This paper was presented at the Spring 2001 Joint Consultation: Commonweal Foundation and Faith & Reason Institute, June 15-17, 2001

Click here for a printer-friendly version of the complete text

Click here to go to first page of multi-page format

I am happy to be here and to be able to react to Phil Murnion’s paper. I am going to react from the point of view of an Hispanic pastor in South Texas who happens to be in charge of a very historical parish that shares ministry in many exciting and creative ways within the Hispanic culture. I say this because I think that is going to be part of what I feel we might want to think about, namely, the opportunities for transmitting the whole question of the Catholic social tradition that Phil brings up in his paper.

Let me start off with just a little bit of history. San Fernando Cathedral, which is the parish that I pastor now, was founded in 1731. 1731 was the first time that the Spanish made a commitment to found a permanent civic settlement in what was then the region called Tejas, which is north of the Rio Grande. Up to that point, the Spanish just had a few military garrisons around Texas and they had a few missions. The missions were never designed to be permanent institutions, but simply to pacify the Indians enough to get them into Spanish civilization. The Spanish were concerned with the French so close in Louisiana, and thus they decided to begin permanent settlements in Texas as a way to solidify their hold.

The Crown of Spain recruited 16 families from the Canary Islands to come over. These were people who were very poor. It took them about a year and a half to get from the Canary Islands to Mexico City and then on to what is now San Antonio. They founded a settlement and called it La Villa de San Fernando, named after the king who fought to drive out the Moors from Spain in the 13^th century.

One of the attractions to go to Texas for these landless peasants from the Canary Islands was that the crown promised them that they would all get land, a place where they could begin their farm and their homes, and they would get a title of nobility. Those two promises excited them, since in the Canary Islands they really had nothing to their names.  A title of nobility was something very special. The title that the king gave them was hidalgo. They were going to become an hidalgo.  With a title and a promise of land they came to the New World.

What is an hidalgo_ If we pull the word apart in Spanish, literally it comes from hijo de algo, “son of something.” We do not know what that something is, but they were sons of something! Literally, they became something. That was important to them, because it gave them a certain dignity, a certain status. They were now hidalgos, sons of something. Each was finally somebody. Each went from nobody to somebody. In a sense, I think, that is very key to the mission of the Church. The Church is called to remind people that they are somebody, that each person is somebody. So often the poor are told in many ways, “You’re nobody. You’re on the extremes of society. You’re on the margins of the community. You don’t count and you’re nobody.”  Thus, the crown and the Church told them for the first time, “You’re somebody.” 

These Canary Islanders founded their city with the idea that they were going to plan the church to be built in the exact geographic center of the city. They did this for two reasons. Number one, the church would have a tower, and anywhere in the little town one could always look for that tower and know the center of the city and thus be oriented.  The second reason was a theological statement that would always live in the hearts of the people. With the church being the center of the city, it served as a physical  reminder that God is in our midst. God is always there, in the middle of everything we do as a city. To remember that always is to have the foundation for a good city.

In 1836 the battle of the Alamo was fought, and shortly after that, Texas gained independence from Mexico.  In the next ten years Hispanics lost everything. From 1836 to about 1845 the Republic of Texas existed.  In 1845, Texas became part of the United States. In those years Spanish-surnamed people that were living in what is now San Antonio went from 90 percent property owners to 9 percent property owners. They were dispossessed of everything: economic power, political power, social status, everything. All the institutions slowly fell. The civic institutions, the business institutions, the educational institutions, all went from Spanish to English almost overnight. Thus, Hispanic people who had positions in the community went from somebody to nobody in nine years.

The only institution that did not capitulate to the Anglo domination was the church. It was in the church that they could still come and be themselves. It was in the church that they could still have their culture, their traditions, their rituals. They celebrated these not only inside the church, but they would organize their processions and their great religious traditions outside. They would walk around the plaza, almost flouting who they were in front of all the people who had taken away all their power. They said in effect, “We still are somebody, because we are marching here behind the Virgin de Guadalupe or we’re processing through this space that you took away from us. However, now, for these few minutes, we take it back from you, because we have made it sacred space by what we’re doing in our rituals, in our traditions, and in our culture.”

That is very powerful. That is a very powerful image. The church continued to tell them: “You’re important, you’re somebody, because we speak your language, we respect your culture, your traditions, who you are. And we not only do this in the liturgy, but we do it in many other ways ritually, to tell the entire community, in a very public way, this is who we are and we are proud of it. “We are people of dignity and we are somebody, even though you keep telling us we’re nobody.” That’s a very powerful role that the church has to play, in the context of liturgy, in the context of public ritual, in the context of traditions. 

Phil was saying that he saw a difference between Catholic social teaching and Catholic social tradition.  I understand that the point he was trying to make was: Catholic social teaching is trying to get us to understand the principals and trying to understand what that is all about. Making it a tradition is moving it from the head to the heart. That makes it part of the way we live, part of the way we relate to one another, part of the way we live as a family, part of the way in which we are a community. It also then becomes  part of the way in which we deal with society and all the institutions and all the things that go on in society. 

Part of the way of doing church, as well, is to make it a tradition. I thought about that because I thought about the difference between an English and a Spanish word that would seem to be the same but is different because of the cultural context. Take the word “educated.” In English, if you say someone is educated, basically you think they have degrees, they have book knowledge, they have gone to school, etc. They are an educated person. Show me all your degrees. But if you translate that word, and you say, in Spanish, “educado,” that a person is educado, then you’re bringing in a whole different understanding of the word because you are in a different cultural context. The word in Spanish, educado, means that not only do I have educational learning, but also I know how to relate to people, how to respect my elders, and my responsibility to help the poor. It also means I know how to relate in society and how to be a community. Educado means I understand a whole way of living, of the traditions and the culture, and the importance of relating to people within my family, within my society, etc. It is simply the respect that is due because of the dignity of everybody—the elders, the young, all. This is what it means to be educado. 

Conversely, whenever someone is mal educado, it means that person does not understand tradition, does not respect their elders, and does not care for the poor. It is that whole sense of educado that I think we need in the church to help people to understand our social tradition. In the Hispanic community, what could be done to promote this tradition is simply to build on that understanding of being educado.  We educate people, in the sense of trying to help them grow in the social tradition of the Catholic Church. 

At San Fernando, we help people grow in the social tradition of the Church through liturgy, culture, and the customs of the people, because these are things that are already familiar to them. These are things that they relate to. These are things that they get excited about.  In that context the people can begin to understand the society that they are living in, the relationships that are there, the dignity of each person, and what each one of us can do to try to make a better world. 

In the liturgy, for example, we can take the Hispanic traditions and customs that are there and the cultural feasts that are there. Dia de los Muertos , Dia de los Santos, the Day of the Dead, the Day of the Saints is one example. Those two days are a very important tradition within the Hispanic community and we celebrate them in a big way. 

In the liturgy for Day of the Dead and Day of the Saints we venerate the saints of the church, the officially canonized saints of the church, but at the same time, we venerate those people who the community feels are their saints even though they have not been officially canonized. We honor people like a school teacher who was dedicated to bilingual poor students, a lawyer who defended immigrants, a civil rights worker, a gardener who simply did his job faithfully, a politician who actually lived off his salary, a young woman who led a pecan shellers’ strike in the 1930’s.

Those are our saints. So we bring forth those Santos Del Pueblo, the saints of the people, so that the people can learn from their stories. At that point the people begin to ask themselves that if she led that pecan shellers’ strike, what do I need to do. What are the injustices today all about_ Those are the kinds of things I think are very powerful in the liturgy.  These are moments which the people want to celebrate and deepen and make more profound in their life.  They relate to these important issues through the liturgy.

Another example is the whole question of public procession, which is a tradition that we have lost in many ways in the Catholic Church, but that Hispanics still have in a strong way. The question here is how to transform public space into sacred space. What do we do when we actually march through public space and make it sacred space_ For example, at Christmas time, we in San Antonio do the posada, which is the story of Joseph and Mary trying to find a place for the child Jesus to be born. In the posada all of us walk through the public spaces of downtown San Antonio, and we are rejected consistently until finally we arrive at the church, where we are allowed in. Where do we go to be rejected in this reenactment_ We go to City Hall, and the mayor tells us to go away. We go to the County Court House, and the county judge tells us to go away. By doing this ritual, the people begin to understand that rejection happens in many ways to people. For the mayor and the judge, it is their role in the tradition, but it will help the people to understand that also, in life, they are rejected by the government, by the powers that be. By walking through these kinds of public rituals we are helping our people to deepen their understanding, their analysis of what it is to be a citizen, to be a person of the community, and how this relates to being a church person.  In these ways we are creating sacred space for this reflection in our cities. 

One final example is drama. Drama is one other thing that we in San Antonio do a lot. The Church has mostly lost the use of drama to teach and evangelize. The great medieval morality plays have been put aside. In San Antonio, we still do those kinds of things. People take on a role. They enter into something different. They begin to understand a little bit more about what the role signifies. In the Passion Play, for example, the players enter into the Gospel. They actually live the Gospel in order to become the Gospel. 

We also have a play called the Pastorella, which happens after Christmas. It is the shepherd play. In that play, the first part concerns Joseph and Mary trying to find a place to have the birth of Jesus while being rejected. The second part concerns the shepherds trying to find the newborn Jesus to venerate Him. However, the devil is working to make sure none of that happens. One of the themes is the devil constantly tempting whomever Joseph and Mary ask for shelter. For example, the devil comes out while Joseph and Mary are asking someone for shelter. The devil is there, whispering into the ear of the person, “Don’t let them stay here. They’re robbers; they’re going to kill you. They’re evil,” and so forth.  The person tempted then rejects the request. In one powerful, yet humorous scene a man comes in dressed luxuriously. He declares very pompously, “I am the richest, most important person in all of Bethlehem.”  He presents himself proudly to all. Joseph and Mary approach him and ask for shelter at his home. The devil comes out as usual to tempt the man, but before the devil can even open his mouth, the man looks down his nose at these two poor people and says, “The way you look_ Who you are_ Of course you can not stay with me.” With that arrogant rejection the rich man walks away very proudly. The devil hears this and happily comments out loud, “He’s more of a devil than I am!” 

Plays can be for our people today what they were for people in medieval times and in the early years of the evangelization of Latin America.  The people can begin to learn and to understand from these plays morality, social justice and community responsibility. This is one more way to carry on the Catholic social tradition in our day. 

Today, in order to have any true impact on the social arena, the Church must be creative and understand the culture of the people.  It must dig into history and learn lessons that apply to our times.  We must imagine how to carry on the great treasure of Catholic social teaching we have inherited so that we can truly make it a tradition that permeates our hearts.

back to the top