The Vietnamese show the way to Catholics Again

I really enjoy the On The Side of the Angels blog from the UK. We might disagree quite a bit on American politics but he always has such interesting posts. I saw this post this morning The Vietnamese show the way... over at his blog. It is about how 150,000 people in Vietnam went on the 15th of August and celebrated our Lady in quite a big way.

This post reminds me of one that Whispers at the Loggia had a week ago called "Asian Invasion" -- for Mary . As he points, 75,000 mostly Vietnamese-American Catholics converged on 28 acres in MISSOURI of all place for Mary Days. Making it the largest American Catholic event. Yet we hear nothing much about it.

I often wonder if the culture, the media, etc in the United States is too obsessed with the whole white/black racial dynamic. It seems that anything involving conflict between whites and blacks are page one news. The result being that the Asian and Hispanic cultures are hardly given the time of day. I was really struck by this during hurricane Katrina. One of the story lines of course was black/white relations. However New Orleans and the whole Gulf Coast has a huge Vietnamese population. Besides for a story of Vietnamese shrimpers in Alabama there was nothing on what happened to these folks?

I wonder if American Catholics and American society as a whole failed to take advantage of the lessons that this vibrant immigrant group had to offer.