25430: Nlbo: (News)Haitian evangelical protestants purchased closed Catholic church (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Nlbo@aol.com

According to a front page article of the June 3rd, 2005 issue of the Malden
Observer,  a Haitian protestant church from  Cambridge bought  a closed
Catholic church in Malden.

I have   a somewhat bittersweet feeling about the selling of an Italian
church, St. Peter's, to a Haitian evangelical protestant group.  As a Haitian, I am
happy that a Haitian owns their own church in lieu of renting spaces in the
public schools, other churches, halls or wherever, though my dream is to see
one united protestant church even a unified Christian universal church. I really
feel there are too many protestant evangelical churches that are not really
serving and meeting the spiritual, temporal, and civic needs of their immigrant
brethren.  On the other hand as a Catholic, I am concerned that 80%to 90% of
those evangelical protestants were Catholics at one point. I am wondering why
can't the Catholic church with better prepared priests, a historically and
materialistically richer religion with more educated and intellectually inclined
members, more beautiful rituals and of course nicer churches can't keep her
own members. With close to one million Catholics in the archdiocese of Boston
from Brazil and other Latin American countries, from African countries, the
Carribean,  Portugal, the Azores,  Cape Verde, and from Asian countries as well,
I sometimes wonder if a concerted effort was made to reach out to these
Catholic groups, or the established educated immigrant Catholics and second
generations of young " ethnic' Catholics, would  all those churches  have closed and
purchased now by protestants?

Moreover, the trend is that most  adherents of those Third World
evangelical/pentecostals/charismatic churches or First World " interdenominational"
congregations that have increased drastically  in  the past 20, 25  years are former
Catholics who many of them still go the Catholic church for the sacraments. I
personally know a number of " protestants" who go to Catholic churches for
first communion, baptisms, weddings, and funerals.

I hope this purchase of the protestant church will give the Haitian Catholic
community "a wake up call." Though Haiti is a Catholic country, more Haitian
protestants in the Boston area are attending Haitian churches than Catholics
(about 6,000 protestants vs. approximately 2,000 catholics). Haitian protestants
give more money to the protestant pastors than Haitian Catholic church goers
give to the Catholic church. The purchase of this church in Malden is a vivid
example.  The article by Allison Morgan has not listed the sale price. But it
said that other non-profit or religious  organizations even the city of Malden
submitted a bid of $500,000.  Haitian Grace Church of God probably put a
higher bid.  I still find $500K a large sum of money for a congregation of 200
blue collar workers, working class Haitian immigrants to afford.

Nekita