Many thoughts.
Many things to catch up on, but most recently, I went to church tonight with my host family for the last time.
Here in Ecuador I've only ever seen two masses, one youth gathering, and one Palm Sunday Mass, but have concretely been given the feeling each and every time that the Latin American Catholic is NOT the same kind of Catholic as Americans or Italians.
The 'service' tonight (my host mother tells me it was not a mass) was 1 part Southern Baptist revival, 1 part youth group camp, and 1 part Christian rock concert. It's just so strange. Things of note:
1) As almost everyone will attest to in this country, Ecuadorians, on the whole, don't read. They CAN read (in fact, their literacy rate is admirably high) but they think it's incredibly boring. I've also often heard different cultural quirks of South America to be explained through the explaination of Catholic-Protestant, LatinAmerica-USA, listening to someone else's interpretation and taking their word as law - reading, critical thinking, and making your own destiny. Two surprising facts:
- 11 of the Nobel Laureates in Literature have been Spanish-speaking (and I would assume, Catholic)
- this priest, both times I've seen him, asks people to hold up the bibles they've brought and then talks about how important it is to actually read the bible yourself, and bring it with you to write thoughts in. Astounding.
2) I'm glad that the not-priest-preacher the whole time brought up the fact that the encouragement of young children in Latin America to dance 'sexy' and pelvic thrust at the age of 4 might be contributing to the teen mom and young marriage rate. Other ideas of note were that 70% of divorces are initiated by women (what? what was he trying to say?) and that men who are incredibly passionate about futbol put their passion in the wrong place, leaving their families often neglected to go hoot and holler (I still don't GET the dedication and lifestyle of major sports fans).
3) The whole thing started like youth camp, with songs with hand motions, followed by a little call-and-response Baptist style, but the last hour was like a meditation, where a man playing the guitar just talked and talked and people cried. Sometimes I think, when these types of performers go ooooon and ooooon (and they almost always do) that they just like the sound of their own voices. I don't get it. It irritates me. Let me have my own thoughts and digest what I hear without you telling me what to feel. I have my own voice inside my head, thank you very much.
4) Last is something that fairly consumes me when I walk into a church nowadays. I was sitting there thinking about the unequal treatment of women in the Catholic church, and how it infuriates me, and paralleling nuns' dress in my mind with that of Muslim women, when it struck me that even more here in Ecuador the majority of churchgoers are female. It astounds me that such a grand majority of regular worshippers is female (all five of us tonight were women) but yet the church denies them participation in all of the important positions. I think attendance tonight was maybe 5% male. But I think it was even less than that. I only saw 4 men in a full church.
I think I'll expand on #4 tomorrow, when I can order my thoughts better.
Here in Ecuador I've only ever seen two masses, one youth gathering, and one Palm Sunday Mass, but have concretely been given the feeling each and every time that the Latin American Catholic is NOT the same kind of Catholic as Americans or Italians.
The 'service' tonight (my host mother tells me it was not a mass) was 1 part Southern Baptist revival, 1 part youth group camp, and 1 part Christian rock concert. It's just so strange. Things of note:
1) As almost everyone will attest to in this country, Ecuadorians, on the whole, don't read. They CAN read (in fact, their literacy rate is admirably high) but they think it's incredibly boring. I've also often heard different cultural quirks of South America to be explained through the explaination of Catholic-Protestant, LatinAmerica-USA, listening to someone else's interpretation and taking their word as law - reading, critical thinking, and making your own destiny. Two surprising facts:
- 11 of the Nobel Laureates in Literature have been Spanish-speaking (and I would assume, Catholic)
- this priest, both times I've seen him, asks people to hold up the bibles they've brought and then talks about how important it is to actually read the bible yourself, and bring it with you to write thoughts in. Astounding.
2) I'm glad that the not-priest-preacher the whole time brought up the fact that the encouragement of young children in Latin America to dance 'sexy' and pelvic thrust at the age of 4 might be contributing to the teen mom and young marriage rate. Other ideas of note were that 70% of divorces are initiated by women (what? what was he trying to say?) and that men who are incredibly passionate about futbol put their passion in the wrong place, leaving their families often neglected to go hoot and holler (I still don't GET the dedication and lifestyle of major sports fans).
3) The whole thing started like youth camp, with songs with hand motions, followed by a little call-and-response Baptist style, but the last hour was like a meditation, where a man playing the guitar just talked and talked and people cried. Sometimes I think, when these types of performers go ooooon and ooooon (and they almost always do) that they just like the sound of their own voices. I don't get it. It irritates me. Let me have my own thoughts and digest what I hear without you telling me what to feel. I have my own voice inside my head, thank you very much.
4) Last is something that fairly consumes me when I walk into a church nowadays. I was sitting there thinking about the unequal treatment of women in the Catholic church, and how it infuriates me, and paralleling nuns' dress in my mind with that of Muslim women, when it struck me that even more here in Ecuador the majority of churchgoers are female. It astounds me that such a grand majority of regular worshippers is female (all five of us tonight were women) but yet the church denies them participation in all of the important positions. I think attendance tonight was maybe 5% male. But I think it was even less than that. I only saw 4 men in a full church.
I think I'll expand on #4 tomorrow, when I can order my thoughts better.