Catholics, Evangelical Christians Battle for Latinos’ Souls : Immigrants: Protestants’ aggressive proselytizing is pulling more Latin Americans away from their traditional church, which is devising methods to stop the trend.

The steady stream of Latino immigrants into Southern California has sparked a battle for their souls that church leaders say will last throughout the 1990s.

The struggle pits the Roman Catholic Church, for centuries the predominant religion among Latinos, against evangelical Christian groups competing with increasing success for Latino converts.

As a result, besieged Catholic leaders throughout the nation are being forced to grapple with the realities of a rapidly transforming flock.

It is an issue they can no longer ignore. While Latinos will compose the largest Catholic group in the nation in the next 10 years--and indeed already do so in Southern California--the church lacks sufficient numbers of Spanish-speaking priests or those with adequate knowledge of Mexican, Central American and South American religious customs. While church officials are particularly concerned about defections among Catholic immigrants, they also worry about losing Latinos who have lived here all their lives.

“Numerically we are behind,” conceded Louis Velasquez, associate director of Hispanic Ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Velasquez estimated that about 70% of the 3.4 million Latinos in the sprawling three-county archdiocese are Catholic. But in the early 1970s, about 85% of the area Latinos were Catholic. Many have converted to “the aggressive fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches,” he said.

Worse, he added, probably no more than 20% of Southern California Latinos who consider themselves Catholic attend Mass regularly.

Many newly arrived Latinos hunger for a passionate, inspiring ministry that reaches them on a deep emotional level, observers say. And an increasing number come to Southern California already converted to Protestant faiths.

Twenty-three percent of Latinos in the United States identify themselves as Protestant, according to Tom W. Smith, director of the general social survey for the Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center. According to Gallup polls, the figure was 19% in 1986 and 16% in 1972.

The fastest-growing local Latino churches are charismatic where immigrants find spirited services, lively music and lay leadership, said Carlos Piar, lecturer in religious studies at Cal State Long Beach.

“There’s none of the staid organ hymns, Gregorian chants type of thing,” said Piar, former pastor of the Spanish-language Emanuel Baptist Church in Fullerton.

In the United States, churches often serve as informal halfway houses for immigrants, Piar added, and grow in accordance with the congregation’s country of origin.

The Evangelical Covenant church in downtown Los Angeles, for instance, is 60% Salvadoran, 30% Guatemalan and 10% Mexican, Piar said. “You go to Santa Ana, churches are 80% Mexican, 10% Central American and maybe a few Ecuadoreans and Puerto Ricans mixed in.”

As the rivalry between Catholics and evangelicals grows, it evokes anxiety and accusations.

Catholics complain that their competitors’ “anti-Catholic” tactics have torn Latinos from their roots.

One Catholic seminary student whose family migrated from Mexico 10 years ago said his two brothers, converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, called him an “anti-Christ” and refused to talk to him for more than a year.

“It’s been dividing my family against me,” he said.

Father Luis Valbuena, pastor of the huge Holy Family Catholic Church in Wilmington, objects to the emotional approach used by many evangelical Protestants. “You and Christ; Christ and you. Does that mean your neighbor doesn’t count? They aren’t related to other things in the community. . . . That is a very false gospel they are preaching, “ he said. At Valbuena’s church, nine of 11 Sunday Masses are conducted in Spanish.

But Protestant evangelicals such as Daniel de Leon, pastor of Templo Calvario in Santa Ana, say they are only responding to needs that have not been fulfilled by the Catholic Church.

“A little sheep, if not fed by the shepherd, will go looking somewhere else for food,” said De Leon, whose 3,000-member church is one of the largest Latino evangelical churches in the country. In 1976, his church had just 100 members.

He predicts that the rivalry for souls will continue for years.

“If the economic, social and political problems persist in Latin America, we will continue to see a great influx of Latins in our country. Obviously, the Hispanic church in America will have a great opportunity to win them over to Christ,” De Leon said.

At a Sunday service conducted by De Leon in Spanish, the sanctuary was packed with well-dressed men, women and children. On the altar flanked by an American flag and a Christian flag, a band played beneath a lighted cross. De Leon said he does not advertise because there is no more room on Sundays in the 60,000-square-foot converted warehouse that holds the sanctuary and offices.

With a $1-million annual budget, Templo Calvario has opened 40 missions associated with the Assemblies of God in Latin America and two in the United States.

De Leon said he hopes to expand his congregation to 6,000 during the 1990s and establish 15 new churches in the United States. The first additional church, Templo Calvario in Riverside, was launched in August. Under the leadership of De Leon’s brother, Lee, the church will open for services Jan. 1.

The last survey of Latino Protestant churches in Southern California was in 1985 and showed 687 congregations in Los Angeles County and 80 in Orange County. Those figures have increased about 10% each year since, said Clifton Holland, president of In-Depth Evangelism Associates, a nonprofit research organization in the San Gabriel Valley.

Latino evangelists have joined Anglos in significant enough numbers to prompt Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena to offer an affirmative action-type master’s program in which Latinos without a bachelor’s degree can enter if they have been preaching for five years and speak English.

Not surprisingly, such moves on the part of the Protestants have forced Southern California Catholic leaders to rethink their own strategy.

Although there are 200 Latino priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles plus another 351 who are bilingual and “function” in Spanish, that is far too few, said Velasquez of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

“I have a gut-level feeling that if we had 100 new Hispanic seminarians tomorrow morning, we wouldn’t have enough priests for the year 2000. And they must also learn the Hispanic culture and customs such as quinceanera ,” a kind of religious coming-out ceremony for 15-year-old girls, he added.

Diocesan priests in Los Angeles and Orange counties have been required since 1987 to learn Spanish before being ordained at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo.

But considering the continued shortage of priests of any ethnicity, the greatest hope is the Latino people themselves, especially in the lay movements, church leaders said.

A variety of lay movements, called comunidades de base, or neighborhood communities, are taking hold in parishes like the 5,000-family Epiphany Church in South El Monte, where four Spanish and five English Masses are said each weekend.

The small neighborhood territories throughout the wider parish, composed of 50 to 100 households each, are being organized to meet in parishioners’ homes, with some groups speaking English and the rest Spanish, explained Father Joseph Greeley, Epiphany’s pastor. The groups discuss social and community problems, pray and study the Bible.

“The purpose of the comunidades de base is to spread the gospel of Jesus, as well as to create that sense of belonging . . . that the church is in the neighborhood,” Greeley said. “And this happens in person-to-person contact. This happens in leadership formation.”

One leadership program at Epiphany that closely mirrors a technique of Pentecostal Protestants is a charismatic-style prayer and training meeting to equip Latino lay people to lead weekend spiritual retreats.

And at Holy Family in Wilmington, Father Valbuena sends lay visitors door to door to invite newcomers to Mass. Others hold small group programs in homes. And a 24-hour help hot line is staffed by Spanish-speaking volunteers.

Auxiliary Bishop Juan Arzube, head of the San Gabriel Pastoral Region of the archdiocese, agrees that personal contact is the best way to meet the challenge of Protestant proselytizing.

Catholics arrive here from Latin America without knowing English and they come to Mass and “are lost in the crowd,” Arzube said.

“If they had belonged to a small group in the barrio, then they would at least know people when they went to church on Sunday. . . . Protestant sects are much smaller in numbers so their pastor can relate more personally. If he speaks Spanish to them on a one-to-one basis, they (Latino Catholic immigrants) will join that church--whatever it is.”

Vying with Protestants for the loyalty of Latinos is a full-time occupation for Karl Keating, founder of the San Diego-based Catholic Answers.

Keating, a former lawyer, said he uses both emotion and doctrine to bring back those who have forsaken Catholicism. His talks are in English and Spanish and stress biblical rather than papal authority.