YO, MAN, GET OUTTA MY FACE

On 2 February 1970, I began my first Passionist assignment at Our Lady of Florida retreat center in North Palm Beach. I was willing to sacrifice, especially in winter! One of the priests there was truly eccentric. He literally would get in my face when he talked emphatically about some church change he disliked. He violated the social space that was usual among white, anglo, predominantly Irish-American males. I could not get him out of my face.

I realize that some of my likes and dislikes are deeply rooted in my cultural background. For example, my love of music came from my grandparents. Grandpa O'Brien (after whom I was named) played drum in an Irish band. Grandma O'Brien played button concertina. (Grandpa Castano played piano and harmonica; he was Spanish). Boyhood memories are filled with singing, music and talk. We O'Briens love to talk (which includes emotionally based opinion, gossip, jokes, stories, poems, whispered health reports, and tales validating long held grudges or plaints over long endured hurts--the saints, don't you know, are those who live with the martyrs).

All of us bring our ethnic histories to worship. The Euro-American Catholic Community has a lot of power in the church: money, education, positions of authority, leadership roles acquired through years of hard work. Our forebears were persecuted for being Catholic and for being Irish, Italian, Polish, French Canadian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Eastern Catholic, Lebanese, and...Euro-American Catholics are uniquely positioned. Because we remember these hurts, we can do things to assure that Catholic peoples of other cultures are embraced and welcomed.

Pope Paul II has said: "I have considered the church's dialogue with the cultures of our time to be a vital area, one in which the destiny of this world at the end of the twentieth century is at stake." We don't need to go overseas to encounter peoples from other cultures. The dialogue is in our face.

Four significant Catholic minorities refresh themselves in the same baptismal bath as we Euro-Americans do: Native tribal peoples, African-Americans (and newly arrived Afro-Caribbean Catholics), Hispanics from many nations, and Asian-Americans.

Some Native peoples have been Catholics for generations. There are over two million African-American Catholics. Were they a separate denomination, they would be the second largest number of African-American Christians in the U. S. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the U.S. church is Latino. Unlike almost any other ethnic group, Latina and Latino peoples deeply connect personal identity and language. In the last year I have met Indian, Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean Catholics in Boston.

These Catholic stories are oft untold because of racism, colonization, and pauperization in our church and society. Women thinkers and pastoral agents from all these groups get in our face about classism and sexist exploitation.

It is time to get in each other's face. To celebrate diverse cultural heritage and to embrace one baptismal heritage. Shall we gather at the river? Shall we share welcome table?...