Beginning the Dialogue on the Lack of Racial Diversity in Mainstream Catholic Media
One's appearance shouldn't matter, but it does for many people. Are we missing out on opportunities for evangelization because too many people in Catholic media are White?
13.08.2013
David L. Gray
According to the most recent statistics provided by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, there are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States (22% of the U.S. population), and nearly 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. According to other sources, 39% of those Catholics are Hispanic and 4% are Blacks. Yet, if you look at all of the major Catholic television outlets, read the mainstream Catholic magazines and website blogs, Diocesan newspapers, peruse the catalogs of Catholic book publishers, listen to Catholic radio, and look at the two major outlets for Catholic speakers, you would come away with the impression that American Catholicism is about as White as Catholicism in Ireland.
Because Catholic media in the United States doesn’t look representative of the racial demographic in the United States, is it possible that we are missing opportunities to effectively evangelize non-Whites? As long as mainstream Catholic media continues to look predominately White, will it only continue to attract more of the same?
Why does race matter? Does truth have a color? Isn’t it all about the color of the Blood of Christ? Ideally, race wouldn’t matter, and ideally, everyone would be immune to the appearance of the vessel containing truth. But the fact remains: we don’t live in an ideal world. I remember those decades before I came to know that Jesus is real; during the 80s, 90s, and the first part of this century, long before I knew the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism – I would channel surf past the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and even sometimes stop for a while to hear what they were saying. I figured they were Christians because I saw Christian symbols in the background, but the reason I would stop and listen is that they looked like peculiar people (I would eventually come to discover that the lady dressed as a nun is the founder of the network, Mother Mary Angelica). I’d listen for awhile and then move on to the next channel, because inasmuch as she and other show hosts looked and sounded interesting, I couldn’t identify with them on that most basic level of my maturity at that time. These people only perpetuated my ignorant belief that Christianity was a White man’s religion.
Meeting people precisely where they are – even with all of their issues and hang-ups – is a core component of Christian evangelization. One gateway to meet people at their level is through mutual identification, which is a building block to a relationship. Two organizations that have been very successful in employing this method are Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), who connect people with alcohol and drug dependence issues with people who have overcome them.
http://www.aleteia.org/en/technology/article/beginning-the-dialogue-on-the-lack-of-racial-diversity-in-mainstream-catholic-media-3336001
This is a good article but I don't know too much about aleteia. It's been around for about a year and is funded by the Foundation for Evangelization through the Media. I can't tell yet if it will be more like EWTN, the National Catholic Reporter or neither. In the meantime, here's their promotional video.
