and saw the lady again, telling her the bishop needed proof. She instructed Juan Diego to go to the mountain top, where he found Castilian roses. These were native to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga's hometown in Spain and could not possibly bloom during wintertime. Juan Diego cut the roses, placed them in his apron-like tilma and returned to the bishop. There an imprint of the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared on the tilma from the residue of the soil and roses. This image is what the portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe is based on.
One thing perhaps lost on non-Hispanic Catholics that the Virgin of Guadalupe is not merely a symbol of Catholic identify for Hispanics of Mexican ancestry, but it is very much a unifying force for all Mexican culture. The event commemorates the appearance of the Virgin Mary to St. Juan Diego, and it occurred a mere 10 years after Mexico had been taken over by Spaniard Conquistadors. However, the location of that site,Tepeyac hill, is also believed to have been a Pre-Columbian worship site for the indigenous Aztec goddess Tonantzin. As such, it has been venerated as a holy spot long before Europeans or Spanish culture event arrived in north America. The story of the Virgin Mary appearing to Juan Diego at that location was extremely persuasive for 16th century Spaniards seeking to gain converts among the indigenous population, while simultaneously allowing the European Spaniards to continue practicing Catholicism in the new world. This had a momentous impact not only in North America, but for the Catholic Church worldwide. At the time the church was gaining thousands of new converts in the new world, it was being torn apart a little something called the Protestant Reformation in Europe (perhaps you’ve heard of it?) Within a few decades, Mexico and other Latin American countries became almost universally Catholic. These new numbers balanced out all the faithful it had lost in Europe and maintained the Catholic church’s strength worldwide as the predominant force in Christianity.
According to the traditional accounts, the name of “Guadalupe” was chosen by the Virgin herself when she appeared on the Tepeyec hill outside Mexico City. The image of the Virgin de Guadalupe, first painted in 1555, symbolizes the blended indigenous and Spaniard cultures in Mexico. Again according to tradition, Mary appears in the form of the local people, and appeared to Juan Diego as a mestizo (person of mixed American Indian and European Spanish ancestry) Mary’s depiction as a Mexican Latina is used to bring together people of distinct cultural heritages. The author Judy King asserts that the Virgin of Guadalupe is a "common denominator" uniting Mexicans. As opposed to the United States where it’s considered tacky to use religious imagery to campaign for office, it is common for Mexican politics to do so. Mexico’s ruling party, PAN, was for many years considered to be primarily for promoting Catholicism in government and then Presidential-candidate Vicente Fox got fined for marching under a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe while running for President. In Mexico today, even protestant churches will often use the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe to appeal to parishioners, which is certainly unheard of in any other part of the world – especially in the United States where Protestants frequently bash Catholic Marian venerations as “unbiblical”.
Mexican Catholics brought these traditions with them when they settled in the United States, and maintain them to this day. Chicago is home to one of the largest Catholic populations in the United States, and today is almost equally split between non-Hispanic Catholics (49% of the Archdiocese of Chicago), and Hispanic Catholics (42% of the Archdiocese). What I think is unfortunate is these two Catholic communities tending to self-segregate and communicate only with themselves, and that inevitably leads to culture conflict in the United States. For example, a seemingly non-controversial poster last year to encourage Hispanics to participate in the Census noted that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because "Joseph and Mary participated in the Census." This factual statement was actually denounced by many Hispanic Catholic officials as “blasphemous” and there were calls to “boycott” the U.S. Census Bureau over it. On the flip side, the man responsible for the administration of St. Bede’s in Chicago is none other than Fr. Jesus Medina – at that parish, you could quite literally say that Jesús met Mary when they did the presentation of the Virgin of Gualulape this week. It is common to find Hispanic Catholics named “Jesús“ For non-Hispanic Catholics, however, the name of Jesus is considered sacred and forbidden since it means “anointed one” and refers to the son of God, so non-Hispanics wouldn’t dare give their child that name anymore than the Chicago Bulls would give a new player the number #23 after Michael Jordan had it. The comparison to Muslims naming their child “Mohammad” is not a good analogy since Islam does NOT teach that Muhammad was divine and instead that he just a special human chosen to be a prophet for God. A closer analogy would be a Muslim naming their child Allah, which is strictly forbidden in Islam. Hispanic Catholics in Chicago also tend to be much more vigilance in weekly church attendance and observing feast days than non-Hispanic Catholics, where a large segment of our population sadly consist of “Christmas and Easter Catholics”, who show up for Mass once or twice a year. On the flip side, non-Hispanic Catholics are more supportive of candidates who follow church teachings than Hispanic Catholics. A major focus of the media reporting last year noted that “Obama won the Catholic vote”. Less reported, however, was the ethnic breakdown of the Catholic vote. Exit polls showed a narrow majority (51%) of non-Hispanic Catholics voted for McCain, while Hispanic Catholics voted pretty heavily (67%) for Obama. Much has been written about how Hispanic voters are supposedly “socially conservative”, but their voting patterns certainly don’t reflect that. Even a majority of black Obama voters supported the Catholic church’s position on Prop. 8 in California and voted for the ban on gay marriage, but the nation’s largest Hispanic newspaper, La Opinión in Los Angeles, editorialized AGAINST Prop. 8 and in favor of gay marriage.
Some of these culture clashes are obviously due to differing circumstances – many non-Hispanic Catholics are 3rd and 4th generation Americans so they’re used to communicating exclusively in English and not knowing about the “old country”, whereas many Hispanic Catholics are 1st and 2nd generation Americans and they’re used to communicating in “spanglish” at home so they can switch back and forth between English and Spanish effortlessly at church, and have ties to relatives back home in Mexico. I do think we can learn a lot from each other and share the best of our respective cultures though. Non-Hispanic Catholics need to be more in touch with the indigenous customs of north American and the early saints of the new world, and need to become more familiar with foreign languages, as well as become more observant for the Sabbath and Catholic feast days. Hispanic Catholics need to familiarize themselves more with the church’s grand 2000 year history, including its great European saints like St. Catherine of Siena , and the richness of American catholic figures like St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Dorothy Day, Fr. Michael McGivney, and Fulton J. Sheen. They need to be more observant of church teachings and support candidates who uphold Catholic beliefs on social teachings, especially to honor the Virgin of Gudalupe’s role as patroness for the unborn. What we do share as Catholics is sheer love and devotion to the Virgin Mary. Perhaps it time we visit each other’s parishes and see how that is expressed throughout the Catholic faith.
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