From Michael Sean Winters, Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics can Save the Democrats, 2008, Basic Books, New York, pp. 219-220:
‘One of the most forceful critiques of America’s consumerist culture for its failure to embrace more humane values came in a document the American Catholic bishops issued in 1997 on Hispanics’ role in the Church’s evangelization efforts. “In our country, the modern technological, functional mentality creates a world of replaceable individuals incapable of authentic solidarity,” the bishops wrote. “In its place, society is grouped by artificial arrangements created by powerful economic interests. The common good is an increasingly dull, sterile, consumer conformism… created by artificial needs promoted by the media to support powerful economic interests.”
The bishops voiced the hope that Latino culture, with its own ethos, “historically inseparable from the Catholic faith,” might balance American culture’s consumerism. They specifically noted certain characteristics of Hispanic culture that stand in opposition to our technological society. “A welcoming disposition to what is unexpected, new and unplanned; simplicity… a love for home, land, and an extended view of family,” as well as “an awareness that… persons are more important than things, personal relations more fulfilling than material success, and serenity more valuable than life in the fast lane.” The bishops were quick to note that Latinos were not the only people to possess such an ethos but that these qualities were also more than “merely folkloric stereotypes.” It would be difficult to find a text more prophetic and populist than this, or more hostile to the vested economic and political interests that have caused so many Americans to view politics as captive to special interests. The document should be ammunition for the Democrats’ unseating of the Republicans’ social Darwinism.”‘
We should remember that Hispanics represent the future of the US church, certainly by demographics. We should also remember than prejudice against Hispanic culture was a core component of nativist anti-Catholicism, a prejudice that is alive and kicking in today’s immigration debates.
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