Ministries Hers is ministry to community in
pain
By LESLIE WIRPSA
NCR Staff Long Beach, Calif.
For Mary Blatz a day of ministry could mean anything from
advocating against welfare cuts at a community meeting, to analyzing the
nightmares of people who saw their families slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, to
a shopping trip with a struggling seamstress to Chinatown's fabric shops, to
playing games with local youngsters who call her "the lady who loves kids."
For all practical purposes, except for administering sacraments,
Blatz is the priest at the Mount Carmel Cambodian Catholic Church, a tiny,
lay-run parish located south of Los Angeles in Long Beach. Her assignment as
pastoral director here is one few clergy would -- or, because of language
limitations, could -- rush to take.
With the urgings of two bishops, the parish wooed Blatz from New
York and a teaching position at Columbia University's American Language Program
almost five years ago.
She arrived in Los Angeles in 1992 two weeks after the riots that
followed the Rodney King verdict. Living and ministering with two others in an
intentional community, Blatz tries to live the example of Christ among Long
Beach's 50,000 Cambodian refugees, the largest concentration of Khmer people
outside Phnom Penn, most of whom are Buddhists.
Hers is a ministry to a community in pain, to a people who watched
thousands die, including half of the Catholics and nearly all of the priests of
their country, during the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge. Hers is a presence
in a community for which, as she says, "life hasn't been normal since
1970."
"What these people went through was a holocaust. ... All of them
were persecuted. ... Then they had years in the (refugee) camps. Maybe 25
percent came with some education that could have a bearing on their situation
here. There are no reserves in this community. It's a completely new immigrant
population," Blatz said.
Here the reality of the cross provides a daily backdrop for a
journey of faith lived in community. "We are walking through the pain. That's
Christian life. It's exciting. There is a resurrection. There is some way. But
you have to walk through the pain," Blatz explained.
At Mount Carmel, this way of evangelization is traveled in very
small steps. The first step was "presence and friendship" -- the three women
living together in the house that once served as a rectory. From there they
facilitated the formation of a core base community of 10 families, drawing 100
or so people for worship and lectionary-based sharing. That life of faith has
since dovetailed with a life of action. "We are trying to move from being an
emergency to being a mission. A lot of basic groundwork has to happen," Blatz
said.
But before that foundation can emerge, the Cambodian refugees must
heal from their trauma so they can reconstruct bonds of trust. This collective
pain has forced the women to design new models of ministry.
"They don't like meetings, for example, because (in Cambodia) they
worked 16 hours a day (in labor camps) and had four-hour meetings, only four
hours of sleep. They are not interested in church organization through
meetings," Blatz said.
It has also taught these ministers profoundly Christian lessons.
"You have to understand how to forge an accepting community. Here we are
challenged to the ultimate to understand about forgiveness."
Blatz said that a community model of worship is essential to the
psychological and spiritual health of the refugees. "The whole objective of the
Khmer Rouge was to strip them of their culture and identity. So this community
needs to exist as a community. When people are told just to go to the pews, it
is not effective," she said.
Blatz, raised in a large Irish-German Catholic family, who holds a
graduate degree in pastoral ministry and catechetics from the international
institute Lumen Vitae in Belgium, has also learned about Buddhism. "Religious
dialogue with the Buddhists is important. People don't want to be separated
from the Buddhist community," she said.
Blatz learned about being church and creating community during the
30 years, off and on, that she attended St. Mary's Parish in Coltsneck, N.J., a
congregation widely known for progressive community (NCR, Oct. 18, 1996). "That
parish was different. When you went on Sunday, you were really fed. There was
always something you could be involved in," she said. Service to refugees in
New Jersey and later in refugee camps in Hong Kong and Indonesia led her to the
Cambodian people.
She said she remembers the day they phoned her at her parents'
home about the L.A. job. "My mother shouted, 'Mary, there are two bishops on
the phone for you,' " Blatz said.
That's when a unique form of ministry began. "When I came here ...
I tried to be quiet. I knew I couldn't be a splash in the Cambodian community,
that it had to be a quiet and warm entrance. I knew I wouldn't know what to do,
but here were three empty and warm buildings where I had to be a spirit."
National Catholic Reporter, January 24,
1997
|