ARTICLES

Sheep and Goats

Non-Catholic Review of Churches

By Abe Opincar

Editor: what follows are excerpts from "Sheep and Goats," a church review column in the San Diego Reader.

TIJUANA CATHEDRAL

Holding a Cup of Noodles in one hand, a rosary in the other, a woman crawls on her knees down the center aisle. Kneeling before the Sacred Heart, clutching a white Stetson to his chest, a white-haired gentleman sobs quietly. Outside Tijuana's cathedral, vendors erect their blue-tarpaulin stalls. Their tables are filled with fancy crucifixes and chalices made of straw. There are bowls heaped with scapulars. There are dozens of jars of "miracle cream." There are hundreds of pendants of Juan Soldado, Tijuana's unofficial saint. There are countless statues, postcards, posters, and framed paintings of El Niño de Atocha, a cute little barefoot boy in a red cape and plumed hat.

"Who was El Niño de Atocha?" I ask one of the vendors, an elderly woman puffing a cigarette.

"An apparition of Baby Jesus," she says. "In Spain. He fought the Arabs." A nun who overheard the vendor's response pulls me aside. "No. He didn't fight the Arabs. This was when the Moors were in Spain. In a town called Atocha, the Moors took Christians hostage. Their families prayed that God would help them. One day a child appeared and brought a basket of food and a gourd filled with water for the prisoners. There was a miracle. The basket of food and the gourd never grew empty. No one knew who the child was. Everyone realized it was Jesus who appeared as a child. The original statue of El Niño de Atocha from Spain is in Mexico, in Zacatecas, in a town called Fresnillo."

And why is El Niño de Atocha so popular in Tijuana? "Maybe because so many people come here to cross the border. El Niño de Atocha protects travelers and people in danger."

The first of the cathedral's twelve Sunday Masses begins at 6:00 a.m. More than 800 people attend each. Hundreds more stream in and out of the dim cavernous building to light candles or just pray. More than fifty large flower arrangements -- roses, mums, carnations -- surround the sanctuary. I count sixty people lined up for confession.

Father Liborio Romero, a sweet and outgoing young priest, celebrated last Sunday's 11:00 a.m. Mass. The liturgy was not of the banjoes-and-hand-puppets variety. The melodies were all somber, some, downright melancholy. When people shared the Sign of Peace, they shook my hand firmly, looked me square in the eye, and said "Peace be with you" without forced smiles.

Mexican priests don't seem to worry much about parishioner "self-esteem." Father Romero was no exception.

"We have a problem of not forgiving and passing judgement on others. We read about or see drug addicts, for example, and we think, 'What a sinner. Thank God I'm not like that.' Or we read about or see unwed mothers, and we think, 'Thank God I'm not like. I'd never do anything like that.' Instead of thinking about how we could help these people, instead of praying for these people, we pass judgement on them. We don't forgive them for their sins. We do this so we don't have to confront our own sins. But our own sins are just as obvious to God.

"The Bible tells us that we should be like God. If God forgives others of their sins, we must forgive them also. If God loves them, we must love them also. That's what it means to be like God. And just as God forgives us our sins, we must forgive ourselves also. We must remember, God doesn't want us sinners to die. He wants us to live and change, to make a real change in our lives, so that we don't sin. So that we forgive others. So that we love others. God doesn't want us to look down on others. God hates hypocrisy."

When I caught up with Father Romero after Mass, two dozen people were lined up before him, waiting for him to bless rosaries, Bibles, crucifixes, pictures of Jesus, bottles of holy water.

"There goes the bishop," he said to me, pointing to a man entering the cathedral, dressed in slacks and a baseball jacket.

"He doesn't look like a bishop," I said. "I thought that after the laws changed in 1992, Mexican clergy could wear clerical clothes in public."

"We can," said Father Romero. "But most of us have kept the custom of wearing secular clothes outside church."

Father Romero was patient with me, but I could tell he was anxious to get back the many people waiting to speak with him. I asked if he thought American priests were isolated and lonely compared to those in Mexico.

"I was in the United States for a while, at a church in Pomona. From what I saw, American priests are more structured. They have to follow a schedule. I don't know if they're lonely. Here, especially at the cathedral, there are hundreds of people who need us. It would be impossible to have a schedule. The good thing about working at the cathedral is that I feel as though I'm helping a lot of people. The bad thing is that with so many people, it's hard to form close relationships. But am I lonely? I don't ever think about it."

CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH

"In the black community, the most dangerous place for a child is in its own mother's womb. In its own mother's womb, a black child can be killed with impunity. Can be killed, and no one will be charged with its murder."

Last Sunday at Calvary Baptist Church, Reverend W. James Smith was warming to his Mother's Day sermon. A tall handsome man in a white suit, he held the podium for an hour. No one fidgeted....

When Reverend Smith is warmed up, after he's established his theme, he fixes his gaze on his audience. If he wanted, you feel, he could call down fire from Heaven. There's not a pastor in this city who couldn't take a lesson from Reverend Smith. Listening to him, you wonder why white Protestants bother going to white churches at all.

He called our attention to the first chapter of Exodus, and pointed out how Pharaoh had ordered the mid-wives to kill Jewish male babies.

"Now, isn't it like the Master Race to co-opt the little people to do their dirty work? Back then, being a midwife wasn't an prestigious job. You needed to know three things. You needed to now how to count, so you could tell a mother how far along she was. You needed to know how to calm a mother when she was delivering her child. And you needed to know how to catch the baby when it came out. Count. Calm. Catch. It was a dirty job, a common job. But God has a way of starting with people who you think don't count.

"The Egyptians were worried that the Jews were too many. The Egyptians said of the Jews, 'After a while, they're gonna get tired of working in the brickyard. They're going to want to get into politics.' And so the Egyptians went after the male children. The best way to liquidate a population, to destroy a society, a civilization, is to start by destroying the male children. Does that sound political to you? Does that sound familiar to you? Could such a thing ever possibly happen in America? I know we don't have problems like that in America.

"Not when they're building abortion clinics right next to our schoolyards. Not when they're feeding us birth control while at the same time cramming fertility drugs into their own mouths. Not when they're giving away condoms at our schools. Not when there are people who will give Ritalin to our children simply because our children are bored by teachers who don't know how to teach. Not when sixty percent of the prison population in this country is made up of black males when we as a people make up only ten percent of the population. They say it's the mafia that brings drugs into our neighborhoods. They say our sons are selling the drugs. But if our sons had the same opportunities as others in this society, they'd be selling pork futures on Wall Street.

"Don't let anyone tell you that you're having too many babies. As we read in Exodus, the powers-that-be will promote and use your own kind against you. But remember that it was the midwives who disobeyed Pharaoh. It was the women who kept the men children alive. This is a Mother's Day message. Aren't you glad your mother didn't have you washed down some sink? When the midwives disobeyed Pharaoh, it was the first spark of a freedom movement, of a tremendous liberation. Because the midwives disobeyed Pharaoh, Moses, a great leader, was born. And Moses led the slaves out of Egypt.

"Remember, you don't serve politics or politicians. You serve the Living God. Keep your men children alive.

"Thank you, mothers. Thank you."

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