Latinos in U.S. Catholicism
Timothy Matovina
Immigrant clergy can border on the hagiographic when they exalt the influence of
Catholicism in their native land. One priest lauded his compatriots’ “simple yet strong piety and
trust in God,” the influence of a Catholic ethos in everyday life, and the “deep religious feeling
[and] love for the Madonna” which “alone would be proof of the strength of their religion.” His
depiction elicited a two-month dispute in the pages of the national Catholic weekly America. The
first respondent retorted that “piety does not consist in processions or carrying lighted candles, in
prostrations before a statue of the Madonna, in processions in honor of the patron saints of
villages.” Others characterized immigrants as ignorant of their Catholic faith, infrequent in
church attendance, and unwilling to offer financial or other support to parishes. For these reasons
critics deemed the émigrés “easy victim[s] to the Protestant proselytizer.” Immigrant defenders
questioned the legitimacy of such claims. They opined that immigrants’ practice of their faith
was remarkable when one considered that most of them were poor workers struggling for their
very survival who had endured the ordeal of migrating from their homelands to blighted
neighborhoods in U.S. cities, where they found relatively few priests prepared to serve them in
their native tongue. Several pointed out the enthusiastic immigrant response to pastoral outreach
efforts. Some considered the real issue to be the hostility the immigrants so frequently meet in
the United States, even from members of their own church.1
The short statement with which the editors of America closed this controversy sided with
1
the critics: “When all has been said and due discount has been made for the insufficiency of the
data offered as the basis of a judgment, the conviction, we think, will cling to most readers’
minds that there is an Italian problem, and that it clamors for solution. . .” The year was 1914,
three decades after debate about the “Italian problem” surfaced among U.S. Catholic bishops at
their 1884 Plenary Council in Baltimore. Pope Leo XIII even weighed in on the situation in an
1888 letter urging the U.S. bishops to provide his immigrant compatriots “the saving care of
ministers of God familiar with the Italian language.”2
Accusations and rebuttals regarding the Italian immigrants of yesteryear are strikingly
parallel to perceptions of today’s Latino3 Catholics. Indeed, the protracted debate about Italians
reveals a central and longstanding feature of U.S. Catholicism: the varied attempts to incorporate
diverse groups into a unified body of faith. Gerald Shaughnessy’s celebrated 1925 book, Has the
Immigrant Kept the Faith?, expressed the core concerns and fears of numerous priests and
prelates in this regard. Was the Catholic Church losing millions of adherents in the process of
immigrant integration into the United States? Should pastoral leaders actively foster integration
as many Irish bishops advised, or promote linguistic and cultural retention in order to fortify the
émigrés’ Catholic loyalties, as German immigrant leaders frequently exhorted? What are the best
pastoral strategies to nourish Catholic faith during the process of integration, and what happens
to the Catholic affiliation of the U.S.-born generations who descend from the immigrants? The
2008 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey showed that fully ten percent of all U.S.
residents were raised as Catholics but no longer describe themselves as Catholic, a loss of one
third of the Catholic faithful between childhood and adulthood. These findings renewed alarms
that, while Catholicism remains the largest denomination in the United States, the next largest
religious bodies are Baptists and former Catholics.4
2
Today the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is the most ethnically and racially
diverse national ecclesial body in the world. In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone, the
Eucharist is regularly celebrated in 42 languages. A century ago, the U.S. Catholic Church was
an overwhelmingly immigrant church of Europeans. Now, the church, largely run by middleclass Catholics, descendants of those immigrants, has growing numbers of Latino, Asian, and
African immigrants, along with sizeable contingents of U.S.-born Latinos, African Americans,
Asian Americans, and some Native Americans. Unlike European émigrés from the great century
of migration between 1820 and 1920, today’s newcomers are immigrants in a middle-class
church. Their class and educational differences with many descendants of previous immigrant
groups expand the diversity within U.S. Catholicism. The challenge of forging unity among such
a diverse ecclesial body is more acute than ever.
Of course, not all Hispanics are newcomers to the United States. In fact, Hispanic
Catholics have lived in what is now the United States for twice as long as the nation has existed.
Subjects of the Spanish crown founded the first diocese in the “New World” at San Juan, Puerto
Rico, in 1513 and, at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, the first permanent European settlement
within the current borders of the continental United States. Though for much of U.S. Catholic
history Hispanics have constituted a relatively small and frequently overlooked group, since
World War II their numbers and influence have increased dramatically. No ethnic or racial group
has ever been as proportionally large in U.S. Catholicism as Latinos are now, some forty percent
of Catholics according to estimates from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.5
Newcomers from such varied locales as Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina, along with ongoing
Mexican immigration, have increased the complexity of the Hispanic population. Latino Catholic
3
communities, previously concentrated in New York, the Southwest, and some Midwestern cities,
now extend from Seattle to Boston, from Miami to Alaska. Expanding diversity of region and
generation of settlement within the United States, national origins or heritage, and
socioeconomic status defy simple generalizations about Latinos, though representatives of these
various groups frequently employ the umbrella terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to reflect and
promote perceptions of a common heritage and a common struggle adapting to life in the United
States. Extant studies on specific groups and regions are more prevalent for the three largest
populations – ethnic Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans – but much further research remains
to be done. Thus this chapter is necessarily a composite overview of Latinos, though specific
groups are identified in instances where information about them is known and pertinent to the
point under discussion.
Contemporary U.S. bishops have not spoken of a Hispanic “problem” but have gone on
record as seeing Latinos as “a blessing from God.”6 Yet, like the discussants of Italians in
America a century ago, Catholic bishops and other pastoral leaders are deeply concerned about
the dynamics of integration, the influence of Protestantism, and Latino participation in civic life.
What do current trends in these three core areas portend for the future of U.S. Catholicism,
particularly the capacity for mobilizing collective Catholic action in American public life?
The National Parish Dynamic and Integration
The Italian experience is a good starting point for an analysis of Latino integration.
Silvano Tomasi’s landmark study identified three stages in the development of New York’s
Italian parishes from 1880 to 1950, the peak years of Italian immigration and adjustment to life
in New York. The initial stage consisted of attempts to incorporate immigrants into existing
structures, usually into predominantly Irish parishes. These “duplex parishes” were attempts to
4
economize by avoiding the construction of multiple parishes in the same neighborhood. But this
plan failed because of language problems, the perceived economic strain that poor immigrants
put on existing congregations, the precedent of national or “ethnic” parishes among German
Catholics, Italian resentment of Irish control of the U.S. hierarchy, the complaints of Italian
clergy against the plan, and the prejudice that Italians felt from other Catholics, often symbolized
by their relegation to worshiping in the basement of existing parishes. Many church leaders also
feared the loss of Italians to Protestant denominations. Thus they supported the formation of
Italian parishes where the immigrants could find a home within their own church.7
The failure of the “duplex parish” led to the second stage of Italian parish development,
the creation of Italian national parishes. These parishes were often the first institutions that
Italian immigrants could call their own. Tomasi claims that the Italian national parish had the
character of a “quasi-sect,” since “it became the place where immigrant Italians who were on the
religious and social periphery of society, could fulfill their religious needs, find opportunity for
self-expression, [and] preserve their self-perception of being human in the face of an unknown
social environment.”8 As quasi-sects, the intended purpose of Italian parishes was to preserve
immigrant faith and their “sacred cosmos,” a combination of saints, devotions, sacred things, and
view of the world that informs the rest of life. The parishes strengthened the internal structure of
Italian communities in that they preserved symbols and other carriers of immigrant culture,
facilitated their adjustment to U.S. society, and provided an arena for the emergence of Italian
leadership.
In time, Italian national parishes gave way to interethnic, territorial parishes in which the
children and grandchildren of immigrants integrated into the “middle American” milieu with
Catholics of other backgrounds. Among the conditions facilitating this change was the loss of the
5
Italian language among the descendants of émigrés, declining immigration resulting from
fluctuations in the job market and restrictive immigration legislation, and the mobility of
immigrants’ descendants as they made advances in education and employment. But Tomasi
contends that the role of the national parish was also significant in the integration of Italians into
more heterogeneous parishes and into the wider society, since national parishes allowed
immigrants a period of adjustment with the support of an institution that was familiar. In
Tomasi’s words, while facilitating the ongoing Catholic allegiance of immigrants and their
descendants, the national parish simultaneously mediated the process of “integration through
separation.”9 Tomasi’s widely-accepted thesis unveils no small irony: while Italians and other
immigrant groups labored to found national parishes as enclaves to preserve their language,
culture, and ethnic expressions of faith in a strange new land, over time these segregated
congregations enabled their descendants to integrate into U.S. society and ecclesial life from a
position of strength. National parishes built unity by enabling newcomers to integrate in their
own time and, to an extent, on their own terms rather than those of their established
predecessors.
Shortly after becoming archbishop of New York in 1939, Cardinal Francis Spellman
reversed a policy of establishing national parishes that had shaped New York Catholicism for
nearly a century. Extolling “integration” as the goal of Catholic ministry among migrants, he
contended that national parishes were no longer a viable pastoral strategy because the third
generation of an immigrant group frequently moves out of these parishes, leaving the
congregation depleted and the church building in disrepair. Furthermore, the children of
immigrants too often abandon their ancestral religion because they identify the Catholic faith
with the archaic practices of their national parish community. The approach Spellman adopted in
6
New York became common across the United States, as Catholic leaders concluded that, “since
the people will eventually become integrated with the established population, it would be wiser
to begin the process of integration from the very beginning.”10
The significance of Catholic parishes for newcomers was not lost on Latino groups like
the Puerto Rican migrants whose numbers increased dramatically in New York after World War
II, just as Italian immigrant parishes were in the midst of losing members to more heterogeneous,
suburban parishes. Encarnación Padilla de Armas arrived in the city in 1945 as a young widow
with a small boy and $150 in her pocket. Subsequently she met Jesuit priest Joseph Fitzpatrick,
with whom she shared her concern that the New York Archdiocese was neglecting the Puerto
Rican community. Fitzpatrick asked her to write a report on the situation and promised that he
would deliver it personally to Cardinal Spellman. Padilla de Armas gathered and led a small
group of Puerto Rican women to prepare this 1951 report which bemoaned that there was “not a
single Catholic priest of Puerto Rican origin” serving in New York. They also asserted
unequivocally that “Puerto Ricans must be received as regular parishioners” in existing Catholic
parishes and that established congregants must be taught “their obligation of receiving these new
people as brothers in Christ.”11
The developments in Hispanic ministry that Padilla de Armas and her companions helped
initiate in New York clearly illuminate what could be deemed the “national parish dynamic.”
Like European immigrants who built national parishes, Latinos attempt to establish and nurture
structures of Catholic life that enable them to move from at best feeling hospitality in someone
else’s church to a sense of homecoming in a church that is their own. Archdiocesan officials
established the Spanish Catholic Action Office two years after the Puerto Rican women
produced their report. Consciously or not, the women’s efforts revealed the Puerto Rican
7
response to the official decline of the national parish was to replace it with structures that met
their desire to feel the sense of belonging national parishes provided.
This desire was evident in other ways. During the 1950s Puerto Ricans numbering in the
tens of thousands celebrated the island’s patron St. John the Baptist (June 24) with an annual
archdiocesan Mass, procession, and daylong festivities that included a civic and cultural program
of events. This vibrant celebration “offered an opportunity for a public demonstration of the
religious and cultural values of the Puerto Rican community. . .It was the first citywide event that
gave presence to the Puerto Ricans.” The renewal movement Cursillo de Cristiandad (Brief
Course in Christianity) weekends began on a regular basis in the New York Archdiocese in 1960.
They were immensely popular and influential among Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, in large
part because they “provided a framework and community to the individual Hispanic immigrant
otherwise submerged in New York’s dominant non-Hispanic culture and in danger of losing his
identity as Hispanic and Catholic.” Similarly, though U.S. clergy promoted the Caballeros de
San Juan Bautista (Knights of St. John the Baptist) as a temporary Puerto Rican pious
association that would foster “integration” and “assimilation,” many Puerto Ricans saw the
Caballeros as on organization that would help them maintain their religious practices, ethnic
identity, and group cohesion on the mainland.12
Today the diminishing number of priests and an expanding Catholic population has
augmented the average size and racial and ethnic diversity of U.S. Catholic congregations.
Particularly outside of areas with more concentrated Latino populations like the Southwest,
Florida, New York, and Chicago, an increasing scenario in parishes encompassing Latinos is that
they are relative newcomers in established Euro-American congregations. A number of Englishspeaking Catholics have made considerable efforts to work with their Latino coreligionists and
8
offer them a sense of welcome. In the decades since the Second Vatican Council, women
religious, clergy, and lay leaders at all levels of the church have invested significant amounts of
time and material resources to help develop and expand ministries with Latino Catholics.
When a parish entails two or more language groups worshiping under the same roof,
however, in many instances they coexist in isolation or even in tension. The sheer number of
Latinos and the fact that they are in a middle-class rather than an immigrant-led church can
exacerbate the situation. For example, when Hispanics attempt to make a parish feel more like
home by placing one of their own sacred images in the worship space or scheduling a Spanish
Mass in a “prime time” slot on Sunday morning, established parishioners frequently rebuff them
with the claim that “our ancestors built this church” or “we were here first.” As one lay leader
bemoaned, “I am discouraged by the fact that we, Hispanics, don’t count here in this parish. We
come to mass in great numbers and our Masses are really filled with the spirit. But all the power
is in the hands of a small group of [non-Hispanic] old-timers who contribute a lot of money to
the Church.” If Latinos respond with protest or complaint, their Euro-American co-religionists
often perceive them as being unappreciative of the welcome offered to them. Like their nonCatholic neighbors, many European-descent U.S. Catholics presume that newcomers who do not
adopt U.S. customs and speak English in public are ungrateful or even not qualified to remain in
the United States. Critics also claim the practice of distinct language Masses creates “parallel
parishes” that have virtually no relationship with one another, leading to fragmentation within
the body of Christ. Leaders in Hispanic ministry like Father Chuck Dahm counter that “the
promotion of multicultural parishes is often little more than a veiled attempt to assimilate the
minority culture into the dominant one.”13
9
As it did with Italian and other European immigrant groups, perceived second-class status
in multicultural parishes leads some Latinos to curtail or abandon their participation in parish
life. For others inhospitality fuels the national parish dynamic, as Father Ezéquiel Sánchez,
former Chicago archdiocesan director of Hispanic ministry, noted about one congregation: “A lot
of people are not very welcoming toward Hispanics, and, consequently, Mission Juan Diego ends
up being an island of refuge for them. It’s their own place.”14 Many territorial parishes are in
effect national parishes as they serve overwhelmingly Hispanic congregations. The impulse to
found and support such parishes is evident among all Latino groups: the predominantly Puerto
Rican parish of Santa Agonía (Holy Agony) in New York, the Cuban and later also Central
American parishioners of St. John Bosco in Miami, the largely Mexican immigrant congregation
of St. Pius V in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, the predominantly Mexican American
community of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, and the multiethnic Latino immigrant
community of Our Lady of the Angels, or la Placita, as it is commonly known, in Los Angeles,
to name but a few. Congregations like these engage parishioners at multiple levels, providing
social services and sacraments, English classes and traditional devotions, religious education and
legal aid, parenting classes and prayer groups. Widespread Latino initiatives to establish and
support such parishes, as well as feast-day celebrations, devotional practices, renewal
movements, parish organizations, and diocesan and regional Hispanic ministry offices reflect
Latinos’ desire to stake out their own turf within U.S. Catholicism, just as Germans, Poles,
Italians, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians, and others did previously in their national parishes.
The 2007 Pew Latino religion survey confirms the ongoing influence of the national
parish dynamic. Seventy percent of Latino Catholics reported worshiping in predominantly
Latino congregations with services in Spanish and at least one Hispanic serving as clergy.
10
Foreign birth and residence in an area densely populated with Latinos increase these percentages,
but do not account exclusively for the phenomenon of Latino ethnic parishes. For example, 57
percent of respondents who live in an area where the population is less than 15 percent Latino
report worshiping in a predominantly Latino congregation.15
Various factors bode well for a more prolonged vitality of the national parish dynamic
among Latinos than among Italian and other previous European émigrés. Despite efforts to
restrict Hispanic immigration and the growth of Protestantism in Latin America, family
unification and the flow of people in a global economy continue to attract numerous Latino
Catholics to the United States. Contact with their countries of origin and other countries where
Spanish is spoken is more frequent for today’s Hispanics than for immigrants who crossed the
ocean, particularly in the Southwest where proximity with Mexico can literally be as close as
several hundred yards. Puerto Ricans have the unique distinction of being “citizen immigrants,”
U.S. citizens by birth who travel freely between the island of Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland.
Spanish television programs, the internet, and improved transportation add to the trend of greater
contact with one’s homeland and the larger Hispanic world. With good reasons scholars of
Latinos in the Americas today speak more of transnational migration – underscoring the frequent
contact and back-and-forth travel among families and kinship networks that span national
boundaries – rather than the more unidirectional concept of immigration. The large numbers of
Latino émigrés and their frequent settlement pattern in ethnic clusters further serve to reinforce
their retention of the Spanish language and elements of their respective cultures.
Latinos also encounter a greater openness to multicultural differences among many
church and societal leaders than did earlier European immigrants, buttressing their efforts to
retain their Hispanic heritage even as they adapt to life in the United States. At the same time, the
11
issue of racism remains. Numerous Latinos have stinging memories of the polite disdain or
outright hostility they meet in their dealings with sales clerks, bosses, coworkers, teachers, police
officers, health care providers, social workers, government employees, professional colleagues,
and civic and church leaders. They are not alone in the experience of discrimination, of course.
Almost every immigrant group had to endure prejudice upon arriving in the United States. With
Latinos and other groups (most notably African Americans) from outside of Europe, there is
frequently a critical difference, however: skin color. While white European immigrants could
blend into U.S. society once they knew the language and culture, the ethnic origin of many
Hispanics remains readily apparent. Subtle (and not so subtle) racist treatment can be the result.
Continuing experiences of prejudice lead Latinos to band together for mutual support and to
oppose wholesale assimilation into a society perceived as unappreciative of the Hispanic
presence.
Moreover, as Joseph Fitzpatrick has argued, unlike Europeans who arrived to the
“immigrant church” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more recent Hispanic
newcomers encounter a U.S. Catholic Church that is “now a middle-class institution.” Difference
of social class between numerous Latinos and the descendants of European immigrants who
occupy the majority of leadership position in parishes and dioceses further inhibit working-class
Latinos from developing a “consciousness that this is their church” apart from the national parish
dynamic.16 Unlike numerous European-descent Catholics for whom integration and assimilation
occurred en masse in the wake of the restrictive immigration legislation of the 1920s, ethnic
consciousness among Latinos will be a persistent feature of U.S. Catholicism for the foreseeable
future.
12
But this is not the full story. Historian Rudolph Vecoli eloquently echoed the sentiments
of millions of immigrant Catholics when he concluded that “the ‘Italian Problem’ was many
things to many people, but to the Italian immigrants themselves it may have been that the Church
in the United States was more American and Irish than Catholic.” Yet Italian immigrants did in
time identify as Italian Americans and many of them eventually simply as Americans. Similarly,
the demographics of generational transition are changing the face of Latino and U.S.
Catholicism. The majority of Latinos – some 60%, according to the 2000 census – are not
immigrants. A 2003 study revealed that while 60% of Hispanics above age 35 are immigrants,
only 13% of those below age 20 are. The study also showed the linguistic impact of U.S. birth
and residence: among Latino Catholics of high school age, 15% primarily speak Spanish, 60%
are bilingual, and 25% speak English with little or no Spanish. While more than half of Latino
adults speak exclusively or primarily Spanish in their home, two thirds of Latino teens speak
exclusively or primarily English among their friends.17 These statistics and the pleas from Latino
leaders for greater initiatives in ministry among U.S.-born Latino youth, a need clearly
articulated in the June 2006 gathering of more than 2,000 Latino youth for the First National
Encounter for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry, are just some of the indicators that an
analysis of Latino Catholicism that solely emphasizes immigrants and ethnic solidarity is
woefully inadequate.
The influence that living in the United States has on Latinos is crucial for the future of
U.S. Catholicism. As David Rieff asked in a recent New York Times Magazine essay: “Is this
[the growing Latino presence] a real turning point in the history of the American church that will
lead to its enduring revival or, instead, only another cycle in that history?” Will the national
parish dynamic lead to the process of “integration through separation” as national parishes did
13
for Italians and other European immigrants? And as more Latinas and Latinos have children and
grandchildren in the United States will their former immigrant Catholicism remain strong, or will
they follow the trajectory of the descendants of European immigrants whose Catholic faith Rieff
claims “eroded in the aftermath of Vatican II and assimilation”?18
Despite his hyperbolic claim that the faith of all European-descent Catholics has eroded,
Rieff justifiably poses this question in stark terms. The degree of contact with non-Hispanics,
distance from one’s homeland, education level, U.S. or foreign birth, and immigrants’ age at the
time of their arrival are just some of factors that shape an individual Latino’s adaptation to U.S.
church and society. Regional influence on the acculturation of Latinos has become even more
pronounced in recent decades, as the dispersion of the Latino population across the United States
means that more of them live in areas where they comprise a numerical minority and
consequently tend to interact more frequently with non-Hispanics. Church leaders and Latino
Catholic parents face the same challenge of passing on the faith that European immigrants did in
the past, especially as young Latinos advance in education, economic status, and Englishlanguage ability.
The national parish dynamic among Latinos reflects an enduring pattern in U.S.
Catholicism: rarely do newcomers readily accept forced integration but, consciously or not, when
given the freedom to do so they often integrate from a position of strength. Current debates about
whether multicultural congregations are segregated, “parallel parishes” or a means to live out the
richness of unity in diversity mirror previous arguments about national parishes and the pastoral
response to European immigrants. From the perspective of newcomers ranging from nineteenthcentury Germans to today’s Hispanics, the fundamental issue in such disputes is moving beyond
mandated assimilation to voluntary integration, beyond an established “host” group controlling
14
parish life to a sense of mutual belonging, beyond receiving hospitality in someone else’s parish
to a homecoming in one’s own church. Theologically, Latinos’ considerable ecclesial activism
over the past half century echoes the same core conviction of millions of other newcomers
throughout the long saga of U.S. Catholicism: God’s house is not holy just because all are
welcome; God’s house is holy because all belong as valued members of the household. The
incorporation of Latinos is yet another major step in the long process to forge a viable,
harmonious Catholic community in a pluralistic church and society.
Yet there remains one further crucial difference: while Latinos evidence both the national
parish dynamic and similarities to the integration and assimilation patterns of their European coreligionists, among Latinos both dynamics are taking place concurrently over a more extended
period of time. No previous group in U.S. Catholicism has ever encompassed such large numbers
of both immigrants and more assimilated populations as do Latinos. A 2000 national poll
confirmed that Latinos of all groups value both their ethnic heritage and their life in the United
States: while 89 percent of Latinos surveyed agreed it is important “for Latinos to maintain their
distinct cultures,” 84 percent of the same group also said it is important “for Latinos to change so
that they blend into the larger society as in the idea of the melting pot.”19 The simultaneity of
ethnic solidarity and ongoing immigration along with generational transition into U.S. church
and society is one of the most significant trends within an expanding Latino population that
encompasses immigrants and their descendants, Spanish- and English-speakers, newcomers and
longstanding residents. Unilateral pastoral approaches are inadequate in this context, both those
that solely emphasize rapid assimilation and exclusive English-language use and those that
promote prolonged ethnic separatism and monolingual Spanish ministries. Future Catholic
impact within U.S. society hinges in no small part on the degree to which Latinos feel a sense of
15
ownership and belonging in U.S. Catholicism and achieve a spirit of unity with their coreligionists in parochial life.
Pentecostal Influence
Ongoing adherence to Catholicism is a necessary prerequisite for vital U.S. Latino
Catholic communities, of course. The upsurge of religious traditions like Pentecostalism
provides a momentous challenge but also an impetus to enhance this vitality. Especially when
parish structures that enable Latinos to gather and express their faith in their own style are
lacking, many Latinos refrain from institutional Catholic involvement or migrate to other
denominations. Father Allan Figueroa Deck, director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in
the Church for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has opined that “the lack of
juridically sanctioned Hispanic parishes with strong pastors identified with their people is
perhaps the single greatest reason for the ineffectiveness of our outreach to Hispanics.” A similar
lack of ministerial structures is noted among younger Latinos who are born in or adapting to life
in the United States. According to Carmen Cervantes, cofounder and executive director of the
Latino youth ministry organization Instituto Fe y Vida, “Latino/a teens will soon be more than
half of all adolescent Catholics in the U.S., and as a group they are even more religiously
inarticulate and disengaged than other Catholic teens.”20
Such observations are confirmed in sociological studies on denominational switching,
beginning with the widely-cited research of Andrew Greeley in the late 1980s, which showed
that some sixty thousand U.S. Hispanics “defect” from their ancestral religion every year. In a
follow-up article a decade later Greeley claimed that the situation had gotten even worse, noting
that the annual loss of Latinos is one half of one percent, although he miscalculated the yearly
exodus as 600,000 rather than the correct figure of sixty thousand based on the data he presented.
16
Given the expansive growth of the U.S. Latino population since Greeley conducted his research,
the raw number of Hispanics who abandon Catholicism annually is undoubtedly now larger.
Greeley’s conclusion that the departure of Latinos is “the worst defection in the history of the
Catholic Church in the United States” needs to be examined against the aforementioned Pew
Forum on Religion & Public Life survey and its finding that one third of U.S. residents whose
childhood religion was Catholic had since left the church. Precise statistics and comparisons
notwithstanding, Greeley and subsequent researchers have rightly pointed to the departure of
Latinos from Catholicism as a monumental pastoral predicament that shows no sign of abating.21
Most Latinos who leave Roman Catholicism have embraced Protestantism, especially in
its Pentecostal and evangelical forms. Analyses of the causes for this trend are varied. Extant
sociological studies often subsume into a single “evangelical” category congregations ranging
from storefront churches that stringently discipline their membership to megachurches that
accentuate the “prosperity gospel.” But a number of observers agree that, unlike many Catholic
parishes, Protestant congregations often provide a strong sense of family and fellowship,
indigenous Spanish-speaking pastors, an overwhelmingly predominant Hispanic membership,
and worship services in which Latinos can pray in their own language and cultural style. While
Latinos who join Protestant congregations often cite a direct and pronounced experience of God
as their primary motive, the parallels between these congregations and national parishes are
striking.
Hispanic Catholics’ departure frequently motivates bishops, clergy, and lay leaders to
nurture the national parish dynamic as a means of strengthening their coreligionists’ Catholic
allegiance and faith. Not surprisingly, Hispanic ministry initiatives in the U.S. Catholic Church
tend to be strongest among immigrants who respond enthusiastically to the national parish
17
dynamic: their traditional rituals and devotions, easily identifiable spiritual and material needs,
preference for Spanish, and deep resonance with pastors who express solidarity with them make
them relatively easier to form into vibrant faith communities. The preponderance of foreign-born
Latino clergy – five of every six among the 2,900 Latino priests in the United States are foreign
born22 – undergirds the prevalence of an immigrant-focused, Spanish-language approach in
Hispanic ministry.
This approach accounts in part for the diminishment of Catholic allegiance among
younger Latinos. Ken Johnson-Mondragón notes in his coauthored study of Latino Catholic
teenagers that Hispanic youth encompass a linguistic range from Spanish-speaking immigrant
workers to bilingual “identity seekers” negotiating between cultures to English-dominant
speakers who have sought or achieved a level of mainstream status and identification. The
difficulty for most Hispanic youth is that, despite their diversity, in the vast majority of parishes
their youth group options are at best “either the mainstream youth ministry of the U.S. or the
immigrant Hispanic ministry.” While Spanish-language pastoral juvenil groups tend to yield the
most dynamic results, Johnson-Mondragón contends that the lack of youth ministry tailored to
the varied groups among Latino youth is a major detriment to their more widespread practice of
Catholicism. Although the younger age cohort of any religious group is generally susceptible to
veer from the faith tradition in which they were raised, generational transition between
immigrant parents and their U.S.-born or U.S.-reared children poses particular challenges.23
The 2000 Hispanic Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) survey showed that the
Catholic affiliation of U.S. Latinos drops from 74 percent among the first generation to 62
percent among the third generation. Johnson-Mondragón’s subsequent study based on the
National Study of Youth and Religion is consistent with this finding, concluding that, though on
18
the whole young Latinos tend to embrace the same faith group as their parents, “the large gap
between the 74% of Spanish-dominant teens who are Catholic and the 57% of English-dominant
Hispanic teens who are Catholic indicates that more acculturated Hispanics are more likely to be
Protestant and less likely to be Catholic.”24
But by no means do all who leave Catholicism end up in Protestant congregations. The
HCAPL survey revealed that three percent of U.S. Latinos belong to “alternative Christian”
religions, most notably the Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons, while another one percent is
affiliated with a world religion other than Christianity. More significantly, the 2001 American
Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) revealed the percentage of Hispanics in the United States
who profess “no religion” doubled to 13% during the 1990s, a figure that parallels the percentage
of no religion respondents in the general population. While other recent studies show a slightly
lower percentage of “no religion” Latino respondents, the upward trend in this statistic is clear.25
Collectively the recent surveys on Latino religion reveal that, for Catholics, the challenge in
Hispanic ministry is not limited to preserving the faith of immigrants but, more fundamentally,
invigorating faith among Latinos as they become more enmeshed in a pluralistic U.S. society
with a range of religious options, including the choice for no religious affiliation.
There is no sign that the Hispanic leakage from Catholic ranks will abate in the proximate
future. It is not clear how many Hispanic “converts” will persist in Pentecostal and other groups.
Some Latinos maintain dual or even multiple denominational attachments. Thus they may attend
a Protestant congregation regularly for Sunday worship but celebrate baptisms, funerals, and
other events in a Catholic parish. Other Latinos in the United States follow the path of religious
seekers: once they have abandoned the religious affiliation of their childhood their propensity for
changing congregations or denominations again increases significantly. And some Hispanics
19
eventually return to the Catholic fold, such as Mary Navarro Farr. After eight years in an
evangelical church, Navarro Farr became upset with the anti-Catholicism in her congregation
and was drawn back to a Catholic parish by “the treasure of the Eucharist, the maternal care of
Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the music and sacred imagery” she remembered from her
childhood. According to the HCAPL survey, however, while some 700,000 Latinos in the United
States have returned or converted to Catholicism, more than four times that number has left it.26
All told, the current demographic state of Latino Catholics is, as sociologist Anthony
Stevens-Arroyo has aptly deemed it, a “shrink-while-we’re-growing” phenomenon: even as the
percentage of Latinos who are Catholics decreases, in raw numbers and in percentage of the total
Catholic population they continue to increase. Overall the religious demographics of U.S.
Latinos also reflect this phenomenon. Since 1990 the percentage of Latinos who are Catholics
decreased to roughly 65 percent, the percentage of those who claim “no religion” increased to
somewhere between 8 to 13 percent, and the percentage of Protestants remained roughly the
same at about 20 to 23 percent, with a small percentage of Latino adherents to other religions.
Yet all categories have increased in actual numbers due to Latino population growth fueled by
ongoing immigration and especially relatively high birth rates.27
The pluralistic and competitive U.S. religious milieu enhances the mutual influence
between Catholicism and other Christian groups, as is evident, for example, in the increasing
enshrinement of Our Lady of Guadalupe images in Protestant congregations, including those of
some Pentecostals and evangelicals. Protestants, especially Pentecostals, also exert notable
influence within Latino Catholicism. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) encompasses
healing Masses, testimonies, prophecy, speaking in tongues, spontaneous public prayer, vibrant
singing, and embodied worship such as hand clapping and raising one’s arms in praise. These
20
exuberant prayer forms are resonant with the devotions and religious feast days of Latino
Catholicism, as well as with Catholic renewal movements like the Cursillo, which Hispanics
brought from Spain to the United States a decade before the CCR was born. But they also
resonate with Pentecostalism, and practices like speaking in tongues clearly spring from
Pentecostal rather than Catholic roots.28
A relatively small group of English-speaking U.S. Catholics founded the CCR in 1967. It
grew to nearly 120 million participants worldwide by the early twenty-first century, more than
sixty percent of them Latin Americans. A number of Latin American immigrants brought the
CCR spirit with them and are leaders or founders of Charismatic groups in U.S. parishes. The
Pew Latino religion survey cites “Renewalist Christianity” as one of the two major features of
Latino religion in the United States. Asserting that Latinos on the whole practice “a distinctive
form of Christianity,” the study also states that “Hispanic Catholics practice a distinctive brand
of Catholicism, one that incorporates many of the beliefs and behaviors most commonly
associated with pentecostal or renewalist Christianity.”29
Some of the specific findings of the survey are questionable or at least difficult to
interpret. Fully 45 percent of all Latino Catholic respondents claimed to have received the
baptism of the Holy Spirit or “second baptism” as it is sometimes called. But the vast majority
stated they received the second baptism as an infant – a practice scarcely heard of since this
baptism almost universally entails a mature profession of faith – leading the researchers
themselves to suggest that they aren’t sure if their respondents were speaking of the Catholic
sacrament of baptism or the more Pentecostal-style baptism of the Holy Spirit. A fundamental
question for the study was whether interviewees identified themselves as “charismatic” – 54
percent of Latino Catholics responded affirmatively. But it is not clear what interviewees meant
21
in affirming this self-identification. In response to another question, only 15 percent of selfprofessed charismatic Catholics said they participate in formal CCR organizations, while 7% of
non-charismatic Catholics said they participate in such organizations. The authors of the study
account for such findings with the claim that even Latinos who do not self-identify as
charismatic “are more likely than non-Latino Catholics to report having experienced or
witnessed supernatural practices such as divine healings or revelations from God.”30 But
Hispanics’ belief in God’s frequent intervention in everyday life and faith healing practices like
curanderismo have been extant since long before the advent of the CCR and even before the
Pentecostal spark was lit at the 1907 Azusa Street Revival. Charismatic practices among Latino
Catholics certainly reflect Pentecostal influences, but they are also rooted in Latino popular
Catholicism, as well as the widespread popularity of the Cursillo and other Catholic renewal
movements. For Latinos, the growing propensity of U.S. believers to blend religious traditions
extends a centuries-old Latin American practice of interweaving elements of Iberian,
Amerindian, and African religions.
Extant surveys report a wide range of findings about the extent of Latino involvement in
CCR groups. On the high end, the HCAPL survey estimates that 5.4 million Latinos in the
United States self-identify as Catholic Charismatics, substantially more than the 3.8 million who
self-identify as Pentecostals. A 1999 U.S. bishops’ committee report found that the CCR is the
most prevalent apostolic movement among Latinos. More than one third of the 3,617 parishes
engaged in Hispanic ministry had CCR groups or activities.31 But even if every one of these
CCR groups had 500 Latino members – a conservative estimate since parish CCR groups tend to
be several hundred if not smaller – cumulatively they would still comprise under a million Latino
Charismatics. The wide discrepancy in these estimates is not easily explicated, though one
22
important factor is the statistical gap between members active in CCR parish groups and the
much larger group of those who in some way identify with the Charismatic Renewal. Many
Latinos participate at least occasionally in home-based CCR activities or larger events apart from
parish-based prayer groups. In any case, the general conclusion that a sizeable number of Latinos
participate in the CCR is undeniable.
Leaders established the Comité Nacional de Servicio Hispano (CNSH) in 1990 to
promote the CCR among Latinos and coordinate activities among the growing number of
Hispanics who had become involved in the CCR over the previous decade. The CNSH has three
core commitments: to serve God in the Catholic Church and advance its mission of
evangelization in the power of the Holy Spirit; to foment the experience of Pentecost as a grace
of the Holy Spirit for the church; and to carry the fervor of the Charismatic Renewal to families,
neighborhoods, parish communities, and all those who thirst for God. Structurally, the CNSH
consists of a national coordinator, spiritual director, executive committee, and youth committee
as well as representatives from eight regions spanning the United States and Canada. One of its
major activities since its inception has been to conduct an annual leaders’ meeting called the
Encuentro Católico Carismático Latino de los Estados Unidos (Latino Catholic Charismatic
Encounter of the United States).32
Thousands of prayer groups that meet regularly in parishes or private homes are the most
widespread manifestation of the CCR among Hispanics. The practice of religión casera (homebased religion) has longstanding antecedents in Latino popular Catholicism. It is also consistent
with the contemporary home-based Catholic prayer and Bible study of comunidades eclesiales
de base (basic ecclesial communities) and faith sharing groups like those of the Cursillo and
23
RENEW movements, as well as the general trend of home-based gatherings in U.S. religion that
scholars like Robert Wuthnow have documented.33
Despite its size and national organization, the CCR is not only one of most understudied
phenomena in Latino Catholicism but also the most unmentioned in official ecclesial documents.
Amazingly, despite its influence the CCR has never been a major point of discussion in the
National Hispanic Pastoral Encuentros convened under the auspices of the U.S. Catholic bishops,
nor in the official statements or pastoral plans that the bishops promulgated. Indeed, despite
consistent attention to proselytizing and the loss of Latinos to Pentecostal and evangelical
churches, often in these venues the CCR is not even mentioned in passing. The attitudes of
Catholic bishops and other church leaders has seemingly been to dismiss or in some cases to
resist the Spirit-filled exuberance of CCR members, though increasingly bishops and priests see
in the CCR a viable means to foster Latino evangelization and Catholic allegiance.
Two major CCR groups in Los Angeles illustrate these dynamics. The origin of Los
Angeles as a major hub of the CCR among Latinos dates back to 1972, when former Assemblies
of God missionaries to Columbia Marilynn and Glenn Kramar established their evangelization
initiative in the city. Subsequently they opened up the Charisma in Missions headquarters in East
Los Angeles with the blessing of Cardinal Timothy Manning. Co-founder Marilynn Kramar
continues to serve as the president of Charisma, which fosters CCR groups through leadership
formation, youth encounters, preaching and healing ministries, and international conferences.
Another Los Angeles-based organization, El Sembrador, began when Noel Díaz, a parishioner at
St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Los Angeles, “accepted the invitation [of Jesus Christ to work
in his vineyard] and in 1984 began to assume the challenge of the new evangelization with a
small group of people who met in a home within the parish.” From its origins as a home- and
24
then parish-based prayer group El Sembrador has grown to international stature. Today the
group’s leaders conduct annual regional congresses and revivals for thousands of participants
and provide a 24-hour a day radio broadcast, as well as cable television programming which
reaches from Canada to South America through their affiliate El Sembrador Nueva
Evangelización.34
Cardinal Roger Mahony and other Los Angeles archdiocesan officials recognize the
evangelizing potential of prayer groups and related ministries. But they are concerned about the
centralized power of CCR leaders whom they perceive as building strong followings among their
group members and maintaining that the prime authority for their ministries is the voice of the
Holy Spirit speaking to them, not the official approbation channels of the institutional church.
Leaders of Charisma in Missions have accused Cardinal Mahony of publicly supporting El
Sembrador while distancing himself and his archdiocese from Marilynn Kramar out of fear that
one day she might lead her devout Latino followers out of the church. One prayer group leader
accused the archdiocese of employing a “divide and conquer strategy.” Another leader
commented “it’s so sad that [Charisma in Missions and El Sembrador] are fighting each other,
instead of battling evil in the Latino community. The devil must be laughing at them.”35
Some Latinos object to the CCR on other grounds, such as its exuberant style and
especially its Pentecostal-related expressions like speaking in tongues and the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. Latino pastoral leaders contend that apostolic movements like the CCR can be a
source of disunity when their members “adopt a quasi-sectarian attitude, focusing singlemindedly on their own activities and growth and neglecting the welfare of the parish.” Latino
enthusiasm for the CCR can also exacerbate the tendency of its members to “see themselves as
holding the right way of being church,” setting them against Latino Catholics in other
25
movements or parish activities. CCR leader Andrés Arango, the representative of the Pacific
region for the CNSH, concurs that some Latino CCR leaders lack adequate ministerial
preparation or undergo formation in CCR programs run parallel to those of dioceses, opening the
door for potential misunderstanding and conflict. Noting that some groups clearly rooted in the
Charismatic Renewal do not want to associate with national CCR leaders, he also opines that
“the biggest challenge we face is dealing with the issue of authority, especially leaders who want
to be independent from any outside authority or influence.”36
In part as a response to such concerns, Charisma in Missions, El Sembrador, and
hundreds of smaller home and parish prayer groups across the United States frequently express
their allegiance to the traditions of the Catholic Church, its institutional leaders, and the overall
wellbeing of their local parish. Leaders demonstrate their fidelity to church authority and
doctrine in their citations of papal and other official teaching. When Catholics – including some
Latinos – picketed Sunday Masses after the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in 2002, El
Sembrador founder Díaz organized processions through downtown Los Angeles to show support
for the church and for “those good priests who have left behind everything to serve the people.”
Many CCR groups incorporate traditional devotions like Eucharistic adoration and the rosary
into their prayer meetings. According to the Pew Latino religion survey, well over eighty percent
of self-identified Latino Charismatics practice Marian devotion and believe in Catholic dogmas
like the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic host and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
The same survey confirmed Latino Charismatics’ emphasis on loyal participation in the life of
the church, finding that they engage in parish ministries such as lector, choir, or parish council
nearly twice as much as other Latino Catholics. Arguably the central feature of the CCR among
26
Latinos is their integration of Pentecostal-style intimacy and enthusiasm, Catholic ecclesial
structures and teaching, and Latino Catholicism’s expressive devotional style.37
CCR leaders also acclaim the Charismatic Renewal as providing a vital, Spirit-filled
alternative to Pentecostal and other Protestant denominations. CNSH regional representative
Arango points to the noteworthy successes of CCR groups in providing Hispanic immigrants a
place to nurture their faith and develop their leadership within the U.S. Catholic Church, as well
as forming bilingual leadership in the second and third generation who help revitalize the
Catholic faith of both Latino and non-Latino youth alike. Father José Hoyos directs the Hispanic
apostolate for the diocese of Arlington, Virginia, where the Latino presence in the Charismatic
Renewal has blossomed from some 150 in the late 1980s to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 active
participants in an array of home, parish, and diocesan-wide events. Hoyos deems Latino
Charismatics the “engine of the Church” and attests that “a lot of [Latino] Pentecostals and other
religions are coming back because of the charismatic renewal.”38
His claim is illustrated in the testimony of Elisabeth Román, who “was raised in a strict
Pentecostal household and indoctrinated from an early age about the evils of the Catholic
Church.” Faced with a personal crisis and lacking a spiritual home after a twenty-year hiatus
from church attendance, a friend coaxed her to Mass at a parish with a strong CCR spirit. Román
continued to worship at the Charismatic Mass each Sunday for three months. Impressed with the
community’s faith, her own sense of inner peace, and the fact that no one pressured her to
become Catholic, over the strong objections of her family members she went through the process
of being received into the Catholic Church. Román insists that among Charismatics “the Mass is
still the center of our lives and we have not abandoned our devotion and love of Mary.” She
concludes that “for Hispanics, who must live between two cultures, charismatic Catholicism can
27
offer the best of both worlds: participation in the sacraments and a personal, livelier form of
worship, which is at the heart of our religious experience.”39 Besides the phenomenon of
denominational switching, her testimony illuminates that the encounter with Pentecostalism and
other faith traditions in a pluralistic, competitive religious milieu shapes Latino Catholics in
important ways ranging from prayer styles to doctrinal fidelity, from relations within families to
those with Catholic Church authorities.
Public Catholicism
Latino Catholics’ rituals and devotions are a significant dimension of their public
presence in the United States. Like European Catholic immigrants, Latinos practice ethnic faith
expressions like the Puerto Rican devotion to their patron San Juan, the Cuban veneration of
their patroness Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre (Our Lady of Charity), the Mexican and
Mexican American honoring of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Guatemalan faith in El Cristo Negro de
Esquipulas (the Black Christ), and El Salvadoran dedication to Oscar Romero, the slain
archbishop of San Salvador who is popularly acclaimed as a martyr and saint. And, like their
European co-religionists, Latino Catholics express their devotion to Christ, the Eucharist, Mary,
and particular patron saints with public manifestations of devotion such as processions through
city streets, outdoor Masses and prayer services, and televised worship.
One of the most widespread traditions among all Latino groups is the extensive devotion
to the crucified Jesus and his suffering mother on Good Friday. In many Hispanic faith
communities this devotion encompasses a public re-enactment of Jesus’ trial, way of the cross,
and crucifixion, or an outdoor Way of the Cross procession. Media coverage often focuses on the
rituals’ embodied messages of political protest against injustice and violence. The opening line
of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report observed: “The symbolism was blinding as an actor
28
playing Jesus Christ was handed over to be crucified during a Good Friday re-enactment on the
same [St. Anthony] church steps where a teenage boy was shot to death last month.” This report
went on to state that the annual ritual’s “prayers and readings drew a line from the suffering and
death of Christ 2,000 years ago to the social ills that plague this poor neighborhood today.”40
Outrage at social injustice was the genesis of the annual Way of the Cross in Chicago’s
Pilsen neighborhood. On Christmas Eve in 1976, ten children and two mothers died in a fire that
swept through an apartment building two blocks from St. Vitus parish. Because they did not
understand Spanish, Chicago firefighters who responded to this emergency were unaware that
these victims were trapped inside the burning building. In a public meeting following the
tragedy, parishioners from St. Vitus and other Pilsen parishes argued that these deaths resulted
from a lack of Spanish-speaking firefighters, as well as absentee landlords, overcrowded
housing, and city neglect of public services. The following Good Friday they began their annual
Way of the Cross as an expression of faith intended to draw the community together in a
collective act of solidarity, remember their lost loved ones, and connect their deaths and the
plight of the Pilsen neighborhood with the unjust crucifixion of Jesus. Subsequently the annual
procession links the Stations of the Cross (the events that comprise Jesus’ journey to Calvary)
with “community problems such as housing, crowded schools, immigration and gang violence.”
In the words of Father James Colleran, pastor of St. Vitus the year of the first Pilsen Way of the
Cross, “the important thing is to relate the stations to what is happening in the community.”41
Latinos do not unanimously endorse this approach to the Way of the Cross. Wayne
Ashley’s ethnographic study of Good Friday rituals at St. Brigid’s parish on Manhattan’s Lower
East Side revealed significant tensions between activist North American priests and their Puerto
Rican parishioners. Congregants objected to the clergy’s overt political messages linked to
29
Christ’s way to Calvary, such as in 1991 when one station presented before a Mobil gas station
included the prayer reflection: “This latest venture [the first Gulf War] was undertaken so that
we might have inexpensive gasoline to fuel an important American idol, the automobile. . .Lord,
have mercy on us!” Complaining bitterly about such prayers of protest, one woman said the antiwar sentiment had driven many people from the church, especially those who had family and
friends in the military. Conversely, she noted that at her hometown parish in Puerto Rico, “They
put a big tree in the plaza, and they put the names of all the people that gone to the Gulf, and
light candles. And nobody died from my town. They came home safe. That’s what we wanted in
the church, but he [the priest] wouldn’t.” Another parishioner assessed the situation more
comprehensively: “We Puerto Ricans have real religion. We do not involve politics with
religion. . .He [the priest] talks a lot about politics. We want to hear religion.”42
Yet for many practitioners religious experience grounds the political messages of these
rituals. Anthropologist Karen Mary Davalos’ study of Pilsen’s Way of the Cross encompassed
conversations with leaders in the Good Friday ritual like Patricia, who summed up the power of
the event: “Christ suffered way back two thousand years ago, but he’s still suffering now. His
people are suffering. We’re lamenting and wailing. And also we are a joyful people at the same
time. . .So this is not a story, this is not a fairy tale. It happened, and it’s happening now.” For
such participants the power of the ritual is its capacity to mediate an encounter with God that
transcends limiting distinctions like those between Pilsen and Calvary Hill, Chicago and
Jerusalem, our “secular” age and the “sacred” time of Jesus. They engage religious traditions not
merely as pious reenactments but as sacred events integrated with the everyday world that
animates devotees to struggle for the transformation of their personal and collective lives and
enables them to endure present trials and hardships with the power of faith. In the words of
30
Claudia, one of the first coordinators for the Pilsen Way of the Cross, this public ritual is “the
real way of praying” because it is “the opportunity to reflect and analyze how we are living and
the things we have to [do] in order to have a better life.”43
Increasing diversity among participants suggests this way of praying provides a viable
model for worship in a pluralistic society that often accents individual spiritual quests and
neglects the human need for collective ritual. Frequently ecumenical and interfaith worship
services focus on the commonalties between diverse peoples and religious traditions and
downplay or ignore their differences. Conversely, Latino public rituals tend to be firmly rooted
in a particular religious tradition and sociopolitical circumstance, yet open to those of other
backgrounds. One of the thousands who frequented the Good Friday processions the San
Fernando Cathedral congregation organized through the streets of downtown San Antonio was
Baptist minister Buckner Fanning, who attested that “when I walked behind Jesus on the Way of
the Cross I wondered what I would have done had I been there. The people of San Fernando
drew me into the passion and put me right there with Jesus.” Sociologist of religion Stephen
Warner, who is Lutheran, commented after his first experience of the San Fernando passion
proclamation, “Many of these rituals were foreign to me. . .Right in front of us we saw
realistically reenacted the suffering and death of Jesus, the cruelty of his tormentors, and the
grief of his mother. There was nothing metaphorical, nothing merely figurative, nothing generic
about these rites. Yet, as an Anglo, I did not feel excluded.” Echoing these insights, former San
Fernando rector Virgilio Elizondo contends that “Latinos’ love for public ritual is a contribution
we make to American society. I think there is a hunger for it in American life. It lets you enter
into the power of a collective experience.”44
31
As the number of Latino Catholics has expanded so too has their influence on their
church leaders’ involvement in political affairs. No issue illustrates this influence more clearly
than immigration. A number of historical events have fueled debates about Hispanic immigration
to the United States: the massive and often illegal deportations of Mexican residents during the
Depression years of the 1930s and “Operation Wetback” during the 1950s, the Bracero program
which brought in some five million guest workers between 1942 and 1964 and initiated a process
of cyclic migration that eventually spanned generations, the major national immigration
legislation of 1965 and 1986, the Central American civil wars and the Sanctuary movement of
the 1980s, the influence of NAFTA and other international trade agreements on immigrant flows,
anti-immigrant backlash like the 1994 passage of Proposition 187 in California, and the current
immigration debate in the Congress and the nation. Latino residents themselves have not been
unanimously pro-immigrant. Even today a majority of U.S.-born Hispanics favor comprehensive
immigration reform but a sizeable minority are concerned that new immigrants depress wages,
take jobs that otherwise would go to native workers, or even increase crime or are a financial
burden on taxpayers. Yet Catholic bishops have increasingly defended immigrants, from their
lackluster response to the Depression-era deportations to their more proactive involvement in the
debate over workers’ rights in the Bracero program to their noteworthy advocacy on behalf of
immigrants in their 2003 joint pastoral letter with the bishops of Mexico and their subsequent
Justice for Immigrants campaign and lobbying efforts for comprehensive immigration reform.45
The bishops’ growing public solidarity with immigrants is the clearest example of how the
Latino presence has shaped the public policy positions of the U.S. Catholic Church.
Grassroots Latinos and their pastors have also collaborated in political activism. The Pew
Latino religion survey found that a slightly over a fourth of Latino Catholics said their
32
congregation had participated in an immigrant rights protest or boycott during the previous
twelve months, a substantially higher percentage than mainline Latino Protestants and more than
double that of Latino evangelical Protestants. Participation in faith-based community
organizations is the most consistent and extensive form of grassroots Latino Catholic political
activism. In his essay for this volume and other publications, Richard Wood contends that faithbased community organizations, that is, organizations whose membership is comprised primarily
of local congregations, are “arguably the broadest movement for social justice in America
today.” Latino involvement in congregations that are members of faith-based community
organizations nearly doubles their population ratio. In cities and regions with large Latino
populations like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Antonio, El Paso, and the Rio Grande
Valley, Latino participation and leadership is even more conspicuous. In Texas half of the
member congregations in faith-based community organizations are Hispanic Catholic parishes.
Not surprisingly, the five states with the largest number of faith-based community organizations
are California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida, the five states with the heaviest
concentration of Latino population.46
The most renowned faith-based community organization is the overwhelmingly Latino
Catholic Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio. Founded in 1974
among six Mexican Catholic parishes in San Antonio’s west side, working-class neighborhoods,
by the first organizational meeting that summer COPS had expanded to 27 churches. Parish
delegates at the inaugural meeting decided that the organization would initially focus on a single
goal: improving the horrendous storm drainage on the city’s west side. For decades the frequent
flooding in west side neighborhoods had caused school closings, accidents, stalled cars, damaged
homes, potholes, impassable roads, bridge collapses, a dearth of business establishments, even
33
deaths. Amazingly, when COPS leaders researched past efforts to address flood problems they
discovered that many drainage projects had actually been authorized in bond issues passed as far
back as 1945. Outraged, they sought meetings with the city public works director and the city
manager, but with no satisfactory results. Then, after a period of heavy flooding, COPS members
filled city hall during a council meeting and related their horror stories of flooding catastrophes,
as well as their findings on the city’s failure to fulfill authorized drainage projects. Mayor
Charles Becker, stunned by the crowd and the overwhelming evidence presented, ordered the
city manager to devise a drainage project implementation plan. In November 1974, COPS took
the lead in passing a $46.8 million bond issue for 15 west side drainage projects.47
This initial major victory was only the beginning of COPS’ long series of successful
efforts at neighborhood development and revitalization. COPS has achieved well over $1 billion
in infrastructure improvements, including streets, sidewalks, libraries, parks, streetlights, clinics,
and affordable housing, as well as significant advances in educational reform, job training,
economic development, living wages, voter registration and active citizenship campaigns, afterschool enrichment classes, college scholarships, and adult literacy. More importantly, COPS has
transformed its members and the wider civil society of San Antonio. As COPS leaders like
parishioners from Our Lady of the Angels attest, “many positive changes have come about in our
community [because of COPS], but the most positive change has been in the attitude of our
people. Twenty-five years ago, we couldn’t imagine that a city council member would attend our
meetings, now we know that with the power of educated, organized people, anything is
possible.”48
Scholars and other observers often overlook a key innovation that leaders in faith-based
organizations foster in community organizing: the importance of integrating faith and politics or,
34
as Catherine Wilson puts it, the ways that leaders’ “interpretation of the Christian narrative”
shape the religious identity and political activism of their respective faith-based organizations.
Training sessions in faith-based organizing frequently include resources like the Bible, Catholic
social encyclicals, and the pastoral letters of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Yet unlike social service
efforts such as food banks, faith-based community organizations focus on active citizenship
rather than temporary assistance. And unlike groups such as the Christian coalition which in
large part promote a fixed moral agenda through national lobbying efforts, faith-based
community organizations are mediating institutions that enable working-class and other
congregational members to participate more actively and effectively in our democratic society.
The primary leaders in COPS, for example, are not professional organizers, nor even clergy with
social reform sympathies, but parishioners who perceive their activism as an extension of their
commitment to family, church, and neighborhood. Over its first two decades all but one of
COPS’ presidents was a Latina woman, most of them middle-aged mothers with strong familial
and parish ties. The organization shifted to a more collective leadership structure in the mid1990s, but the prominent leadership of Latina parishioners continued. Inez Ramírez summarizes
the sentiments of many COPS leaders: “This is not merely politics we are engaged in, but
correcting injustice, which is God’s work and the mission of the church. There is more to our
spirituality than just going to Mass on Sundays. Our spirituality embodies a deep concern for the
physical well-being of every individual.”49
The most widespread form of Latino Catholic civic participation, voting, has been the
subject of much debate. Some political pundits contend that Latino voting patterns are
dramatically shifting toward the Republicans. Political consultant and commentator Dick Morris’
bold assertion three days after President Bush’s 2004 reelection victory exemplifies this thesis:
35
“the biggest reason for Bush’s victory was that he finally cracked the Democratic stranglehold on
the Hispanic vote.” Morris based his claim on estimates that Latinos cast twelve percent of the
votes in the 2004 election, increased their voting support for President Bush ten percentage
points between his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and thus accounted for 2.4 percent of Bush’s
electoral edge over Senator Kerry, more than three fourths of the president’s 3.1 percent margin
of victory in the popular vote. According to Morris, Bush’s popularity with Latinos was rooted in
a platform consistent with their preferences on core issues, as he held firmly to his party’s stands
on “values” concerns like abortion and gay marriage but reversed his party’s typical positions on
issues such as bilingual education, English-only policies, and immigration reform. Arguing for
potentially “enormous” future consequences stemming from Bush’s electoral success, Morris
revealed his Republic loyalty with the conclusion that “Bush may have begun to crack the
unholy triple alliance of blacks, Hispanics and single women that anchors the political base of
the Democratic Party.”50
Morris’ post-election enthusiasm overstates the case. In a thorough review of extant voter
polls for the 2004 election, David Leal, Matt Barreto, Johgho Lee, and Rodolfo de la Garza
pointed out the range of findings in these polls and questioned the claim that Bush received 45
percent of the Latino vote, estimating that 39 percent is more likely an accurate figure. Even
sources that concluded a mid-forties percentage for Bush such as the National Election Pool
(NEP) found that Latinos only cast approximately eight percent of the votes. Given the general
consensus that Bush received 35 percent of the Latino vote in 2000, these figures reveal a
slimmer increase in Latino support between the two campaigns. Taking a longer view, Leal and
his colleagues note that Ronald Reagan won 37 percent of the Latino vote in 1984, but in the
following three presidential elections Republican candidates received 32, 28, and 21 percent,
36
respectively. Even when Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy is taken into account, these
decreases temper predictions of Latino voter realignment, since it is at least as plausible to
conclude that, like Reagan, Bush’s success among Latino voters reflects his own popularity with
them. Strategically, in the 2004 swing states of Florida and New Mexico, a relatively larger
Latino electorate gave the victorious Bush a higher percentage of their votes than his national
average. But in a close race like the Bush-Kerry contest, the importance of every grouping of
voters is magnified. Clearly the significance of the Latino vote continues to increase though, as
Leal and his colleagues soberly conclude, for the 2004 election there is not sufficient evidence to
deem Latinos “the decisive factor.”51
The denominational switching of recent decades has produced a modest but discernible
shift among Latino voters. Though survey results differ on partisan allegiance percentages,
Latino Protestants and especially evangelicals are more disposed to the Republican Party than
their Catholic counterparts. Four recent surveys concur that, while the affiliation of Latino
evangelicals is roughly split among the two major parties, Latino Catholics favor the Democrats
by a margin of three or even four to one. The only major exception to this pattern is Cuban
Catholics, among whom the inverse is true: nearly three times as many are Republican, an
exception generally attributed to their higher socioeconomic status and a conservatism born of
their painful experience of exile in the wake of the socialist revolution Fidel Castro led in their
homeland. The 2004 presidential election reflected these preferences. Political scientist John
Green’s analysis shows that, despite President Bush’s relatively strong appeal to Latinos, the
Catholics among them voted for Kerry by about a two-to-one margin while well over half of
Latino Protestants cast their ballots for Bush. A pre-election poll showed fully 80 percent of
37
Cubans intended to vote for Bush, but since they comprise only about six percent of the Latino
electorate Kerry’s Latino Catholic majority was still substantial.52
Exit polls from 2004 and other years also show that relatively low voter turnout has
inhibited Latinos from playing an even greater role in national elections. Like any electoral
constituency, Latinos are more apt to vote when they perceive their participation will directly
influence an election’s outcome. Thus on the state and local levels, Latino political participation
and election to office have increased notably. When the late Willie Velásquez founded the
acclaimed Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project in 1974, there were about 1,300
Latino-elected officials in the country and 2.4 million Latino voters. As of 2007 some ten million
Latinos were registered to vote and a total of 5,129 Latino elected officials served in 43 states,
the majority of them independents since they hold local offices, but with some ten times as many
Democrats as Republicans in partisan elected posts.53
The common wisdom is that Latinos tend to hold more conservative views on life and
reproductive issues and on gay marriage while endorsing social, economic, and immigration
reforms generally deemed liberal, political leanings that lead partisans to claim both that Latinos
are “natural Republicans” and “natural Democrats.” But in the 2004 election economic issues
ranked as the concern that most influenced Latino Catholic and Protestant voters, while a 2008
pre-election survey shows that the primary concerns of Latinos are education, the economy, and
health care. Two recent surveys give divergent views on abortion and gay marriage, one finding
that Latino Protestants are more opposed than Latino Catholics to both and the other asserting
that Latinos mirror the general U.S. populace in their views, regardless of religious affiliation.
Surprisingly, neither survey confirms the familiar assertion that Latino Catholics are far more
conservative than non-Latino Catholics on these issues.54
38
It is not surprising that pollsters and candidates pay more attention to the growing Latino
electorate. From presidential to local campaigns, many candidates are prepared to offer at least a
few lines of their stump speeches in Spanish. Latino activists are quick to remind candidates and
party leaders that the Hispanic population is most dense in high-prize electoral states like
California, New York, Texas, and Florida. Though increased voter registration and participation
are the most crucial factors for Latino political influence, trends in denominational affiliation and
convictions on social and moral issues will also shape the dynamic interplay between Latino
voters and those who crave their electoral support. Republicans’ demonstrated potential for
gaining votes will drive their ongoing attempts to reach Latino voters, especially among
evangelicals and traditional Catholics who seem more amenable to their message. The
Republicans’ past success provides a clear warning to Democrats that the Latino vote cannot be
taken for granted, neither in terms of turnout or party loyalty. Nonetheless, Latinos’ perception
that the Democrats best represent them on social policy and bread-and-butter issues, a view
particularly influential among Latino Catholic voters, overshadows the resonance of some
Latinos with Republicans’ moral traditionalism. It also overshadows their compliance with the
insistence of some Catholic bishops and lay leaders that “nonnegotiable” stances like pro-life and
traditional marriage between a man and a woman should dictate Catholic voters’ choices.
Though much remains to be learned about religion and political behavior among Latinos,
collectively extant research suggests that Latino Catholic voting is more apt to resonate with
Catholic social teaching than with church teaching on life and sexual morality, and that the social
situation and economic concerns of all Latinos are at least as influential for their voting choices
as their religious convictions.
Latinos in U.S. Catholicism
39
The mutual influence of Catholicism and Latinos in the United States will shape not just
the future of American Catholic life but also the life of the nation. Assimilatory pressures,
English-only movements, the accent on congregational rather than denominational allegiance,
religious pluralism and voluntarism, the rise of Pentecostal religion, secularization, a penchant
for democratic structures even in ecclesial bodies, and ongoing debates about the role of
churches in public affairs are just some of the elements of the U.S. ethos that refashion the lives
and the faith of Latino Catholics. Conversely, Latinos are altering their church and U.S.
homeland through their varied responses to demands that they become “Americanized” and
adopt the English language, denominational affiliations, advocacy for Hispanic ministry and for
immigration rights, involvement in faith based community organizing, voting patterns, and
proclivity for public ritual and Pentecostal prayer – both within Pentecostal churches and the
Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
On various measures Latinos differ from their European-descent coreligionists. NonLatino Catholics are less likely to identify themselves as Charismatic.55 Public rituals draw a
steadily growing number of European-descent participants, but these traditions were far more
prevalent among their ancestors, as today they are among Latinos. Proportionally Latinos are
more engaged in faith based community organizations and in activism on behalf of immigrants.
Though some Catholic leaders have defined “nonnegotiable” moral issues as the determinative
criteria for Catholic voters, Latino Catholics join another group of their coreligionists in
prioritizing economic and social issues. The net result is that a slim majority of white non-Latino
Catholics self-identify as Democrats, while Latino Catholics do so by a margin of at least three
to one. The persistence of differences between Latino Catholics and their European-descent
40
counterparts is reinforced in both ongoing immigration and in the marginal lower socioeconomic
status of many foreign- and U.S.-born Latinos.
These differences and their sizeable number fuel Latino Catholics’ potential to refashion
U.S. Catholicism, the nation’s largest religious denomination. In their pastoral letter on Hispanic
ministry, the U.S. Catholic bishops outlined some ways Latinos have a salutary impact, noting
the values with which Latinos enrich church and society such as respect for the dignity of each
person, profound love for family life, a deep sense of community, an appreciation of life as a
precious gift from God, and pervasive and authentic devotion to Mary, the mother of God.56
Current realities foreshadow that Latino prayer forms such as ethnic devotions, public ritual, and
Charismatic praise will continue to shape worship life in parishes. Their more embodied style of
communal prayer will form the religious experience of some non-Latinos who participate with
Latinos in worship. Their immigrant activism will keep the plight of immigrants in view of
Catholic bishops, other pastoral leaders, and elected officials. Their proclivity to support a
reformist social agenda will bolster the official stands of the Catholic Church on many political
issues and shape the growing Latino population’s electoral choices. Their growing numbers and
willingness to cross party lines in a particular election will shape Republican and Democrat
competition for their votes. Their faith-based activism will enable parishioners to engage in
political discourse and decision-making processes that affect their lives, contesting the often
unconscious presupposition that voting is the sole means for ordinary U.S. citizens to participate
in our democracy.
Yet signs that the U.S. milieu influences Latinos abound, from the statistical rise of
Latinos who profess no religion to the widespread use of English among the native born. Though
still relatively modest, the emergent minority of Latino Catholics who self-identify as
41
Republican, as well as those who oppose government aid to immigrants, illuminate the potential
for attitudinal shifts among Latinos in the United States. Most conspicuously, with generational
transition many young Latino Catholics loosen their attachment to their parents’ ethnic heritage,
faith expressions, and even to their Catholic affiliation. Though the forces that sustain Latino
distinctiveness are considerable, over time the daily encounter with the U.S. milieu has an equal
if not more potent effect.
The most powerful determinant of Latinos’ influence on ecclesial and civic life is also the
most basic: the vitality of Latino Catholicism itself. Without renewed faith among each new
generation of Latinos, there will not be the cohort of active Latino Catholics necessary for them
to incite transformation in U.S. Catholicism, much less in the wider society. Like their electoral
influence, Latino capacity to shape U.S. Catholicism will only be realized to the extent that
potential impact becomes actualized. Sustaining and invigorating Latino Catholics’ faith is a
formidable challenge that extant pastoral initiatives address with varying degrees of
effectiveness. Future efforts to foster the faith commitment of Latinos, especially younger
generations as they adapt to life in the United States, will mold their influence on U.S.
Catholicism and society more than any other single factor.
America 12 (17 October – 19 December 1914): quotations at 7, 66.
Ibid., 19 December 1914, 246; Rudolph J. Vecoli, “Prelates and Peasants: Italian Immigrants
and the Catholic Church,” Journal of Social History 2 (1969): 243-4.
3
U.S. residents whose origins or those of their ancestors are in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, El
Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries where Spanish is a primary language frequently
employ the designations Hispanic, Latino, and its feminine form Latina to accentuate
commonalties of language and ethnic heritage as well as perceived differences with other U.S.
residents. No clear consensus on any one term is evident. “Hispanic” is more commonly used in
official Catholic documents in the United States and in Catholic ministry circles, while “Latino”
and the gender inclusive “Latino/a” are gaining ascendancy among scholars. In this essay I will
use these terms interchangeably.
4
Gerald Shaughnessy, Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? A Study of Immigration and Catholic
Growth in the United States, 1790-1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1925); U.S. Religious
1
2
42
Landscape Survey, Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant
(Washington, D.C.: The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, June 2008), 25-6, at
http://religions.pewforum.org/reports.
5
“Hispanic Ministry at a Glance,” Hispanic Affairs, United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, at http://www.usccb.org/hispanicaffairs/demo.shtml#1.
6
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (now the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops), The Hispanic Presence: Challenge and Commitment (Washington, D.C.: United States
Catholic Conference, 1984), #1.
7
Silvano M. Tomasi, Piety and Power: The Role of Italian Parishes in the New York
Metropolitan Area, 1880-1930 (Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies, 1975).
8
Ibid., 105.
9
Ibid., 140.
10
Cardinal Francis Spellman, “Dedication,” in William Ferrée, Ivan Illich, and Joseph P.
Fitzpatrick, eds., Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants: Report on the First Conference, Held
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 11th to 16th, 1955 (New York: Arno, 1980), 7; Summary of the
conference, ibid., sec. 1, p. 7.
11
Encarnación Padilla de Armas, et al., Report of Some Catholic Women on the Religious
Condition of Puerto Rican Immigrants in New York City, 1951. Reprinted in Timothy Matovina
and Gerald E. Poyo, eds., ¡Presente! U.S. Latino Catholics from Colonial Origins to the Present
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 110-115.
12
Robert L. Stern, “Evolution of Hispanic Ministry in the New York Archdiocese,” in Hispanics
in New York: Religious, Cultural and Social Experiences, Ruth T. Doyle, et al. (New York:
Archdiocese of New York Office of Pastoral Research, 1982), 2:309, 313; Jaime R. Vidal,
“Citizens Yet Strangers: The Puerto Rican Experience,” in Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in
the U.S., 1900-1965, ed. Jay P. Dolan and Jaime R. Vidal (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1994), 129-33.
13
Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Affairs, Hispanic Ministry at the Turn of the New
Millennium (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 1999),
On-Site Interview section, #8, at http://www.nccbuscc.org/hispanicaffairs/study.shtml; Charles
W. Dahm, Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2004), 294.
14
Ibid., 63.
15
Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (Washington, D.C.:
Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2007), 52, 57, at
http://pewforum.org/surveys/hispanic/hispanics-religion-07.pdf.
16
Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, “The Hispanic Poor in a Middle-Class Church,” America 159 (2 July
1988): 11-13.
17
Vecoli, “Prelates and Peasants,” 268; Ken Johnson-Mondragón, Welcoming Hispanic
Youth/Jóvenes in Catholic Parishes and Dioceses (Report, The National Research and Resource
Center for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry, 2003), 2-3; Johnson-Mondragón,
“Socioreligious Demographics of Hispanic Teenagers,” in Pathways of Hope and Faith Among
Hispanic Teens: Pastoral Reflections and Strategies Inspired by the National Study of Youth and
Religion, ed. Johnson-Mondragón (Stockton, CA: Instituto Fe y Vida, 2007), 24.
18
David Rieff, “Nuevo Catholics,” The New York Times Magazine (24 December 2006): 40-5,
85-7.
43
Amy Goldstein and Roberto Suro, “A Journey in Stages: Assimilation’s Pull Is Still Strong,
But Its Pace Varies,” Washington Post, 16 January 2000, A1.
20
Allan Figueroa Deck, “At the Crossroads: North American and Hispanic,” in We Are a
People? Initiatives in Hispanic American Theology, ed. Roberto S. Goizueta (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1992), 13; Carmen Cervantes with Ken Johnson-Mondragón, “Passing the Faith to
Latino/a Catholic Teens in the U.S.,” in Johnson-Mondragón, ed., Pathways of Hope and Faith,
324.
21
Andrew M. Greeley, “Defection Among Hispanics,” America 159 (30 July 1988): 61-2;
Greeley, “Defection Among Hispanics (Updated),” America 177 (27 September 1997): 12-13. In
his 1997 article Greeley calculated the annual defection rate as one half of one percent of an
estimated 12 million Hispanics, which computes to sixty thousand, not 600,000.
22
“Hispanic Ministry at a Glance.”
23
Johnson-Mondragón, “Socioreligious Demographics of Hispanic Teenagers,” 34-8, citation at
35.
24
Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, Hispanic Churches in American
Public Life: Summary of Findings (Interim Report, Institute for Latino Studies, University of
Notre Dame, 2003), 15; Johnson-Mondragón, “Socioreligious Demographics of Hispanic
Teenagers,” 21.
25
Gastón Espinosa, “Latinizing American Christianity: Pluralism, Pentecostalism and the Future
of American Catholicism,” Conscience 28 (Summer 2007): 30-1; Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela
Keysar, Religion in a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious Americans (Ithaca, NY:
Paramount, 2006), 247. The Pew Latino religion survey showed an 8% “no religion” Latino
response rate. Changing Faiths, 9.
26
Mary Navarro Farr, interview by author, 1 July 2001; Gastón Espinosa, “The
Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity,” Pneuma: The Journal of the
Society for Pentecostal Studies 26, #2 (2004): 268.
27
Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “Correction, Si; Defection, No: Hispanics and U.S. Catholicism,”
America 189 (7 July 2003): 17.
28
For a case study of a Hispanic Catholic evangelizing group that blends Catholic, Pentecostal,
and evangelical influences, see Kristy Nabhan-Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian
Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York
University Press, 2005), esp. chap. 8, “Catholic Evangelization: Fighting ‘Fire with Fire.’”
29
International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, at
http://www.iccrs.org/CCR%20worldwide.htm; Changing Faiths, 3, 30.
30
Ibid., 30, 33-5.
31
Espinosa, “Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity,” 266; Bishops’
Committee on Hispanic Affairs, Hispanic Ministry, Tables 5 and 6.
32
http://www.comitercch-usa.org/index.htm.
33
See, e.g., Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since
World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Wuthnow, ed., “I Come Away
Stronger”: How Small Groups Are Shaping American Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1994).
34
Espinosa, “Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity,” 273;
http://carismaenmisiones.com/; http://www.elsembrador.org/.
19
44
As cited in Jonathan Fierro, “The Devil Must Be Laughing: The Archdiocese and Latino
Charismatic Ministry,” Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission (February 2003), at
www.losangelesmission.com/ed/articles/2003/0203jf.htm.
36
Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Affairs, Hispanic Ministry, On-Site Interview section, #3;
Andrés Arango, interview by author, 8 July 2008.
37
Anthony DePalma, “Hispanics Still Backing Catholic Leaders, for Now,” New York Times, 1
May 2002, A18; Changing Faiths, 39.
38
Arango, interview by author; Nick Manetto, “Charismatic Spirit Spreads with Latino
Catholics,” Our Sunday Visitor, 19 August 2007, 5.
39
Elisabeth Román, “The Other Latin Mass,” U.S. Catholic 73 (February 2008): 30-3.
40
Jim Stingl, “Good Friday Procession Ties Traditions to Today’s Sorrows,” Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, 11 April 1998, 1.
41
Constanza Montana, “Passion Play Unites Pilsen: Way of the Cross Is a Community
Tradition,” Chicago Tribune, 26 March 1991, 1C; Karen Mary Davalos, “‘The Real Way of
Praying’: The Via Crucis, Mexicano Sacred Space, and the Architecture of Domination,” in
Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism, ed. Timothy Matovina and
Gary Riebe-Estrella (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2002), 41-68, esp. 46-8.
42
Wayne Ashley, “The Stations of the Cross: Christ, Politics, and Processions on New York
City’s Lower East Side,” in Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape, ed.
Robert A. Orsi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 341-66, quotations at 362-3.
43
Davalos, “The Real Way of Praying,” 60-1.
44
Buckner Fanning, interview by author, 11 March 1994; R. Stephen Warner, “Elizondo’s
Pastoral Theology in Action: An Inductive Appreciation,” in Beyond Borders: Writings of
Virgilio Elizondo and Friends, ed. Timothy Matovina (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 50; Mary
Rourke, “A Return to Ritual,” Los Angeles Times, 28 March, 1997, E8.
45
Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States, Strangers No Longer: Together on the
Journey of Hope (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003),
available at http://www.usccb.org/mrs/stranger.shtml; Justice for Immigrants campaign website
at http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/.
46
Changing Faiths, 63; Richard L. Wood, “Up from the Parishes: Reclaiming the Public Voice
of Catholicism,” American Catholic Studies Newsletter 30 (Fall 2003): 1; Wood, Faith in Action:
Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002); Mark R. Warren, Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American
Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
47
Warren, Dry Bones Rattling, esp. 47-57, 233-4; Mary Beth Rogers, Cold Anger: A Story of
Faith and Power Politics (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1990), 105-26.
48
Power, Action, Justice: 1974-1999 (COPS 25th anniversary program), 21.
49
Catherine E. Wilson, The Politics of Latino Faith: Religion, Identity, and Urban Community
(New York: New York University Press, 2008), 8; Rogers, Cold Anger, 124.
50
Dick Morris, “The Hispanic Vote Elects Bush,” 5 November 2004, at
www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/4/203450.shtml.
51
David L. Leal, Matt A. Barreto, Johgho Lee, and Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “The Latino Vote in
the 2004 Election,” PSOnline (January 2005), 41-9, quotation at 41, at
http://faculty.washington.edu/mbarreto/papers/2004vote.pdf; National Election Pool 2004 exit
poll at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html; Paul
35
45
Taylor and Richard Fry, Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote? (Washington, D.C.:
Pew Hispanic Center, December 2007), 20, at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/83.pdf.
52
Kosmin and Keysar, Religion in a Free Market, 230-1; John C. Green, Corwin E. Smidt,
James L. Guth, and Lyman A Kellstedt, “The American Religious Landscape and the 2004
Presidential Vote: Increased Polarization,” 17, at
http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/postelection.pdf; Leal, et al., “The Latino Vote in the
2004 Election,” 46-7; Changing Faiths, 77; John C. Green, The Faith Factor: How Religion
Influences American Elections (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), 9, 60.
53
William C. Velasquez Institute, William C. Velásquez: 1944-1988, at
http://www.wcvi.org/wcvbio.htm; Taylor and Fry, Hispanics and the 2008 Election, 15-6;
National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials, A Profile of Latino Elected
Officials in the United States and Their Progress Since 1996, at
http://www.naleo.org/downloads/NALEOFactSheet07.pdf.
54
Ray Suarez, The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America (New York: HarperCollins,
2006), 217-8; Green, et al., “The American Religious Landscape and the 2004 Presidential
Vote,” 11, Green, The Faith Factor, 13, 80; Taylor and Fry, Hispanics and the 2008 Election,
10; Religion and the 2008 Election: A Pre-Election Analysis (Grand Rapids, MI: Henry Institute
for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin College, June 2008), 14, at
http://www.calvin.edu/henry/civic/CivicRespGrant/Religionand2008Election.doc.
55
Changing Faiths, 33.
56
National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hispanic Presence: Challenge and Commitment, #3.
46