24289: Nlbo: (Response) to article on Notre Dame D'Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Nlbo@aol.com

As a catholic  who has been here since the  early days of the “birth” of the
Haitian churches, I feel embarrassed to see the growth of Notre Dame D’Haiti
that started almost a decade later the Catholic ministries in Boston. St. Leo
was the first Haitian parish with a Haitian priest in the United States. The
late Father Jeannot started saying mass in l972. Haitian Fathers started saying
mass for Haitians in the early l970’s also. But it was different. The priests
were not the administrators of their parishes, like late father Jeannot was.
They presided over liturgies at St. Theresa and at  other parishes in Brooklyn
from predominantely American churches. They shared the parishes with the
American Catholics. I knew when Father Jean Juste left Boston to work with
refugees in Miami. He may have been instrumental  alone with present Bishop Wenski
in the making of Notre Dame D’Haiti two decades ago.

Efforts to renovate St. Leo did not materialize. Moreover, St. Leo  merged
with St. Matthew  seven or eight years ago, sometimes in the late l990's. The
physical church and the entire compound where St. Leo was located could have
developed into  what I always refer to as a “ One Stop Center” where the
Haitians’  spiritual and social, political and temporal needs could be met   like
Notre  Dame D’Haiti in Miami.

Somehow Haitian stakeholders in Boston don’t seem to have collective long
term visions. Since day one, in l972, no one ever asked “What do we want to see
St. Leo become 20, 30 years down the road?" In  the late l970’s, ca. l978, l979
when the Haitian Multi Service Center started, I doubt various groups or
visionaries in the Haitian community at large came together periodically to
analyze the development of the Haitian Multi Service Center which one hears of only
during mounted conflicts or fund raising events.

 More than 3 decades later, St. Leo is history. The sanctuary had become a
storage place( a "depot") I heard and all the properties  in the compound are in
poor physical conditions.  I believe the whole area will some day be
demolished and turn into something else, hopefully affordable housing in the
Dorchester area. The Haitian Multi Service Center will in the near future be part of a
combined center with other ethnic groups in Dorchester. Compare to Haitians of
all educational and social status who attend Notre Dame D’Haiti, the Haitian
churches in Boston had become a place that can not attract most  who completed
more than 8 th grade in a western country. Can a  church or any institution
in the United States function effectively without its intellectual or
professional  members or those born and/or raised in the United States and its youth?

For the past ten years, I have been suggesting  in writing and orally a
meeting, a gathering, or a dialogue with all  catholic lay and religious leaders
ministering to Haitians, but no one had listened and sometimes seem  hostile
toward the idea of getting together and dialoguing in the context of the global
village we are members of.

Two years ago, I have started addressing the needs for community building
dialogue to the secular area as well. So far, there was one meeting wich did not
amount to any subsequent community building conversations. There was a major
convention in the fall of 2001, that had no follow up either. I am hoping that
reading the news about Notre Dame d’Haiti which is a Centre of reference for
most Haitians in Miame-Dade country regardless of their faith, creed, or
political appartenance, Haitians in Boston will wonder if after more than 3 decades
as a church community and close to five decades into making Boston an
adoptive home, do we Haitians in Boston have a place that every Haitian sees as a
frame of reference, or as a cultural home like Notre Dame D’Haiti? In addition to
lack of interactive community dialogue, in an era where Blacks and Hispanics
are  scoring very   low in standardized tests and young Haitians are
increasingly involved with the justice system, do we in Boston have a place where young
people can go in lieu of being in the streets? This is a generation that had
not collectively taken care of its young people.

In the age of technology, do we  have an interactive “ virtual” home in
Boston? Do we have newspapers, newsletters, yahoogroups, message boards, even
phone trees that allow intergenarational communication in French, Creole or
English within all the Boston regions? The radios are usually a one person show, or
a close- knit show focusing on the political developments of Haiti. Do we have
a committee, a  group, or a person over looking at the community in general?
Is the Haitian community, the youth, the children getting all the resources
that are available in the Boston area? Who is/are watching over the Haitian
community in Boston as a whole?

I am very thankful to Jacqueline Charles for writing piece. I wish the Miami
community good luck in building , not only only a physical church, but
continuing on building the South Florida Haitian community. I feel sometime sad with
all the intellectual and material resources and state of the art theological
institutions in Boston, all those Catholic  churches are closing and  the first
Haitian church like St. Leo was gone a number of years ago.  After 33 years
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, three generations of Haitians don’t have a church
they can call home or a spiritual figure they can relate to/with. Even two or
three blocks from Harvard University, a Haitian church has not managed in
three decades to offer a ministry at a level of  a U.S high school graduate.

Moreover, with 90% of the estimated 80,000 Haitians being Catholic, only an
estimated 2,500 Haitians are attending Haitian Catholic churches and close to
7, 000 Haitians are attending primarely Evangelical protestant Haitian
denominations. The numbers in apostolic  Pentecostal churches seem astronomical given
that Catholic clergy are better prepared than their pentecostal counterparts.
I am hopeful that sometimes religious and secular Haitian stakeholders in
Boston regardless of their faith would together examine the state of the
community and set vision for its future. Twenty , 30 years have passed without us
thinking collectively. I believe it’s not too late to come together and analyze
the results of us not thinking.

I don’t know how the readers see this vision of focusing on the youth with
those who want to learn how to and those who can not be active in learning, but
can at  least provide the financial means to do so.

Basically my sense of things is the mindset of most of the generation over 35
is a hopeless situation. My experience with those in their late 20’s to early
30’s new from Haiti, or in case of church overtly apostolic are not too
hopeful either. Boston needs a handful of optimistic learners who are willing to
learn how to work with this new generation being raised in this country and
hopefully 20, 30 years down the road, Boston community will have a new outlook
that can be an example in the diaspora and in Haiti.

Nekita