Hoping for a Latino Archbishop in NY

From the New York Times:

Latinos account for at least half of the Roman Catholics in New York. Their neighborhood churches are often filled to capacity. Parishes originally named for Irish saints have been renamed for Hispanic ones. Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral honoring the feast days of their patron saints draw crowds so large and fervent that worshipers sometimes spill out onto Fifth Avenue to pray on their knees on the sidewalk.

And when the Vatican announced last week that the next leader of the Archdiocese of New York would be Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of Milwaukee — the 10th in an unbroken line of Irish-American archbishops to hold that job since 1842 — Latino Catholics in New York reacted as they would to news of another sunrise over the East River.

The muted response did not reflect indifference to the new archbishop, whom many people seemed to like, or to the notion that appointing a prelate with a Hispanic name instead of a Celtic one might be smart: Latinos are not only ascendant in New York, but also likely to be the majority of Catholics in the United States within a decade. The archbishop of New York, with his pulpit in the media nexus of the world, has been called the pope of America.

As Latino leaders described their reaction, it was more like accepting the limits of one’s options in the family business.

“It’s not called St. Patrick’s Cathedral for nothing,” said Richard Espinal, executive director of Centro Altagracia for Faith and Justice, a Jesuit-sponsored Latino advocacy group in Harlem. “The old guard of Irish-American priests — that’s still the church’s power base in New York. I have no problem with it. I’m just happy to read in the paper that the new archbishop can say Mass in Spanish.”

...There are still far more Irish-American priests than Latino ones in New York, as in most of the country. The board of directors of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation, which sponsors the New York Archdiocese’s biggest fund-raiser of the year, a white-tie dinner that attracts the city’s political and business elite, still reflects the white Catholic population that arrived in New York a century and more ago, and is mostly Irish-American.

Appointing a Latino archbishop in New York would not change the fundamental equation, but it would send a message, some community leaders said.

“This was a lost opportunity,” said the Rev. Ray Rivera, founder of the Latino Pastoral Action Center in the Bronx, a network of evangelical ministries that promotes economic development and operates a charter school.

Mr. Rivera is a former Catholic, like many evangelical Protestants, and evangelicals have given the Catholic Church stiff competition in courting Latinos. But he knows the landscape of Hispanic faith in New York.

“The Catholic Church’s renewal in New York is due to the Latino community,” he said. “Naming an archbishop who reflects the fastest-growing constituency it has would have sent a message that this church is not in a world apart.”

I suspect Pope Benedict was looking for a qualified successor to Cardinal Egan. Period.

I think it would have been as much of a mistake for the Pope to have appointed Archbishop Dolan the head of the Archdiocese of New York based on his ethnic background as it would have been to reject him because he's not Latino.

The Catholic Church isn't an affirmative action program.

...[Bishop Dennis Sullivan, the diocese’s vicar general, or first deputy to Cardinal Egan,] said communication between a priest and his flock is about more than language. “What is most important is that the bishop be able to communicate,” he said, “and I think Archbishop Dolan’s eloquence was evident to Catholics in the pictures of him. His smile is its own language.”

Dolan is a great communicator. Ethnicity or race is irrelevant.

If there are New York Latinos currently disappointed because Dolan has an Irish ancestry and doesn't share their ethnic background, I'm sure that will quickly be forgotten, and they will eagerly embrace Dolan as soon as they get to know him.

They won't complain. They'll consider themselves blessed.