DENVER — On the day she is to become a woman, Monica Reyes sits in front of the church for Mass. Her white dress — sewn in her mother’s Mexican hometown — spills over her chair like an oversized lampshade.
The priest urges her to live as a daughter of God. Her parents give her a gold ring shaped like the number 15. Near the end of the service, Reyes lays a bouquet of roses before a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Then she steps through the worn, wooden doors of St. Joseph’s, a Roman Catholic parish for generations of poor, Hispanic immigrants, and into a 20-seat white Hummer limo that rents for $150 an hour.
Before long, a stretch Lincoln Town Car arrives for the next Quinceanera Mass.
An elaborate coming-of-age ritual for Hispanic girls on their 15th birthday, the Quinceanera has long been divisive in the U.S. Catholic Church, where it’s viewed as either an exercise in excess or an opportunity to send a message about faith and sexual responsibility.
The latter view won an important endorsement last summer, when the Vatican approved a new set of prayers for U.S. dioceses called, in English, Order for the Blessing on the Fifteenth Birthday.
Consider it an acknowledgment of the changing face of American Catholicism. Hispanics account for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s 65 million Catholics and 71 percent of new U.S. Catholics since 1960, studies show.
In the Archdiocese of Denver, Hispanic ministry leaders view the Quinceanera craze as not just a chance to strengthen faith and family, but as a weapon against teen pregnancy.
Before Reyes could have her Quinceanera Mass, she and her parents had to enroll in a four-week curriculum introduced last year at Hispanic-dominated parishes that combines Catholicism 101 with a strong chastity message.
“Some girls come to the class expecting to be taught how to dance,” said Alfonso Lara, the archdiocese’s Hispanic Ministry coordinator.
One lesson included tips for safe dating (avoid dating Web sites in favor of group outings in public places). Then there is an explanation of the difference between simple abstinence (a way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases), and chastity (living like Jesus and Mary).
Monica Reyes is the model pupil. Once her Quinceanera is over, the high school junior will be allowed to go to parties and date, as many of her classmates do. But Reyes isn’t eager to join them.
“I’m still too young,” she said. “I could have a bad experience. So I’d rather wait.”
In Mexico and other Latin American countries, the Quinceanera once signaled that a girl was officially on the marriage market. The downside to that legacy: The Quinceanera Mass is sometimes seen as a sexual coming-of-age moment.
Although teen pregnancy rates have generally declined across ethnic lines over the last 15 years, 51 percent of Hispanic teens get pregnant before age 20, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
“Even now, immigrant parents don’t talk to their young daughters about sex,” said Timothy Matovina, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “There is not an open conversation going on about the value of waiting till marriage or the economic pitfalls of becoming a single mother.”
The Quinceanera at times has the feel of an out-of-control prom in the United States.
A $400 million-a-year industry has sprouted up, catering to Hispanic immigrants seeking to maintain cultural traditions while showing they’ve made it in their new countries, offering everything from Quinceanera planners and cruises to professional ballroom dancers to teach the ceremonial waltz.
At the same time, the ritual is a point of tension with the Catholic Church because Catholic families want their faith to be part of the celebration, yet it isn’t a sacrament, like marriage.
The Reyes family does not attend Mass regularly, but would never consider the Quinceanera legitimate without the blessing of a priest.
“The reason to have the Mass is to be blessed, and to say thanks to God,” said Monica’s mother, Luz.
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