LV's Catholic leaders build on parishioners' 'committed' attitude

On a Thursday morning at 8 a.m., the parking lot at Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic Church is full, and some parishioners are forced to park on the curb. The first Mass of the day has ended, and the second is soon to begin.

Young and old greet one another in the courtyard, but once inside the quiet sanctuary, many kneel alone and bow their heads in silent prayer under strands of morning light reaching in through stained-glass windows.

"Our people are much more committed than many other faiths," Bishop Daniel Walsh, of the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas, said. "And our residential communities are actually as religious, or more religious, than any group I've ever met."

Catholics make up the largest religious group in the United States and in Las Vegas. There are 61 million Catholics in the U.S.; 70,000 attend Mass each week in Las Vegas. Although Nevada was the last of the contiguous 48 states to have its own Catholic diocese, now 29 percent of Southern Nevadans identify themselves as Catholic, according to the UNLV Cannon Center for Survey Research.

The local diocese has added 10 churches in 10 years, in addition to numerous expansions and upgrades of existing churches, Walsh said. Another parish is scheduled to open this fall in the northwest part of town. On top of the constant inflow of new residents who are Catholic, more than 250 adults have converted to Catholicism from other faiths already this year. Accordingly, Walsh hired a nationally renowned fund-raising consultant to help assess the diocese's capital needs and resources.

"I've worked in dioceses from Anchorage to San Diego, Los Angeles to Maine, and I'm telling you, the diocese is more active and alive than in most parts of the country," said Mike Cusack, a consultant from Guidance in Giving, a New York-based Catholic fund-raising company.

The community involvement of Las Vegas Catholics ranges from the 57-year-old Catholic Charities to Legatus, a Catholic businessperson's association, as well as parish outreach efforts such as food banks and homeless shelters.

"It may be because of the high rate of newcomers who are looking to develop a social network, but sometimes there are just areas that are more active, period -- and that energy snowballs within a diocese."

(SUBHEAD: 'A place where God is')

Andrea Owens, a member of Our Lady of Las Vegas, is a Catholic by both heritage and choice.

"I was born a Catholic," Owens said. "My parents were married in this church. I went to school here. I've lived here all my life, and I don't know anything other than being a Catholic. And I like it."

Owens, who is married and has elementary school-aged children who now attend school at Our Lady, said the church offers a comforting stability to her and her family.

"In today's world, it's a pretty scary place -- there is a lot of wondering out there. But the church is a place where there is belief, a place where God is there to guide you."

The Roman Catholic Church is the original Christian church, from which other Christian denominations split beginning with the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

Catholics believe in the Bible, and they believe in "papal infallibility" -- that is, that the pope speaks without error on matters of faith and morality. Catholics believe in seven sacraments, or symbolic rituals of faith: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, reconciliation or confession, healing or extreme unction, matrimony, and holy orders.

The Church has long been regarded as a bastion of conservatism -- in modern times, it has taken political stances against abortion and homosexuality, among other issues.

But Owens said that while the Church's values remain conservative, worship practices have made the necessary changes to adapt to modern living.

"For example, confession is really misunderstood," Owens said.

Gone are the days when a Catholic's only method of confession involved a dark closet-like room and a screen between him or her and the priest, she said. Now, parishioners may knock on the priest's office door, sit down face-to-face and receive counseling.

"It's not the same as it used to be. My kids look forward to it, and I know I didn't when I was a kid. For first confessions now, they go into different areas of the church and talk to the priest face-to-face. They are given penance and guidance.

"It's not scary. It's an atmosphere of support. It used to be a little room with a screen; now it's a relationship with a priest," she said.

Most such changes had their roots in the 1962 Second Vatican Council under Pope John Paul XXIII.

"The image of Vatican II was that of opening the doors of the Church and letting the fresh air in," said the Rev. Bill Kenny, a priest at Christ the King Catholic Church and a lifelong Las Vegan. "And since then, things here in Las Vegas, as all over, have become more collegial."

"Now things are much more democratic, and there have been cultural adaptations to Mass. It used to be that no matter where you went, Mass was identical -- in Latin. Now it's in English or French or Swahili or whatever. And some (churches) offer different styles of music."

Still, old images die hard, and mastering the seemingly complicated rituals of Catholic worship often override a deeper understanding of the faith, according to the Rev. Bede Wevita, a priest at Our Lady.

"Our churches are packed, and (parishioners) are very faithful, but you ask them what they believe and they sometimes can't answer you," Wevita said.

"But day and night I see an increase in interest. You have ignorant parents trying to teach their children -- the blind leading the blind -- and now, they want to learn. So it's good."

(SUBHEAD: Increase in Spanish Mass)

Some were crying tears of joy.

It was early August at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in West Las Vegas, and the pews were full.

Those who shed tears were reading the church's weekly bulletin -- perhaps for the first time -- because this was the first time it was printed in Spanish as well as in English.

"We're a very emotional culture," the Rev. Manuel Quintero, a priest at St. Francis, said. "To have it in Spanish is very important to them."

Inroads toward accommodating Spanish-speaking Catholics, the fastest-growing group of Catholics in the United States, are long overdue in Las Vegas, according to some parishioners. This fall's start of Spanish Mass at St. Francis marks the beginning of efforts to bring the church's services up to speed with the changing face of Catholicism.

About 30 percent of the nation's 61 million Catholics are Hispanic, according to church officials. And as the United States' Hispanic population continues to rise, U.S. Catholic churches will feel the impact because Catholicism is the dominant religion in many Latin countries.

According to an April 1998 report by Sonia Perez, director of research for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic Civil Rights group, nearly 25 percent of the United States population will be Hispanic by 2050. One-third of the U.S. Hispanic population is under the age of 18 now. As of last year, 55.8 percent of Hispanics now living in the U.S. also were born in the United States.

St. Francis is the fourth Catholic church in Las Vegas to offer Spanish Mass -- St. Anne, St. Christopher and Prince of Peace Catholic churches also do so.

"For years, I've always had to go all the way across the city to St. Christopher's for Spanish Mass on the east side, even though I live on the west side," Stella Garcia, a Catholic who has lived in Las Vegas for eight years, said.

"I am bilingual, but we want to hear mass in Spanish because that's our language, and we pray in Spanish," she said.

Many Spanish-speaking Catholics in Las Vegas do not speak any English, Garcia said, and either make the trek across town to one of three churches that provide Spanish Mass or attend English Mass even though they don't speak the language.

"It's so crowded at St. Christopher's," she said. "It's unbelievable. People have to stand. Some even have to stand outside. And inside, the air conditioning is so bad because so many people are in there.

"So this is a great step in the right direction."

(SUBHEAD: Shortage of priests)

As the Catholic population continues to grow locally and nationwide, the number of priests is not increasing at a comparable rate. In fact, it is decreasing with no signs of recovering.

In 1966, there were 35,000 Catholic priests in the U.S. Today, there are 24,000. Catholic sociologists project that the number will dwindle to 13,000 in 20 years.

There are about 50 priest in the Las Vegas diocese.

"Right now we are behind the curve," Walsh said. "We have a transient population here, and priests don't come with people when they move here."

The oath of celibacy -- required of Catholic priests -- has been cited as the top reason that the priesthood is losing its appeal. In a study at Catholic University, 70 percent of undergraduate males said the reason they would not become priests was because they then could not marry.

"That's one of the first questions high school students ask," said the Rev. Tony Vercellone, the diocese's vocation director, who makes presentations on the priesthood at local Catholic schools. "They want to talk about the celibacy issue."

Vercellone's recruiting program at the six Las Vegas Catholic grade schools and one Catholic high school includes showing a video on the priesthood and talking about his own experiences in the Church.

The diocese was able to recruit four seminarians who are studying now in California because there are no seminaries in Nevada. They plan to be priests in the diocese, some as early as the year 2000. Efforts to recruit nuns are less successful. There are five orders of Catholic nuns in Las Vegas, consisting of about 50 nuns. In recent years, the diocese has not recruited any new women for the religious life, Vercellone said.

"It's safe to say that sisters, as we have known them, are changing," he said. "The new role for women in the Church has yet to be seen -- it will be dynamic, but we don't know what it will be. But young women are not showing much interest."

Diocesan officials also conduct priest-recruitment programs at UNLV, where young men express an even more enthusiastic concern about the vow of celibacy than their younger high school counterparts.

"People are shy of commitment nowadays," Walsh said. "Priesthood is a commitment just as marriage is a commitment."

(Subhead: Priest finds spouse)

John Danks, who has lived in Las Vegas since 1977, was a Catholic priest for 23 years. He resigned his priesthood in 1983 because he didn't want to be celibate anymore.

"I think in many ways being a priest was a wonderful experience, and a very humbling experience for me to celebrate the Eucharist and administer the sacraments -- and it was a joy for me to baptize small children and baptize babies.

"It was also a lonely life because for me, personally, there was always the question of whether I was really destined to live a celibate life and never marry," Danks, 63, said.

"I feel that celibacy is a gift for some. But, personally, I don't believe that it is a mandatable gift -- that just because it is a discipline that you are automatically successful at it.

"I'm of the belief that if there were optional celibacy, there could be many more priests," Danks said.

He entered the seminary to become a priest when he was 16.

"Four of my aunts were nuns and two of my cousins were priests," Danks, who grew up in Pennsylvania, said. "My whole family experience was Irish-Catholic. The Church was very much a part of my growing up."

"I wanted to be a priest to do what I saw other priests doing -- celebrating Mass and counseling people."

But Danks said he was always a little self-conscious about his ability to counsel married couples, or prepare engaged couples for marriage, because he had never experienced that type of relationship.

"When married couples welcomed engaged couples into their home for pre-marital counseling, I would go, and we would talk about marital issues. But the whole area of sexuality was difficult for me," he said.

"I just felt it was something that young couples would feel more comfortable talking about with a married couple than with a celibate priest looking over their shoulders. So I became embarrassed and left. It was a mutual embarrassment.

"The older I got, the more I just didn't want to spend the rest of my life that way," he said.

A year after resigning, he was married.

After a stint as a travel agent working in Caesar's Palace ("Oh, brother -- that was wild for me," he said), Danks eventually settled into a career as a spiritual, pastoral and bereavement counselor for Sierra Health Services.

"I don't go in (to patients) saying, 'I'm a former Catholic priest,' " he said. "My respect for people's different faiths -- and even no faiths -- has helped me continue my ministry. And it's a wonderful ministry."

Danks said he does not regret his decision to become a priest, nor his decision to resign.

"I still have a strong, deep, abiding faith in God, and I've been blessed with a beautiful person who is my wife."

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