From the Editor – November 2011

From June 5-8, 2011, at its Annual Colloquium and General Meeting in San José, California, the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States focused on the theme, “Pan de Vida: Eucharistic Liturgy, Piety, and Justice. The Colloquium Announcement explained, it was “time to go to the corazón of our Catholic faith and worship, the Eucharist, and draw from it pan de vida y bebida de salvación not just for us but for our communities. In a relaxed atmosphere of reflection and convivencia we invite[d] Jesus to stay with us and in us as we look[ed] at his Eucharistic presence and challenge in the official liturgy of the Church, our people’s devotion, and the Church’s social doctrine. In the articles we now present in the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology, we share with a broader public some of the spirit of that Colloquium. These articles, originally presented at the Colloquium in preliminary form, subsequently revised in the light of discussions around the table, and then peer-reviewed, offer insightful reflections on the convergence and intersections that are named in the Colloquium theme. These essays offer not just liturgical theology considered apart from real worshipping communities, not a consideration of devotional piety alone, but a matter of both considered in richly nuanced terms in the light of the call to justice that is at the very heart of the Gospel.

After the midterm elections of 2010, the burst of activity by the lame-duck 111^th 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]

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Welcome to the electronic Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology. In 1993, the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States launched the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology as a peer-reviewed quarterly that provided a venue for the growing body of theological analysis of the religious reality of the Latinos and Latinas in the United States, a population that is steadily increasing in number and in significance for the life of the church. Recognizing the opportunities for a wider readership across the United States, in Latin America, and around the world, the new electronic format of the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology takes advantage of advances in information technology to make this research available to an ever broader and more diverse readership of scholars, pastoral agents, students, and others. We welcome your comments and your questions, as we look forward to sharing this important and exciting work with you. In this inaugural issue, we present two articles. The first is “¡Presente! The Prophetic Legacy of Monseñor Oscar Romero,” by Dr. Carmen Nanko Fernández of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. “We also present Life-Giving Migrations: Re-visioning the Mystery of God through U.S. Hispanic Eyes,” by Dr. Miguel H. Díaz of the College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University in Collegeville Minnesota. We invite you to include this site among your favorites, and to return often as updates are posted. To celebrate the launch of this new format, the electronic Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology will be free for a limited time.

Jean-Pierre Ruiz
Editor
jhlteditor[at]achtus.org

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