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CARA Symposium on Hispanic/Latino(a) Catholics in the United States
A Generational Perspective
Presented by Ken Johnson-Mondragón, D.Min. cand.
I would like to begin my presentation by thanking the staff of CARA for hosting this
gathering and for the opportunity to share with all of you some of the work I have been
doing at Instituto Fe y Vida since 2001. If you would like additional information, I would
encourage you to explore the materials on our website at:
http://www.feyvida.org/research/researchpubs.html
Part 1: A Statistical Look at Hispanic Generations
My presentation is divided into three parts, and in this first section I want to provide
some demographic data to contextualize our conversation about the various generations
of Catholic Hispanics. Later on, I will mostly be focusing on Latino/a youth and young
adults since that is my area of expertise, but I think it is important to at least begin with a
broader perspective on the population we are discussing.
Figure 1: U.S. Religious Affiliation by Age Group and Race/Ethnicity
The first thing to notice in
Figure 1 is that the Hispanic
population increasingly self-
identifies as Catholic as it
gets older. What is especially
noteworthy is that the
Hispanic young adults are
significantly more Catholic
than the adolescents. This
pattern is reversed in the
white, non-Hispanic
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population, where the greatest growth between teens and young adults is seen in the
segment that has no religious affiliation.
Figure 2: Hispanics in the United States in 2007 by Age and Generation
The higher proportion of Catholics among Latino/a young adults makes sense when
we remember that immigrant Latino/as are more likely to identify themselves as Catholic
than Hispanics who were born in the United States. Due to the steep increase in the
number of Latino/a immigrants between ages 17 and 25, as shown above in Figure 2, the
majority of young adult Hispanic Catholics is foreign-born, and the immigrant percentage
among Hispanics over age 30 is even higher.
Another important point on this graph is the sheer size of the immigrant adult
population among Latinos. Furthermore, the proportion of immigrants among Hispanics
is even higher among Catholics. As a result, we cannot assume that Latino/a adults
experienced the changes in the Catholic Church before, during, and after the Second
Vatican Council in the same way as Catholics living in the U.S. did. Thus, a broader Pan-
American perspective on the Church is required when describing the generational
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differences among U.S. Catholics. Even among the Hispanics who were already here for
generations, there were significant differences in the way they experienced the Church—
and especially the parish—compared to Euro-American Catholics.
Finally, when we look at the size of the Vatican II and Pre-Vatican II Latino
population, it is clear that it forms a much smaller segment of the overall Catholic
population in those age groups. However, in the Post-Vatican II and Millennial
generations, the proportion is much higher, to the point that the youngest Millennial
Hispanics actually form the majority of Catholics in their age cohort.
Figure 3
All of this begs the question
of whether the traditional
generational categories used in
mainstream sociological
research on U.S. Catholics are
meaningful with respect to
Hispanic Catholics. As Figure
3 shows, there can be
significant “generational”
differences between Latino/a
Catholics by age cohort, even
between age groups that are
considered to be part of the
same generation (in this case “Millennials”) by many sociologists.
My last point in this section is simply to underscore the importance of this gathering
here today. As shown in Figure 4 below, Latino/a children are already about half of all
Catholics under age 18 in the United States, and Latino/as are poised to become the vast
majority of all Catholics in the next 40 years. Thus, the pastoral work of our Church in
this century will be shaped by a tremendous demographic shift to a majority Hispanic
population. If we as sociologists and pastoral practitioners do not collaborate heavily in
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the years ahead, our leaders will not be prepared to address this change and lead our
communities in constructive ways.
Figure 4: U.S. Catholic Population Projections by Age, Race/Ethnicity and Year
Part 2: Findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion
Over the last five years, Fe y Vida has had the privilege of working with survey and
interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), the largest study
ever conducted on the religious lives of adolescents in the U.S. We have published a
book called Pathways of Hope and Faith Among Hispanic Teens detailing our research
on the Latino/a teens, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as the pastoral implications of
what we found. In this section, I will highlight a few of the most important findings and
implications of that work.
Key Finding #1: As a whole, when compared to their Protestant peers, Catholic
teens are: less articulate about their faith; less engaged at church;
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and more likely to subscribe to the tenets of Moralistic Thera-
peutic Deism (MTD).
The first finding relates to all Catholic teens in general, not just the Hispanics. The
NSYR research found that U.S. Catholic teens were the most religiously inarticulate and
disengaged of all Christian denominational groups. Their core beliefs, dubbed Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism by Christian Smith, form a kind of religious “whateverism” that says
people can believe whatever they want to believe about God, and it doesn’t really matter.
For most of our young Catholics, the sum total of what they could express about their
faith is that God exists, that God loves and helps people when they need it, that good
people go to heaven when they die, and that almost everyone is good no matter what they
do or don’t do in their religious lives.
Key Finding #2: As a group, Latino teens are more religiously disengaged at
church than other Catholic teens, despite the fact that they
participate in more personal and family-based spiritual
practices, and their parents demonstrate greater commitment
to their faith than do the white Catholic parents.
Figure 5: Young Catholics Currently in a Youth Group Catholic teens as a group by Race/Ethnicity
distinguished themselves from
other young Christians in the
NSYR by having lower rates of
attendance at Sunday worship
and lower youth group
participation. Figure 5 indicates
the proportion of all Catholic
teens who are members of a
youth group, as represented in
the central circle. Each person in
the diagram represents 145,000
high school-age Catholics of the
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racial/ethnic group(s) indicated by the color. The research found that Latino/a teens were
even less likely to participate in parish youth groups, and did not stay involved as long, as
their peers of other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Figure 6: Spiritual Practices at Home Among Catholic Teens by Race/Ethnicity (NSYR)
Nevertheless, on a number of personal measures including those presented in Figure
6, the young Hispanic Catholics reported higher levels of interest and participation in
spiritual activities than their white peers. In fact, they were twice as likely (30% v. 16%)
to say that they were “very interested” in learning more about their faith.
Similarly, the parents of the Hispanic Catholic teens in the survey also reported
higher levels of commitment to their faith life than their white peers. The following table
offers a composite summary of the religious commitment of the Hispanic and white
Catholic teens and their parents, based on a number of questions from the NSYR surveys.
Each number represents the percent of Catholics that is of the indicated religious type
within each group identified in the column headings, based on their survey responses.
Teenagers Parents
Religious Type Hispanic White Hispanic White
Committed 4 8 8 6
Engaged 43 44 43 38
Sporadic 22 25 7 12
Disengaged 3 7 3 10
Mixed 28 16 39 34
Source: Pathways of Hope and Faith Among Hispanic Teens, 2007.
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Key Finding #3: A majority of the most religiously committed Hispanic
Catholic parents has a difficult time getting their children to
participate in their parish’s youth ministry programs, and to
go to Sunday Mass every week.
To put this in context, it helps to understand that one of the major findings of the
overall NSYR study was that U.S. adolescents are generally similar to their parents in
terms of their level of religious understanding, commitment, and engagement. In other
words, as parents, you tend to get what you are.
Given this reality and the overall higher level of commitment among Hispanic
Catholic parents, one might expect the Latino/a Catholic teens to be more engaged as
well. However, in our research we found that Hispanic Catholic teens alone, as distinct
from their Hispanic Protestant peers and their white peers whether Catholic or Protestant,
were the exception to this rule.
Figure 7: Community Religious Practices Among Catholic Teens with Committed Parents
This fact is vividly demonstrated in Figure 7 above. You can see from the Ns in this
graphic that this finding is based on a very small subsample—namely the adolescent
children of highly committed and engaged Catholic parents—but the finding is dramatic.
Among this group, the Hispanic teens were less than half as likely as their white peers to
go to Mass every week, one-third as likely to attend a youth group or serve as an acolyte,
one-fourth as likely to attend a Catholic school, one-fifth as likely to be a youth group
leader, one-sixth as likely to have been on a retreat, and one-eighth as likely to have gone
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to a religious camp. Although the data are from a small subsample, I have spoken to
numerous groups of youth ministers and Latino parents over the last two years, and they
have universally affirmed this finding as part of their experience.
Figure 8: The Acculturation Process The reasons for this disparity
are not clear in the data, but we
believe that cultural differences
play a major role. Figure 8 is
taken from Fe y Vida’s book on
the NSYR, and it is also found
with a detailed description of the
processes involved in Publication
#5 in our Perspectives on
Hispanic Youth and Young Adult
Ministry series, which is available
on our website. To summarize, the diagram depicts the four possible outcomes of cultural
adaptation when migrants move into a new cultural setting.
Without going into detail about the mechanisms of cultural adaptation, we have found
that there are several common patterns of acculturation that play out between immigrant
adults and their children who were born in the U.S. or who came here at a young age, as
shown in Figure 9 below. When such teens find themselves rejecting or being rejected by
Figure 9: Patterns of Acculturation in the Second Generation
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people of their parents’ culture, people of the mainstream culture, or both, their
acculturation process can negatively impact their ability to understand and integrate the
faith of their parents, or to feel comfortable in a youth ministry setting that caters to teens
of the cultural mainstream.
Figure 10 On another note, recent
surveys have shown that
Latino/a Catholic adults are
more likely to identify them-
selves as charismatic or
pentecostal than their white
Catholic peers, as shown in
Figure 10. Could differences of
spirituality between the
adolescent children of Latino/a
charismatic Catholics and their
non-charismatic, non-Latino
youth ministers contribute to the low participation rates of Hispanic teens in Catholic youth
ministry programs? Unfortunately, the NSYR does not provide insight into this question
since the teens in the large survey were not asked if they are charismatic, and only one of the
16 Hispanic Catholic teens in the personal interview component of the NSYR made mention
of anything that resembled charismatic practices or experiences. In fact, he only mentioned it
in order to say that he did not believe it was real. Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence suggests
two things regarding the impact of the Charismatic Renewal on Latino/a teens:
1. The percentage of Latino/a Catholic teens who consider themselves “charismatic” is
probably very small, but those who do usually prefer to go to a charismatic prayer
group instead of their parish youth group; and
2. Non-charismatic teens who have charismatic parents sometimes reject not just
their parents’ spirituality, but their faith as well, and therefore choose to have very
little to do with the Church at any level, including Mass and youth group.
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Key Finding #4: There are significant social barriers to the integration of all
Catholic teens—Hispanic, white, and of other races or
cultures—in a single youth ministry setting. Therefore, we
need a differentiated approach to ministry with Hispanic
Catholic teens and their families in parishes and dioceses in
order to effectively reach all segments of the population.
While the cultural and religious differences between Latino/a Catholic teens and their
white, non-Hispanic peers can play a significant role in the young Hispanics’ decision to
opt out of parish youth ministry programs, the NSYR found other differences that may
also contribute to this underrepresentation.
Figure 11: Annual Income in Households with Catholic The first of these is simply Teenagers, by Race/Ethnicity
access to economic resources,
which also reflects educational
differences among the parents.
The NSYR found that white
Catholic families are better off
than the general white population
in the U.S., while Latino
Catholic families have lower
incomes than other Latinos.
Educational and economic
differences often lead to
socialization in different circles,
especially in adolescence—even if the teens attend the same school. Although they were
relatively few in number, the upper-income Hispanic teens in the survey were actually
just as involved in youth ministry as their upper-income white peers. Youth group
participation rates dropped with family income for both Hispanic and white Catholic
teens, but the drop among Hispanics was steeper, and the proportion of low-income
families was much higher among Hispanic teens—41% compared to just 7% for their
white peers.
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Figure 12: Pastoral Categories of Young Hispanics
Taking into account a variety of sociocultural factors, it is possible to discern four
broad pastoral categories of young Latino/as, as shown in Figure 12 above. The challenge
for youth ministry lies in the fact that, even among adolescents who are all Hispanic, the
teens in different categories often do not relate well with one another. Not all Hispanic
teens fit neatly into one of these four categories, but if a parish can develop youth
ministry programs designed to meet the needs of all four “types,” it is likely that any and
all young Latino/as will find a youth ministry setting in which they feel comfortable,
welcome, and can grow in faith with their peers.
The problem is that far too often, the sum total of youth ministry programming in
Catholic parishes consists of a single youth group. The limitations of this approach were
also identified by the participants in the First National Encuentro for Hispanic Youth and
Young Adult ministry (Encuentro) held at Notre Dame two years ago, as shown in the
following quote from page 33 of the Encuentro’s conclusions, which are available for
purchase from USCCB Publishing:
“The leaders in Pastoral Juvenil, Hispanic ministry, and mainstream youth and
young adult ministry are increasingly aware that the programs and activities of the
mainstream culture do not attract the full participation of Hispanic adolescents
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and jóvenes, even though they may speak English. This occurs due to economic,
cultural, educational, geographic, and linguistic differences between the young
people, especially when the parish ministry is limited to a single youth
group.” [emphasis added]
Thus, the pastoral reality calls for a differentiated approach to ministry with Hispanic
Catholic teens and their families in order to effectively reach all segments of the
population with ministries that provide a welcoming social environment and address their
pastoral needs. In Renewing the Vision—the U.S. Bishops’ document from 1997 that sets
out the vision for Catholic youth ministry—the importance of developing specialized
ministries for cultural minorities is also recognized. The document states: “Ministry with
adolescents is multicultural when it focuses on a specialized ministry to youth of
particular racial and ethnic cultures and promotes multicultural awareness among all
youth.” (p. 22) Nevertheless, such specialized ministries specifically for Latino/a teens
are still few and far between.
In our conversations around the country, we have often heard youth ministers say that
either they or their pastors believe that creating a separate youth ministry program for the
Hispanic teens would “divide the Church” or “create a parallel Church,” and that it
simply is not necessary because they all speak English. Even if it were true that they all
speak English—and it is not, at least not in all places—we believe the real division of the
Church occurs when the limited options in our parish programs result in a de facto
separation of the teens into two groups: those who are offered the experience of a socio-
culturally accessible peer group in which to grow in the faith, and those who are not. Far
too often, the young Latino/as are relegated to the group of those who are not.
As an alternative to the “one size fits all” model of youth ministry, Pathways of Hope
and Faith Among Hispanic Teens describes a way to develop a “community of
communities” model for parish youth ministry that is consistent with the Bishops’ vision
for youth ministry and the conclusions of the Encuentro:
• In small communities, teens are empowered to reflect on their faith from their
own sociocultural perspective with others who can relate to their experiences.
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• The various parish youth groups come together periodically in a context of dialogue,
liturgical celebration, or for other events of interest to the entire youth community.
• The leadership team is composed of adult and teen leaders whose diversity
reflects that of the whole parish, united by a common vision for their ministry.
13: Youth Ministry in a Community of Communities Figure 13 demonstrates
what this would look like in
practice. The leadership team
in the center includes the adult
coordinators and youth leaders
of all the parish’s youth
ministry communities, and it
should reflect the cultural
diversity of the whole parish.
These leaders gather for
training, planning, socializing,
and supporting one another’s ministries. The actual communities may be more or less
multicultural, depending on the language they use, the needs they address, and the time
and place their meetings are held.
Even though they do not regularly meet together, the various communities do not form
isolated groups, but rather a network of communities that collaborate and serve one another
for specific purposes throughout the year. The major responsibilities of the parish’s staff
youth ministry director/coordinator (whether volunteer or paid, part-time or full-time) are
to recruit, train, and support the adult and youth leaders in each of the small communities,
and to facilitate a process of needs assessment and pastoral planning with them to provide
pastoral care and accompaniment to all of the parish’s adolescents. He or she may also
serve as coordinator of one or more of the communities as time allows. It is worth noting
here that this method of structuring a parish’s youth ministry can also be scaled up as a
model for the overall ministry in a multicultural parish.
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Part 3: Pastoral Issues and Research Questions
In this third section of my presentation, I will identify seven pastoral issues and research
questions that I think are important for us as sociologists and pastoral leaders for
Hispanic ministry in the years ahead.
1. Educational attainment
We cannot overstate the importance of increasing the educational attainment of our
young Latino/a Catholics for the future of our Church and our country. Young Hispanics
have over twice the high school non-completion rate of blacks, and nearly four times that
of whites, and similarly low college completion rates. At the same time, our Church
oversees the largest network of private schools in the country, and thousands of our
parishes have full-time youth ministry coordinators, part of whose ministry is to advocate
for the needs of the teens in their parish. How can we leverage our Catholic schools and
parish youth ministry programs to encourage and support the academic achievement of
young Latino/a Catholics?
2. Leadership development
Figure 14: Ratio of Hispanics Among Catholic Leaders Figure 14 demonstrates that
Hispanics are drastically
underrepresented at all levels
of church leadership. An
increased emphasis on the
education of Latino/a
Catholics at all levels is
urgently needed, including
pastoral and theological
formation. We need a
comprehensive national strategy to ensure greater representation of Hispanics in ministry
as the young generation grows into adulthood.
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3. Religious switching
The generational trend of more Hispanics abandoning the Catholic Church the longer
their family has been in the United States is clear in all of the major surveys of Hispanic
religious identification. Nevertheless, a comparison of Wave 1 and Wave 2 data from the
NSYR tells a different story—one of relatively stable religious identity in early young
adulthood, despite the religious illiteracy of most young Hispanic Catholics. Only 9% of
the young Hispanics who identified themselves as Catholic in the first survey had
changed their religious affiliation or had no affiliation by the time of the second survey
(conducted in 2002-2003 and 2005), compared to 19% of the young white Catholics and
16% of the young Hispanic Protestants. This stable identity is an asset we must learn to
leverage in order to increase their religious literacy, Mass attendance, and participation in
the life and mission of the parish.
4. Evangelization and catechesis
The pervasiveness of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) in U.S. culture presents a
serious challenge to effective catechesis for all ages and ethnic groups, especially
adolescents. For Catholics, this challenge is compounded by the fact that 75% of our teens
do not regularly participate in youth ministry, and most of them have already filled their
lives with other priorities, often with their parents’ encouragement. Among young Hispanic
Catholics, the social, cultural, and religious differences they experience in groups with
Catholic teens of other backgrounds provide further impediments to participation.
In the last year, I have analyzed the population data for three dioceses in California,
and I found that in all three, the average parish had about 1,000 high school-aged
Catholic teens, ranging from 60% to 83% Hispanic. At the same time, the U.S. bishops
are pushing for a four-year catechetical curriculum for all adolescent Catholics as an
effective response to the challenge of MTD. The question is: how do we implement that
curriculum in a way that reaches all of our young people, especially those on the margins
of parish life, as many Hispanics are?
One possible solution, promoted in the conclusions of the Encuentro, is dynamic
differentiated youth ministry, incarnated in the culture(s) of the young people, that
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mentors and empowers teens to become evangelizers of their peers. The emphasis on
engaging Hispanic teens as evangelizers of their peers is urgently needed because the
adult leaders in the parish have no way to connect with the vast majority of Latino/a
Catholic teens who are not regularly coming to Mass or youth group—but their peers can
do it. If we do not engage them as young evangelizers and mentor them in reaching out to
their peers, all the effort we put into developing the content for adolescent catechesis will
never benefit the majority of our young Catholics.
5. Theology of the parish
As I mentioned earlier regarding the two approaches to youth ministry, there are two
competing visions of ministry in multicultural parishes today: the “one parish, one
community” model and the “parish as a community of communities” model. Too often,
the ability of our parishes to respond in ministry to more Hispanic Catholics of all ages is
limited by a pastoral vision that does not allow for a diversity of ministries to meet the
needs of diverse members. This is especially true in youth ministry.
We need to ask ourselves, what are the pastoral implications of our understanding of
the parish for ministry with the dominant cultural group in the parish, as well as for
ministry with the minority groups? How can our theology guide us in the development of
pastoral structures that enliven the parish community and foster a commitment to Christ
and to the mission of the Church among all Catholics?
6. Meaning and role of the apostolic movements
The Encuentro two years ago identified about 50 apostolic movements that currently
serve Hispanic youth and young adults in dioceses across the country. In addition, there
are many other apostolic movements that work primarily with adults, that never heard
about the Encuentro process, or that simply opted not to participate in it. For many
Hispanic Catholics, the apostolic movements provide more meaningful pastoral
accompaniment and faith formation than their parishes.
Nevertheless, the level of collaboration between diocesan Hispanic ministry offices,
schools of ministry, and the leaders of the apostolic movements is generally very
limited. This isolation often means that the Hispanic leaders who generously give their
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time and enthusiasm to the mission of the Church through the apostolic movements,
have little theological-pastoral formation. In many cases this prevents them from being
recognized, validated, utilized, and compensated in ministry beyond their movement.
What can our parish and diocesan communities do to be better stewards of the gifts of
these human vessels?
7. Quantitative and qualitative research
To close, I have a few comments to make regarding research. As we have already heard
here today, good survey research on the religious lives of Hispanic Catholics is hard to
find, and even harder to design, validate, and carry out. Nevertheless, it is critical to
understanding the pastoral issues our Church must address in the years ahead. Because of
the size of the Hispanic Catholic population today, quantitative research on U.S.
Catholics that includes a representative sample of the full spectrum of the Hispanics who
live here and proudly call themselves Catholic is required.
At the same time, we must recognize the limits of quantitative research and do
qualitative research to fill out our understanding of the Hispanic community. Below are
listed a few of the research questions that have interested me in recent years. You can add
your own to that list and perhaps together we can begin to generate a collaborative
research agenda to carry Hispanic ministry forward in the U.S. for the rest of this century.
� How has the “American” cultural ethos of most U.S. Catholic parishes impacted
the religious lives of Hispanic Catholics of all ages?
� For immigrant parents, what new understanding or skills are needed to more
effectively pass the faith to their children in the U.S. cultural context?
� How do young Hispanic Catholics interpret and integrate (or reject) the
charismatic spirituality, popular Catholicism, or indigenous syncretism of their
parents and other family elders, and how does that shape their sense (or lack) of
Catholic identity?
With that, I hand the floor to my colleague Georgina Vaca.