Changes at the Spanish Secretariat – Advance or Setback?
By Alfonso Aguilar
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 7/26/07)
WASHINGTON — With the abolition of the Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs inside the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other changes that might radically affect the manner in which the Church has been serving the Hispanic community, the central question is whether these new developments are an advance or a setback.
In addition to the demise of the secretariat, the Bishop’s Committee on Hispanic Affairs will be demoted to a “subcommittee” and the magazine En Marcha, published by the secretariat for 25 years, folded this spring.
All these changes are a result of a comprehensive reorganization of the USCCB that will be completed in January 2008.
“It does not mean that Hispanic ministry will cease to exist at the USCCB nor does it mean that we will no longer be in touch with you through publications such as En Marcha,” wrote Bishop Plácido Rodríguez in the last issue of the publication.
“As it usually happens when we begin something new, we start this new era with a combination of uncertainty in the presence of change and the expectation of new opportunities and blessings for the Hispanic people and for all the Church,” said Bishop Rodríguez, chairman of the Hispanic Bishop’s Committee.
In the U.S. bishops’ plan, the new Department of Cultural Diversity will serve Hispanics, Africans and Afro-Americans, native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and migrants and refugees.
A Jesuit priest from California, Father Allan Figueroa Deck of Mexican ancestry, will be the executive director of the new office in Washington. He will be assisted by three associate directors, including Alejandro Aguilera-Titus, now acting director of the secretariat.
Ronaldo Cruz, who served as executive director for 21 years, and Rosalva Castañeda, who was the secretariat’s program specialist for 23 years, retired. At least 30 other USCCB employees took early retirement. Leonor Castro, secretary for 18 years, will remain on staff in the new department.
The secretariat was established 36 years ago, but its roots date back to 1945, when an office to serve Spanish-speaking population was born under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Council.
Overall, the USCCB will reduce its staff approximately one-third, and the five-year strategic plan focuses on five goals — implementation of the pastoral initiative on marriage; faith formation focused on sacramental practice; priestly and religious vocations; life and dignity of the human persons, and recognition of cultural diversity with a special emphasis on Hispanic ministry.
“Under current economic pressures, the Church needed a better cost-effective plan to face its new challenges, and focus its energy on specific projects and top priorities,” said Aguilera-Titus. He will be the lead staff for Hispanic affairs, but in his new capacity he will serve all minority groups equally.
Aguilera-Titus recognized that multicultural models often fail, and that ethnic groups do no like to be integrated with others inside one office.
“We heard that some people absolutely disagree with the new model, but we see it as a way to understand diversity as something akin to everybody. This is a change, and changes imply new challenges and some kind of uncertainty,” he said.
Castro said the bishop’s announcement created confusion at first glance, but little by little “we understood the changes as something positive and a new opportunity to work closely with people from other cultures and countries.”
Mario Paredes, a former executive director for a regional ministry office for 27 years whose weekly column on religious topics appears in dozens of Spanish publications, has a less optimistic view.
“From a pragmatic perspective, it is an absurd decision. Hispanics make up 50 percent of the faithful in many dioceses, we represent 35 percent to 40 percent of all Catholics in the country, and we are the group that grows faster than any other. In that sense it does not make any sense to serve Hispanics from an office for diversity, when the model in past years was to better serve Hispanics establishing more and more Hispanic offices inside dioceses.”
Paredes said that from a pastoral view the changes “are wrong. A great mistake. A total setback of what we achieved in the last 30, 40 years. And from an evangelical view, a sad idea, which carries a loss of presence of the Church on those in more need.”
He also expressed concerns given that in recent years six of the eight regional Hispanic ministries closed.
“We are moving backward. As a Hispanic community, we do not have a strong, capable leadership. We don’t know yet how to dialogue with the predominant culture,” said Paredes.
In his farewell, published in En Marcha, the now former director wrote: “Needless to say, the Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs is significantly affected. There is great concern among many of you, as well as with the Committee on Hispanic Affairs and the Hispanic bishops, of the unknown consequences the restructuring will have on Hispanic ministries throughout the United States.”
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