What future for Los Angeles?

Begun on July 5 at 11:20 A.M.

A post I needed, for reasons that will become apparent in a future post on the same topic, based on something more recent. (An address of Archbishop Gomez at the Napa Institute Conference became available.)

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, What is most important for America (EWTN article).

Archbishop Gomez states that America is diverse, and yet he holds on to a rather monolithic conception of it as a political entity, or nation-state. Well, it's not a surprise -- the nationalist (as opposed to federalist*) conception has prevailed in education and the media.

Although it was founded by Christians, America has become home to an amazing diversity of cultures, religions and ways of life.

This diversity flourishes precisely because our nation’s founders had a Christian vision of the human person, freedom, and truth. It is a basic American belief that men and women are created equal — with God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Once again, proposition nation, the American creed. No mention of Anglo-American cultures and identities. So it shouldn't be a problem for Anglo-Americans to adopt Spanish missionaries and history as being important to our history, because they have no culture or identity of their own?

I believe American Catholics need to begin to see how these memorials belong together. America’s story starts with those Spanish missionaries. Our national character and identity are deeply marked by the Gospel values they brought to this land.

Holding up Spanish and French missionaries in high regard is not a problem for me; they are Catholic Christians after all. In fact, as saints they are owed dulia.  But I react badly to what the archbishop writes here because he seems to be no better than his predecessor with regard to protecting the natives and their culture. Is he just dealing with the demographic reality of Los Angeles and addressing the local church? Or is this intended for a wider audience? His words can be interpreted as pushing for the Hispanicisation of the Church. Is this an unwarranted? Am I jumping to conclusions because of my suspicions?

It is true that Anglo-Americans may not have any immediate Catholic predecessors to look to because of the Anglican schism and heresy. But staunch white Protestants will probably not accept the archbishop's historical claims concerning the founding or their history.

The feast of Junipero Serra is on July 1. He did not contribute to the American founding, but he has a place in the history of California. But who remembers what California was like before it became a republic? Who identifies with pre-Anglo California? Whose family has roots in that period of time, other than the Amerindians, whose history goes back further than that? The California Amerindians are  not the same as the ones in Mexico, and so the claims of Mexicans is second to that of the aborigines. (Who is still around representing the natives? I haven't met any, as far as I know.)

Honoring the same saints is not enough to create a sense of shared history, or to gather two peoples into one. The Church is the people of God, but that is a super-added identity; it does not replace or destroy ethnic identities. Immigrants from Catholic countries may be more open to identifying with these saints, but because their own sense of identity and history is malleable. There can be a blending of cultures, but I don't see how this can occur except for certain aspects of one being grafted onto the other (and intermarriage taking place). I may study the Carthaginians and their history, but does that make me a Carthaginian? I bet the Turks don't consider themselves Greeks after taking Constantinople, and they don't perceive a need to study Byzantine history and culture.

Besides, who will there be left to convert if more and more whites decide to leave the area? Ibero-American immigrants do have a great need for pastoring, as it is. Why preach to the non-Hispanics? Do non-whites take California history seriously, as a part of their identity? Those who have been here several generations and are established, such as the  nisei might, but their history is more of a local, lived sort, I would think, than one learned from a textbook. How many non-Hispanic Catholics will continue to live in [Southern] California if it becomes more and more Spanish-speaking?

Finally, do Mexicans themselves have an affinity for colonial times?  Or do they lack deep roots as well, being motivated more by nationalism and the desire to recover territory? Is the Church too "European" for many of them, especially the militant Atzlan groups and the like? How many think of themselves as heirs of Rome and its culture? How many would be willing to accept the history given by the archbishop as their own story? Perhaps they'd rather forget European colonialism.

From the beginning, Los Angeles been a meeting place of indigenous and immigrant cultures. We sit at the crossroads of continents — uniting North and South America and opening the Americas to Asia and the Pacific Rim.

In our new evangelization we must be an icon of what God intends his Church to be — one family of God that joins peoples of many colors, races, nationalities and languages.

A recognition that Los Angeles is "diverse." Inter-ethnic harmony is important, but is this the way to accomplish it?  (Does Los Angeles have a future if it is not sustainable?) Are the (militant) Hispanics accepting of non-Hispanics? How welcoming will they be once they are the majority in California? Will the attitudes behind what happened last month, with the booing of Team USA at the Gold Cup game in LA, be taken even further? (Soccer - The Patriot's Game)


A thought:
Hmmm... Are whites more likely to trusting because they are sheeple and take certain behaviors and attitudes for granted? Whereas members of other minorities are more likely to be suspicious, because they are aware of the unfamiliarity, lack of closeness? Does Putnam cover differences in attitudes according to ethnicity?

*Instead of nationalist, would unitary be a better word? But the word nationalist captures other aspects of the narrative, that there is just one people, one nation, with the exact same culture, and so on.

Related:
The City of Angels goes to hell. by Joel Kotkin
"Lost Angeles"

Decline and Fall of the Anglo Empire by Charles A. Coulombe

Edit. Archbishop José Gomez from Los Angeles receives the pallium from Pope Benedict