THE HISPANIC PRESENCE IN THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES by Msgr. Albacete Since this is the first general conference of the convocation, I have been assigned the topic of the convocation itself, that is, "The Hispanic Presence in the New Evangelization in the United States." Obviously, it is not possible for me, nor do I have the capacity to do it, to treat all the items and respond to all the questions that come to mind when we reflect about such a topic as this one. It is precisely to this purpose that we have dedicated the convocation: to treat the different aspects of this topic, both theoretical and practical. Listening to the different speakers, discussing the different topics of the workshops in the light of the call to a new evangelization and, above all, exchanging experiences of our work in pastoral service to Hispanics, we should be able to understand better--so we hope--the nature and the magnitude of the challenge which such a call conveys for those committed to serve our Hispanic communities as well as to the leaders of the church, above all the bishops of this country, if we wish to be faithful to the model of church proposed by the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry: "To live and promote, by a means of a , a model of church that is communitarian, evangelizing and missionary, incarnate in the reality of the Hispanic people and open to the diversity of cultures; a promoter and example of justice that develops leadership through integral education ... that is leaven for the kingdom of God in society." For my part, in this introductory conference I have decided to limit myself to only one topic which, it seems to me, encompasses what could be the most important contribution of the Catholic Hispanic communities to the new evangelization in the United States. I have in mind the topic of the relation between faith and culture. Undoubtedly this topic is only one of the many questions raised by the meaning of the Hispanic presence for the Catholic Church in this country, and other concerns may appear to have a more urgent importance. Certainly, although central, the faith and culture relation is not all that is necessary to understand what evangelization is. I am conscious of the danger of reducing evangelization to a program of social or cultural renewal. Nonetheless, I maintain that an adequate evangelization has not been realized without it having an impact on the cultural level. By its very nature, the Christian faith in Jesus Christ generates culture. The words of Pope John Paul II support this, repeated always when he treats this subject. The pope insists that a faith that does not become culture is a faith not totally received, a faith not totally thought through in all its depth, a faith not faithfully lived." It is in this area, I think, that our Catholic Hispanic communities can make a tremendous contribution to the church in this country. For it has to be clearly said: The Hispanic presence within the Catholic Church in the United States is not simply "another pastoral problem." The Hispanic presence is not a problem; it is a blessing. This presence is, above all, a privileged ecclesial opportunity. On this weekend we have come to commemorate the anniversary of the bishops' special recognition of our needs 50 years ago; it is also time to insist that we not only wish our needs to be recognized, we wish also that the great contribution we can make to the life and mission of the Catholic Church be recognized as well, especially at this moment of its history in this country. The Hispanic Catholic presence in what is today the United States started long before the modern pastoral service to Hispanics, and we are proud of this history. When the invasion from the North put an end to the great evangelizing work taking place in this part of the country where we are meeting, the faith generating culture, and when other customs were imposed by force, the Catholic Church in this country was deprived of a great missionary resource, and the country was deprived of what would have been a singular contribution to its culture. Eventually open-eyed Catholic leaders recognized the needs of the Hispanic peoples and committed themselves to help us. But it is only in our own times at last that it has been recognized that the Hispanic presence is not a problem, but a resource that the Catholic Church in the United States urgently needs now that the failure of its efforts to maintain the Catholic identity of the faithful in the midst of an alien culture is more and more visible. Or so it seems, since the bishops have called prophetic the Hispanic presence. But words are not enough. It is necessary to act, and we can ask how exactly the church intends to respond to this prophetic presence. A valid response cannot consist only of help to survive in this country as Catholics and as Hispanics; it requires also learning from the fruits of our profoundly Catholic roots, which still, in spite of all, remain as characteristic of the way of thinking and living of the great majority of our people. In this effort we cannot forget those large numbers of Hispanics who have achieved success in American society, but at the cost of sacrificing or at least hiding attitudes and ways of thinking originating in the inculturation of the Catholic faith in our history as Hispanic peoples. Other immigrants from cultures infused by the Catholic faith were similarly forced to pay this price, in spite of the impressive "ghetto" constructed by the Catholic Church in the United States. We must insist that we are not prepared to pay this price. The solution clearly is not the construction of another ghetto. The solution is a strong campaign of evangelization which clearly recognizes that faith either generates a culture or it is lost. The Hispanic presence offers a new opportunity to undertake this new evangelization. This presence constitutes what the Second Vatican Council called one of the "signs of the times," which are ignored at the risk of ignoring what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church at the present moment of its history in the United States. As such, the Hispanic presence has what we can call "theological meaning" for the church in this country for all of the church. By , I mean what an event or reality tells us about the nature of God's plan in Christ, of the mystery as it becomes incarnate at each moment and place of the pilgrimage of the people of God in history. The theological meaning is that which speaks to us about our identity and mission as people of God, of our relationship with Jesus, of our origin and destiny in him, the "center of history and the universe."[1] in this sense does not refer to any system of scientific reflection on divine revelation; rather it describes the experience itself of the mystery of salvation incarnate in human history. It is precisely what the bishops have called a . As with all prophetic realities, it constitutes a call to retrieve the experience of being that people, that communion in solidarity, which constitutes the true presence of Christ in the world, conqueror of sin and death. In biblical terms we could speak of a "spiritual meaning," where designates all that is part of the realization of the reign of God in the world. That is why we could also speak of a "salvific meaning." How can we understand better the theological meaning of the Hispanic presence for the church in the United States? I propose that the theological meaning of the Hispanic presence in the Catholic Church in the United States consists in the call and the opportunity to retrieve the experience of the "preferential option for the poor" as the point of departure to understand what the call to a "new evangelization" says about the inculturation of faith in this country. The term has its origins in the efforts of the church in Latin America to understand how to proclaim and promote the liberation which the Gospel of Christ announces to the poor. The so-called "theology of liberation" contributed the awareness that the preferential option for the poor is essential to understanding the mission of the church. The experience of the poor's struggle for liberation is a privileged point of departure for theological reflection and the proclamation of the faith. The poor today constitute a world made up of subjugated peoples, exploited social classes, despised races, marginated cultures and women discriminated against. It is important to underline that the preferential option for the poor does not mean only the efforts to better their economic situation. That would be the concept of rejected by the theology of liberation. The in question goes beyond the lack of economic resources. refers to a socially and culturally structured marginalization of people by the famous "social structures of sin" at the service of political and economic power. It could be said that this poverty is more a cultural than an economic reality. It defines indeed what we could call a . This is the world composed by those at the margins of society who struggle for the "space" for self- determination. The poor are the "absent ones" of history. In the Gospel of Luke, the word poor could be translated as "bent down," those with their backs bent by a socially dominant power. Another translation would be "the scared ones." The commitment to the struggle for liberation of the "bent and scared ones," an authentic praxis of liberation, is an appropriate base for theological reflection and pastoral work. This commitment prevents the degeneration of theology into abstraction and thus subject to manipulation by the powerful. Many think that with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and with the disappearance of its threat in Latin America, the theology of liberation has been effectively surpassed. At least it is said that it no longer challenges the church (and society) with the same urgency as before. As if the poor had disappeared! If they have disappeared, it is unfortunately from our conscience as we follow one theological fashion after another. Today who speaks of a need for an integral liberation? Who insists again and again that if Marxist solutions do not work, the problems and social realities that tormented Marx have not disappeared but evolved, acquiring even more alienating and cruel characteristics for the "absent ones of history"? Where do we hear a strong voice denouncing the price the world's economic powers impose on dependent countries to allow them to play at the triumphant economic neoliberalism? We hear the voice of the pope and of the church's magisterium. As a lonely prophet, John Paul II repeatedly says that the world faces today a danger far bigger than that of communist imperialism. The world confronts a culture of death that reflects a way of perceiving reality (better, of reducing or doing violence to reality) whose point of departure is no different from that of communist praxis and that therefore leads to similar bloody situations of poverty and exclusion. With the power of its communist opposition gone, the culture of death accelerated its devastating destruction. The struggle for liberation from the clutches of the culture of death is today even more urgent. Whatever one thinks of the achievements or errors of liberation theology, its great questions continue as a challenge to the church at the present time. The Catholic Church in the United States has assumed worldwide leadership in the past through its bishops' famous pastoral letters on the economy and on peace. Confronting the efforts of the powerful to ridicule them, the bishops did not back down from denouncing economic and political programs that invoked individual liberty and national security to ignore the rights of the human person in the area of economics and the solidarity that transcends frontiers. Many American Catholics were confused, thinking the bishops were interfering in purely political matters, but this concern did not prevent the bishops' prophetic witness. It is similar to the position of the bishops against abortion, euthanasia and the destruction of the family. Retrieval of the preferential option for the poor would continue the prophetic mission of the church, especially here in the very center of the present empire of economism. The opportunity to learn what this preferential option comprises and how to exercise it is one of the most important contributions of the Hispanic presence to the new evangelization in the United States. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, it is necessary for us (beginning with Hispanics) to understand why our Catholic faith generates culture, why it is that faith becomes a "culture of evangelization." It seems to me that Catholic intellectual thought in the United States has not reflected adequately on the relation between faith and culture. Perhaps it could be said that due to Protestant prejudices against culture as mediating or expressing faith, the discussion has been limited to the legal and constitutional protection of freedom of conscience and the requirements of religious pluralism in a democracy. The present discussion about freedom of choice and about religious convictions as a purely private matter continues under the same purely legalistic terms. That is why I consider it important for the Catholic Church to move the discussion to a more profound level, to the level of faith, culture and the human person. I do not think there is a more important task than this one for the Catholic Church in the United States. All the great problems it faces, even in the strictly spiritual area, of what it means to follow Christ in this society will not be adequately dealt with without consideration of this level. The "solutions" not rooted in this level will be at best only temporary, if not inadequate or unreal. Pope John Paul II could not have said it more clearly again and again, especially in his recent encyclical on "The Gospel of Life." Let us recall his words: "In the background there is the profound crisis of culture, which generates skepticism in relation to the very foundations of knowledge and ethics, and which makes it increasingly difficult to grasp clearly the meaning of what man is, the meaning of his rights and his duties."[2] And in terms reminiscent of the theology of liberation, the pope writes: "We are confronted by an even larger reality [than that of individual morality] which can be described as a veritable structure of sin. This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable 'culture of death.' This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at a situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak."[3] It is therefore urgent to acquire an experience of the inculturation of faith. Faith is not only an intellectual position concerning divine realities. Faith is above all the "taking of a position" in the face of reality, all of reality: before creation and nature with its resources, before other persons, before the mystery hidden behind the visible. Faith is a personal "stand," from which comes a form of "under-standing." Faith is an act of the entire person, not only the intellect. It is an engagement with reality. As such, the faith embraces all levels of human existence: the private, the public, the spiritual, the material, and the individual and social levels. On the other hand, culture is precisely all of that through which the human person is expressed and nourished as such as a unique and unrepeatable subject. The word comes from the verb "to cultivate." Culture is all that through which the human person cultivates its identity as such. That is why we say that faith, as a profoundly personal "taking of a position," always becomes culture. The culture born from the efforts to follow Christ becomes a mentality in the ethos of a people. The truth about Jesus Christ reveals the truth about the human person at all levels, and faith in Christ configures the human subject according to that truth. That is why faith in Christ always becomes culture. The preferential option for the poor, being a constitutive element of faith in Christ, is also meant to become a cultural reality reflected in the different social, economic, political and religious relations through which human persons discover their identity as members of a people. That is, faith in Christ becomes necessarily a liberating force on behalf of the oppressed and it awakens the conscience of the powerful to the dignity of the poor, so that they no longer will be those "bent down" by the powerful. The Hispanic presence can help the Catholic Church understand the preferential option for the poor not because all Hispanics are poor. All Hispanics in the United States are not poor. On the contrary, as we said, many have found success in society, and we must do all we can to increase their number. Moreover, the contribution of these professionals, industrialists, business leaders and intellectuals to the inculturation of the faith is essential. (It seems a disgrace to me that in a large part of the intellectual Catholic world in which the church's future in this country is discussed no effort is made to include the contribution of Hispanic intellectuals. This is another proof of the reduction of the Hispanic presence to "folklore." In the great majority of times that I have complained about this situation, my proposal has been ridiculed, at times with clearly racist commentaries. (Not long ago, for example, Spanish was not considered an adequate foreign language for students in graduate theological studies, and this is still the case in some educational centers. This is clearly part of the influence of the "black legend" against Spanish culture. Behind this prejudice lies anti-Catholicism, and it is our Catholic origins that scare the elites of this country, who are scared by the large number of our peoples in their midst. The current campaign against immigrants from Latin America often hides this anti-Catholicism behind economic concerns. I think that intellectuals and other Hispanics who have achieved recognition in their fields have an obligation to ensure that decisions in the field of immigration are not inspired by the antiCatholicism typical of American elites who fear--not the dogmas or doctrines of the Catholic Church--but precisely the inculturation of the faith.) Not all Hispanics are poor, no, but a great number still are. And it is not only a matter of a lack of resources, but of a lack of opportunities to better their life and that of Hispanic youth. Moreover, poor or not, all of us constitute a people, a world spiritually in conflict with the dominant culture. This gives all of us the experience of those living at the margins of society in a continuous struggle for our identity and dignity, the experience of being excluded, the experience of the poor. In our efforts to incarnate the preferential option for the poor in our society, we are certainly united with many nonHispanics who struggle for the same cause. Among these we must give special recognition to our African-American sisters and brothers, who certainly have been leaders and teachers of this struggle in the United States. That is why we are so happy that our celebration here this weekend has been supported by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for African-American Catholics, and here with us are Bishop Curtis J. Guillory from Houston, its chairperson, and Ms. Beverly Carroll, executive director of the secretariat. Welcome! This is proof of the solidarity that must exist within the world of the poor. Let us not be paralyzed by those who insist on our differences and divisions, be it with other marginalized people or among ourselves. Of course there are differences in emphasis, customs and priorities! Instead of separating us, these can contribute to a deeper understanding of our common task. And speaking about differences between us, Hispanics or Latinos (and the very discussion about these two terms reflects these), our cultural variety demonstrates more profoundly what unites us in a common identity, and this is precisely that all of us are the fruits of the very same process of inculturation of the Catholic faith. All of us are daughters and sons of the dramatic encounter between Spanish Catholicism, the spirituality of the Native Americans and the profound African religiosity. It is true that many different cultures emerged from this encounter, a variety of , and that these differences characterize also the Hispanic presence in the United States. But these do not constitute a difference in identity, for in the end, identity has its roots in the religious experience of the sacred. In this we all have the same Father, the one revealed in Jesus Christ, and the same mother, the Catholic Church. This is the basis of our common identity. From this common identity emerge those qualities, attitudes and experiences that characterize all inculturation of the Catholic faith. It is enough to recall the words of the pope about the culture of death. It is a culture "contrary to solidarity," he says, with a conception of society "based on efficiency." The priority of solidarity over efficiency is one of the characteristics of a culture generated by faith, since faith insists on the priority of persons over things, ethics over technology and spirit over matter. From the point of view of efficiency, what matters is not the human person as such, but that person's capacity to contribute to the material progress of society. The individual without resources to make himself or herself known doesn't even exist. The preferential option for the poor is above all the affirmation of the value of the person, without any criterion of importance. A culture characterized by the preferential option for the poor is a culture that expresses the sense of the human person as (in the words of Vatican II) the "only creature on earth created by God for its own sake."[4] This truth is the basis of all Christian morality, individual and social. That is why the preferential option for the poor proves the inculturation of the faith. In this convocation we will discuss the most important areas of Hispanic pastoral work today. I suggest that you reflect on how in each of these areas we can give witness to the preferential option for the poor, to the priority of the human person, always from the perspective of the faith and culture relation and not only as immediate solutions to our current problems. The most important areas of this pastoral service have already been identified by the national pastoral plan, a fruit of the Encuentro process that emerged from the experiences of our people. This convocation doesn't pretend to change this process, but to respond to the opportunity offered to us by the call to a new evangelization. In our statement of commitment we shall let our bishops know that we take this call seriously and that we are willing to serve the entire church in the United States, giving witness to a culture generated by faith. The national pastoral plan itself is the result of this fact, and that is why it is urgent that its promises be fulfilled. Some will say that we cannot contribute anything until we ourselves give proof of a life in accord with the Gospel. Beware of this position. It is not our holiness that we offer as example! We are sinners like anyone else. A new evangelization is also urgent in our countries of origin. We recognize how far we are from being faithful to the riches of our faith. But despite our infidelities and our sins, we are the people who just last night sang proudly--without fear of being called integralists or enemies of religious freedom, foreign to pluralism, threats to democracy--the words which all of us. from North and South, East and West of the United States, whether citizens of this country for generations or newly arrived from the varied regions and cultures of the immense continent beyond the Rio Grande, all of us recognized and which we exclaimed with one voice: "You will reign! This is the ardent cry of our faith. You will reign! Oh blessed king! For you said: 'I will reign.' Let Jesus reign forever; let his heart reign in our land, in our soil, because our nation belongs to Mary." Yes, also here in this land, in this soil, for also to Mary does this nation belong. May it be so. ENDNOTES 1 John Paul II, , 1. 2 Ibid., , 11. 3 Ibid., 12. 4 , 24. Msgr. Albacete is a theologian at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Washington, D.C. and a consultor to the U.S. bishops' Committee on Hispanic Affairs. He gave this address to the Hispanic Convocation '95 in San Antonio, Texas. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Provided courtesy of: Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Road Irondale, AL 35210 www.ewtn.com .