Bishop Nelson J. PEREZ, et al. Proceedings and Conclusions of the V National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington. 2019. Reviewed by Anthony M. STEVENS-ARROYO, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY 11210
This publication carries the official approval of the USCCB as record of an authorized congress held September 20-23, 2018. The meeting came at the end of a process, or Encuentro, for clergy and laity engaged in Catholic ministry to the nation’s resident Hispanic/Latino peoples. As the Super-Bowl-like Roman numeral suggests, this was not the first such national pastoral event nor is it likely to be the last. Although Proceedings and Conclusions is not an academic book directed towards sociologists, anthropologists and other scholars who study religion and religious movements, it presents important insights into the ministry among Latino Catholics in the United States. Placed in context with the previous events, the text itself becomes an important historical document and an object for scholarly study.
Personal history provides me with advantages for fully appreciating the V Encuentro. I played a role in organizing the first two Encuentros in 1972 and 1977. I documented the background and results from both 1970s’ events in my book, Prophets Denied Honor (Orbis, 1980). Later, as Director of PARAL (Program of Analysis of Religion Among Latinos) funded by the Lilly Foundation, I directed an interdenominational conference for nationally recognized scholars at Princeton University in 1993 which led to publication of the key papers in four interdisciplinary volumes issued in 1994 and 1995 by the Bildner Center in New York. The books were followed by an interfaith survey, the “National Survey of Leadership in Latino Parishes and Congregations” in 2003. An expanding circle of PARAL scholars regularly presented research findings at meetings of professional organizations such as the SSSR. Professor Ana María Díaz-Stevens, with whom I have shared more than just an academic partnership for nearly 40 years, was even more closely connected with the first two Encuentros and attended the fourth in 2000 in an official capacity. We both contributed to the organization and the writing of the three volumes on the history of Hispanic Catholicism produced by Jay Dolan and Allan Figueroa Deck, SJ for the University of Notre Dame Press in 1994. Dr. Díaz-Stevens and I published together Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion: The Emmaus Paradigm (Westview: 1998) to assess the generational impact of a burgeoning Latino cultural awareness upon the entire United States’ religious experience. Nearly 20 years later, at the invitation of Professor Hosffman Ospino, I offered comments on the drafting of the public call for the V Encuentro. I note that this last -- although admittedly minor role -- gave me a place on the current list of contributors to the on-going emergence of Latino Catholicism, the subject of my academic career. It is comforting to see that the issue remains relevant.
I beg the reader to indulge the parade of past publications on Latino religion of which my own are scarcely the only ones. It seems to me, however, that one cannot gauge how far a movement has progressed without marking the starting point. Because it is not a regular academic book, it is understandable that Proceedings and Conclusions makes only a brief mention of Encuentro’s past history (pp. 19-21; 24). By embracing past research, however, scholars can add the historical context, making this publication all the more important to the academic field. Fittingly, the V Encuentro also chose the Emmaus biblical narrative (Luke 24:13-35) to characterize the Encuentro process, much as we had in naming our 1998 book. Invoking the same theme for this book confirms that the analysis of the same Latino phenomenon continues today.
Proceedings and Conclusions has three parts of unequal lengths. The first begins with the 2013 start of the planning. We are told that over the next five years, 2,150 parish communities were consulted in preparation for the closing Encuentro assembly which was held September 20-23, 2018 in Grapevine, Texas, near Dallas-Fort Worth. The second part presents an overview of the formal sessions during that three-day meeting of 3,470 delegates, including full-color photographs of the people and personages present. Importantly, there is a detailed review of the recommendations voted on by the assembly (pp. 73-82) and a digest of the working papers (pp. 83-142). The third part offers a series of appendices, of which the most striking are detailed summaries of the issues with summaries of Hispanic ministry in the episcopal regions (Appendix D) and graphs for demographic and survey data (Appendix E).
Readers should not overlook the importance of the process outlined in the first part of this book. These few pages (pp. 5-18) detail how all the Encuentros mirror the synodal process promoted by Pope Francis, whose message to the delegates is included (p. 32). For those unfamiliar with the importance of the changes impelled by the synodal process, picture an upside-down pyramid, where lay people at the grassroots are at the top and ecclesiastical hierarchs are at the bottom. The process allows pastoral information generated by the See-Judge-Act methodology of Young Christian Workers among lay ministries to be gradually distilled “downwards” for the last recipients in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Although the numbers of persons included for the V Encuentro far exceeded the outreach of the Encuentros I and II, the construct of a pastoral circle was the same. Once again, Latino leadership as in 1972 and 1977 used the model of Latin American episcopal meetings such as Medellín and Aparecida to engage the grassroots in a cooperative pastoral plan (pastoral de conjunto).
As in Encuentros I, II, III, working documents on specific issues were prepared for the V Encuentro. The problems common to Latinos in US society and in the Church were presented with social science data and were paired with testimony from experts in relevant fields. The goal was to gather from participants recommendations for improving ministry. Beginning in 2015, there were 1,200 training sessions held throughout the nation producing 30,000 leaders for discussions. Structured dialogs were conducted at the parish levels with some 142,000 contributors, including 60,000 young Latinos and Latinas. In outreach to what the pope calls “the peripheries,” another 211,000 persons not directly engaged in church activities were contacted. This phase ended in June of 2017 and, in August, dioceses began a series of meetings to process the information taken from the local communities. Beginning in 2018, 144 dioceses held their own meetings with some 47,000 delegates chosen from among those who had already participated in the outreach sessions. The working documents were also shared online with another 52,500 responses. Note that US Catholic dioceses are organized geographically into 14 Episcopal Regions. Each of these conducted regional Encuentros to discuss the 28 policy areas that had emerged from the initial consultations. The 5,182 delegates to these regional meetings were joined by 118 bishops. An online ministerial census was added, reaching 100% of US Catholic dioceses. Thus, the upside-down pyramid of the synodal process began with the widest possible audience and conveyed the message to a gradually reduced number of leaders being prepared to meet in Texas as the final 3,470 delegates.
Importantly, as explored in publications about previous Encuentros, the participants were “delegates.” Those attending these meetings (Encuentro 2000 was an exception) were chosen to represent other Catholics: they did not attend as if self-selected consumers at a conference about better catechetics or catchy liturgical music: their presence was sanctioned by each of their bishops in a democratizing process. On this basis, the V Encuentro can be studied as a historical example of Pope Francis’ synodal process. It conveyed the actual experience of US Latinos to church leadership, so that the bishops were guided into a cooperative pastoral plan by persons they had entrusted with this duty.
Scholars of religion should be intrigued by the organizational structure for the Encuentros. Remarkably, this democratizing church process comes from an ethnic group with lower levels of education and higher rates of poverty than the general US population (pp. 202-206). Most of the Encuentros, including this one, were designed to combat the notion that the role of US Catholicism is to “Americanize” Latinos (p. 25). The focus in 2018 was upon outreach to young Latino Catholics (Appendix B), since they constitute more than half of US Catholics under the age of 17 (p. 197). As suggested (pp. 174-179), the future of the Latino youth is the probably future of Catholicism in the US.
The second part of Proceedings and Conclusions provides synopses of each session with pictures of key participants and excerpts of quotable reactions on the issue at hand. In addition to the plenary sessions of the three-day Encuentro congress in Texas, there were also break-out workshops for the 28 areas of concern that had emerged from the earlier consultations. These are listed in the book with the relevant social science and survey data, citations of academic resources and recommended courses of action. Each session included members of the hierarchy and a panel of experts. Understandably, there are some redundancies, e.g. Campus Ministries and Higher Education are not very different. Nonetheless, valuable expertise and welcomed granularity are presented in bullet style for each of these areas. The reports from these specialized workshops were then voted on in plenary sessions in order to be sent as policy recommendations for the entire Catholic hierarchy.
The third part of the publication consists of the appendices. I recommend scholarly attention to Appendix D. That section (pp. 181-196) adds significant descriptive data about Latinos in each of the episcopal regions. I also believe that scholars with limited experience studying Latino Catholicism will benefit greatly from Appendix E, with its effective presentation of graphs on demography for US Latinos and survey results for Catholics.
Overall, I find little fault with the presentation of the V Encuentro in this publication, except perhaps my frustration that the pictures lacked identifying captions of the persons and personages. For instance, I was not sure which photo presented Ken Johnson-Mondragón, the organizing committee’s manager of social science data. Johnson-Mondragón had contributed to the PARAL research project 15 years ago when he had started working with Instituto Fe y Vida. He has more than matched the promise of scholarship exhibited many years ago -- but I wish I could be sure of where he is pictured among the photographs!
The final critique of this publication is more about what has not been included than what is here. I remember how important an emerging Liberation Theology among Latinos was for organizing Encuentros I and II, and indeed a few of those key concepts were repeated here: pastoral de conjunto (74), lo cotidiano (14), abuela theology (145) and mística (7, 34). Most theological references, however, are citations of Pope Francis, especially his Gaudium Evangelii where he also called attention to people at the peripheries. I found it strange that there was not a single mention of the work of the late Virgilio Elizondo, whose significant production had framed theological developments nationwide for the better part of two decades. The Archdiocese of New York had been key to Encuentros I and II, but I am still searching for the listing of a bishop from that archdiocese. More puzzling was the total absence of any reference to Puerto Rico, to the Archdiocese of San Juan or to any of the island’s five dioceses. Since all Puerto Ricans are US citizens and the island is populated by at least 3 million Catholics, the island’s Catholic Church has significant pastoral experiences that bear upon evaluation of Latino Catholicism. Adding the island’s people would have doubled the number of Puerto Ricans among Latinos and increased the number of Latino Catholic US citizens by about 5%. Without any explanation for the exclusion, I can only guess that there is a credible behind-the-scenes’ story here that needs to be told some day.
Despite the breadth of topics, there was a lamentable lack of attention to indigenous and African-based religious experiences. PARAL devoted one of its four volumes to the importance of syncretism to Latino spiritual identities. In contrast, the V Encuentro seemed focused exclusively on ecumenical relations with other Christians, particularly Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants (pp. 94-95). I laud the Encuentro’s stated project (pp. 134-136) of retaining for Catholicism the Latinos in or past the third generation of immigration. However, past research indicates such an effort could likely benefit by recognizing that Catholic cultural identities are influenced by non-white spiritualities which have greatly informed the historical creation of national consciousnesses.
Thankfully, the organizers promise that the V Encuentro will have a follow-up stage. Perhaps the omissions mentioned above will receive attention in due time. Nonetheless, judged on its actual production, and not on my wish-list of missing topics, Proceedings and Conclusions makes a significant contribution to knowledge about Latino Catholicism. I heartily recommend its inclusion on lists for library purchases and as recommended reading in course outlines.