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Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006there is a ratio of one bishop to every 231,000 Catholics in theUnited States but only one Hispanic bishop to every one millionLatino/a Catholics in the country. 13 To date there has not been aU.S. Hispanic cardinal. Less than 7% of the nation’s ordained clergyis Hispanic, 14 and “[w]hites still account for nearly two thirdsof priesthood candidates enrolled in theologates. One in six (15percent) is Hispanic/Latino.” 15At the grassroots level, limited financial resources and lowerlevels of educational attainment affect the number of Latino/alaity involved in ecclesial ministries that do not require ordination.For example, Latinos/as comprise approximately 12% ofparticipants in lay ecclesial ministry programs nationwide; incomparison “[n]early eight in ten participants… are white….Hispanics/Latinos are much less likely to be enrolled in degreeprograms in lay ecclesial ministry formation and whites are muchmore likely to be enrolled in degree programs. Hispanics/Latinosare 6 percent of students enrolled in degree programs and 10 percentof students enrolled in certificate programs.” 16 It is alsotelling that Latinos/as are “more likely to be providing their ministryas unpaid volunteers (25 percent compared to 12 percent).” 17The obvious implications of under-representation in all formsof ecclesial leadership is that more often than not Latino/a programs,parishes, and offices on the local and diocesan levels aremanaged by non-Hispanics; and the presence of Latinos/as inleadership, outside of the sphere of Hispanic ministries, is minimal.The correlation between under-representation and educationalattainment cannot be under-estimated. The U.S. Bishopsthemselves admit that “[t]he limitation of resources dedicated tothe education of Latinos has a direct impact on the number ofHispanics who have the necessary credentials to hold leadershiplevelpositions.” 18Not only are Latinos/as under-educated for ministerial leader-84ship, but even fewer are involved in the education and formationof the church’s ministers. According to the data collected by theAssociation of <strong>Theological</strong> Schools (ATS) from its member institutions,the presence of Latinos/as as students and faculty in theologicaleducation hovers around 3%. Latinos/as remain the mostunder-represented community in the academy especially in lightof the size and exponential growth of the Hispanic population ingeneral. 19 The most recent degree completion numbers for doctorallevel programs at ATS schools are not encouraging: six menand three women earned the PhD/ThD and twenty men andtwo women the Doctor of Ministry degree. 20 Considering thesenumbers do not diff e rentiate denominationally, the future forCatholics is particularly bleak. This minimal presence is reflectedin a breakdown of the doctoral scholarship recipients of theHispanic <strong>Theological</strong> Initiative from 1997-2005. Statistics indicatethat 62% percent of the eighty-two awardees were Protestant and38% were Catholic, a group that “does not mirror the religious orientationof Latinos in the general population.” 21The human resource problem is coupled with a lack of materialresources. Numbers alone do not necessarily translate intoinfluence or access to those with decision-making or decisionbreakingpower. The Hispanic population in the church may havegrown exponentially, but low representation in ministerial leadership,a paucity of presence in the education and formation ofscholars and ministers, and recent pastoral developments causeskepticism about the institutional church’s commitment to ministrywith la comunidad latina. For example, the closures and/ormergers of parishes and schools across the nation have hit AfricanAmericans and Latinos/as particularly hard. Cardinal FrancisGeorge, commenting on school closings that would disproportionatelyimpact poor and working class neighborhoods in hisarchdiocese of Chicago, noted “[w]hile the commitment remainsstrong, the resources remain limited.” 2285
Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Perspectivas/Occasional Papers • Fall 2006Meanwhile, in the Archdiocese of Washington the Hispanicpopulation has quadrupled over the past twenty-five years so thatLatinos/as now constitute at least 40% of the Catholic community.In response, a pastoral plan several years in the making wasreleased in June 2006. Entitled Diverse in Culture, United in Faith,the goals of the five year plan are to be funded out of the archdiocesancapital campaign, so that implementation will require no“shifting of priorities and resources at the expense of other ministries.”23Clearly this remains to be seen, but as demonstrated with thesituation in Chicago, there remains a disconnect between commitmentto la comunidad latina and the recognition that this entails aserious allocation and reprioritization of both human and materialresources. If not, Hispanic Catholics risk rapidly becoming amarginalized majority in our own church. It is worth heeding theexperience of a parish lay leader: “I am discouraged by the factthat we, Hispanics, don’t count here in this parish. We come tomass in great numbers and our Masses are really filled with thespirit. But all the power is in the hands of a small group of (non-Hispanic] old-timers who contribute a lot of money to theChurch.” 24Dealing with Diversity: Homogenizing DifferenceThis sense of disempowerment is not only a local experiencebut it is communicated in an understanding of diversity thatimplicitly guides the direction of Hispanic ministry decisions bythe ecclesial leadership. Two national examples from the UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Biships, Encuentro 2000 and the currentproposal for the creation of a Committee on CulturallyDiverse Communities, illustrate the marginalization that resultsfor the U.S. church’s largest population when ecclesial leadersinterpret diversity as difference that must be controlled.In 1997 the U.S. bishops accepted the recommendation of their86Hispanic Affairs Committee to “convoke a national gathering inthe Jubilee Year 2000 to celebrate the rich cultural diversity of theChurch in the United States.” 25 In the words of Bishop Gerald R.Barnes, then Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on HispanicAffairs, the premise of this fourth Encuentro was that the pastthree Encuentros had “given them [Hispanics] an opportunity topray and share and listen to and with one another. As we beginthe Third Millennium of Christianity, Hispanic Catholics in theUnited States want to gather once again with all their brothers andsisters in the Church to celebrate the cultural richness of theCatholic faith and to plan for new ways of evangelizing.” 26Portrayed by the Bishops’ Conference as “a response to the challengesof serving culturally diverse communities, and especiallythe Hispanic community,” 27 this national intercultural event wasconvened in July 2000 in Los Angeles, California. The Committeeon Hispanic Affairs and Hispanic Catholics served as the hostsand lead agents of “Encuentro 2000: Many Faces in God’s House,”…[which] marked the first time that the Church in theUnited States gathered to recognize, affirm, and celebratethe cultural and racial diversity of its members.With the participation of more than five thousandleaders representing the many faces of the Church…Encuentro 2000 inspired and challenged Catholics inthe United States to embrace a Catholic vision for thethird millennium in which all are welcomed to theFather’s table. 28This event was not without controversy. There had been adegree of ownership by Hispanic Catholics of the Encuentro nameand process that was nurtured over three national meetings from1972-1985. Encuentro was a way of meeting, developed withCatholic Latinos/as, that promoted agency, favored consultationand served as a means to involve the grassroots in the ecclesial87
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