Church Rejects Parishioners’ Pleas for Meeting

Despite pleas from Latinos, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has no plans to meet with parishioners who are upset at a decision to turn the largely Latino St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Monterey Park into a center for Chinese American evangelism, officials of the Los Angeles archdiocese said Monday.

Archdiocesan officials defended their decision and chided the congregation for stirring up controversy, saying members should adjust to changes aimed at the common good.

“I would seriously . . . question some of the underlying agendas at work here. I think it’s possible there’s xenophobia and bigotry,” said Father Gregory Coiro, archdiocesan public affairs director.

Meanwhile, a Chinese American city councilman in Monterey Park charged the archdiocese with acting in a “high-handed and less than sensitive” manner that will drive a wedge between the Chinese American and Latino communities at a time when civic leaders are trying to unite them.

Councilman Sam Chiang said he asked the archdiocese Monday to postpone its plans until the community can meet to air concerns. Chiang said he was disappointed when auxiliary Bishop-Elect Thomas Curry, secretariat for Ethnic Ministry, refused such a meeting and said a Chinese-speaking pastor would be installed today. The archdiocese also plans to remove the only priest who speaks some Spanish.

Chiang said Curry also accused him of meddling in religious affairs. But Chiang said the dispute is “not just a church matter. This is causing a community problem because you’ve got different ethnic groups upset at each other.”

“It’s unfair to the Spanish-speaking community, but it is also unfair to the Chinese community, most of whom are not even Catholic,” he said. “It makes the entire Chinese community into a bad guy.”

Problems began coalescing three weeks ago when the archdiocese unveiled plans to center its efforts to evangelize the San Gabriel Valley’s Chinese American population at St. Thomas Aquinas, whose parish of 1,200 families has about 840 Latino families and 20 Chinese American families.

The church plans to install three Chinese-speaking priests at the parish, open a Chinese language school on the premises and build a Chinese community center to provide outreach to potential converts.

Archdiocese officials have assured the parish that no Spanish-language ministries will be curtailed and that a visiting priest will be brought in to say a Spanish language Mass each Sunday. But they have transferred the church’s longtime pastor, Father Brian Cavanagh, who occasionally says Masses and gives sermons in Spanish, although he says he is far from fluent.

This has infuriated many longtime parishioners, including some Chinese Americans who say they plan to leave the church in protest when the new pastor arrives. Latinos view the changes as an indication that the church does not care about them. Although many of them speak English, they say they are traumatized by losing the one priest who, after many years of outreach, understood their language, culture and holy days.

Parishioners are also upset that they were not consulted about the changes. But church officials, who expect things to calm down once the new pastor is installed, say that is not their way.

“The church has never been democratic in that things are put up for a vote,” Coiro said. “The church is a hierarchy.”