As he was approaching retirement in late 2020, Bishop Barnes sat down with Father Soney Sebastian, SVD, for an interview on Wordnet TV. A good part of the discussion centered on Bishop Barnes’ reflections on the multicultural reality of the Diocese – its blessings, its challenges and what our Catholic faith tells us about recognizing the presence of God in all people.
Fr. Soney: When you look at the demography of this [Diocese], we get a feeling that there is a growing number of Hispanic people, and there is a decline in the Anglo community and we see that very tangibly in many of our parishes, in our churches and in the ministries. Because of that do you think there has been any kind of tension?
Bishop Barnes: There is tension; tension is real; tension is not necessarily bad. The tension helps us grow. But we have to be open to working with it, what it is saying, and not running away from it or not blaming people. I sincerely believe that if I meet a person of another race or ethnicity, or generation, God has that person there for some reason for me. That’s what I’m saying about that encounter, a culture of encounter. God has placed that person there, that person is made in God’s image and likeness.
And I get to know my God and who my God is even more by knowing other people, but the tension is there. Part of it is that the Hispanic community has been a part of these lands for generations since before we were a country. I mean even the name San Bernardino, it’s in Spanish, right? For St. Bernardine. So, this part of the United States was settled by Hispanic people so that the roots are here and when the roots are there it attracts other people with those same affiliations, right? Because that’s who we are.
The other aspect is Hispanic families today are growing, they have more children than white or Anglo families, and they tend to stick together, where with the Anglo you might live here but you have a son living in Florida and one in Canada, one in Texas. Whereas the Hispanics will mostly be still in their neighborhood with their families, so that gives a bigger number.
The other is that the Hispanic story is very, very tied to their faith and so they’re going to be there for the celebrations of that faith, and it’s not just for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe or for the Sunday Mass that they’re going to be coming. At one time, for the Anglo community that was part of the identity. You were very tied to your parish, you had guilds, had societies. That no longer exists in the same number that the Hispanics have.
So that, in some way, for some people, is threatening. Like they’re taking over exactly for the other people. Some might say, “I wish I knew the story of my Italian roots, or my Polish celebrations.” The Hispanics still have that and so there’s a certain piety that they bring, a certain popular religiosity that in some way has not continued in the English speaking or the Anglo community and that brings tension. Sometimes, I think it is a little jealousy and sometimes it’s fear.
If we just, say, eliminated the Spanish-speaking community from this Diocese, we would have to close over half of our churches because 74 percent of the Catholics in this Diocese are Hispanic origin. Only 30 percent are immigrants; 70 percent are native born, but they’re still Hispanic, with the same kind of roots and affiliations.
Fr. Soney: It is not only just the Hispanic community, but there are also so many ethnic Asian communities that have come into our Diocese and contributed.
Bishop Barnes: Yes. Half of our parishes contribute also to the growth of the number of Asian Catholics that have moved in and that are also seen as a threat by some people. [We have a] growing number of Filipinos and we have the Vietnamese Catholics, Korean Catholics, Chinese Catholics, Indonesian Catholics, Indian Catholics, Arabic speaking Catholics. We have Latin rite Catholics, Portuguese Catholics ... the largest number is Hispanic, but the fastest growing number is Asian and some of what they bring others feel threatened by.
It’s people feeling that whatever is foreign may threaten them. That’s why we need to meet them, know them and, hopefully, bring it to our Catholic faith. That’s what we have in common, that’s our roots and do we appreciate them. The same thing goes for the ethnic communities themselves. They struggle and there’s this tension in themselves, so it’s not that one group is free of the tension. The tension exists in all the groups.
Fr. Soney: How many parishes do we have in the Diocese?
Bishop Barnes: We have 92 parishes and 13 missions.
Fr. Soney: There is a mixture, a growing number of different ethnicities now to serve and that is also a difficult situation. Do you have enough priests, deacons and lay ministers? How are you able to handle that?
Bishop Barnes: Well, it’s very, it’s very challenging. The numbers of priests. When we started with 235,000 [Catholics], we had 100 diocesan active priests (not retired or ill). Today we have less than 60 diocesan priests and 1.7 million Catholics, so we are very fortunate to have a number of religious communities ... We have communities from the Philippines, from Korea, from Mexico, Guatemala, Africa, so we have a number of religious priests from different parts of the country and different parts of the world. And then we have extern priests who are priests from other dioceses, either in the United States or in other parts of the world. And so all of those are coming together to help us with that.
These priests from other countries, they’re really missionaries to us. But that doesn’t release us from the responsibility of promoting vocations among our own people.
Fr. Soney: When somebody comes from the other country, we bring a certain aspect of that country, that culture, but there’s also a challenge. It’s not that easy to get oneself acclimatized and inducted into a new culture and a new system and a new way of living.
Bishop Barnes: So, when we have this meeting of cultures, that’s an opportunity for us to evangelize one another. And the Church has always done that; it’s one of the great successes of the Catholic Church is that everybody belongs. They say we invited the Catholics, that means everybody’s coming.
That’s who we are. But as Americans, unfortunately, we excel in a lot of things, but we are very poor in understanding history or appreciating history or geography. Everything revolves around us and so you see somebody from India or Africa, or China and you can’t believe that person is a Catholic.