Small Church Leads Resistance to Clinic

Guardian Angel Catholic Church in Pacoima is by far the smallest of the five parishes within San Fernando High School’s attendance boundaries.

Most of its 600 families are immigrants from Mexico, church officials say.

And its small, unimposing sanctuary and location across from a crime-plagued public housing project bear testament to the poverty and difficult circumstances of many of its parishioners.

But Guardian Angel has become the leader in the battle to stop establishment of a San Fernando High School medical clinic whose services would include dispensing contraceptives and birth-control advice.

In the past three months, Guardian Angel has organized two demonstrations against the proposed clinic, which drew about 2,000 protesters each. Some of its parishioners helped start Parents and Students United in the San Fernando Valley, an organization of clinic opponents.

Guardian Angel has contacted other churches, written letters of protest to school administrators and concluded Sunday Masses with talks against the clinic.

Declined TV Debate

Guardian Angel’s activism led school board member Roberta Weintraub to challenge Father Peter Irving, the church’s associate pastor, to a televised debate on the clinic. He declined but urged her to hold a community meeting on the subject.

All five Catholic churches in the area are opposed to the clinic on grounds that its birth-control services would run counter to the church’s prohibition against contraception and because clerics believe the clinic would interfere in matters that should be reserved for the family.

But the churches express their opposition quite differently. While Guardian Angel was organizing a candlelight march to the offices of the agency chosen to run the campus clinic, St. Ferdinand’s Catholic Church in San Fernando was limiting its protest to a message from its pastor in a church bulletin to parishioners.

Guardian Angel’s activism might well be traced to its large proportion of recently immigrated families, according to Latino and urban studies experts at California State University, Northridge.

Newly arrived immigrants tend to cling to traditions, including the authority of the church, said Jorge Garcia, associate professor of Chicano studies at CSUN.

“With immigrants, if the church says march, they’ll march,” Garcia said. “You aren’t going to find that same kind of enthusiasm among those who have become integrated.”

Jose Hernandez, coordinator of the CSUN Urban Studies Program, said assimilated immigrants feel less threatened by institutional change. Thus, he speculated, Father Paul Waldie of St. Ferdinand’s might have alienated his parish of 1,600 families, most of whom are Anglo or second- or third-generation American-born Latinos, if he had done much more than write an anti-clinic letter to them.

Furthermore, the church tends to be more important to recent Latino immigrants than to others, Hernandez said. “People begin to feel that the church is a second home.”

This is true not only at Guardian Angel but also at Santa Rosa Catholic Church in San Fernando and, to a somewhat lesser extent, at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Pacoima. Santa Rosa considers itself the “newcomer church,” with most of its 4,000 families having immigrated from Mexico and Central America. Mary Immaculate, on the other hand, has more of a mixture of immigrants and American-born Latinos--mostly first-generation American-born--in its 1,600-family parish.

Santa Rosa, for example, offers parishioners a credit union and an immigration counseling center. All three “Latino” churches hold English classes, offer free medical and dental exams and hold such social activities as community dances.

Clothing a Statue

Immigrant Latinos also try to make their new churches resemble churches in Mexico. At Santa Rosa, for example, newly arrived parishioners have brought the custom of dressing statues of the Christ child in elaborate baby clothes. Clothing a statue is a sign of respect and devotion, according to students of Catholic rituals.

In an attempt to make American churches more hospitable to newly arrived Latinos, many American priests are welcoming traditions and saints peculiar to Latino cultures. Last summer, for example, Guardian Angel played host to the statue of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, commonly known as the patron saint of immigrants to the United States.

And Garcia said he believes it was no accident that one of the large demonstrations against the clinic was held on the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other during Las Posadas, two important Latino Catholic celebrations.

“Holding the marches on these days was not simply a shrewd organizational tactic,” Garcia said. “It is an example of how the church has learned to incorporate popular piety, that is, the rituals unique to a certain segment of the church, into the traditional formalities.”

Things are a little different at St. Ferdinand’s and St. Didacus Catholic churches in Sylmar. Parishioners at these churches are more affluent, more diverse ethnically and more a part of mainstream society. St. Didacus’ 2,700 families are an about-equal mix of Anglos and Latinos, and very few of the Latinos are immigrants, church officials said.

‘Anglo’ Parish

At one time, St. Ferdinand was the “Anglo” parish, serving the growers and landowners in the San Fernando area, and Latinos in the area went to Santa Rosa, a few blocks away. Now St. Ferdinand’s has many Latinos in its congregation, but, according to Father Waldie, its pastor, most are second- and third-generation American-born members who want their Mass said in English, not in Spanish.

St. Ferdinand’s offers one Mass in Spanish to show that the church welcomes newly arrived immigrants, but CSUN’s Hernandez said he believes it takes more than Spanish Masses to encourage participation by a wider spectrum of Latinos.

“There are very few statues of saints in St. Ferdinand. Someone from a small Mexican village may feel uncomfortable worshiping in what they feel is a barren church,” Hernandez said.