Latino Catholicism

Many people may know that Catholics represent the largest religious group in the United States. With 78 million baptized members, the Catholic Church hosts nearly five times as many members as the next largest Christian denomination.[1] But isn’t it shrinking? Despite the general impression of an aging and waning Catholic presence, many are surprised to learn that the Catholic Church is one of the few growing segments of the American church.

What? How?

The answer is simple. Latino Catholics.[2]

Historically speaking, Latino Catholics have lived in what is now the United States for twice as long as this great nation has even existed.[3] So, in a sense, they’ve always been here. Mexican Catholics in the mid-nineteenth century did not have to cross the border at all, rather “the border crossed them” as U.S. territorial expansion encompassed much of what is now the Southwest United States. In an instant, these Mexican natives became “foreigners in their own land,” enduring the systematic disestablishment of their political agency, economic well-being, and religious faith.

In a complex demographic evolution dating all the way back to 1511, the religious map of the United States has always included large numbers of Latino Catholics.[4] Though this probably represents one of the most unspoken chapters of U.S. history, “The origins of Catholicism in what is now the United States were decidedly Hispanic,” notes Timothy Matovia, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. By 1850, the Catholic Church had become the largest denomination in the United States, aided by the great famine in Ireland and revolution in the Germanic states. And the growth continues into our own era.

Today, over a third of U.S. Catholics are Latino. In the Southwest, Latino presence is even greater, representing over half of the Catholic population. Matter of fact, they are the only reason that Catholicism is holding its own. “Without the ever-growing number of Latinos in this country,” Matovia states, “the U.S. Catholic population would be declining at a rate similar to mainline Protestant groups.”

So what will the Catholic Church in the U.S. look like in the future? According to a recent study, the Catholic Church is well on its way to “becoming a majority-Latino institution” in this country.[5] Furthermore, when we add that two-thirds of Catholics under the age of thirty-five who attend church regularly are Latinos, we know that the face of the future of U.S. Catholicism is a young, U.S.-born Hispanic. The question now becomes, how will we respond?  In future posts, I will be exploring the unique features of Latino Catholicism and how Young Life continues to build the kingdom in its pursuit of "every kid, everywhere, for eternity."

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[1] There are 16 million Southern Baptists in the United States.

[2] While I will employ the term “Latino Catholics” or “Hispanic Catholics,” it must be stressed that this cannot be understood as a homogeneous group. Notre Dame professor, Timothy Matovia, notes, “Although ‘Latino Catholics’ may be a convenient term . . . the idea of a generic Latino Catholic is no more useful than that of a generic African, Asian, European, or Native American Catholic.” See Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), ix.

[3] Ibid, 7.

[4] “The first diocese in the New World was established in 1511 at San Juan, Puerto Rico, now a commonwealth associated with the United States. Subjects of the Spanish Crown founded the first permanent European settlement within the current borders of the fifty states at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, four decades before the establishment of Jamestown”(Matovina, 7).

[5] Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010).