Public Catholicism

This chapter explore how the growing Hispanic presence makes the ramifications of moral and social issues more imminent in numerous parishes. In this context, Catholic teachings such as those on justice and civic responsibility are more salient when embodied in local organizing initiatives that enable grassroots people to address community concerns and participate in the decision-making processes affecting them and their families. Arguably, the most significant contribution Latino Catholics make to public Catholicism is the various ways they reveal that the sometimes-harsh realities of everyday pastoral work are the ordinary means through which the church lives out its mission to transform lives, communities, and society.

Integration

This chapter demonstrates how national parishes and their parochial schools were among the societal institutions that most effectively fostered the integration of European immigrants and their offspring. Attitudes of forced assimilation can lead to frustration and thwart newcomers' desire to integrate. Yet church congregations and organizations remain a refuge for many emigres and can help them and their children and grandchildren adapt to life in the United States. While across generations English language use and other influences of the U.S. milieu are inevitable, the relative success or failure of Latinos' incorporation into the U.S. Catholic Church enhances or inhibits that process. Within the Catholic fold itself, the progression from hospitality to homecoming remains a daunting challenge that many Hispanic ministry leaders concur has only begun to be addressed.

Remapping American Catholicism

This chapter argues that the long-standing links between Latin and North America already lead many Latinos to adopting a more hemispheric perspective to Catholicism in the United States. The memory that Hispanics established faith communities in Spanish and Mexican territories before the United States expanded into them shaped the historical development of those communities as they, their descendants, and even later immigrants became part of the United States. The chapter shows how such perceptions conflict with the presumption that European immigrants and their descendants set a unilateral paradigm for assimilating newcomers into church and society. Since the early 1990s, the geographic dispersion of Latinos across the United States and the growing diversity of their national backgrounds have brought the historical perspectives of Catholics from Latin America and the United States into unprecedented levels of daily contact.

Worship and Devotion

This chapter talks about how an insufficient number of clergy and liturgical leaders who actively promote Latinos' Good Friday, Marian, and other religious traditions keep Hispanic impact on communal prayer in U.S. parishes and their environs from becoming even greater, despite the fact that the geographic dispersion of the Hispanic population over the past two decades has expanded Latino influence. Even conflicts and debates about Hispanic traditions and liturgical participation reveal that Latinos shape parish worship and public ritual in significant ways. Hispanics' ritual and devotional proclivities and their promotion of a liturgical renewal that engages their faith expressions currently comprise one of the fundamental dynamics in the prayer life of numerous Catholic parishes in the United States.

Leadership

This chapter argues that for many church officials, the fervent Hispanic Catholics in evangelization groups, apostolic movements, small faith communities, and youth ministries represent the organizational challenge of tapping into their leadership base and guiding it—or some would say controlling it—so that it remains faithful to a canonical vision of the Catholic Church's teachings and mission. Hispanic ministry leaders contend that a particularly urgent challenge is to form their grassroots counterparts in a broad ecclesial vision that transcends the bounds of their own movement or group and diminishes competition between fellow leaders. Another frequent concern is that many charismatic leaders are overly focused on the pursuit of affective religious experience and are ill equipped to deal with inevitable disappointments in their ministries and perceived defects in fellow church leaders, especially priests.

Transformation in America’s Largest Church

This concluding chapter considers how Latinos present a distinct agenda of core concerns within U.S. Catholicism. Many Euro-American Catholics have emphasized concerns such as liturgical reform, the role of the laity, dissent or obedience to sexual ethics and other church teaching, the proper exercise of authority, and the question of who is called to ordination. Conversely, Latinos have been more inclined to accentuate concerns such as funding for Hispanic ministry offices, youth initiatives, outreach efforts, and leadership training and formation programs. Although these efforts encompass attempts at reform in areas such as liturgy and participation in church leadership, they are primarily intended to equip the church to serve and accompany its Latino members in their faith and daily struggles.

Passing on the Faith

This chapter talks about how the transition from immigrant to U.S.-born generations is at the heart of the evangelization challenge among Latinos. As they begin to surpass their parents' and grandparents' often limited formal education, young Latinos need catechesis that engages their minds as well as their hearts. They need formation in Catholic faith and teachings that both addresses that reality and builds on their elders' religious traditions. When Catholic families, parishes, schools, and youth ministries do not provide formation that takes into account young Latinos' background and life situation, they are more likely to become adherents of moralistic therapeutic deism, participants in Pentecostal or evangelical churches, or progressively detached from any religious practice or tradition.

Parishes and Apostolic Movements

This chapter examines how the growth of Pentecostal and evangelical religions among Latinos, as well as the erosion of religious commitment in a secular culture of choice, are momentous challenges for Catholic outreach ministries. Ongoing difficulties within apostolic movements and parishes often detract from their evangelizing potential. Yet even these struggles are an indicator of the Hispanic presence and influence within the faith communities of U.S. Catholicism. Hispanic influences at the local level have one driving force in common: leadership. From pastors to prayer group leaders, effective Latina and Latino leaders enhance the ministries of parishes and apostolic movements. Conversely, the absence of such leaders or the ineffectiveness of poorly formed or self-serving leaders can pose a major detriment to building vibrant faith communities.

Hispanic Ministry

This chapter discusses how the pastoral outreach among Latinos today in dioceses, parishes, and apostolic movements extends the efforts of those who promoted Hispanic ministry during the Encuentro era. According to current statistics, more than 80 percent of the 195 dioceses in the United States have diocesan staff assigned to coordinate Hispanic ministry, though with varying degrees of time commitment ranging from part-time coordinators to full-time directors. However, several diocesan directors have articulated to U.S. bishops their growing concerns related to the closing of diocesan offices for Hispanic ministry or their placement under multicultural ministry offices and their alarm that while the Hispanic presence continues to grow and demand a more robust ministerial response, diocesan personnel and/or resources for Hispanic ministry are diminishing in a number of archdioceses.