Spiritual Direction in a Multicultural Church Helping Others Encounter God in Their Own Cultures

Abstract

In recent years a significant demographic shift has been predicted for the North American Catholic Church, especially in the United States of America. Jesuit Hispanic theologian Alan Figueroa Deck refers to it as the “Second Wave,” that is, the emergence, within the first decades of the next century, of minority groups, in particular African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian, not only in the American population at large, but also within the Roman Catholic Church, among the laity as well as among candidates to the priesthood and religious life (Deck, 1989).