TABLE DISCUSSIONS

SR. ROSEMARY NASSIF: I am still haunted by a statement that was made that “demography is destiny.” I am haunted because, first of all, it alarmed me. As an educator, I spent a lot of my life addressing students and walking with students whose demographic statistics, I assured them, did not have to be their destiny. The statistics around their demographics were saying that they were going to be low academic achievers, they were not going to graduate from college, and they probably would not get a job that could really provide an affordable income for them and their families. I assured them that their demographic statistics did not have to be their destiny.

“What innovations and collaborations could contribute to strengthening current pastoral outreach to Hispanic leaders and provide mentoring and support?

“What targeted investment could result in the expansion of access to higher education for Hispanic youth?”

Hispanic community. Is it a culture that is open to change, to become more Latina, more Latino? Are we a culture as a Church that wants to be more Latina? Do we all see that as a value and a benefit to us? It is like receiving a gift that changes us, not just a gift that we say, “oh, how nice.”

Are the demographics of our Church our destiny? How do we take that demographic destiny and turn it into a tremendous blessing and an opportunity as a Church, rather than something that could be a lost opportunity for the Church?

This has been an inspiring conference for all of us, and a real conscientious awakening around a critical issue for each of us and for our Church. I am hoping for a call to action that we experience not only as individuals, but that we can come to some kind of call to action as a community that truly desires our demography as a Church to be a blessing for our future.

I think if we are truly open to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is in the mess and the Holy Spirit is in the confusion. Our Holy Father called us, in his first pastoral visit to Brazil, to “Go back and stir things up.” Yet we are doing everything we possibly can to calm the seas. I think when we see young leaders in general all across ethnic groups, there is a common piece that we want them to be tokens at our committees, on our pastoral councils, etc. But let’s say that we have an economic student that is going back to a parish: why isn’t she sitting in on the finance council meeting to see that more funding is going towards young people in leadership in our parish and formation programs to be catechists and those sorts of things? We have a young Church that is crying out to be incorporated. We are afraid to accompany, and we are missing out on the Holy Spirit, and then we become the periphery. That is part of the challenge, removing those obstacles so as not to let our young people just be token representation.

We have more Hispanics, and more young Hispanics leaving the Church. We have a Church whose culture may not be technically and intellectually open to the

FR. JOHN HURLEY: Hispanic youth are also experiencing the same thing that the young Church in general does in our nation. There is a fear about letting young people get too close to making decisions for our communities. When we see people like Alixzandra and Javier, and we all have faces and names that we can put there, how do we remove obstacles to let them lead?

I would also like to draw attention to a national young adult program called ESTEEM through which the Leadership Roundtable and St. Thomas More at Yale collaborate, and many members of FADICA funded. It is precisely to prepare the best and brightest at the college level for meaningful levels of leadership in the Church, and on finance councils where some real authority is.