scholarly journals LATINO MIGRATION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S.A. CATHOLICISM: FRAMING THE QUESTION

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (128) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Allan Figueroa Deck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Youth Ministry ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Dynamic Vision ◽  
Latino Migration

Este ensaio estuda a relação entre a migração latino-americana em direção ao Norte e as mudanças que estão tendo lugar no catolicismo estadunidense. A parte principal do artigo concentra-se na profunda e histórica experiência religiosa que os latinos trazem à Igreja nos Estados Unidos, herança marcadamente diferente da anglo-americana. Ao pano de fundo colonial, entretanto, devem ser acrescentadas as profundas mudanças que aconteceram no catolicismo latino-americano no período posterior ao Concilio Vaticano II. Os latinos têm sido um canal para comunicar a visão dinâmica de Medellín e Aparecida à Igreja católica estadunidense mais focada na conservação que na missão. A seção final trata das contribuições específicas do catolicismo latino à vida da Igreja estadunidense contemporânea através dos métodos pastorais renovados, da opção pelos pobres e da teologia da libertação, assim como no âmbito da oração, do culto e da espiritualidade, a preocupação pela justiça social, a religiosidade popular e a pastoral juvenil – para mencionar apenas algumas poucas. A eleição do Papa Francisco, o primeiro papa latino-americano, destaca a influência emergente do catolicismo latino-americano na cena mundial e não apenas nos Estados Unidos.ABSTRACT: This essay explores the link between Latin American migration northward and changes taking place in U.S. Catholicism. A major part of the article focuses on the deep and historic religious background that Latinos bring to the Church in the United States, a heritage markedly different from that of Anglo America. To the colonial background, however, must be added the profound changes that have taken place in Latin American Catholicism in the period after the Second Vatican Council. Latinos have been a conduit for communicating the dynamic vision of Medellín and Aparecida to a U.S. Catholic Church focused more on maintenance than mission. A final section looks at specific contributions of Latino Catholicism to the U.S. Church’s contemporary life through renewed pastoral methods, the option for the poor, and Liberation Theology as well as in the area of prayer, worship and spirituality, concern for social justice, popular piety, and youth ministry—to name just a few. The election of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, highlights the emerging influence of Latin American Catholicism on the world stage and not only in the United States.

The Bible and Catholicism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Senior
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Impact

The role of the Bible in Roman Catholicism in the United States has been shaped both by the history and teaching of the universal Catholic Church and by the particular social and religious context of North America. Catholic religious authorities in Europe viewed modern historical-critical methods of biblical interpretation with suspicion, a stance that also roiled the study and use of the Bible in American Catholicism. The impact of the Second Vatican Council opened the doors to the use of modern methods in biblical interpretation and sparked a strong biblical renewal in American Catholicism. The Protestant appeal to scripture (widespread in the United States) and the advent of ecumenism in Catholicism also contributed to an ever-growing popular use of the Bible in Catholic theology, catechesis, and devotional life.

Indigeneity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Aldama ◽  
Clint Carroll ◽  
Natasha Myhal ◽  
Luz Ruiz ◽  
Maria Ruiz-Martinez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nation States ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Transnational Space ◽  
Community Struggles

Issues of indigeneity, along with mestizaje—racial and cultural mixtures of African, indigenous, and Spanish ancestries and cultures that came as a result of the European colonization of the Americas—are core aspects of Chicana and Chicano and Latina and Latino identities, histories, and cultures. For Chicanas and Chicanos, understandings of indigeneity have shifted significantly since the early 1960s. During that time, tropes of cultural nationalism argued that all Mexican-origin people were descendants of the Aztecs, and that Aztlán—what many believed to be the conquered homelands of their Aztec ancestors encompassing the Four Corners region of the United States (Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona)—should be reclaimed. Today, a more nuanced understanding of Latinx/Chicanx indigeneity considers, for example, the complex politics of indigenous subjects migrating to settler colonial nation-states such as the United States, and the resulting negotiations of language and identity in this transnational space. Scholars of decolonial studies have added to this nuance by analyzing systems of heteropatriarchy (and the resulting gender binaries and practices of toxic masculinity) imposed through colonization and reinforced by such institutions as the Catholic Church. The editors seek to assemble and summarize key sources that speak to how indigeneity works within the transnational and transborder archives of colonization. This includes the differentiated ways that nation-states in the Americas have engaged with their indigenous pasts (including the sociopolitical and legal definitions of and practices toward indigenous communities and nations within the nation-state), as well as indigenous-led revitalization and sovereignty movements that envision decolonial futures. The goals of this bibliographic overview are to provide scholars interested in indigeneity in the Latinx context with key sources specific to Latinx communities and histories, while also considering important works that are grounded in Latin American, US, and Canadian indigenous contexts and histories. This bibliography thus invites scholars to explore the legal, political, social, and historical differences and similarities of indigeneity across hemispheric geographies. By juxtaposing the radical feminism of Gloria Anzaldúa (writing from the US-Mexico borderlands) with the decolonial visions of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Simpson (writing from her Canadian First Nation) the disjunctures and commonalities of indigeneity and decolonial thought are highlighted. The bibliography also include some key texts on indigeneity in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Bolivia that discuss places where the majority populations are mestiza/o and indigenous, and yet most indigenous communities, many whose first language is not Spanish, live in varying degrees of dispossession, poverty, and racial marginalization. The bibliography also invites scholars to consider Afro-Indigenous identities and community struggles in hemispheric frames.

Parish

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia Colleen Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Institutional Control ◽  
Early American ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Institutional Church

This chapter unpacks the meaning of “parish” and significance of canonical parish status in the Catholic Church. Institutional authority matters for defining parish in ways unlike other forms of congregation. This chapter explores the role of territory in defining parish historically, along with exceptions to this rule that proliferated in early American Catholicism. National parishes challenged the institutional Church to clarify bishops’ authority over local religious organizing. Changes to canon law in 1917 reasserted institutional control over parish establishment, once again prioritizing territorial boundaries. The Second Vatican Council and subsequent reforms to canon law in 1983 made room for communities of purpose alongside territory. Bishops found greater discretion to establish purpose-based parishes in their dioceses. This chapter specifies the canonical privileges that accompany parish status. It also profiles the characteristics of personal parishes appearing in the United States today.

Basic Ecclesiastic Communities in Brazil

1985 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiza Beth Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Threat ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Economy And Education ◽  
The Catholic Church

Recently, considerable attention — both within the United States and around the world — has been focused on the role and involvement of the Catholic church in worldly problems related to peace, the nuclear threat, the economy, and education. Of particular importance is the Latin American scene. In this article, Luiza Fernandes discusses the evolving role and the increasing involvement of the Catholic church on behalf of the poor and persecuted in what is considered the largest Catholic country in the world — Brazil. She focuses on what are known as Basic Ecclesiastic Communities, which were developed in Brazil within the Catholic church and now number over 80,000. Based partially on her own experience with these communities, Fernandes describes their function and the concerns of the participants. She stresses the interaction of politics, religion, and education and the role of the latter two in understanding and challenging the inhuman and unjust conditions under which the vast majority of Brazilians live today.

Public Schools vs. Catholic Schools and James McMaster

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas T. McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
American Catholic

THE “emergence of the Catholic layman” in the United States which has been heralded sofrequently since the opening of the Second Vatican Council has tended to do a grave injustice to the American Catholic layman of earlier generations. It is true that many of the leading American Catholiclaymen of the nineteenth century were converts from Protestantism, and there were few opportunities for the first generation immigrant Catholic to achieve higher education outside the seminaries. Nevertheless, the “Generation of the Third Eye” has not produced a philosopher of the depth or comprehension of Orestes A. Brownson, nor a defender of orthodoxy of the knowledge and capacity of James A. McMaster nor has it surpassed such men as Roger B. Taney, John Scott, and William J. Read who were called in to address the first Provincial Council of Baltimore, or Richard Clarke who tried to form the first Catholic union in the United States. The number of prominent Catholic laymen and laywomen of the nineteenth century is large as can be seen in the mere listing of the galaxy that participated in the two lay Catholic Congresses in Baltimore in 1889 and Chicago in 1893. Of all these, James McMaster has no equal in his influence on the religious and theological development of American Catholicism.

The Scalabrini Fathers, the Italian Emigrant Church, and Ethnic Nationalism in America

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. D'Agostino
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
Generational Transition

Philip Gleason has observed that the Roman Catholic church in the United States has been an “institutional immigrant” for much of its history. The idea of an “institutional immigrant,” posed in the Singular and distinguished from “the immigrant peoples who comprised the Catholic population,” presupposes a basic if undefined unity to American Catholicism. The nature of that unity has always been a highly contested issue. Gleason's formulation also suggests that the experience of the Catholic church is illuminated by considering its history in light of the processes that have occupied students of immigration—Americanization, generational transition, assimilation, the invention of ethnicity, and the like. The nature of these processes has also given rise to debates as Americans grapple to understand their cultural identity. In short, Gleason's idea lends itself to debate about the normative significance of American Catholicism, American culture, and their relationship to one another. In the interest of enriching this debate, I would suggest that the Roman Catholic church in the United States has also been an institutional emigrant.

Catholicism in the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Parochial Schools ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Church

The Catholic Church has been a presence in the United States since the arrival of French and Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish established a number of missions in what is now the western part of the United States; the most important French colony was New Orleans. Although they were a minority in the thirteen British colonies prior to the American Revolution, Catholics found ways to participate in communal forms of worship when no priest was available to celebrate Mass. John Carroll was appointed superior of the Mission of the United States of America in 1785. Four years later, Carroll was elected the first bishop in the United States; his diocese encompassed the entire country. The Catholic population of the United States began to grow during the first half of the 19th century primarily due to Irish and German immigration. Protestant America was often critical of the newcomers, believing one could not be a good Catholic and a good American at the same time. By 1850, Roman Catholicism was the largest denomination in the United States. The number of Catholics arriving in the United States declined during the Civil War but began to increase after the cessation of hostilities. Catholic immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily from southern and Eastern Europe, and they were not often welcomed by a church that was dominated by Irish and Irish American leaders. At the same time that the church was expanding its network of parishes, schools, and hospitals to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the new immigrants, other Catholics were determining how their church could speak to issues of social and economic justice. Dorothy Day, Father Charles Coughlin, and Monsignor John A. Ryan are three examples of practicing Catholics who believed that the principles of Catholicism could help to solve problems related to international relations, poverty, nuclear weapons, and the struggle between labor and capital. In addition to changes resulting from suburbanization, the Second Vatican Council transformed Catholicism in the United States. Catholics experienced other changes as a decrease in the number of men and women entering religious life led to fewer priests and sisters staffing parochial schools and parishes. In the early decades of the 21st century, the church in the United States was trying to recover from the sexual abuse crisis. Visiting America in 2015, Pope Francis reminded Catholics of the important teachings of the church regarding poverty, justice, and climate change. It remains to be seen what impact his papacy will have on the future of Catholicism in the United States.

scholarly journals Models and Methods for Confirmation Catechesis in Catholic Youth Ministry

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 417
Author(s):  
Arthur Canales
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Youth Ministry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Youth Ministers ◽  
The Catholic Church

This article will briefly address the origins of confirmation and the current approaches to adolescent confirmation. Moreover, the article discusses the two predominant models of confirmation in the Catholic Church in the United States and the predominant methods for adolescent confirmation in Catholic parishes and in youth ministry settings. Finally, the article delineates three proposed methods for confirmation catechesis in Catholic youth ministry. The hope is that these three methods will help Catholic youth ministers and/or confirmation coordinators in their important work of providing confirmation catechesis with teenagers.

A Holy Alliance between the Catholic Church and Constitution-Makers? The Diffusion of the Clause of Cooperation in Third Wave Democracies

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Madalena Meyer Resende
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Cosmopolitan Law ◽  
Constitutional Regime ◽  
The Church

AbstractWhat explains the adoption of the regime of cooperation between church and the state in the democratic constitutions of Spain and Poland, while Portugal maintained a regime of strict separation in the United States and French tradition? The explanation could be that a consensual constitution-making process resulted in a constitutional formula accommodating religion and guaranteeing religious freedoms. Alternatively, the constitutional regime of cooperation could result from the diffusion of international norms to national constitutions, in this case, the cosmopolitan law of the church. The article process-traces the constitution drafting processes and finds that the emergence of a constitutional consensus among secularist and constitutional drafters in Spain and Poland was based on the Vatican Council II doctrine and facilitated by the intervention of the Catholic hierarchies. In Portugal, the violent context of the revolution excluded the church, and the constitutional regime of strict separation between church and state was adopted.

Dialogue and Conversion

Horizons ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Maurice Schepers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Catholic Church

On August 12, 1996, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago († November 14, 1996), released a statement entitled “Called to Be Catholic Church in a Time of Peril,” which concretized an initiative called the Catholic Common Ground Project. This project is to be staffed by the thirteen-year-old, New York-based, National Pastoral Life Center, which was originally established under the auspices of the Administrative Committee of the U.S. Bishops' Conference. The peril which is the project's concern is the polarization that has developed in the Catholic Church in the United States in the course of the thirtyodd years elapsed since the close of the Second Vatican Council.

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