Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
A Great Light Shineth…On The Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States
The Roman Catholics of this area of the United States and, represented by us, all of the Catholics of the Americas, are making ready to welcome the visit of Pope Benedict XVI during April.
In the person of the Pope, we Catholics are not simply receiving a Chief of State, and much less still, simply a great writer or famous personality. We Roman Catholics receive the Pope with enormous gratitude and are joyful at his visit and physical presence among us, because he is, above all, the successor of Peter, the first of the Apostles in the Church and the one who is for us the confirmation of truth and unity. In other words, we Catholics see the Pope’s visit to our particular churches as an event that should strengthen our faith and encourage our hope.
A large part of today’s Catholic world knew Pope John Paul II, thanks to his long time at the head of the Church. We knew him in the early days and latter years of his mission, as well as during his times of strength and frailty. John Paul II was seen and heard, followed and loved, but he was not always obeyed. Benedict XVI is another man altogether and – according to an old adage – “the style is the man”. The current Pope, the one that will be visiting us, is a German priest, an intellectual, a recognized thinker of our times and circumstances from the viewpoint of Christian theology, in his role as a great academic, professor and prolific writer.
And Benedict XVI comes to us in a space and time conditioned and characterized by difficult circumstances, not only in terms of what is happening in the United States, but also in the history of the entire American Continent and the world as a whole.
In effect, and at an internal level in this Nation, we are going through a worrisome and evident time of economic “recession” or of “deceleration” (the terminology or technicalities are immaterial, in the end, when the pocketbooks and needs of the poor are at stake), with all that this signifies: fewer job opportunities and, with this, less access to personal and social welfare – e.g., to more highly qualified training, better housing, better health care, and so on. It is a difficult time, above all, because it gravely and scandalously reveals the huge gaps and inequalities that are prevalent in North American society, where a handful of people have a super abundance of wealth, while millions survive a situation of injustice for anyone living in the world’s most powerful Nation, and a situation too that is unworthy and inhuman for any among the children of God.
We find ourselves currently immersed in an electoral battle for the presidency of this Nation. In a Nation in which, from a social and governmental standpoint, the stakes surround issues that are indeed major and pressing, topics of the delicacy and controversial nature of war and peace, the rights of the unborn, U.S. foreign policy, public sexual morals, immigration reform and with it, the rights of those who have magnified this country’s economic greatness with their work, sweat, abnegation and sacrifice, only to then be abused, exploited, mistreated and persecuted. And this is a treatment of immigrants that is clearly at odds with the image of the United States in the eyes of the world as the safe harbor and oasis of freedom, of democracy and of respect for civil rights and the dignity of the human race.
And as if all of this were not enough, we also find ourselves immersed in warfare being waged in different parts of the world, and especially in Iraq. This is a war that comes with great losses of human life, with unjust and unjustifiable spending on arms, with the destruction of what was once the land of the Old Testament and that signifies a huge step backward in age-old progress and development in the humanization and civilization of Mankind.
The climate in the heart of the Catholic Church in this Nation is hardly alien to the social crisis. We carry with us the still fresh wounds of recent scandals involving sexual abuse, and in which ordained ministers of the Church have been implicated. Worrisome too is the ever-lower number of those confessing a vocation for life as priests or nuns and the constant challenge of building the Church in the midst of such diversity between that which is “national” and “immigrant”, “Catholic” and “ecumenical”. The fact is that universal unity is enriching, precisely because of its ethnic, social and cultural diversity. And this diversity has identifiable faces: namely, the more than 45 million Spanish-speaking men and women who inhabit this Nation (the immense majority of them Catholic in terms of their roots and identity), not counting growing waves of immigration from Europe, Asia and Africa. All of this signifies that, currently, over a quarter of the entire population of the United States of America is made up of immigrants.
These and other changing circumstances and concerns form the political, economic, social, cultural and ecclesiastical context of our times. And they constitute our current challenge, as well as our historical responsibility.
Within the framework of this reality, Benedict XVI faces a challenge of his own, since we men and women of good faith, Catholics or not, who inhabit the length and breadth of this Nation, conditioned by these and other circumstances, eagerly await his message, the light of the Gospel, the coming true of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” And in this way, the religious and Christian experience, as lived in the bossom of the Roman Catholic Church, stands to become an ever more possible, amiable, credible, hopeful and saving life experience.
In the person of the Pope, we Catholics are not simply receiving a Chief of State, and much less still, simply a great writer or famous personality. We Roman Catholics receive the Pope with enormous gratitude and are joyful at his visit and physical presence among us, because he is, above all, the successor of Peter, the first of the Apostles in the Church and the one who is for us the confirmation of truth and unity. In other words, we Catholics see the Pope’s visit to our particular churches as an event that should strengthen our faith and encourage our hope.
A large part of today’s Catholic world knew Pope John Paul II, thanks to his long time at the head of the Church. We knew him in the early days and latter years of his mission, as well as during his times of strength and frailty. John Paul II was seen and heard, followed and loved, but he was not always obeyed. Benedict XVI is another man altogether and – according to an old adage – “the style is the man”. The current Pope, the one that will be visiting us, is a German priest, an intellectual, a recognized thinker of our times and circumstances from the viewpoint of Christian theology, in his role as a great academic, professor and prolific writer.
And Benedict XVI comes to us in a space and time conditioned and characterized by difficult circumstances, not only in terms of what is happening in the United States, but also in the history of the entire American Continent and the world as a whole.
In effect, and at an internal level in this Nation, we are going through a worrisome and evident time of economic “recession” or of “deceleration” (the terminology or technicalities are immaterial, in the end, when the pocketbooks and needs of the poor are at stake), with all that this signifies: fewer job opportunities and, with this, less access to personal and social welfare – e.g., to more highly qualified training, better housing, better health care, and so on. It is a difficult time, above all, because it gravely and scandalously reveals the huge gaps and inequalities that are prevalent in North American society, where a handful of people have a super abundance of wealth, while millions survive a situation of injustice for anyone living in the world’s most powerful Nation, and a situation too that is unworthy and inhuman for any among the children of God.
We find ourselves currently immersed in an electoral battle for the presidency of this Nation. In a Nation in which, from a social and governmental standpoint, the stakes surround issues that are indeed major and pressing, topics of the delicacy and controversial nature of war and peace, the rights of the unborn, U.S. foreign policy, public sexual morals, immigration reform and with it, the rights of those who have magnified this country’s economic greatness with their work, sweat, abnegation and sacrifice, only to then be abused, exploited, mistreated and persecuted. And this is a treatment of immigrants that is clearly at odds with the image of the United States in the eyes of the world as the safe harbor and oasis of freedom, of democracy and of respect for civil rights and the dignity of the human race.
And as if all of this were not enough, we also find ourselves immersed in warfare being waged in different parts of the world, and especially in Iraq. This is a war that comes with great losses of human life, with unjust and unjustifiable spending on arms, with the destruction of what was once the land of the Old Testament and that signifies a huge step backward in age-old progress and development in the humanization and civilization of Mankind.
The climate in the heart of the Catholic Church in this Nation is hardly alien to the social crisis. We carry with us the still fresh wounds of recent scandals involving sexual abuse, and in which ordained ministers of the Church have been implicated. Worrisome too is the ever-lower number of those confessing a vocation for life as priests or nuns and the constant challenge of building the Church in the midst of such diversity between that which is “national” and “immigrant”, “Catholic” and “ecumenical”. The fact is that universal unity is enriching, precisely because of its ethnic, social and cultural diversity. And this diversity has identifiable faces: namely, the more than 45 million Spanish-speaking men and women who inhabit this Nation (the immense majority of them Catholic in terms of their roots and identity), not counting growing waves of immigration from Europe, Asia and Africa. All of this signifies that, currently, over a quarter of the entire population of the United States of America is made up of immigrants.
These and other changing circumstances and concerns form the political, economic, social, cultural and ecclesiastical context of our times. And they constitute our current challenge, as well as our historical responsibility.
Within the framework of this reality, Benedict XVI faces a challenge of his own, since we men and women of good faith, Catholics or not, who inhabit the length and breadth of this Nation, conditioned by these and other circumstances, eagerly await his message, the light of the Gospel, the coming true of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” And in this way, the religious and Christian experience, as lived in the bossom of the Roman Catholic Church, stands to become an ever more possible, amiable, credible, hopeful and saving life experience.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Resurrection as a Celebration of Hope
Every Sunday, but especially during the Easter Season, and very especially on the Sunday following the Easter Vigil (Holy Saturday), Roman Catholic Liturgy commemorates and celebrates the confession of faith that sustains and makes sense of the Christian religion and of the life of every believer, and of the Church community as a whole: namely, that Christ is Risen, that His news, His message, His life’s project and the much-heralded and witnessed coming of the Kingdom of God live on in the new life of Christians in the Church and in the building of a better world – a world in which it is our mission to live bent on complying with the will of the Father of Jesus Christ, our Father, and which consists of loving each other even as God loves us.
At the core and in the essence of the teachings of Jesus – through His words and deeds, through His prophetic aspiration and through the perception of His works as seen by his compatriots and contemporaries and as witnessed in the New Testament – is the establishment of the Kingdom of God, much-heralded by the Prophets and awaited by the people of the Old Testament. But contrary to the warrior/military and politically expansionist traits attributed to this Messiah, the profile of this Messenger, this Envoy come to establish the Kingdom of God, is that of a Jesus who presented the Sovereignty of God on Earth through the love of all those who recognize themselves as the children of the Father and, as such, build their world in a peace that sows justice, peace as the sum of God’s blessings for Man, asserted in abounding truth, compassion, mercy, solidarity, bread, health, forgiveness, freedom, good news and renewed opportunities for life, and not just any life, but abounding life.
The Resurrection, that fundamental confession of faith of the first Christians, was born of a transformation of their lives through the Crucified Lord. Arising from this transformation, they know and confess themselves to be "new men". And in this new life they now raise their voices to God the “Father” and find the Living Crucified Christ upon “breaking bread” and this brings them together as brothers and sisters in small communities of faith and hope, in which they possess the knowledge that they have passed from death to life, a new life in which they now effectively love one another so that not one among them suffers want.
Christian Easter is, then, a celebration of life over death. It is the triumph of love and forgiveness over hatred and it is, for this reason, the opening of a new life, a new world in which peaceful coexistence and reconciliation and goodness are made possible through the new mandate of love, which is the summary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who invites Man to partake of a new lifestyle, which consists not of selfishly saving and tending to one’s own life, but of spending one’s life on others, as a condition for happiness and for the eternal life that we all seek and for which we yearn for as long as we are on this earthly pilgrimage.
The most superficial analysis of our current national and international reality provides a sharp contrast to the principles of the New Testament, which is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God as lived and heralded by Jesus and practiced by the communities arising from the ministry of the Apostles. The categories of our society of today are far from those presented and suggested by the Carpenter of Nazareth as the most human means of building the new Heaven on the new Earth.
Today, in the United States of America, we are living in times of deep crisis, of great and grave uncertainty regarding the immediate future: We do not live in peace due to the armed conflicts on which erratic government policies have embarked us. We fail to know whether our senior citizens will be able to enjoy the rights and benefits of their work during retirement or whether current medical services will be able to continue in the form of the most universal and efficient coverage possible for the North American population. Nor do we know if today’s children and youth will have access to an education, or to a proper education, and so on. And all of this is taking place in the midst of an evident recession – one that is undeclared officially but one that is apparent on an everyday basis in both labor and commerce – and also amid an intense, extensive and costly presidential race, characterized by the emergence of new models of candidates and new sectors of the voting population that are being thrown into the ever manipulated, ever self-interested and ever biased mix made of this, and of all information emerging from the Social Communications Media.
But the situation is neither better nor more hope-inspiring in the rest of the world: We have advanced in technical-scientific manipulation but have reverted in the task of humanizing Man and communities. This is manifest in ills that affect today’s world: famine, forced displacements, huge migratory waves, vast inequalities between the few people and nations with squandered wealth to spare and the enormous masses that have nothing, rampant administrative corruption in government systems and multinational corporations alike, the lack of elemental human and social opportunities for the greatest part of the population and for the most diverse of reasons, as well as the lack of access to such basic needs as housing, health, education and work.
From our Christian viewpoint of Man, the world and their history, this disheartening outlook finds its roots in sin, which is manifest in the injustice, unbridled greed and hedonism of a culture that gives priority to knowledge of the world over knowledge of the Kingdom of God, a culture that turns its back on God and where the selfish whims of Man take privilege over the creative, paternal and merciful will of God.
But it is precisely within this inhuman and unjust reality that we Christians must ask ourselves about the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth in the life of his followers and about the presence of the values of the Scriptures in the world, about the ferment of the masses and the effectiveness of the evangelizing task of the Church. In the light of the Gospel, far from intimidating us, this world should challenge us, as of the Easter of Christ, to build upon Easter worldwide – to go from darkness into day, from indifference to love, from intolerance of differences to reconciliation born of brotherly dialog, from attachment to the temporal to yearning for the eternal, from the corrupt and corruptible to the new and transcendental, from a thousand kinds of death to the bounty of life that God offers us in the Resurrected Christ.
Today, then, more than ever, the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ takes on significance as a challenge to all Christians, to all men and women of goodwill, to build the new world that we all yearn for and the new Earth that we also all aspire to as the best living space and time possible for future generations, a world built on the criteria of the Kingdom of God.
At the core and in the essence of the teachings of Jesus – through His words and deeds, through His prophetic aspiration and through the perception of His works as seen by his compatriots and contemporaries and as witnessed in the New Testament – is the establishment of the Kingdom of God, much-heralded by the Prophets and awaited by the people of the Old Testament. But contrary to the warrior/military and politically expansionist traits attributed to this Messiah, the profile of this Messenger, this Envoy come to establish the Kingdom of God, is that of a Jesus who presented the Sovereignty of God on Earth through the love of all those who recognize themselves as the children of the Father and, as such, build their world in a peace that sows justice, peace as the sum of God’s blessings for Man, asserted in abounding truth, compassion, mercy, solidarity, bread, health, forgiveness, freedom, good news and renewed opportunities for life, and not just any life, but abounding life.
The Resurrection, that fundamental confession of faith of the first Christians, was born of a transformation of their lives through the Crucified Lord. Arising from this transformation, they know and confess themselves to be "new men". And in this new life they now raise their voices to God the “Father” and find the Living Crucified Christ upon “breaking bread” and this brings them together as brothers and sisters in small communities of faith and hope, in which they possess the knowledge that they have passed from death to life, a new life in which they now effectively love one another so that not one among them suffers want.
Christian Easter is, then, a celebration of life over death. It is the triumph of love and forgiveness over hatred and it is, for this reason, the opening of a new life, a new world in which peaceful coexistence and reconciliation and goodness are made possible through the new mandate of love, which is the summary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who invites Man to partake of a new lifestyle, which consists not of selfishly saving and tending to one’s own life, but of spending one’s life on others, as a condition for happiness and for the eternal life that we all seek and for which we yearn for as long as we are on this earthly pilgrimage.
The most superficial analysis of our current national and international reality provides a sharp contrast to the principles of the New Testament, which is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God as lived and heralded by Jesus and practiced by the communities arising from the ministry of the Apostles. The categories of our society of today are far from those presented and suggested by the Carpenter of Nazareth as the most human means of building the new Heaven on the new Earth.
Today, in the United States of America, we are living in times of deep crisis, of great and grave uncertainty regarding the immediate future: We do not live in peace due to the armed conflicts on which erratic government policies have embarked us. We fail to know whether our senior citizens will be able to enjoy the rights and benefits of their work during retirement or whether current medical services will be able to continue in the form of the most universal and efficient coverage possible for the North American population. Nor do we know if today’s children and youth will have access to an education, or to a proper education, and so on. And all of this is taking place in the midst of an evident recession – one that is undeclared officially but one that is apparent on an everyday basis in both labor and commerce – and also amid an intense, extensive and costly presidential race, characterized by the emergence of new models of candidates and new sectors of the voting population that are being thrown into the ever manipulated, ever self-interested and ever biased mix made of this, and of all information emerging from the Social Communications Media.
But the situation is neither better nor more hope-inspiring in the rest of the world: We have advanced in technical-scientific manipulation but have reverted in the task of humanizing Man and communities. This is manifest in ills that affect today’s world: famine, forced displacements, huge migratory waves, vast inequalities between the few people and nations with squandered wealth to spare and the enormous masses that have nothing, rampant administrative corruption in government systems and multinational corporations alike, the lack of elemental human and social opportunities for the greatest part of the population and for the most diverse of reasons, as well as the lack of access to such basic needs as housing, health, education and work.
From our Christian viewpoint of Man, the world and their history, this disheartening outlook finds its roots in sin, which is manifest in the injustice, unbridled greed and hedonism of a culture that gives priority to knowledge of the world over knowledge of the Kingdom of God, a culture that turns its back on God and where the selfish whims of Man take privilege over the creative, paternal and merciful will of God.
But it is precisely within this inhuman and unjust reality that we Christians must ask ourselves about the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth in the life of his followers and about the presence of the values of the Scriptures in the world, about the ferment of the masses and the effectiveness of the evangelizing task of the Church. In the light of the Gospel, far from intimidating us, this world should challenge us, as of the Easter of Christ, to build upon Easter worldwide – to go from darkness into day, from indifference to love, from intolerance of differences to reconciliation born of brotherly dialog, from attachment to the temporal to yearning for the eternal, from the corrupt and corruptible to the new and transcendental, from a thousand kinds of death to the bounty of life that God offers us in the Resurrected Christ.
Today, then, more than ever, the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ takes on significance as a challenge to all Christians, to all men and women of goodwill, to build the new world that we all yearn for and the new Earth that we also all aspire to as the best living space and time possible for future generations, a world built on the criteria of the Kingdom of God.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL) Inauguration Speech
Your Excellencies, colleagues and dear friends,
It is a joy and a privilege to stand in front of you today and speak on behalf of all of the members of the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders. The organization we refer to as C.A.L.L.
Historic moment: Today we are experiencing a historic moment. For the first time in our life in the United States - and in the life of the Catholic Church in this country - we have a group of Hispanic Latino business and professional leaders that have come together to reflect and work on the issues that concern our community from the perspective of the Catholic faith and tradition. There are many Hispanic and Latino groups throughout the Nation, but none created to convene Latino leadership that openly profess their Catholic faith and beliefs.
The importance of Latinos: We are all aware of the magnitude of the Hispanic presence in the United States. According to an American Community Survey conducted by the US Census, in 2006 there were approximately 45 million Hispanics in the US, representing 15% of the total population. The Selig Center estimates Hispanic purchasing power will surpass all U.S. minority groups by 2007 with a buying power of $863.1 billion, and is expected to be almost $1.2 trillion by 2011. That's more than 450 percent growth from 1990 to 2011. In contrast, non-Hispanic buying power’s rate of growth is estimated to be 176% over the same period.
Support of Archbishops: This historic gathering is taking place thanks to the leadership and vision of Archbishop Jose Gomez from this important Archdiocese of San Antonio. Archbishop Gomez has engaged in continuous dialogue with Latino leaders in various professional fields in the hope that they will actively participate in conversations with the dominant culture in our society, speaking with well-informed opinions and from the perspective of our Catholic tradition.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver was the first prelate in the Church to encourage and support Archbishop Gomez in this noble initiative. This process began three years ago with an annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. We have now arrived at this moment: we have a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Texas with a tax exempt status.
Mission of CALL: Heeding God’s call as members of His Church and active participants in her mission of evangelization, and recognizing our responsibility as leaders within our Hispanic communities, our mission is to work within the context of our culture and in communion with our bishops to promote the common good of Latinos in the United States. This Catholic Association of Latino Leaders will provide a forum for members to strengthen their faith in community through prayer, education and service. We commit to being a national voice for Hispanics on social justice issues and to impact the national dialogue and its outcome in favor of improving our nation’s policies affecting Latinos.
We are people that believe in ethical values, and know they are neither a limitation nor a restraint on business but rather an opportunity that furthers efficiency and business objectives. Moral values are not enemies of the economy nor of its business enterprises, on the contrary they are their best allies. Immorality does not help business rather it weakens it.
Placing it within the Catholic Church’s Framework: The social doctrine of our Church places a very high importance on entrepreneurship, which is a reflection of God’s creativity; this social doctrine does not in any way contain the idea of an intrinsically evil economy that is to be restrained with the reins of ethics like a ferocious beast that must be tamed. On the contrary, it reasserts that the economy, a resolve of human activity, has meaning and longevity only when it corresponds to an anthropological reality. Our late Holy Father, John Paul II, explained the failure of Communism as a result of a major anthropological error which could only lead to economic failure. He also criticized Capitalism, not for its economic system, but for the weakening of the entire social system as it limits itself to producing goods and services, and falls into an equally condemnable materialism.
We cannot deny that the Church and the business world have suffered an ambiguous relationship. Today, we have the opportunity to recognize the positive role of the market rather than condemn its ideology as anti-religious, inhuman, and socially unsustainable. The Catholic life cannot be lived in a dichotomy. Faith matters. All of our being calls us to have an integral personal development. We cannot pretend to be religious in the Church and ruthless in the workplace or community. This is a false interpretation of the human person.
Fr. Bartolome Las Casas of the 16th century, a Dominican Spanish priest, criticized the oppression of the Conquistadores. Las Casas condemned slavery because it presumed that non-Christians had no rights and no souls worth saving. Fr. Las Casas was a critic of power and a genuine champion of liberation who never lost site of the primary focus on the individual person.
Joseph Ratzinger was a champion of the Second Vatican Council that declared the unequivocal right to religious freedom and thus the wisdom of separating Church from the State. The Pope’s support for the politics of freedom grows out of his ideal of a depoliticized faith. In his visit to Brazil his message was to demonstrate that one can care about justice for the poor without constructing a practice that calls for even more power to the State. “What is real?” Benedict asked in a speech in Brazil. “Only material goods, social and economical problems? No, the conscience and soul are also real.”
CALL: CALL will be the full realization of our vocation as Christian Catholic leaders. CALL is the organization where there will be no place for double standards, for immorality or unethical actions. The call that we have received by joining this organization is to work for a better society to improve our communities and for the integration of our Christian principles which are rooted in our Catholic tradition, and experience of the Church. This is the challenge we have received.
Specifics: We actively embrace the issues of preserving and promoting Catholic values such as the sanctity and dignity of life, of marriage and family life, Catholic faith formation and education, vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, promoting the dignity of every person, and furthering the evangelization of culture and the common good, all in collaboration with our bishops. The current debate on immigration is one of the most tragic experiences in recent time. To single out an entire community of people as the detestable is to regress in time and history and to have a mean spirit.
According to a recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center, two-thirds of Hispanics (64%) say the debate over immigration policy and the failure of Congress to enact an immigration reform bill have made life more difficult for Latinos living in this country. The same study states that roughly half of all Hispanics report the increased public attention to immigration issues has negatively impacted their lives in one or more ways. This unresolved debate has been for the Nation, the opinion makers and the politicians a lost opportunity to build a solution to the immigration question inspired by authentic humanism. The human person is sacred and in the United States all people are recognized by the Constitution as having inalienable rights.
Call to action: We would like to invite anyone, moved by the teaching of the Gospels, of our Lord Jesus Christ, to join us in this remarkable journey to further the Christian mission that will enrich individual and cultural transformation full of love, generosity and hope.
It is a joy and a privilege to stand in front of you today and speak on behalf of all of the members of the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders. The organization we refer to as C.A.L.L.
Historic moment: Today we are experiencing a historic moment. For the first time in our life in the United States - and in the life of the Catholic Church in this country - we have a group of Hispanic Latino business and professional leaders that have come together to reflect and work on the issues that concern our community from the perspective of the Catholic faith and tradition. There are many Hispanic and Latino groups throughout the Nation, but none created to convene Latino leadership that openly profess their Catholic faith and beliefs.
The importance of Latinos: We are all aware of the magnitude of the Hispanic presence in the United States. According to an American Community Survey conducted by the US Census, in 2006 there were approximately 45 million Hispanics in the US, representing 15% of the total population. The Selig Center estimates Hispanic purchasing power will surpass all U.S. minority groups by 2007 with a buying power of $863.1 billion, and is expected to be almost $1.2 trillion by 2011. That's more than 450 percent growth from 1990 to 2011. In contrast, non-Hispanic buying power’s rate of growth is estimated to be 176% over the same period.
Support of Archbishops: This historic gathering is taking place thanks to the leadership and vision of Archbishop Jose Gomez from this important Archdiocese of San Antonio. Archbishop Gomez has engaged in continuous dialogue with Latino leaders in various professional fields in the hope that they will actively participate in conversations with the dominant culture in our society, speaking with well-informed opinions and from the perspective of our Catholic tradition.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver was the first prelate in the Church to encourage and support Archbishop Gomez in this noble initiative. This process began three years ago with an annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. We have now arrived at this moment: we have a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Texas with a tax exempt status.
Mission of CALL: Heeding God’s call as members of His Church and active participants in her mission of evangelization, and recognizing our responsibility as leaders within our Hispanic communities, our mission is to work within the context of our culture and in communion with our bishops to promote the common good of Latinos in the United States. This Catholic Association of Latino Leaders will provide a forum for members to strengthen their faith in community through prayer, education and service. We commit to being a national voice for Hispanics on social justice issues and to impact the national dialogue and its outcome in favor of improving our nation’s policies affecting Latinos.
We are people that believe in ethical values, and know they are neither a limitation nor a restraint on business but rather an opportunity that furthers efficiency and business objectives. Moral values are not enemies of the economy nor of its business enterprises, on the contrary they are their best allies. Immorality does not help business rather it weakens it.
Placing it within the Catholic Church’s Framework: The social doctrine of our Church places a very high importance on entrepreneurship, which is a reflection of God’s creativity; this social doctrine does not in any way contain the idea of an intrinsically evil economy that is to be restrained with the reins of ethics like a ferocious beast that must be tamed. On the contrary, it reasserts that the economy, a resolve of human activity, has meaning and longevity only when it corresponds to an anthropological reality. Our late Holy Father, John Paul II, explained the failure of Communism as a result of a major anthropological error which could only lead to economic failure. He also criticized Capitalism, not for its economic system, but for the weakening of the entire social system as it limits itself to producing goods and services, and falls into an equally condemnable materialism.
We cannot deny that the Church and the business world have suffered an ambiguous relationship. Today, we have the opportunity to recognize the positive role of the market rather than condemn its ideology as anti-religious, inhuman, and socially unsustainable. The Catholic life cannot be lived in a dichotomy. Faith matters. All of our being calls us to have an integral personal development. We cannot pretend to be religious in the Church and ruthless in the workplace or community. This is a false interpretation of the human person.
Fr. Bartolome Las Casas of the 16th century, a Dominican Spanish priest, criticized the oppression of the Conquistadores. Las Casas condemned slavery because it presumed that non-Christians had no rights and no souls worth saving. Fr. Las Casas was a critic of power and a genuine champion of liberation who never lost site of the primary focus on the individual person.
Joseph Ratzinger was a champion of the Second Vatican Council that declared the unequivocal right to religious freedom and thus the wisdom of separating Church from the State. The Pope’s support for the politics of freedom grows out of his ideal of a depoliticized faith. In his visit to Brazil his message was to demonstrate that one can care about justice for the poor without constructing a practice that calls for even more power to the State. “What is real?” Benedict asked in a speech in Brazil. “Only material goods, social and economical problems? No, the conscience and soul are also real.”
CALL: CALL will be the full realization of our vocation as Christian Catholic leaders. CALL is the organization where there will be no place for double standards, for immorality or unethical actions. The call that we have received by joining this organization is to work for a better society to improve our communities and for the integration of our Christian principles which are rooted in our Catholic tradition, and experience of the Church. This is the challenge we have received.
Specifics: We actively embrace the issues of preserving and promoting Catholic values such as the sanctity and dignity of life, of marriage and family life, Catholic faith formation and education, vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, promoting the dignity of every person, and furthering the evangelization of culture and the common good, all in collaboration with our bishops. The current debate on immigration is one of the most tragic experiences in recent time. To single out an entire community of people as the detestable is to regress in time and history and to have a mean spirit.
According to a recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center, two-thirds of Hispanics (64%) say the debate over immigration policy and the failure of Congress to enact an immigration reform bill have made life more difficult for Latinos living in this country. The same study states that roughly half of all Hispanics report the increased public attention to immigration issues has negatively impacted their lives in one or more ways. This unresolved debate has been for the Nation, the opinion makers and the politicians a lost opportunity to build a solution to the immigration question inspired by authentic humanism. The human person is sacred and in the United States all people are recognized by the Constitution as having inalienable rights.
Call to action: We would like to invite anyone, moved by the teaching of the Gospels, of our Lord Jesus Christ, to join us in this remarkable journey to further the Christian mission that will enrich individual and cultural transformation full of love, generosity and hope.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL)
Our Reality...
In recent decades, the reality of the Hispanic Community living in the United States of America – and which the National Census Bureau and the most diverse statistics imaginable seek to capture in figures – has become a boundless and ever-changing one.
Not counting those who reside in Puerto Rico, the Census Bureau now counts 34 million Hispanics living in this Nation, 60% of them born within US territory.
The Bureau also reports that the educational and academic indices of the Hispanic Community are on the rise: There are now more Hispanics in US schools and a growing number of them are graduating and receiving diplomas from North American universities.
In politics, the figures indicate that if more than 6.5 million Hispanics took part in the last presidential race, as many as 8.6 million could participate in the upcoming presidential elections, a fact that represents an unquestionably important variable, capable of tipping the balance when it comes to defining and choosing those who will govern the destiny of the Nation.
In business, the increase in the participation, leadership and purchasing power of Hispanics has been noteworthy. More than 2 million businesses in the United States are today owned by proprietors of Hispanic origin. The National Census Bureau confirms what has become evident: the undeniable, growing, far-reaching and decisive presence of the Hispanic Community in all walks of North American life and society.
But, beyond this, we also find and have proof that the reasons why Hispanics immigrate to this Nation and the profile of the Hispanic immigrant as such are changing: In the past decade, Hispanic families hailing from the different countries of Latin America have arrived here with high standards of living and education and have set up housekeeping in the United States for reasons of security and business.
Furthermore, a new profile has emerged in ties between the United States and Latin American countries, especially in the face of the Free Trade Agreements signed, for example, with Mexico, Chile, Peru, Central America, the Dominican Republic, and those to be approved and signed soon with Panama and Colombia. All of this implies new realities for the American Continent, realities that pose new challenges.
Mainly Catholic from our origins as Latin American peoples and nations, the Hispanic Community in the United States has not, however, altogether found its place in the Catholic Church that forms part of this country, nor has the Roman Catholic Church managed, through its evangelizing mission, to permeate the life of the Hispanic Community in the United States at all levels.
The effects of this divorce, this estrangement, this oversight that exists between Hispanic life in the United States and our faith and identity as Roman Catholics are especially hard-felt in Hispanic Catholic circles of political, professional and economic leadership at the heart of the Hispanic Community that have the capacity to relate to and engage in dialog with the different strata of life and society in this Nation.
Our Response...
Immersed in the current reality of the Hispanic Community present in the United States – as briefly described above – aware too of the growing importance of the Hispanic presence in this Nation and, at the same time, conscious of the gap and serious neglect that exists between the Roman Catholic Church of the United States and we Hispanics who make our way, with our history, culture and Catholic faith, through life on North American soil, and still further aware of the lack of and urgent need for a professional organization of Latinos capable of congregating business and professional people from different fields of knowledge, Catholic Archbishops José Gómez of San Antonio and Charles Chaput of Denver are encouraging a dialog that springs from within the Hispanic Community, the Church and American Society as a whole. Knowledgeable like few others of the “Hispanic phenomenon” in the United States, they have been holding talks with professionals and business people with the aim of founding a much lacking and much needed organization: an Hispanic association with the kind of qualified representation necessary to articulate the major concerns of the Hispanic Community within and in relation with the Catholic Church and at the highest levels of society in the United States of America.
The aim is to create a lay organization of Catholic professionals and business leaders which – enlightened by the principles and values of the Holy Gospel, inspired by the humanism lived and preached by Jesus Christ, in harmony with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and imbued with the deeply human and Christian values that are so much a part of the Hispanic essence (solidarity, sharing even in poverty, the sense of celebrating life, of festivity, of sorrow, of death, the importance of family and work, and the value of friendship) – will be capable of contributing the best that Hispanic culture has to offer to US society and culture as a whole.
The Church, Mother and Teacher, has much to teach, to accompany and to learn in this segment of the Hispanic Community, a segment made up of leaders from the professional and business worlds. These men and women themselves belong to, are and indeed make up part of the Church and, as such – based on Christian humanism, on the model of Man and society proposed by Jesus Christ and the Word of the Holy Scriptures – can engage with new impetus in the defense of life and of every person as a child of God and as brothers and sisters among themselves, while testifying to the value of work, home, education, health, freedom, honesty, social justice, peace, progress, integration, communion, participation, responsible citizenship, national dialog, the search for the common good among men and nations alike, and so on. And all of these things in a clear response against the culture of death in all of its multiple and concern-provoking manifestations that have become so much a part of society and culture. An authentic discipleship, through conscious, committed and active participation in the Church can, then, provide members of this organization with important tools for use in developing personal, social and Christian life.
The Church, with its worldwide evangelizing mission, has much to contribute and accompany and much to teach and learn in the interior of the Hispanic Community and, more concretely, among its professional and business leaders and among those from the fields of science and the arts and those connected with the development of contemporary culture. And all of this constitutes an urgent need, a challenge, a pending task, a responsibility and a hope, especially when these spaces in the life of Man appear today to be ignored, worryingly abandoned, forgotten, neglected, impervious to the Gospel.
This, then, is why Bishops Gómez and Chaput recently called a meeting of Catholic Hispanic leaders, at which the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL) was founded. At this meeting, CALL also elected its first Board of Directors and the author of these lines is honored to have been named Chairman. In order to initiate this drive of hope, we have legally established the Association under the laws of the State of Texas and obtained our Charter, setting up our headquarters at the Archbishopric of San Antonio. CALL is to be financed by its members themselves and three major annual events have already been programmed:
- A Spiritual Retreat for Hispanic professionals.
- A Meeting of members of the Association.
- An annual professional conference for Catholic Hispanic business and professional people.
There will be other regional activities in major urban centers around the United States where large Spanish-speaking populations are found, such as: San Antonio, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago, among others.
Our Identity: Vision and Mission...
Within the varied landscape of already existing Hispanic groups throughout the United States, with all of their diverse aims, CALL does not aspire to be just one more organization. CALL is, instead, a Catholic Association at the service of leadership in the Hispanic Community of the United States. It is formed from among professional and business men and women, enlightened by and committed to the values and principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as espoused by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and incorporated into the cultural and historical identity of our nations as part of the necessary, equitable, respectful and just dialog that must be permanently established between the Hispanic Community and the rest of North American and Latin American Society.
To this end, CALL will seek to be:
- A forum for Catholic leaders from the Hispanic/Latino Community in the United States of America, with its aim being to serve as an instrument for dialog with the dominant culture, while offering a professional and responsible voice and presence in defense of the Hispanic Catholic essence.
- A venue that makes possible and accompanies the training of Hispanic Catholic professionals and business people to stand at the forefront of the Hispanic Community’s presence in the political, economic, social and cultural life and events of this Nation.
- A center for national dialog and education to provide for maturity in Hispanic Catholic leadership and within the entire Hispanic community present in the United States, and for the development of its urgent role in the present and future of the Nation.
Our Hope...
From the outset of this journey, full of hope and goodwill at the service of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Church and inserted within the world at large, ready as we are to serve the Hispanic Community within the context of new North and Latin American realities that face us on this pilgrimage with our Catholic faith, it is encouraging to note that this Association is responding to the meaning of the acronym that stands for its name: CALL. This is, indeed an organization built on a “calling”, a “convocation” of wills, a “vocation”.
We Catholic laymen and, more concretely, we professionals and business people who are Catholic Hispanics living in the United States, have the primary vocation of living our humanity in the image and likeness of God, being, as we are, his creations and his children as followers of Christ. We have the vocation of being disciples of the Gospel, each within his or her status, style, condition and life circumstances. And, in accordance with the aims of CALL, we also have the vocation to be proper, conscientious and responsible leaders of the Hispanic Community’s presence in this Nation, backed by our origins, our history, our culture, our values and our faith and those of our ancestors.
A calling always encompasses a mission. And the acronym that stands for our Association is, at once, then, a calling, a challenge, and a task.
Ladies and gentlemen, Catholic and Hispanic business people and professionals residing in the United States of America, I invite you, call upon you and convoke you, through CALL, to join me in rising to the challenge and demands posed by the Hispanic Community in this Nation.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Making This a Truly “New” Year
According to our calendars, our way of measuring time, one year ends and another begins. This is always a propitious occasion on which to pause in order to evaluate and reflect on what lies behind us in life, so as to weigh our present and calculate and foresee our future, both as individuals and as a community.
It is also a time of celebration: We celebrate the life we leave behind. We celebrate everything that we are and everything that we have in the present. But above all, we celebrate our fondest aspirations for the human race as a whole.
Each year arrives with its own novelties and surprises at an individual, family, social, national and worldwide level.
In the case of those of us living in the United States of America, New Year 2008 involves a presidential campaign and election. We are not unaware of the fact that the results of this political race will have a marked influence not only at a local and domestic level, but also on an international and worldwide plane.
The coming electoral process is characterized by a degree of political and social erosion that is unparalleled in the recent history of this Nation. The presidential campaign has begun early and will be long. And it is a campaign that – misguided and mishandled like so many others in so many other places on earth – could well undermine politics and the political process, social values and the common good, democracy and public service, and may end up exhausting the voters already overwhelmed by the millions upon millions of dollars squandered on deceitful, pernicious advertising and on the kind of degrading and defamatory advertising that only serves to distort reality.
Despite all of this, and without ignoring the major problems currently facing the United States and the grave institutional and economic crisis in which it finds itself, and without forgetting the institutional and economic crises that the rest of the community of Nations is facing, and remaining fully conscious of the fact that the country we inhabit is the most influential Nation on earth, we cannot elude the historical, political and social responsibility of asking ourselves – on the eve of yet another New Year – what our deepest and fondest aspirations are and which among them are the most urgent and advisable for ourselves and for the future of mankind as a whole.
There is an urgent need, then, to take part in the public debate, and for these elections to be active, aware, discerning, reasoned, reasonable, democratic and responsible. Participation should be free from political intrigue, demagoguery, falsehoods and the skewed vision of vested interests and should champion a constructive attitude at the service of public welfare and for the good of everyone.
The Hispanic Community, as a growing presence and in ever greater numbers in this Nation, can and should break with the traditional mindset that, up to the present, has balanced and shared out the workings of politics between left and right, between conservatives and liberals, between the blue and the red, and between Democrats and Republicans. The Hispanic Community has, here and now, a political responsibility to participate, in order to suggest, lead, demand, reinvent, innovate on, promote and choose political alternatives that are different from and better than the present ones. Within the current situation and under current circumstances, the Hispanic Community of this Nation has the urgent, unavoidable and inalienable opportunity to make a difference.
Through the political participation of the Hispanic Community, it is time to clarify and bring to a close the shameful process of immigration policies by which political manipulators and pettifogging shysters have played with the public and made a mockery of the hopes and just claims of millions of people. It is time to end the humiliating and ignoble situation in which millions of our migrant brothers and sisters live without proper papers in this Nation and beyond our borders as well.
Decades after the apparent end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of dictators and despotic political systems that are today a shameful stain on the annals of the history of civilization, we find ourselves shamed once more as spectators of war, as observers of hostility on the US-Mexican border, of the construction of new physical walls and walls too in the hearts of men, of persecutions, exclusions and marginalization, of the exploitation of individuals and whole peoples, of racism and discrimination fostered by the Social Communications Media, and of so very many other forms of injustice that impoverish the human spirit.
Those of us who root our lives in our faith in a Semitic and biblical mentality, know that it is within the meantime of the afterlife, in the here and now of historical space and time, that the pages of our calendars (kronos) inexorably turn and our days pass, and in which comes the time for the action, intervention and salvation of Almighty God in the history of Man (kayros). That it is in this time (kronos) that we build the Kingdom of Heaven among us (kayros) by doing His will.
The end of one year and the start of another provide a propitious opportunity for us – through the political participation of the Hispanic Community – to tear down the walls and myths erected against Hispanic migration, and for us to demand the noble place – past and present – that we deserve in the building of this Nation’s future. Only then shall we truly have a prosperous and blessed 2008!
It is also a time of celebration: We celebrate the life we leave behind. We celebrate everything that we are and everything that we have in the present. But above all, we celebrate our fondest aspirations for the human race as a whole.
Each year arrives with its own novelties and surprises at an individual, family, social, national and worldwide level.
In the case of those of us living in the United States of America, New Year 2008 involves a presidential campaign and election. We are not unaware of the fact that the results of this political race will have a marked influence not only at a local and domestic level, but also on an international and worldwide plane.
The coming electoral process is characterized by a degree of political and social erosion that is unparalleled in the recent history of this Nation. The presidential campaign has begun early and will be long. And it is a campaign that – misguided and mishandled like so many others in so many other places on earth – could well undermine politics and the political process, social values and the common good, democracy and public service, and may end up exhausting the voters already overwhelmed by the millions upon millions of dollars squandered on deceitful, pernicious advertising and on the kind of degrading and defamatory advertising that only serves to distort reality.
Despite all of this, and without ignoring the major problems currently facing the United States and the grave institutional and economic crisis in which it finds itself, and without forgetting the institutional and economic crises that the rest of the community of Nations is facing, and remaining fully conscious of the fact that the country we inhabit is the most influential Nation on earth, we cannot elude the historical, political and social responsibility of asking ourselves – on the eve of yet another New Year – what our deepest and fondest aspirations are and which among them are the most urgent and advisable for ourselves and for the future of mankind as a whole.
There is an urgent need, then, to take part in the public debate, and for these elections to be active, aware, discerning, reasoned, reasonable, democratic and responsible. Participation should be free from political intrigue, demagoguery, falsehoods and the skewed vision of vested interests and should champion a constructive attitude at the service of public welfare and for the good of everyone.
The Hispanic Community, as a growing presence and in ever greater numbers in this Nation, can and should break with the traditional mindset that, up to the present, has balanced and shared out the workings of politics between left and right, between conservatives and liberals, between the blue and the red, and between Democrats and Republicans. The Hispanic Community has, here and now, a political responsibility to participate, in order to suggest, lead, demand, reinvent, innovate on, promote and choose political alternatives that are different from and better than the present ones. Within the current situation and under current circumstances, the Hispanic Community of this Nation has the urgent, unavoidable and inalienable opportunity to make a difference.
Through the political participation of the Hispanic Community, it is time to clarify and bring to a close the shameful process of immigration policies by which political manipulators and pettifogging shysters have played with the public and made a mockery of the hopes and just claims of millions of people. It is time to end the humiliating and ignoble situation in which millions of our migrant brothers and sisters live without proper papers in this Nation and beyond our borders as well.
Decades after the apparent end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of dictators and despotic political systems that are today a shameful stain on the annals of the history of civilization, we find ourselves shamed once more as spectators of war, as observers of hostility on the US-Mexican border, of the construction of new physical walls and walls too in the hearts of men, of persecutions, exclusions and marginalization, of the exploitation of individuals and whole peoples, of racism and discrimination fostered by the Social Communications Media, and of so very many other forms of injustice that impoverish the human spirit.
Those of us who root our lives in our faith in a Semitic and biblical mentality, know that it is within the meantime of the afterlife, in the here and now of historical space and time, that the pages of our calendars (kronos) inexorably turn and our days pass, and in which comes the time for the action, intervention and salvation of Almighty God in the history of Man (kayros). That it is in this time (kronos) that we build the Kingdom of Heaven among us (kayros) by doing His will.
The end of one year and the start of another provide a propitious opportunity for us – through the political participation of the Hispanic Community – to tear down the walls and myths erected against Hispanic migration, and for us to demand the noble place – past and present – that we deserve in the building of this Nation’s future. Only then shall we truly have a prosperous and blessed 2008!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Keeping Christ in Christmas
In the midst of the voracious consumerism, unbridled marketing and paganization that are characterizing the December holiday season, combined with the recent proliferation and dissemination of falsehoods regarding Jesus of Nazareth – lies that are an affront to the very foundations of the Christian Faith – the essence, sense and significance of Christmas are obscured, and we Christians run the risk of forgetting what it is that we are actually celebrating and the implications of this annual commemoration within our Christian and ecclesiastical life, and in the lives of every man and woman of goodwill.
The remembrance of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which we Catholics celebrate in the liturgical holiday season of Christmas, finds its inspiration, foundation and source in the birth and infancy of Jesus as related to us in the New Testament and, more specifically, in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke, whose works take up that portion of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
In order to achieve an “intelligent” reading of the Bible and, with it, a “Christian” celebration of Christmas, one must distinguish and differentiate, within all of the stories related in the Bible, between two types of data on which all human stories are built and which provide the written plot for the story of Mankind as such: namely, historical data and testimonies of faith.
Historical data are all of those that provide tangible evidence, provable within our classifications of time/space, and verifiable – as such – by a universe of individuals. These data are even present in extra-biblical narratives. For example: the existence of persons and events such as the group of slaves of the Egyptians, banishment to Babylonia, Jesus of Nazareth, His ministry, His death on the cross, the first disciples (Peter and Paul), the founding of the first Christian communities, their persecution, and so on.
Testimonies of faith are data that are only valid for a certain community or group of persons and born of a singular experience. For example, that Jesus "is the Lord God" or "the Light of the World" are testimonies of faith that are valid only for Christians. Testimonies of faith constitute the priority and the main aspect in the theological purpose of the holy scribes, but they nonetheless would be impossible without historical foundation.
In other words, while it is true that the purpose of the writers of the Gospel is, first and foremost, theological – that is to say, to profess and proclaim faith in Jesus Christ (in the case of the New Testament), and not necessarily to relate historical fact in the style of today and in accordance with history as we understand it from our chronological and chronometric viewpoint, it remains, nevertheless, possible, in stories from the Bible and the New Testament, to find historical information to support and make possible the experience of Jesus Christ and information that has given rise to testimonies of faith. These are testimonies of faith, from another time and in different historical contexts and circumstances, which connect the Christians of today – and throughout history – with the same faith confessed and proclaimed in the New Testament by the very first Christians.
Among historical data and testimonies that we find, and might point to as noteworthy, within the so-called “childhood stories” of Jesus of Nazareth, in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke, are the following:
Historical Data: A male child called Jesus is born in the days of King Herod, when Augustus Caesar issued an edict requiring census registration, at the time when Cirinus was governor of Syria. The Child’s parents, Joseph and Mary, in compliance with the law of Moses, circumcised him and presented him in the Temple. The boy grew up in Nazareth and there grew strong and full with wisdom.
Testimonies of Faith: Through the stories of his genealogy, the Annunciation of His coming to Mary and the shepherds, the Immaculate Conception, his birth in Bethlehem and in a manger, the presentation of Joseph as a descendant of David, the persecution led by Herod, the adoration of the Magi, the journey into Egypt, the Visitation, the circumcision, the presentation in the Temple…through all of these things, the Christian communities of Matthew and Luke seek to testify – and indeed do testify – (in the light of Easter) to the Resurrected Lord, already from His childhood, as the long-awaited, almighty, central figure in the history of Israel (in the case of St. Matthew, who relates him with personages of the ilk of David and Abraham) and of Mankind (according to St. Luke, who relates him directly to Adam), as the Son of God, Christ the Lord, the Messiah, whose coming the prophets of the Old Testament foresaw, even as they held up David as the model for the King of Israel, King of Kings, Light of Nations, Glory of Israel, born among and in the manner of the world’s humble, to serve as their savior, the Savior of Israel and of all peoples who live in the Grace of God. And testimony and recognition are also borne to Mary and Joseph and other characters as well (Simeon the Righteous, the Prophet Anna, John the Baptist, his mother Elizabeth, the shepherds…) as faithful followers of the will of God the Father and, therefore, benefactors of the promises set down in the Old Testament.
It is all of this that we Christians recall, testify to and celebrate during this liturgical holiday season of Christmas.
The remembrance of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which we Catholics celebrate in the liturgical holiday season of Christmas, finds its inspiration, foundation and source in the birth and infancy of Jesus as related to us in the New Testament and, more specifically, in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke, whose works take up that portion of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
In order to achieve an “intelligent” reading of the Bible and, with it, a “Christian” celebration of Christmas, one must distinguish and differentiate, within all of the stories related in the Bible, between two types of data on which all human stories are built and which provide the written plot for the story of Mankind as such: namely, historical data and testimonies of faith.
Historical data are all of those that provide tangible evidence, provable within our classifications of time/space, and verifiable – as such – by a universe of individuals. These data are even present in extra-biblical narratives. For example: the existence of persons and events such as the group of slaves of the Egyptians, banishment to Babylonia, Jesus of Nazareth, His ministry, His death on the cross, the first disciples (Peter and Paul), the founding of the first Christian communities, their persecution, and so on.
Testimonies of faith are data that are only valid for a certain community or group of persons and born of a singular experience. For example, that Jesus "is the Lord God" or "the Light of the World" are testimonies of faith that are valid only for Christians. Testimonies of faith constitute the priority and the main aspect in the theological purpose of the holy scribes, but they nonetheless would be impossible without historical foundation.
In other words, while it is true that the purpose of the writers of the Gospel is, first and foremost, theological – that is to say, to profess and proclaim faith in Jesus Christ (in the case of the New Testament), and not necessarily to relate historical fact in the style of today and in accordance with history as we understand it from our chronological and chronometric viewpoint, it remains, nevertheless, possible, in stories from the Bible and the New Testament, to find historical information to support and make possible the experience of Jesus Christ and information that has given rise to testimonies of faith. These are testimonies of faith, from another time and in different historical contexts and circumstances, which connect the Christians of today – and throughout history – with the same faith confessed and proclaimed in the New Testament by the very first Christians.
Among historical data and testimonies that we find, and might point to as noteworthy, within the so-called “childhood stories” of Jesus of Nazareth, in the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke, are the following:
Historical Data: A male child called Jesus is born in the days of King Herod, when Augustus Caesar issued an edict requiring census registration, at the time when Cirinus was governor of Syria. The Child’s parents, Joseph and Mary, in compliance with the law of Moses, circumcised him and presented him in the Temple. The boy grew up in Nazareth and there grew strong and full with wisdom.
Testimonies of Faith: Through the stories of his genealogy, the Annunciation of His coming to Mary and the shepherds, the Immaculate Conception, his birth in Bethlehem and in a manger, the presentation of Joseph as a descendant of David, the persecution led by Herod, the adoration of the Magi, the journey into Egypt, the Visitation, the circumcision, the presentation in the Temple…through all of these things, the Christian communities of Matthew and Luke seek to testify – and indeed do testify – (in the light of Easter) to the Resurrected Lord, already from His childhood, as the long-awaited, almighty, central figure in the history of Israel (in the case of St. Matthew, who relates him with personages of the ilk of David and Abraham) and of Mankind (according to St. Luke, who relates him directly to Adam), as the Son of God, Christ the Lord, the Messiah, whose coming the prophets of the Old Testament foresaw, even as they held up David as the model for the King of Israel, King of Kings, Light of Nations, Glory of Israel, born among and in the manner of the world’s humble, to serve as their savior, the Savior of Israel and of all peoples who live in the Grace of God. And testimony and recognition are also borne to Mary and Joseph and other characters as well (Simeon the Righteous, the Prophet Anna, John the Baptist, his mother Elizabeth, the shepherds…) as faithful followers of the will of God the Father and, therefore, benefactors of the promises set down in the Old Testament.
It is all of this that we Christians recall, testify to and celebrate during this liturgical holiday season of Christmas.
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