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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
“Hispanic” is a term from the United States (USA) census bureau later adopted by the United States Catholic Council of Bishops (USCCB) that refers to USA residents who trace part of their ancestry to Spanish-speakers. Usually they also have ancestors from among either American indigenous communities or Africans imported as slaves, or both. For the purpose of this article, it presumes that whatever their level of acculturation to USA society, their preferred language of worship is still Spanish.
A new way of being Catholic is necessarily forged by those Hispanics. They are not assimilating into the USA church as did former immigrants from Europe, but they are also unable to simply reproduce the Catholicism of their twenty plus countries of origin.
New church structures must therefore address this novel phenomenon, especially in areas where those immigrants are recent or geographically dispersed.
Rather than only continuing the mostly futile attempt to integrate immigrants into existing parishes, local ordinaries should consider other options including parishes without boundaries or buildings. Such personal parishes constituted of a community of small communities are not only possible under current Church law and doctrine, but often best fulfills the intent of those same documents.
1 For other similar organizations see Vandenakker, John Paul, Small Christian Communities and the Parish (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1994)Google Scholar.
2 Davis, Kenneth G. and Menocal, Lydia, “Culled to Worship?”Seminary Journal 11 (1996)Google Scholar, forthcoming.
3 Variously attributed to Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.
4 Chinnici, Joseph P and Dries, Angelyn, eds Prayer and Practice in the American Catholic Community (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), pp. 200-209Google Scholar.
5 Taves, Ann, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), p.111Google Scholar.
6 Tweed, Thomas A.. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See critiques, for example, of Boff, Leonardo, Eclesiogénesis. Las Comunidades de Base Reinventan la Iglesia (Santander: Sal Terrae, 1986)Google Scholar
8 Azevedo, Marcello de C. S.J., Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil: The Challenge of a New Way of Being Church (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
9 Martínez, Richard E. PADRES: The National Chicano Priest Movement. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005). pp 88-98Google Scholar
10 Connors, Michael CSC. Inculturated Pastoral Planning: The U.S. Hispanic Experience. (Rome: Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 2001), p 94Google Scholar. Page 102 elaborates: “If the pastoral priorities for Hispanic ministry are collaboration, evangelization, and formation, as the NPPHM identified them, SECs (here called SCCs) would seem to be one reasonable, historically tested channel for efforts to those ends.”
11 The National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Hispanic Presence (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, Inc., 1984)Google Scholar, paragraph p.
12 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Encuentro and Mission: A Renewed Pastoral Framework for Hispanic Ministry (Washington, D.C.: USCCB, November 13, 2002)Google Scholar.
13 Or Hispanics are relegated to the basement. See Stevens, Ana María Díaz, Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration Upon the Archdiocese of New Cork (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
14 There are entire personal prelatures, i.e., Opus Dei.
15 Lee, Bernard J. SM. The Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000) p. 50Google Scholar.
16 Iglesias, María Luisa, “Participative Preaching: Laity as C0-Authors of the Homily,” inDavis, Kenneth G. and Presmanes, Jorge L., eds. Preaching and Culture in Latino Congregations. (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 2000), pp. 62-74Google Scholar.
17 Lee. pages 60 and 133.
18 Howlett, Lawrence J.. A Field Study of Hispanic Ecclesial Base Communities in Northern Illinois (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University: Ed. D. dissertation, 1998)Google Scholar.
19 Some other requirements such as a finance committee would also be needed, but others such as maintenance of records might be handled by a territorial parish or the diocesan chancery.
20 Hispanics support churches that support them. See McCready, William C., “Organized Religion and Nonprofit Activities Among Hispanic People in the United States”, in Gallegos, Herman E. and O'Neill, Michael, Hispanics and the Nonprofit Sector (New York, NY: The Foundation Center, 1991), pp. 83-96Google Scholar. Also Miranda, Jesse, “Religion, Philanthropy, and the Hispanic People in North America”, New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising 24 (Summer 1999), pp. 59-74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wagner, And Lilya, Paredes, Rebecca, and Rodriguez, Ricardo, eds, Envisioning Growth-Achieving Greatness: The Story of the Hispanic Stewardship Development Partnership, (Indianapolis, IN: The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, 2004)Google Scholar.
21 Compare to the 1917 Code #216.4: “Parishes based on diversity of the language or nationality of the faithful found in the same city or territory cannot be constituted without special apostolic indult, nor can familial or personal parishes; as to those already constituted, nothing is to be modified without consulting the Apostolic See.”
22 Dolan, Jay P. and Vidal, Jaime R., eds. Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the U.S., 1900-1965 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp 84-87Google Scholar. Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno had already made explicit the previous implicit claims of Rerum Novarum that the dignity of work needed to sustain a family included the right to migrate in search of such work.
23 Bishops were installed in Puerto Rico in 1511, almost three hundred years before the establishment of the diocese of Baltimore. Catholic churches were founded in the mainland USA by Spanish-speakers in the 1560s.
24 Davis, Kenneth G., “Cursillo de Cristiandad: Gift of the Hispanic Church,”Chicago Studies 38 (Fall/Winter 1999), pp. 318-328Google Scholar.
25 Davis, Kenneth G.. El Recacer de los Jóvens/The Renewal of Youth. (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 2002)Google Scholar.
26 For instance, Wood, Richard L., Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
27 Kenneth G. Davis, “The Venerable Vulnerable”, New Theology Review February 1996.
28 Lara, Jaime, “Roman Catholics in Hispanic America,” in Wainwright, G. and Westerfield, K.B., eds, Oxford History of Christian Worship (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2005), pp. 633-650Google Scholar.
