The Word Became Culture

By Miguel H. Díaz, María Teresa Dávila, Néstor Medina and 3 more

Exploring Latin@ theologies and the power of revelation.

The Word Became Culture enacts a preferential option for culture, retrieving experiences and expressions from across latinidad as sources of theologizing and acts of resistance to marginaliza­tion. Each author in this edited volume demonstrates the many ways in which Latin@ theologies are disruptive, generative, and creative spaces rooted in the richness, struggles, texts, and rituals found at the intersections of faith and culture. With a foreword by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, this book situates Latin@ theologies in the ongoing search for and recognition of the “Word becoming” within the particularities of diverse cultural experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781531505820

María Teresa Dávila

María Teresa (MT) Dávila is Associate Professor of Practice and Chair of the Department of Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, North Andover MA. Her work focuses on the areas of migrant and racial justice, the option for the poor and Catholic social teaching, the ethics of the use of force, and public theology. With Agnes Brazal, she is co editor of Living With(out) Borders: Theological Ethics and Peoples on the Move (Orbis, 2016). Her work appears regularly in the Theology en la Plaza column in the National Catholic Reporter, Syndicate, and Political Theology Today. She is a Roman Catholic laywoman.

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Cover: The Word Became Culture by Miguel H. Díaz

DISRUPTIVE CARTOGRAPHERS:

DOING THEOLOGY LATINAMENTE

Series editors: Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández,

Miguel H. Díaz, Gary Riebe-Estrella

This multivolume series re-maps theology and pushes out in new directions from varying coordinates across a spectrum of latinidad as lived in the USA. Authors reconfigure and disrupt key areas like revelation, pneumatology, eschatology, and Mariology. Other volumes complicate and advance even further key themes of significance in Latin@ theologies, including the option for culture, religious diversity, and the integral relationship between theologizing and praxis.

Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente

THE WORD BECAME CULTURE

MIGUEL H. DÍAZ

Fordham University Press

New York 2024

Copyright © 2020 by Miguel H. Díaz

Cover art: Judith F. Baca © 2008 Danza de la Tierra, the Dallas Latino

Cultural Center Mural, Dallas, Texas. 8' x 24' acrylic on wood mural.

Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives, SPARCinLA.org.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available online at https://catalog.loc.gov.

Printed in the United States of America

26 25 245 4 3 2 1

First Fordham University Press edition, 2024

CONTENTS

Preface to the Series

Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Preferential Option for Culture

Miguel H. Díaz

Foreword

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi

1.The Word That Crosses: Life-giving Encounters with the Markan Jesus and Guadalupe

Miguel H. Díaz

2.Beyond Borders and Boundaries: Rethinking Eisegesis and Rereading Ruth 1:16–17

Jean-Pierre Ruiz

3.A Preferential Option: A Challenge to Faith in a Culture of Privilege

María Teresa Dávila

4.(De)Ciphering Mestizaje: Encrypting Lived Faith

Néstor Medina

5.Playing en los Márgenes: Lo Popular as Locus Theologicus

Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández

Index

PREFACE TO THE SERIES

Disruptive Cartographers

Maps are functional and aesthetic. They establish and make visible place, space, time, and distance in terms of scale and relationships that are inevitably influenced by the cartographer’s own coordinates. Mapping as a process is not as objective as it might seem, and the maps produced are not beyond bias. Maps are tools of power employed by empires to mark and represent their domains, territorially, economically, politically, culturally, religiously. Mapping also orients resistance by contesting borders, shifting perspective, challenging omissions, retrieving what was rendered invisible or insignificant, disrupting the illusion that certain maps or particular ways of mapping are necessarily normative.

Disruptive Cartographers is a multivolume series mapping theology from varying coordinates across a spectrum of latinidad as lived in the USA. Points of departure for Latin@ theologies are embedded in the complexities of la vida cotidiana, daily lived experience, which call forth a rich variety of responses from theologians who self-identify, in roots and commitments, as belonging to and emerging from the diversity found under such umbrella terms as Hispanic, Latino/a, Latinx, Latin@, Latin@́. Explorations of lo cotidiano require a variety of lenses that must take into account intricate historical constructions that cannot easily shake off legacies of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and colonialism. These legacies and their contemporary manifestations continue to influence sociopolitical contexts, theological formulations, and power and privilege differentials in church, academy, and society. The authors in this series have been left free to choose their own lenses and to probe those historical trajectories which most reflect their experience of the subject at hand.

In this series in constructive theology some volumes seek to reconfigure such key areas as revelation, pneumatology, and eschatology, and others pursue themes significant in theologizing latinamente, including the option for culture, religious pluralism, and the relationship between theory and praxis. Each volume retrieves sources from within the historical stream of Latin@ theologies using contemporary experience as a guide. This series is not an introduction to Latino/a theology; it is not a comprehensive survey of contemporary Latinx theology; it is not an attempt to assert a monolithic or foundational Latin@ theology. Each volume offers a distinctive perspective on a topic familiar to systematic theologians. Accomplished latinamente, each reveals the complexity, diversity, and theological creativity that continues to emerge from within the community of Latino, Latina, Latinx theologians and scholars.

This distinctiveness is evident across the series volumes in a variety of ways. Within Latin@ theologies, socially locating one’s perspective is an ethical obligation, an admission that our complicated identities and situated places from which we theologize form, inform, and reform our scholarship. Our fluid identities are expressed through a multiplicity of terms by which we name ourselves (Latino/a, Latinao, Latinoa, Latin@, Latin@́, Latinx, Hispanic, Hispana, Hispano, Chican@, Tejana, Boricua, Cuban American are but a few). This self-naming is not a matter of semantics or political correctness but a claim that identity is a matter of theological anthropology. In this series there is no one imposed term, and each author provides their own rationale for their preferences. In addition, Latin@́ theologies operate at the intersection of languages, and this hybridity may be reflected in the deployment of English, Spanish, and variations of Spanglish within texts. For Latinos/as Spanish is not a foreign language, and authors may choose not to italicize it in their respective volumes. Our preference for footnotes over endnotes reflects an understanding that they engage in a conversation literally on the same page as the body text. In this (at times) multilingual conjunto each maintains its integrity, and it is easier for readers to move from one to the other smoothly.

While each volume offers a distinctive and not a comprehensive perspective, authors situate themselves within the larger enterprise of doing theology latinamente and demonstrate that commitment by underscoring the relevance of lived experience as locus theologicus and by retrieving resources that draw from the depth and breadth of latinidad. Readers can begin their reading with any of the volumes in this series. Their commonality is to be found in the methods authors use to theologize; their diversity is in the historical sources and daily experience they privilege.

Ultimately, this series acknowledges that theological mapping matters for our communities of accountability too long left off or consigned to the margins of too many maps. At the same time, by allowing for creative and sustained development of constructive theological threads, familiar yet new, this series seeks to emulate the advice of Pope Francis to theologians: Do not lose the ability for wonder; to practice theology in wonder.¹

Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández,

Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz

Series Editors

_____________________

¹ Pope Francis, Audience with Members of the Italian Theological Association, December 29, 2017, http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/12/29/171229c.html.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ideas that fertilized this book began in 2015 during my installation as the John Courtney Murray Chair in Public Service. At that time I invited His Eminence Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, to participate and be part of an unprecedented colloquium with prominent Latinx theologians titled The Preferential Option for Culture in Latino/a Theology. During my diplomatic service as US Ambassador to the Holy See (2009–12) I had the opportunity to meet and engage many members of the Roman Curia and meet a number of prominent international theological voices. Among all those I met, I held Cardinal Ravasi in high regard as someone who stood out in Rome as a man of faith with broad intellectual depth, and great openness to engage in dialogue within and outside of the Roman Catholic Church. His groundbreaking initiative, The Courtyard of the Gentiles, exemplifies these three personal characteristics. My gratitude for this book begins with recognizing Cardinal Ravasi, his contribution to the success of our colloquium, and his willingness to write the foreword to this book.

I also want acknowledge all the scholars that participated in this critical conversation on culture with Ravasi. Their ideas planted the seed that would translate into this book: Maria Teresa Dávila (Merrimack College), A ‘Preferential Option’: A Challenge to Faith in a Culture of Privilege; Neomi De Anda (University of Dayton), "Your Caridad del Cobre is not My Guadalupe, but Let’s Share La Leche: Expressions of Latino/a Theological Roots in Images of Breast Milk; Marian K. Díaz (Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality), Futuring Our Past: The Origins, Evolutions, and Future of Latino/a Theology; Orlando O. Espín (University of San Diego), Popular Catholicism, sensus fidelium, and the Faith of the Church; Roberto S. Goizueta (Boston College), Jesus, Our Companion; Néstor Medina (Emmanuel College, University of Toronto), (De)Ciphering Mestizaje: Encrypting Lived Faith"; Carmen Nanko-Fernández (Catholic Theological Union), "Playing en los Márgenes: Lo Popular as Locus Theologicus; and Jean-Pierre Ruiz (St. John’s University), Beyond Borders and Boundaries: Rethinking Eisegesis and Rereading Ruth 1:16–17."

I want to thank the following colleagues from Loyola University Chicago for their generous support: Rev. Michael Garanzini, SJ, past president of Loyola University Chicago, John P. Pelissero, past provost of Loyola University Chicago, Rev. Thomas Regan, past dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. And from the Hank Center at Loyola I want to thank in particular Rev. Mark Bosco, SJ, Michael Murphy, Gabija Steponenaite, John Crowley Buck, Meghan Toomey, and all the graduate and undergraduate assistants who helped me put together this colloquium. I am also very grateful for the support I received from Susan A. Ross, past chair of the theology department, Robert Divito, current chair, and to my colleagues within and outside of the theology department at Loyola University Chicago. Finally, I want to thank my graduate assistants Andy Blosser, Evan Marsolek, Zaccary Haney, and Jack Nuelle for helping me organize and proofread various documents associated with the colloquium and this book.

I also offer my word of gratitude to my Latinx colleagues en la lucha from ACHTUS, the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, and from the HTI, the Hispanic Theological Initiative. Our work in theological education, like that of my colleagues in the diplomatic corps, serves to build bridges of understanding across cultures and among peoples.

Special word of thanks goes to my friends and colleagues Carmen Nanko-Fernández and Jean-Pierre Ruiz. Beyond their contributions to the colloquium and this volume, they have also helped edit these texts. Our work en conjunto has brought us closer together in the service of our Latinx communities. I am grateful to the Catholic Theological Union and their Bechtold Library for providing a welcoming and supportive environment, as well Richard McCarron for his editorial suggestions. I am grateful to Robert Ellsberg, and from Fordham University Press, John Garza and the editorial staff for their support and labors on this book and the Disruptive Cartographers Series.

I want to thank Judith F. Baca, renowned artist, scholar, educator, and activist, for granting me permission to use her mural Danza de la Tierra as the cover art for this book. Baca is the co-founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), and her art, work, and commitments address the equality of all persons, the struggle for human rights, and the connections of community to place. I also want to thank the staff of the Dallas Latino Cultural Center, where Danza de la Tierra is located, and in particular Benjamin Espino, the General Manager, for their welcome and the opportunity to view the mural.

I want to thank our Latin@́ communities, our faith communities, and our families, for inspiring our work and to whom we hold ourselves accountable. I am particularly blessed and grateful to have the unconditional love and support of four amazing children: Josh, Ana, Emmanuel, and Miguel David. Finally, no words can express the gratitude owed to Michael for his unwavering accompaniment.

Miguel H. Díaz

INTRODUCTION

A Preferential Option for Culture

Miguel H. Díaz

Ever since Latino/a theology emerged in the early 1970s, Latino/a theologians in the United States have been reflecting on the faith of our people, as practiced and communicated from one generation to another. At the 1995 annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) in New York I raised the following theological question: "What would Catholic systematics look like if it were done latinamente?" That question led to the publication of From the Heart of Our People (Orbis, 1999). That volume came about as a result of a teología en conjunto, a theological