Traditional Influence

            The United States, without a doubt, is composed of a variety of ethnicities from around the world. This nation is comprised of people who have sought a better life for themselves and their families, so by immigrating to the United States, they attempt to achieve socioeconomic stability for themselves and their future generations to come. People don’t just simply migrate from place to place based on their free will; there is always a reason for why one decides to leave their home and search for a different place to live. Unfortunately, the most common reasons why people choose to migrate are due to religious or economic constraints that they are facing. These constraints can range from uncontrollable world events to a backlash from U.S. citizens opposing the migration of a certain ethnicity. Instead of being persecuted for one’s beliefs or lying around waiting for a miracle to arrive, it makes logical sense for people to search elsewhere for a location where they can live the life they choose to live freely and peacefully. Adjusting to a new social environment is by far the most difficult thing for new incoming immigrants to do in part due to the turbulent responses that they receive for importing their culture and traditions to the U.S. from their native land. The possibility for a numerous amount of religions to harmoniously coexist in the United States is something that isn’t out of range it just requires time and education for those unfamiliar to the new beliefs. By having practitioners and committed members educate people who aren’t familiar with their diverse traditions, those who are uninformed will commence to understand the religious standpoints of others. Even though the government is the entity that legally decides whether certain practices are religious or not, the people are the ones who ultimately decide what is accepted and what is rejected.

People tend to reject those who are seen as the “others” because they bring with them ideas and things that marks them as being different from the average American. Those who are scapegoating the newer waves of immigrants are essentially just “afraid” of the unknown that’s trying to occupy the land that they claim is theirs (1). People are afraid of embracing this new wave of beliefs because if they welcome it too quickly, they increase their “risk of becoming bewitched”; a superstition that has arisen to describe peoples’ quick acceptance of never before seen traditions (3). A sense of some type of divine right to control who and what is able to enter the place they live is engraved in their mind so opening their social gates to others isn’t quite easy to do. The cliché of having “the freedom to go elsewhere” is simply a nicer way of stating a stern opposition to someone else’s traditions (1). This stance of neutrality illustrates an example of the internal problems that mold peoples’ hostile views and opinions on minority traditions.  

When newly arriving immigrants set foot on a new country, they literally have no place to go nor any place to work at especially if they don’t know anybody or know their way around. Very few people possess the benevolent characteristics to house and take care of people experiencing a huge transition in their life so its up to organizations such as churches to aid in implementing people into the assimilation process required at in any country. “Churches have financial, political, and institutional resources” that can really help those in need of leadership and of a community that they can depend on (2). The churches that are proactive in their venture to aid anybody in need demonstrate one of the major internal forces that influences Americans’ standpoint on issues like these.

The media by far is the most powerful influencer regarding social issues such as religion, immigration, and universal social acceptance or rejection. The media’s reach is extended far enough that it is able to shape the ways that diverse minority traditions are embraced in the U.S. both internally and externally. Interestingly, the media’s external influence holds a firm grip on the way outsiders are perceived by Americans which then further affects how the outsiders’ beliefs are absorbed. The Dalai Lama is a prime example of the use of “a series of mass media orientations”, such as the newspaper or magazines, to Americanize religious icons and shape them into what the American people think they should be like (4). The media has a wide range of methods to get across information and opinions so its no wonder why they possess such a huge influence on Americans views. 

There is an endless amount of reasons why people immigrate around the world but as soon as those migrants arrive at their destination, they are faced with people who were fed biased information regarding their beliefs and traditions. Organizations from both sides of the acceptance and rejection spectrum of outsiders' traditions maintain an impact on the perception Americans hold on others but if one begins to start searching for their own personal standpoint, the magnitude of influence that these organizations hold will start to deteriorate. 

Religious and Moral Catholic Turbulence

My mother’s Catholic practices and ideologies illustrate how cultural religion revolves around her lifestyle and community. The Mexican ethnicity that she carries with her highlights the historical struggle that her people underwent when becoming the newest wave of immigrants to arrive in America. Without a doubt, most American’s perceive the majority of Hispanic individuals to be some how related or connected to Catholicism whether it be due to their parents, close relatives, or friends. This may in fact be due to Hispanic Catholics demonstrating a population with “substantial numbers that were already in the U.S. part of the continent even as the nation began” to be built (1). The most recent huge surge of Hispanic Catholic immigration took place for a variety of reasons, with the derived common factor being consistent clashes between the government and its citizens over socioeconomic conditions that people were living in during that time. The bloody Mexican revolution and “subsequent events such as World War II” are some of the main factors that forced so many Mexicans’ to flee their native country in order to avoid being killed in the crossfire or to seek a better economically stable life for themselves and their family (1). My mom’s primary logic for fleeing her country was due to one of the main aforementioned reasons while simultaneously taking into consideration the future life of her offspring. She found herself receiving very comfortable hospitality from the church that she had been affiliated with her entire life. They also helped her obtain one of her most notable religious aspects as a mother and a person; her never-ending praise and belief in the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. The graceful attitude that she took towards raising her kids and disciplining them as she saw fit demonstrated the importance my mother placed on maintaining family integrity amongst us. Moralism played a huge role in my mother’s life so it is only obvious that she was more than likely to be inclined to teach her kids the same type of moral and social guidelines and restrictions that she was taught as a child. She especially emphasized on what I now know to be “moral coherence”, which is defined as a “unified and integrated religious, personal, and political approach to life”; something that my mom attempts to live by on a daily basis and pass on to her children (2). One of the many moral aspects of life that my mom tried teaching me was to always maintain a positive attitude towards life and its endless struggles. Whether the struggles are economic, social, academic, or family related, I had to always maintain my composure and not give in to the hardships that I was dealing with at a certain point in my life. Even though the Catholic ways that my mother tried exposing me to had a minute effect on who I would become to be in the near future, I am grateful that her Catholic influence helped her morph into the strict and respectable woman that she continues to be. 

1-                    Pineda, Ana M. "Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America's Largest Church." Rev. of Theological Studies. 2012: 949-51. UCSB Library. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.

2-                    Formicola, Jo R. "Catholic Moral Demands in American Politics: A New Paradigm." (2009): 4-23. Journal of Church and State. Web. 6 Sept. 2013.

People tend to be slightly uneasy when it comes to an introduction to something that they view as radical or extraordinary, especially when it deals with religious beliefs and customs. Pluralism involves not only the diversity of the many different religions in a society, but also a harmonious engagement among the different religions that happen to be located near one another. T.S Elliot perfectly describes the reasoning why pluralism is difficult to achieve due the fact that people are “plagued by feelings only partly explicable in any rational terms”. In other words, people were sacred. People were afraid of the new religious values that new immigrants bring with them and perceived some of those religious beliefs as “socially threatening behavior”. After the 911 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Muslims encountered a countless amount of harassments due to their religious connection with those responsible for the attacks. Some of the main indicators for their religion are the hijabs and buraks that the women and men wear on their heads and their distinguishable names (1). After this event, Muslims around the U.S were continuously being targeted for their beliefs due to peoples’ inability to understand that not all Muslims were terrorists with a mission to destroy American society. 

What can people do to shift away from the judgmental and disrespectful attitude that is burdened on immigrants who bring new religions with them? How can one go about accepting other religions without a prejudice mentality with regards to an event that manipulated a religion’s values?

      1- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/naida-hosan-muslim-harassment_n_3239521.html

The Catholic religion and its church do not have a definitive date of when it came to exist but scholars and historians alike have endlessly debated whether Catholicism began when Jesus Christ appointed Saint Peter, one of his most trusted followers and disciples, to become the first pope of his new religion on 32 CE (1). Or whether it started after Emperor Theodosius of Rome published one of his edicts in which he established Catholicism as the official religion throughout the Roman state on February 27, AD 380 (1). Regardless of when the religion was truly created, Catholicism has spread on a global scale with the number of its committed members rising over a whopping 1.2 billion people worldwide. 

My immediate family is part of the 1.2 billion people that actively practice the Catholic religion and aspire to live by the sacred creeds and cultuses that the priests and the Bible aim at teaching its followers. Latinos are the last ethnic group to migrate to the United States. Their recent migration to the U.S created an enormous surge in the amount of Catholics living in the U.S. Although most of the Latino people that I know are Catholics, a stereotype among the general public that the “Latino population is overwhelmingly and immutably Catholic is inaccurate and misleading” according to research done by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2). Their set of data also indicates that Latinos who were born and raised within the United States were more inclined to “leave their traditional Catholic roots and embrace other religious traditions” (2). This may be connected with the numerous non-Catholic religions that Latinos are being exposed to in the U.S. These statistics give good insight into the situation that my family and I are currently in. My parents, who immigrated to the United States in the late 80s, still maintain their Catholic views and haven’t considered alternating their religious beliefs. My siblings and I are a slightly different story; our beliefs have indeed modernized as we grew older in part due to the exposure to other religions and the natural occurrence of people seeking their own faith without necessarily committing to any religion. The study done by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville reflects my family’s current condition on our religious values and holds true its analysis of Latinos religious demographics in the U.S, which states Latinos born and raised in the United States are more likely to shift away from the Catholic church than those who were bred and nurtured in another country. 

One of the many reasons to the religious shift among the younger generations of Latinos might be due to the Catholic church’s inability to “improve the status of Latino immigrants” and of their families (3). The loyalty of the Catholic Church’s Hispanic flock can prove to be vital to the religious influence that Catholicism holds in America. Without the full commitment of younger generations of Latinos in the United States, the Catholic Church will start losing a considerable amount of followers and eventually will end with the “failure of the Catholic Church” to help improve the lives of its members in the U.S (3). My mother’s exemplary persistence in keeping the Catholic lifestyle within my family will prove to be crucial for the continuity of the religions impact on many newer generations to come. The future success of the Catholic Church lies in the hands of its many dedicated followers who try to draw members on the micro level in which the heads of a household attempt to convince their offspring that their values are indispensable to their faith. 

Works Cited

1-    Kodesh, Ben Ruach Ha. "The Origins of the Catholic Church." The Origins of the Catholic Church. John of AllFaith, Feb. 2007. Web. 24 Aug. 2013.

2-    Kelly, Nathan J., and Jana Morgan. "Religion and Latino Partisanship in the United States." Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange (2005): n. pag. Political Science Publications and Other Works. Web. 22 Aug. 2013. <2- http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=utk_polipubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dcatholic%2Blatinos%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%252C5#search=%22catholic%20latinos%22>.

3-    Alba, Richard D., Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh DeWind. Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.

Blog Post #1- Maternal Miracles

The belief of a higher power has always existed in my mind, I’ve just never indulged in the same practices that my parents tried accustoming me to as a kid and also now as an adult. Catholicism involves believing in an all-knowing and all-powerful god who is viewed as the creator of humans, animals, plants, and Earth among many more things. Believing and practicing the many sacred creeds that go along with being an active member of the Catholic community didn’t correlate swiftly with the personal views and morals that I believe to be important. 

My mother endlessly tried persuading me that Catholicism is the religion I ought to believe in due to the fact that my entire family followed the same religious path and for the many miraculous encounters that she has experienced throughout her lifetime. For example, my mom has the utmost faith in a divine figure of the Catholic religion named the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. She claims to be certain that the Virgin Mary has helped her overcome all her past endeavors as a child and now as a mother of four as well. An intimate case in which she sought the help of the divine figure was when she was at the brink of undergoing an abortion procedure due to complications throughout the process of her pregnancy. Coincidentally, the incident that drove my mother to the hospital and get a check up on the status of her child took place at a Catholic church, also known as the House of God. After receiving news that the possibility of her baby boy being born were extremely slim, the doctor recommended an abortion to spare my mom the agony of seeing her creation drop out of her vagina at any point in time when using the restroom. Upon hearing this tragic news, my mother began attending church much more frequently, clinging onto the shear hope of my brother being born safely and healthy. Miraculously, 5 months later my mother gave birth to an eight and a half pound baby looking as healthy and happy as any other child. 

My mom doesn’t believe that her views as a Catholic will ever change, in fact, she feels as if though her connection with these divine entities has grown stronger than ever. Every twelve of December my mother demonstrates her respect and gratitude towards the Virgin Mary by taking part in a ceremonial gathering of Catholic believers in order to celebrate the divine birth of Jesus Christ. Some of the many items brought to the feast are candles to represent the birthday of Jesus Christ, elegant flowers to offer the Virgin Mary for enduring the burden of having the child of the almighty God, and delicious treats and plates for everybody to enjoy. The maternal and caring image that the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe represents is one that my mother tries to mimic by they way she attempts of nurturing her kids. She states that she vows to continue being the same Catholic believer that she has been ever since she was a little girl.  The Virgin Mary has never neglected or rejected any of my mother’s pleads for guidance or help so my mom’s loyalty to her shall never decease. Even though most of my family members are committed and active Catholics, I can’t help but question the authenticity of these miraculous events that have occurred in my mom’s life. To this day, I haven’t found myself in a situation in which I prayed for guidance or a miracle to happen when I felt I was out of options. Who knows, maybe I might find myself in need of help from a higher power sooner than I might expect.