Outreach Plan for Catholic Latinos Has Mixed Success : Religion: Some of the most ambitious goals set for the archdiocese 4 years ago are unmet. But Archbishop Roger Mahony says most of the major ones have been dealt with effectively.

More than 50,000 Latino Catholics filled Dodger Stadium four years ago for a fiesta celebrating a new five-year plan to address spiritual and material needs of the Spanish-speaking population in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The excited, hopeful crowd greeted Archbishop Roger M. Mahony with cries of “Rogelio! Rogelio,” a reference to the bilingual Los Angeles prelate, and applauded loudly when he reviewed goals “to place emphasis on education” and to offer “alternatives to gang participation.”

Today, some of the most ambitious goals in adult education, gang abatement, temporary housing and instructional television are unmet. The few critics of the 24-point pastoral plan say the funding was too meager.

But Mahony considers the program a success. And it is clear that when thwarted by impractical concepts or prohibitive costs, the archdiocese often seized other opportunities to serve Latino Catholics, taking steps not even envisioned in the plan.

Through it all, Mahony’s reputation is untarnished and perhaps enhanced.

“He’s responded with his public presence over and over,” said Fernando Moreno, a layman who heads the campus ministry at Loyola Marymount University.

Latinos are said to number more than 2 million, or at least 60% of the 3.4 million Catholics in the archdiocese that embraces Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Some Latino priests place the percentage higher than 70%.

Such numbers are daunting and may overwhelm the resources of the archdiocese, suggested one priest who requested anonymity.

“(We have) the best intentions, but they don’t translate into hard dollars when it comes to budgeting,” he said.

Similarly, Father Luis Valbuena, pastor of Holy Family Church in Wilmington, said that the five-year plan “was a beautiful awakening for Spanish-speaking people who take seriously their roles in the Catholic Church. But when you come to practical follow-up, you don’t see too many changes.”

Mahony announced just before the June 1 “Celebracion ‘86” in Dodger Stadium that $2 million would be spent during the first year of the plan.

“Some people interpreted that to mean we would have $2 million each year,” said Jesuit Father Anastasio Rivera, director of the Office of Hispanic Ministry. “But, no, we don’t have that kind of megabucks.”

Rivera’s office is charged with overseeing the plan, but it possesses neither the purse nor the power to see it through. Responsibility for implementation is dispersed among various departments and individual parishes in the archdiocese.

The biggest disappointment, Rivera said, probably has been the failure to establish contacts with gangs. The plan’s proposed Archdiocesan Council for Youth Gangs was dropped. “We haven’t been able to touch that at all,” Rivera said. “We simply haven’t had the personnel.”

But other goals also are unfulfilled. For instance, parochial school facilities have not opened at night and during vacation periods for English, citizenship and literacy classes.

Nor have centers been established for immigrants and the homeless in each of the five administrative regions of the archdiocese. Some of those needs are met, however, through the ongoing programs of Catholic Charities.

When circumstances dictated adjustments in the pastoral plan, the archdiocese either took new directions or, in one case, simply got lucky.

Under an amnesty program signed into law in late 1986, archdiocesan leaders took the unforeseen opportunity to help alien Latinos apply for citizenship. The archdiocese eventually processed 37,500 amnesty cases at 17 centers by the May 4, 1988, deadline.

“We had hoped to be able to help many, many thousands more than we did,” said Rivera. Nevertheless, the priest said that nearly $4 million was spent on the amnesty program by the social services arm of the archdiocese, augmented by special funds. “Either we helped the people meet deadlines at that time or they would have lost their chance,” he said. Although the immigrant/homeless center plan was shelved as a result, Rivera said it was “a fair substitute.”

The archdiocese hoped to expand its instructional television system, now limited to parochial schools, to a “Catholic channel” that many said would be the most effective way to reach Latinos. But even if some local cable companies were able to expand their number of available channels, the projected studio and production costs have made the goal impractical, church officials said.

As a result, the archdiocese plans to publish a weekly Spanish-language Catholic newspaper, “Vida Nueva,” by next year and mail it free to every Latino household in the archdiocese, supporting it through advertising.

The pastoral plan called for formation of an archdiocesan-organized community of nuns to serve Latino areas. “After some homework,” Rivera said, “we decided we would be working on this for 10 or 20 years.” The idea of a male-organized community of nuns also struck some officials as insensitive, he added.

Coincidentally, a Mexico City-based religious order requested permission to establish a chapter in Los Angeles. That solved the problem for the archdiocese as well as providing three sisters to work as Latino regional coordinators. A second order from Mexico also has started work in the archdiocese.

Rivera is happiest with steps taken to require that all seminary graduates be bilingual, a remedial education program for Spanish-speaking priesthood candidates, and with two young adult gatherings in recent years that drew thousands of Latinos.

He also cited the growing amount of tuition aid for students in Catholic schools from the new Archdiocesan Education Foundation, which will distribute $1 million in the 1990-91 school year.

Mona Virramontes of Huntington Park, who was “full of hope” at the Dodger Stadium fiesta, said that Catholic school tuition is out of reach for many families and that other education programs go unfunded. Nevertheless, Virramontes said she believes that Mahony is trying his best.

Mahony’s own assessment is that the plan is working.

“Most of the major target goals are being dealt with effectively,” he said in a recent interview.

Social justice aims, such as gang violence abatement and support for the proposed Nehemiah West low-income townhouse project, are pursued through the archdiocese’s backing of the expanding Industrial Areas Foundation Network. Activist community groups such as United Neighborhoods Organization and the relatively new Justice and Peace Commission are part of the network, he said.

“Our concern for youth, family and evangelization have received the brunt of our effort,” Mahony said.

Each of the five regions of the archdiocese has a system for training lay parish leaders. And the nearly 200 parishes with significant Latino populations are under pressure from the chancery to hire a youth minister for Latinos, if one is not already on the parish staff.

While the wooing of nominal Latino Catholics by small fundamentalist churches has worried Catholic church leaders, Mahony said that the fundamentalist churches are scarce in parishes that are actively in touch with the neighborhoods. The archbishop said that new Bible study materials in Spanish that will be available in September should help people to “share and deepen their faith in small, neighborhood groupings.”

Dan Saenz, a former president of UNO, said in an interview that he has seen more lay Latinos involved “in the nitty-gritty work”--on parish councils and in small groups within the parishes--after the pastoral plan was inaugurated.

Much of the Latino ministry is focused on the Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, which require the most assistance.

Because of that emphasis, there is a gradual exodus from the church of Chicanos, second- and third-generation Catholics who speak English and are uncomfortable in “Mexican churches,” according to Gilbert R. Cadena, assistant professor of sociology at Pomona College. “They also don’t feel comfortable in an Anglo church,” Cadena said.

Mahony said he “worries” about that problem, noting that “huge numbers” of Catholics from Central American countries also have their own religious traditions and social needs.

Before the five years are up, the Latino pastoral plan is going to be folded into a larger “strategic process” that involves goals for the whole archdiocese, Mahony said.