While so many of us have been turning East, and focusing on the events in Washington and New York over the last several days, John Allen at NCR took some time to look westward. He’s got a fascinating piece in last week’s issue about Texas Catholics — and it really looks like that corner of the country is the New Frontier:

If one were to pick a single word to capture the Catholic reality in Texas today, it would have to be “growth.” While dioceses in other parts of the country are closing schools and clustering parishes, in Texas Catholic churches are overflowing, driven above all by massive waves of Hispanic immigration since the early 1990s, but also significant gains in other ethnic communities such as Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indians and Nigerians.

“In some parts of our nation, you’re trying to resurrect the faith. Here, you’re just trying to keep up with how fast it’s growing,” said Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas.

Signs of expansion are ubiquitous. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Houston, for example, serves a staggering total of 7,600 families, meaning roughly 23,000 people, making it in some ways a Catholic version of Houston’s famous “megachurches.” In Garland, a largely Hispanic region of Dallas, another parish named Good Shepherd holds 11 Masses over the weekend, with two Saturday night and nine on Sunday, beginning at 7:15 a.m. and ending at 7:30 p.m. The seating capacity is 450, but the smallest crowd is usually more than 500. (“We have a very understanding fire marshal,” said Fr. Robert Williams, the pastor.) Mass-goers flow into the attached school, sometimes following the Mass on loudspeakers in the hallways and cafeteria.

“I firmly believe there are thousands of Hispanics who do not go to a Catholic Mass in this diocese on Sunday simply because they cannot find a place to sit,” Williams said.

Texas may also be among the few places in America where Catholic dioceses are entering local real estate markets primarily as buyers rather than sellers. In Austin, Bishop Gregory Aymond said he’s looking at six sites to open new parishes. In Dallas, Farrell said he could open 12 to 15 new parishes tomorrow, if resources weren’t an issue, and not meet the need. DiNardo said that when he arrived in Houston, his predecessor, Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, told him he could open four parishes immediately and still be behind the curve. Currently, DiNardo said, the archdiocese is opening two new parishes.

With an estimated Catholic population today of 6.5 million, Texas is the third-largest Catholic state in America, after California and New York, and coming up fast on the second position. Between 2005 and 2008 alone, according to the Official Catholic Directory, New York lost 300,000 Catholics and Texas gained 350,000.

Much of that gain stems from Catholics moving to the state and registering with parishes, but much, too, leaders say, is the result of Hispanic immigrants who were formerly nominal Catholics but are seeking full membership in a parish. That accounts for the preponderance of the more than 8,000 Catholics who went through the RCIA program in the state’s 15 dioceses this year and were either baptized or confirmed on Holy Saturday.

Looking at future projections compiled by Lynn Rossol of the Pastoral Planning and Research Office in Dallas is an eye-popping exercise. By 2015, according to her data, Hispanics should outnumber Anglos in Texas 11.8 million to 11.7 million. By 2040, which is as far out as the projections go, and assuming that the border isn’t completely sealed off, the population of Texas should be around 45 million, with Anglos at 11.7 million and Hispanics an astonishing 26.1 million.

(Williams, the pastor in Garland, believes that attempts to close the border would be an exercise in futility. “Show me a 15-foot wall,” as he puts it, “and I’ll show you a 16-foot ladder.”)

By midcentury, Texas could plausibly have at least six dioceses with a Catholic population in excess of 2 million: Austin, Brownsville, Dallas, Fort Worth, Galveston/Houston and San Antonio.

There’s much more, so check out the rest at the link.

Photo: Pilgrims hold a Texas flag as they wait to enter a special audience with Pope Benedict XVI Nov. 26 at the Vatican. By Paul Haring/CNS