La Virgen Peregrina: A New Paradigm for “Just” Liturgies in a Latino/a Context
A New Paradigm for “Just” Liturgies in a Latino/a Context[1]
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA
Among liturgists and theologians in the United States much discussion concerning liturgy and justice centers on what occurs during the “official” celebration of Eucharist, primarily on Sundays.[2] It asks how Word and Eucharist challenge the faithful to carry out justice in the world. Vatican II’s 1963 Constitution on Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) regards liturgy as the source and summit from which all flows.[3] Other discussion concerns the potential that “just” liturgies hold for full and active participation by all present (SC 14). [4] Clearly, justice in its fruition, whether inspired by liturgy or enacted in liturgy is still the ongoing “work of the people.”[5]
From the Editor January 2011
After the midterm elections of 2010, the burst of activity by the lame-duck 111th Congress offered some hope that the DREAM Act—the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act—might finally be passed. This legislation would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for irregular immigrant young people who arrived in the United States as minors, provided that they complete at least two years of higher education or of military service. Passed by the House of Representatives on December 8, 2010 (coincidentally or providentially, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, patronal feast of the United States), the DREAM Act did not make it through the Senate, coming up five votes short of the sixty needed to achieve cloture on December 18, 2010. Commenting on the Senate vote, Archbishop José Gómez, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration called the vote a “setback, not a defeat,” and insisted that, as we move forward, “More education is needed to ensure that Catholics, as well as all Americans, fully understand the humanitarian consequences of a broken immigration system, especially on families.”[1]
Old Testament Legislation and Foreigners: An Alternative Majority Group Response
An Alternative Majority Group Response
Reinhardt University, Waleska, GA
The United States of America, Canada, and Australia are at the forefront of countries hosting people from many nations around the globe. They are also known for the comprehensive laws they have created to welcome many immigrants.[1] What we oftentimes neglected is that, behind the elaboration of these laws, there is a history of negative feelings and decisions affecting the influx of immigrants to their shores and their lives therein.
A Migrant Being at Work: Movement and Migration in Johannine Christology
“[Have no] contact anywhere with an illegal alien!…And that starts in the restaurants….[You] don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!” So warned nationally syndicated conservative talk show host Michael Savage in his efforts to stymie the spring 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 virus (commonly referred to as “swine flu”), an outbreak that began in Mexico.[1] The ill logic of Savage’s comments—what makes “illegal” im/migrants more likely to have unclean hands than “legal” im/migrants?—makes no attempt to disguise the fact that such rhetoric and fear mongering betray pre-existing prejudices resurfacing by way of the H1N1 virus outbreak, as did anti-Jewish sentiment during the time of the Black Death in Europe and the 1892 cholera pandemic in the United States.[2] Any push for immigration reform is sure to spur more xenophobia from pundits and others like Savage who assert that non-white immigrants, especially those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border or who have ties to Islam, taint the U.S. with disease, violence, and an inferior culture.[3] It is in the face of such anti-immigrant rhetoric that Latino/a theologians have articulated and continue to articulate a stance for justice and solidarity with im/migrants marginalized by the society they have entered. This solidarity has found and must continue to find concrete expression in public advocacy and political action.[4]
From the Editor September 2010
From the Editor – September 2010
Many Latina/o theologians have insisted that lived daily experience — lo cotidiano — in all its complexity is among the key sources for theological reflection. From machismo to telenovelas, from social networking to art along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, different dimensions of lived daily experience have found a place in the studies that have appeared in this journal. Vincent Olea’s article, “‘Out of Cariño:’ Toward a Theology of Fighting Observed in
U.S. Hispanic Youth in East Los Angeles,” opens a door into an especially challenging aspect of the lived daily experience of young people in Boyle Heights, California. Olea has worked passionately for nearly twenty years as a director of youth ministry serving young people in Catholic parishes in San Diego and Los Angeles, most recently accompanying inner-city Hispanic youth at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, Ca. Continuing his development of a narrative approach to inner-city youth ministry, Vince is currently laying the groundwork for a non-profit organization in Los Angeles called The Center for Story and the Arts.
The Pneumatological Dimension of Orlando Espín’s Theological Work
The Pneumatological Dimension of Orlando Espín’s Theological Work and Its Implications for Engagement with Pentecostal Communities
Néstor Medina
Introduction
I find Orlando Espín’s cultural theology immensely provocative. More specifically, I find him most engaging when considering the elements that popular Catholicism and Pentecostalism share. In my view, they are closer than either side would care to admit.
I seek to explore this point here by way of a cultural pneumatology. I will argue that it is precisely in the intersection of culture and the Spirit that Espín’s proposal offers a rich platform of conversation between Catholicism and Pentecostalism. I will examine this in the following three sections: First, I briefly outline Espín’s cultural proposal; second, I highlight some of the pneumatological cultural implications from his work; and third, I propose a Pentecostal pneumatological approach as a way of complementing Espín’s embryonic pneumatology.
“Out of Cariño:” Toward a Theology of Fighting
“Out of Cariño:” Toward a Theology of Fighting Observed in
U.S. Hispanic Youth in East Los Angeles
Vincent Olea
Barry University, Miami Shores, FL
In the opening scene of the movie Crash, Officer Graham (Don Cheadle) turns to his partner after crashing into another car and says, “It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” In these six sentences Graham dares to view the violent act of a car crash as an intended means to fulfilling a basic human need, one that is not being met under the current social norms of interaction. As absurd as it sounds, especially for those who have been devastated by a car crash, Graham looks directly at the act itself and uncovers the need to experience beauty, in the midst of blood, broken glass and bent metal. In the same way and with the same sense of absurdity, I seek to identify an experience of beauty, in the midst of flailing fists, grinding teeth, torn clothes, blood and bruises, especially as it relates to U.S. Hispanic youth in East Los Angeles. In proposing a theological dimension to fighting, I will develop a view of physical aggressive interaction that reveals a pained yet relational social location, and the need to physically express both.
Cruz Review of Nanko-Fernandez Theologizing en Espanglish
Carmen Nanko-Fernández. Theologizing en Espanglish: Context, Community, and Ministry. Foreword by Gary Riebe-Estrella, SVD. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2010. Pages, xx + 188. Paper, $25. ISBN: 9781570758645.
Theologizing en Espanglish: Context, Community, and Ministry is a tour-de-fuerza synthesis and advancement of Latino/a Christian thought on ministry and theology, two “inextricably intertwined” communal enterprises (xviii). Several chapters are reworked from earlier published articles by Carmen Nanko-Fernández, yet these updated writings complement the book’s newer material, offering greater unity of content than is typically found in a scholar’s reader of essential writings.
Nanko-Fernández explores several implications of her recognition that experiences of life together en lo cotidiano [in daily life] constitute the revelatory sources for, and context of, theological reflection—its locus theologicus. She challenges theologians to critical awareness of the contexts and relationships within which we are embedded and implicated, and which unavoidably shape the content and horizons of our thought. She finds this critical awareness lacking, for example, in the distant and linear See, Judge, Act method of theologizing. Further, Nanko-Fernández argues that recognizing lo cotidiano as the source and context of our theologizing also demands our making lo cotidiano a hermeneutical lens and epistemic principle within our theologizing.
Van Wensveen review of Garcia Dignidad Ethics Through Hispanic Eyes
Dignidad: Ethics through Hispanic Eyes. By Ismael García. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997. Pages, 190. Paper, $16.95. ISBN: 0687021340
Reviewed by: Louke Van Wensveen
In Dignidad, Ismael García interprets the moral language of Hispanic Americans and offers his own critical perspective as an Hispanic Christian ethicist. The book follows in the footsteps of his earlier work, Justice in Latin American Theology of Liberation (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), with a substantial chapter on justice (chapter two) and a consistent focus on the themes of oppression and liberation. However, in Dignidad the scene moves to the United States, where we find a diverse Hispanic community trying to carve out a place of dignity. García joins pioneering ethicists such as Anthony Cortese and Ada María Isasi-Díaz in providing a theoretical articulation of this distinct praxis.
Reynolds Review of Kendall and OCollins In Many and Diverse Ways In Honor of Jacques Dupuis
Kendall, Daniel and Gerald O’Collins, eds. In Many and Diverse Ways: In Honor of Jacques Dupuis. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003. Pages, xiv + 290, $30.00. ISBN: 1570755108
Reviewed by: Gabriel Reynolds
In Many and Diverse Ways is a Festschrift in honor of Belgian Jesuit theologian Jacques Dupuis on his eightieth birthday. As one might expect, it is made up of articles by prominent theologians on subjects cognate to the work of Dupuis, which itself is catalogued at the end of the volume in an exhaustive bibliography. Yet what distinguishes this volume is its relation to the most recent phase of Dupuis’ career: the publication of his Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism and the subsequent investigation thereof by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which culminated in an official notification on 24 January, 2001. These events form the backdrop for all of the eighteen articles of In Many and Diverse Ways, which thereby enter into the lively current debate on religious pluralism. The focus of this volume on this question is also reflected in the inclusion of a second bibliography, which includes the many documents and academic reviews related to Dupuis’ book and the CDF’s investigation. Thus In Many and Diverse Ways is more than a Festschrift: it is an enterprise of collaborative theological speculation on religious pluralism.