Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2009 by Gleason, Philip

Latinos and the New Immigrant Church. By David A. Badillo. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. xxiii, 275. Notes, index. Cloth, $60.00; Paper, $22.95).

Recognizing that the religious dimension of Latino immigration has been grievously neglected, David A. Badillo here undertakes to provide broad scale coverage of that topic. He takes passing notice of Protestantism, but is principally concerned with Catholicism since that is the religious tradition to which the overwhelming majority of Latinos are historically attached. Besides exploring how Latino immigrants have fared in the Catholic Church in this country, he asserts that their coming is reshaping American Catholicism into a "new immigrant church" comparable to, but different from, the one created by the great migrations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The book is organized as a series of discrete studies of the experience of three groups (with incidental attention to others) in four urban settings. The groups are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. The cities are San Antonio, New York City, Chicago, and Miami. Though not a conventionally structured history, the individual studies are set forth in roughly chronological order, as follows: 1) a description of Iberian Catholicism and its transmission to the new world; 2) the impact of the Mexican Revolution on the religious situation in San Antonio from the 1910s through the 1930s; 3) Puerto Ricans in New York up to World War II; 4) how bishops in San Antonio, New York, and Chicago dealt with Latino immigration in the 1940s and 50s; 5) Cubans in Miami from Castro's revolution to the present; 6) Latinos in Chicago and its suburbs from the 1960s through the 1990s; 7) developments among Mexicans in San Antonio from the 1960s on, and among Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York during the same period; 8) how new social and theological developments since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) have affected the religious situation of Latinos over the past quarter century.

Badillo clearly demonstrates that it is misleading to speak of the religious experience of Latinos as though it were the same for all groups. That is hardly surprising given the very different urban settings he covers, as well as various distinctive features of the different groups, the most notable, perhaps, being the highly politicized circumstances of Cuban migration. At the same time, he notes that while the groups involved identify themselves primarily in national terms (i.e., as Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans), there are some indications that a "pan-Latino" ethnic consciousness may be developing, especially among second-generation immigrants attending churches that serve more than one Latino group.

It is inherently difficult to draw firm conclusions about matters as elusive as shifts in ethnic feeling, but the largely descriptive method adopted by the author also militates against the reader's forming clearcut overall impressions. For despite his declared interest in comparison and contrast, there is little comparative (or any other kind of) analysis in this book. Thus statistics of migration and ethnic presence are scattered haphazardly throughout the text, with nothing presented in tabular form for the topic as a whole, or for particular localities, periods, or groups. And though Badillo seems to feel that ecclesiastical leaders of the post-World War II era did a better job of providing pastoral care for Latinos than their more recent counterparts, the implicit contrast is not spelled out or examined in a systematic way Much useful information is, however, presented in more or less anecdotal form. Readers of this journal will probably find Badillo's treatment of post-sixties Latino migration to Chicago, selected suburbs, and "edge cities," particularly rewarding. Similarly interesting are the changes over time among Miami's Cubans; the influence of the "Cursillo" (short course in Christianity) movement among Puerto Ricans; and the importance of Pentecostals and the charismatic movement among Latinos.

Aside from being so heavily composed of Hispanics, the "new immigrant church" is distinctive, according to Badillo, in that Latino Catholicism is a "popular," family-oriented, strongly maternalistic form of religion. The "old immigrant church," which it is said to be replacing was, on the other hand, rigidly structured and parish-oriented - "mass and sacraments" Catholicism, as Jay Dolan puts it. The contrast in itself is familiar; more novel is Badillo's assertion that the displacement of the old by the new is already so far advanced. Unfortunately, much of his argument is so diffuse - particularly the invocation of "transnationalism." "globalization," "consumerism," and "ethnic revitalization," as key factors in the process - that one is hard put to evaluate the validity of his claim.

Philip Gleason, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and of the Immigration and Ethnic Historical Society, and author of many works in these fields.