[Published, somewhat modified, as “Evolution of Hispanic Ministry in the New York Archdiocese” in Hispanics in New York: Religious, Cultural and Social Experiences, Hispanos en Nueva York: Experiencias Religiosas, Culturales y Sociales (New York: Office of Pastoral Research, Archdiocese of New York, 1982), Volume 11, pp. 283-366.]
INTRODUCTION
The diocese of New York was established in 1808. Within the first twenty years a Cuban priest, Fr. Felix Varela, exiled by the Spanish crown for his advocacy of Cuban independence, came to work in New York at the mother parish of St. Peter in Manhattan. He became the first pastor of Christ Church parish, divided in 1827 into St. James and Transfiguration. After serving as the pastor of St. James, he later became vicar general of the diocese. Another Spanish exile, Fr. Ildefonso Madrano, founded the parish of St. Peter on Staten Island.
As Teilhard De Chardin remarked in his great work on evolution as human development, “Nothing is so delicate and fugitive by its very nature as a beginning . . . Beginnings have an irritating and essential fragility, and one that should be taken to heart by all who occupy themselves with history.”(( Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (second Harper Torchbook edition; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), pp. 120-121.)) And so, with the beginnings of the Spanish speaking population of New York. There have been Spaniards and Hispanic Americans in New York City from colonial times. There were Puerto Ricans living there before the Revo1utionary War. The port and the city have always been one of the great gateways to the United States, and Hispanics have always passed through it.
What follows is a summary overview of the development of special ministry to Hispanics in the Archdiocese of New York, especially the first three decades of unprecedented efforts to respond to the massive immigration of Puerto Ricans and other Spanish speaking people in the second half of the twentieth century. To treat the topic in detail requires a far more scientific and elaborate study than this study affords. I have tried to call attention to all the significant beginnings and moments of decision that I am aware of. No office, agency, institution or program is explained in detail or its internal history described except the archdiocesan Spanish office. The story of each parish and its Hispanic ministry would fill its own book. Every agency of Catholic Charities and pastoral department could call attention to a long history of achievements. For the most part none of that is treated here.
Naturally what is selected, described and highlighted and the very pattern of organization of the study reflect an interpretation and a point of view. My goal has been to be as nearly objective as I possibly can, to be candid and concise and to display what I believe is a proud record of achievement by the Archdiocese of New York. In some areas I would like to have included a greater precision of detail, but limitations of time and accessibility of records and persons precluded that.
I am grateful to the many people who so helpfully shared their time and reflections with me and especially to Mrs. Carmen Goytia and Ms. María Quiñones for their clerical assistance.
I. ETHNIC PARISHES AND INSTITUTIONS
From the beginnings of New Amsterdam in 1609 till its conquest by the English in 1664, about the only Catholic appearance of which we know anything was Isaac Jogues’ passage through the colony to England after his rescue from the Iroquois. A Catholic, Thomas Dongan, was named governor of New York in 1682 and brought some Jesuits here and adopted a bill of rights for the colony guaranteeing religious freedom. The development of the Catholic Church in New York was nipped in the bud by the revolution of 1688, and by 1693 the Church of England was established by law, followed by penal legislation against Catholics.(( John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 29-30. ))
When Fr. John Carroll, prefect apostolic of the Church in the United States, submitted his report to the Congregation of the Propaganda in 1785, he spoke of a Catholic population of at least 1,500 in the state of New York.(( John Gilmary Shea, Life and Times of the Most Rev. John Carroll Bishop and First Archbishop of Baltimore Embracing the History of the Catholic Church in the United States 1763-1815 (New York: John G. Shea, 1888), p. 257.)) When Fr. Charles Whelan, O.F.M. Cap. was appointed to the care of the Catholics in the city of New York by Fr. Carroll. he had a congregation of two hundred, who incorporated themselves and began to build a church in I785.(( Theodore Roemer, O.F.M Cap, The Catholic Church in the United States (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1950,), p. 92.)) The Church in New York from its beginnings was a minority in an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.
The Ethnic Identity of the New York Church
The first Catholic population in New York was mostly English and Irish. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Irish constituted the greatest number of Catholic immigrants to the United States.(( Ellis, op. cit., p.48.)) By 1850, with the massive arrival of so many more Irish immigrants, the majority of whom were Catholic, the dominant nationality of the New York church was clearly Irish. In terms of total population, it continued so for the next hundred years; in terms of the ordained leadership, it remains so today. Witness the succession of New York bishops: Concanen, Connolly, Dubois, Hughes, McCloskey, Corrigan, Farley, Hayes, Spellman and Cooke.
From the earliest years of the Church in New York there were non-English speaking Catholics, minorities within the predominantly Irish Catholic community, itself a minority within the larger American society. In 1810, Fr. Anthony Kohlman, S.J. was named the administrator of the new Diocese of New York after the death of its first bishop, Luke Concanen, O.P., who had died in Naples, Italy, before taking possession of his see. A special reason for Fr. Kohlman’s appointment was to care for German speaking Catholics. Ironically, it was he who founded the cathedral parish of St. Patrick.(( Roemer, op. cit., pp. 152-153.))
As European immigration increased during the nineteenth century. the American church and the New York church as well became ever more diverse in terms of the nationalities and cultures of its members. Writing about Puerto Ricans in 1954, the priest-sociologist George Kelly observed, “The American Church and dioceses like New York are unique in the history of the Universal Church, in this respect at least, that at no time did any local branch of the Mystical Body over so long a period have to work with so many newcomers whose background, culture and religious customs, as well as languages, were so varied. One would have to go back to Spain, Gaul and Italy of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. to find an invasion of people paralleling the American experience.”(( George A. Kelly, “The Puerto Rican and the Church in New York,” Integrity, April, 1954, p. 36.))
National Parishes
For New York’s Irish Catholic immigrant population, the parish became the focus of the life of their communities. Discriminated against and not accepted as equals in the larger society, the Irish built their churches and schools with great sacrifice. The parish served as a center of social life and organization and as an instrument of preservation of their religious, cultural and national identity. Through the clergy the children of the immigrants attained positions of respect, eminence and influence, and the Church served generally as a force for the upward socio-economic mobility of its members.
As other ethnic and cultural groups arrived in greater numbers they too had the same need to consolidate and strengthen their identity and culture, but the parishes they found had too much of an Irish character to serve this purpose for them. So gradually other churches were established for the various immigrant groups: German, Italian, French, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak, Lithuanian and Chinese. To distinguish them from the parishes serving the dominant Irish population in the diocese, they were considered ethnic or “national” parishes.
Besides helping the immigrant communities keep their Catholic faith and national culture, the national parishes provided for all of them a bridge into American society and the “American” church. “The national parish provided an opportunity for a gradual transition to American ways. The slow drift from the national parish was associated with a gradual adjustment to American customs and a growing familiarity with the ways in which the faith was practiced in the United States. Therefore, by the time the immigrant children had become American, they had learned also how to be a Catholic in an American way.”(( Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, S.J., “Sociological Aspects of Migration and their Impact on Religious Practice,” Report on the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955 (New York: Archdiocese of New York, 1955), section II, paper 9, p.2. (Mimeographed.)))
National Parishes for the Spanish Speaking
At the turn of the last century there was some concern among members of the New York church and archdiocesan authorities for the pastoral care of the increasing numbers of Mexican and other Hispanic workers and their families in Manhattan, especially in the dock area at the end of West 14th Street. At that time there was an Assumptionist priest serving as the chaplain of their sisters in New York who heard of the interest in establishing a parish for these Spanish speaking people. The Assumptionist Fathers (Augustinians of the Assumption) offered to assume responsibility for such a parish and in 1902 a small building on West 14th Street was made into a chapel, the beginnings of the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
A few years later, an upper class Spanish lady, María De Barril, who lived in the fashionable area around West 155th Street, asked for an uptown Spanish church although there were hardly any Spanish speaking people living in that neighborhood. She spoke to Mr. Archer Huntington, the founder of the museum of the Hispanic Society of America, whose personal estate was the block bounded by West 155th Street, Riverside Drive, West 156th Street and Broadway. He offered a piece of his property for a site for a church and pledged a matching grant for its construction. A committee was set up, interest was aroused and the archdiocese gave approval for a fundraising drive under the direction of the Assumptionist Fathers. The church of Our Lady of Esperanza was built and inaugurated as New York’s second Spanish national parish in 1912 and continued in the care of the Assumptionist Fathers until 1982.
In 1926 an old synagogue just north of Central Park became New York’s third Spanish national parish, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal or “La Milagrosa” as it came to be known by a generation of Hispanic New Yorkers. The parish was entrusted to the care of the American Spanish branch of the Vincentian Fathers of Madrid and in 1930 another parish, Holy Agony, on the east side of Manhattan was inaugurated and staffed by the same Vincentian Fathers. In its day Milagrosa was the center of Hispanic Catholic life for the West Side and upper Manhattan but with the later development of services for Spanish speaking in most of the area’s churches its importance declined and in 1978 it was canonically closed and incorporated into Holy Agony parish.
The concept of a Spanish “national” parish is somewhat anomalous. For most nationalities, there is a coincidence between national and linguistic identity. In the case of Spanish speaking peoples there are twenty different nationalities. It is more appropriate to consider these four parishes as centers for the Spanish speaking rather as “national.” In any case there was no further establishment of national parishes for Hispanics, although religious orders, especially Spanish orders, continued to be requested to provide staff to existing parishes or even to take on full responsibility for their staffing, often of parishes previously established for other ethnic groups.
Religious Order Staffing of Parishes for Spanish Speaking Ministry
By the later part of the 1930’s there were so many Puerto Rican people living in what came to be called Spanish Harlem, the area centered around East 116th Street, that the ministrations of the Spanish Vincentian Fathers at Milagrosa and Holy Agony needed to be assisted by other clergy. Since the new archbishop of New York, Francis J. Spellman, was personally familiar with the pastoral work in Puerto Rico of the Redemptorist Fathers of the Baltimore Province who had missions there and in Paraguay for many years, he decided to request their help in New York.
In 1939 they took over the parish of St. Cecilia on East 106th Street from the diocesan clergy. In its early years it was the center of a thriving Irish-American neighborhood. Now it took on the same role for Puerto Ricans. The Redemptorists made it a matter of policy to assign only bilingual personnel to the parish. For the most part they were American priests and religious who had pastoral experience in Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America and for whom Spanish was a second language.
In 1948 a Calasanzian priest came to New York to serve as chaplain to the sisters of San José de la Montaña who staffed the San José Day Nursery. The following year he was asked to serve at St. Paul’s parish on East 117th Street in Spanish Harlem as well and later at Corpus Christi parish. Others of his congregation joined him and in 1949 the Calasanzian Fathers organized a central house in 2nd Street to coordinate and provided a community base for the work of their members in various parishes of the diocese otherwise staffed by the diocesan clergy. In 1977 they assumed full responsibility for the staffing of Annunciation parish in Manhattan from the archdiocese and the rectory there supplanted the central house.
In 1953 the parish of St. Benedict the Moor on West 53rd Street, established since 1883 for Black Catholics, was entrusted to the care of the Franciscan Fathers Third Order Regular of the Province of the Immaculate Conception in Spain and became a center of pastoral care and ministry for Hispanic people in that area.
A year or two later the Augustinian Recollect Fathers of the Province of St. Augustine began to staff Most Holy Crucifix parish on the lower East Side. The parish had been founded in 1925 to serve the needs of the Italian population of the area. The Augustinians offered Spanish language services as well as English and utilized the parish as a center and home base for other priests who had been assisting at other parishes where there was need for the use of the Spanish language, such as St. Rose of Lima in upper Manhattan and Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Augustine in the Bronx. The Augustinians continued their work there until 1981, when the parish was turned over to still another group of predominantly Italian religious.
The model of a central house for a group of priests with a missionary outreach was followed by the Canons Regular of the Lateran as well. This group of Basque priests adopted this innovative form of community life and pastoral mission. The members of the congregation were assigned to local parishes otherwise staffed by diocesan priests and lived and worked there. However they assembled weekly at their central house in the Bronx to maintain and nourish their community life and spirit. The first member of the congregation came to New York in 1961. In 1976 the Canons assumed responsibility for the staffing of Our Saviour parish in the Bronx, previously cared for by diocesan clergy
For a brief while the Augustinian Recollect Fathers of the Province of St. Augustine took pastoral responsibility for the parish of St. Rita of Cascia in the Bronx. They relieved the diocesan clergy there in 1973. However because of difficulties in providing an adequate number of staff, they in turn entrusted the responsibility to the Augustinian Recollect Fathers of the Province of St. Nicholas of Tolentine in 1976. This latter congregation in 1974 had taken over St. Roch parish in the Bronx, originally established for the Italian community.
In 1978 the archdiocese asked the Augustinians of the Holy Name Province of the Philippine Islands to take on the pastoral care of Holy Rosary parish in East Harlem. Previously this too was a parish especially at the service of the Italian community.
Pastoral Care of Spanish Speaking in Other Religious Order Parishes
Besides the religious congregations staffing specifically national or ethnic parishes or supplying priest personnel to other parishes staffed by diocesan clergy, many congregations found that the parishes that they had been serving for many years were becoming, as a matter of fact if not of canon law, overwhelmingly Hispanic. As part of their pastoral responsibility they either trained their members to speak Spanish or assigned priests and other religious to those parishes who were native Hispanics or who had pastoral experience in Hispanic countries. Among the congregations so concerned for the Spanish speaking should be mentioned the Benedictines, Capuchins, Carmelites, Franciscans, Jesuits, Paulists, Redemptorists and Salesians
Non-Parochial Institutions for the Spanish Speaking
New York’s first Hispanic neighborhood was the area of the West side around 14th Street and the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Besides the services offered by the parish there, in 1916 a group of Spanish religious, the sisters of San José de la Montaña or Mothers of the Helpless, came to New York to start a day care program for children of Hispanic working mothers. That work still continues at the San José Day Nursery on West 20th Street. In 1964 the same sisters began a residence for young working women without families in New York, the Sacred Heart Residence on West 20th Street, for the purpose not only of supplying them with a decent place to live but also of providing guidance and moral support.
In 1927, Fr. Adrien of the Assumptionist Fathers at Guadalupe began Casa María, a residence originally for Spanish working girls, later for other nationalities as well, on West 14th Sweet near the parish church. In 1907 when a group of Sisters Servants of Mary were en route from Spain to Mexico one of their number died in New York and was buried by Fr. Adrien. Twenty years later, when he began Casa María, Fr. Adrien thought to invite the Sisters Servants of Mary to staff it, and they did so until 1964. At that time the work was continued by the Religious of Mary Immaculate. The Sisters Servants of Mary, who are primarily visiting and nursing sisters, also opened a convent in the Bronx in 1931 as a center for their apostolate of free care for the sick at home or in hospitals.
The Religious of Mary Immaculate who took over the Casa María in 1965 carried on the work under the title of Centro María. It continued to be a residence for young, single and poor Hispanic working girls, with the sisters supplying lodging, care and counsel. In 1981 the center was moved to West 54th Street.
In the early 1930s a small group of Catholic lay people founded a kind of settlement house in “El Barrio” (Spanish Harlem) for Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics. The foundresses, the Sullivan sisters, were concerned about the fact that the Puerto Ricans were not being attended by the local churches. They began to work in a small, converted apartment house. When the Hispanic children they sent to the neighborhood parish for religious instruction were ignored, they collaborated with the Spanish Vincentians at Milagrosa to set up a religious education program there. Gradually other activities such as a summer day camp were added. The Center, Casita María, moved to the Carver Houses where it was responsible for the recreational program. At the beginning of the 1960s it moved to Simpson Street in St. Athanasius parish in the Bronx where it continues to offer a wide variety of programs to the neighborhood.
II. THE TURNING POINT
Pastoral responsibility for the church in New York is commonly understood to be in the hands of the Archbishop of New York and the clergy, both diocesan and religious, associated with him. There is no question but that there was a sense of responsibility for all the ethnic groups in the diocese including the Spanish speaking. The early initiatives to establish Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and Holy Agony parishes are to the credit of the archdiocese, as well as the invitation to the Redemptorist Fathers to staff St. Cecilia Parish.
It is interesting to note that in the period before the World War II, the time when the four national parishes were founded and St. Cecilia parish was entrusted to the Redemptorists, pastoral responsibility for Hispanic Catholics was being delegated almost in its entirety to religious congregations. The diocesan clergy, with few exceptions, did not seem to be conscious of any special, personal responsibility to serve Spanish speaking Catholics nor were they being challenged to do so by the archdiocesan authorities. If there was a fault to be found, perhaps it was that of complacency. The thriving and booming predominantly Irish-American parishes seemed to be the main business of the New York Church; ministry to Hispanics and other ethnic groups seemed to be only a kind of special interest and apostolate for those so inclined. In so far as they were integrated into the general population Hispanics were served by all the institutions of the archdiocese; otherwise they were left, for the most part, to the care of Spanish speaking religious.
The Puerto Rican Migration
Although there was a sizable population of Puerto Ricans in New York in Spanish Harlem or “El Barrio” before World War II, at the conclusion of the war a massive migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland United States began, the majority of whom settled in and around New York City. For the early years after the war, the net emigration from Puerto Rico to the mainland was as follows:
1945 – 13,573 1948 – 32,775 1951 – 49,436
1946 – 39,911 1949 – 25,696 1952 – 59,000 (roughly)
1947 – 24,551 1950 – 34,703 1953 – 73,000((“Some Statistical Data,” Report on the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan ,Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955, op. cit., section IV, appendix 1, p. 1.))
To the sensitive and thoughtful observer the implications of this population trend were very serious. A great new immigration of non-English speaking Catholics was underway, this time from Latin America not from Europe. The new arrivals from Puerto Rico were native Spanish speaking United States citizens. They came from a country and culture that were deeply Catholic but with hardly any native clergy, so unlike previous immigrant groups they had no immigrant clergy to accompany and minister to them. They were for the most part from rural parts of Puerto Rico, very poor and generally little schooled or skilled. And, the rate of their arrival raised important questions about the future of the New York church.
One of the first to perceive the dimensions and implications of this great migration was a Jesuit sociologist on the faculty of Fordham University, Fr. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick. He began to study this movement of people and call attention to it in the academic and church communities. In fact, during the ensuing years he gradually became the foremost expert on the Puerto Rican migration, publishing many articles and books and widely lecturing and teaching on the topic.
In 1952 he was joined in his advocacy by a brilliant young Dalmatian priest, just recently arrived in the New York diocese and assigned to pastoral work in Incarnation parish on Manhattan’s upper West Side, Ivan D. Illich. Fr. Illich had been trained in Rome for service in the diplomatic corps of the Holy See but preferred to work in New York. He came highly recommended to Cardinal Spellman and in later years always enjoyed a privileged relationship to him. Shortly after Fr. Illich’s arrival in Incarnation he went to Puerto Rico, quickly learned the language, familiarized himself with the condition of the people and the church on the island and returned to New York to begin a creative and innovative ministry to them.
Another sensitive and thoughtful observer of the phenomenon of the Puerto Rican migration was the chancellor of the archdiocese, Msgr. John J. Maguire, later coadjutor archbishop of New York. He saw the implications of this new population for the Church and as well the need for hard data about its present status in relationship to the church as a basis for pastoral planning. In the fall of 1952 he asked Fr. George A. Kelly, a young priest-sociologist then stationed at St. Monica parish, to do a scientific study on the Puerto Ricans and the church. During the next year Fr. Kelly gathered a tremendous amount of data and prepared a research document that offered a bold and blunt challenge to the archdiocese, a document remarkably prescient about the growth and development of New York’s Puerto Rican population.(( George A. Kelly, “Catholic Survey of Puerto Rican Population in the Archdiocese of New York” (unpublished), Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York.))
The “Catholic Survey”
As Fr. Kelly mentioned in the introduction to his final report, “This survey of the Puerto Rican population in the Archdiocese of New York is highly experimental. A sociological analysis of a religious problem, having in view the development of a program to meet that problem, is a novel enterprise for the diocese.”((Ibid., 1. Introduction.)) And, anticipating the conclusion of the study, he asserted, “…there is little doubt that the Archdiocese has on its hands a pastoral and a missionary problem of such magnitude as to tax its resources, ingenuity and manpower for years to come….one of the first jobs that lie ahead is to create a milieu among the Puerto Ricans in New York that will be friendly to priestly and pastoral efforts by the Church. In this connection the education of the priests and religious of New York in the nature and scope of the problem is an outstanding imperative. To honestly present to them the exact extent of the evils at hand, to create sympathy for the Puerto Ricans, to inspire enthusiasm for work among them, to prepare priests not now directly involved to meet a problem which is quickly moving their way—all these ends this survey can further. But there must be some plain talking and some publication of salient information for Catholic priests and within Catholic circles.”((Ibid.))
Content. The survey attempted to gather and interpret data and make broad projections and recommendations for the future development of the New York church. After an introductory chapter on the size and distribution of the Puerto Rican population, the survey treated Spanish speaking priests and teachers, the administration of sacraments to Puerto Ricans, Mass attendance, parochial school enrollment and other religious educational programs, and Catholic societies and organizations. It focused especially on the growth of the Puerto Rican community from the 1950 federal census to the time of the survey itself. The following sampling of some of its findings gives some indications of the scope and flavor of the work.
– According to the latest estimates that can be made, there were more than 300,000 Puerto Ricans in Manhattan and the Bronx in 1952.((Ibid., 3. Size and Distribution of the Puerto Rican Population.))
– Within eight years the Puerto Ricans population of the Archdiocese will be approximately 880,000.((Ibid., Conclusions to Chapter 3.))
– . . . within ten years the Puerto Rican Catholics of New York will form perhaps a majority of the nominal Catholics within the Archdiocese.((Ibid., 2. General Summary, Magnitude of the Problem.))
– The Puerto Rican people of Manhattan are not at all served adequately by Spanish-speaking priests, and in this respect, the Bronx is twice as bad off as Manhattan. The worst off sections of New York are Lower Harlem, the West Side, and Spanish Bronx, which need such priests badly. Only twelve New York priests speak Spanish.((Ibid., Conclusions to Chapter 4 (Spanish-Speaking Priests—Teachers and the Puerto Ricans).))
– Religious priests up to now have been carrying this burden but will require much greater assistance from diocesan parishes in the future, since Puerto Rican migration in the City is making this a problem mainly for diocesan parishes in the next ten years.((Ibid.))
– The teachers of New York are even less prepared to speak Spanish, particularly the brothers and the lay teachers.((Ibid.))
– . . . there are approximately…only thirty teaching sisters who are competent to work among the Puerto Ricans.((Ibid., General Summary, Spanish-Speaking.))
– There is almost a reluctance on the part of pastors of diocesan parishes to plunge into Puerto Rican work wholeheartedly or to have their parishes known as Puerto Rican, even where large minority of the Catholics, and in some places a majority, are Puerto Rican.((Ibid., General Summary, Diocesan and Religious Parishes.))
– Granting the growth of Puerto Ricans in the Archdiocese and granting the principle of commensurate service, by 1960 there ought to be 500 Spanish-speaking priests and 1,500 Spanish-speaking sisters. (These estimates do not consider the needs of Puerto Ricans in the educational and welfare agencies of the Archdiocese.)((Ibid., General Summary, Spanish-Speaking.))
– In view of present conditions and future prospects, it does not seem that a voluntary system of training future priests in Spanish for work in the New York Archdiocese will meet the demand. It would almost seem imperative that every priest being ordained speak Spanish and that his training in this language be compulsory.((Ibid.))
– About one-half of the Puerto Rican children born each year (at present) is baptized Catholic.((Ibid., Conclusions to Chapter 5. (Baptism and the Puerto Ricans).))
– Protestant ministers witness as many marriages of American-born Puerto Ricans and twice as many marriages of native-born Puerto Ricans as priests.((Ibid., Conclusions to Chapter 7 (Marriage and the Puerto Ricans).))
– Slightly more than one-third of the Catholics of New York attend Sunday Mass. . . . Not much more than one out of ten New York Puerto Ricans attend Sunday Mass.((Ibid., Conclusions to Chapter 8 (Sunday Mass and the Puerto Ricans).))
– Out of 43,000 Puerto Rican children attending New York elementary schools, 5,000 attend parochial schools, 9,000 receive released time instruction, and 29,000 are out of touch with the church.((Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York.))
Importance, The survey marshaled a tremendous array of data, for the most part hitherto not collected or assembled, calculated to awaken any reader to the tremendous pastoral need and challenge facing the New York church. The very fact of the survey and the information it was uncovering put into the hands of Msgr. Maguire the factual data he needed to persuade Cardinal Spellman of the need for innovative and urgent action on behalf of New York’s Puerto Ricans. The conclusions of the survey became the stimulus for a complete redirection of the response of the archdiocese to the Puerto Rican migration.
In conducting the survey Fr. Kelly found himself being called upon and enthusiastically received by a variety of Puerto Rican groups and organizations. They found in him a representative of the archdiocese concerned with Puerto Rican and Hispanic interests. It became clear that such a role was necessary on an official and permanent basis. So, even before the survey was concluded, it was decided to create a new office within the archdiocese with the responsibility of representing the interests of the archdiocese within the Hispanic community and of advocating Hispanic interests within the parishes and other institutions of the archdiocese.
The Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action
On March 24, 1953 on the recommendation of Msgr. Maguire, Cardinal Spellman appointed Msgr. Joseph F. Connolly to the newly created position of Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York. The official press release about the appointment stated, “This new post has been established in order to integrate the work being done for New York’s Puerto Rican people by Catholic religious, educational and social agencies and to develop the scope of the present program to provide more extended facilities for our newly arriving co-religionists. Monsignor Connolly will have his headquarters at the Chancery Office of the Archdiocese of New York, 451 Madison Avenue.”(( Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York.))
From the tenor of the press release it is clear that an important factor was “image.” The new office was clearly meant to be a high level and prestigious one. In itself the appointment was an important message to the Puerto Rican community and reflected a new sense of responsibility on the part of the archdiocese for Puerto Ricans. Msgr. Connolly was an intelligent and dynamic priest of the archdiocese, Roman trained, a former faculty member of the seminary and a domestic prelate. He contributed drive, creativity and sense of importance to this new office and his designation was well received by the spokesmen for New York’s Puerto Ricans. And, it should be noted, his residence in Incarnation parish enabled him to share ideas, enthusiasm and plans with Fr. Illich.
III. NEW DIRECTIONS
Msgr. Connolly felt the need for a bold and imaginative beginning, for some signs or gestures indicating that a whole new era was beginning as far as the archdiocese and the Puerto Rican community was concerned. Two such signs were given within the first two months of the new office: the institution of the feast of St. John the Baptist and the first official training it of New York diocesan clergy in Puerto Rico. Both proclaimed loud and clear that the archdiocese directly and immediately through its own clergy was cognizant of and responding to Puerto Ricans in New York.
The San Juan Fiesta
On June 24, l953 “forty-five hundred people were present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a Solemn Pontifical Mass celebrated in the presence of His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman. The sermon was in Spanish.”(( Joseph F. Connolly, “Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,” Report on the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955, op. cit., section II, paper 5, p. 9.)) This terse description of Msgr. Connolly marked the beginning of a New York tradition and an important one in the development of the Puerto Rican community. At that time there were not yet any large public manifestations of Puerto Rican presence, culture or religiosity. The special Mass for the feast of the patron saint of Puerto Rico’s capital was consciously meant to be by Msgr. Connolly “the Spanish-American equivalent of a ‘St. Patrick’s Day’.”((Ibid.))
The celebration of the feast was repeated in the cathedral again in 1954 and in 1955. Bishops from Puerto Rico attended, Spanish songs and hymns were sung, all the seminarians studying Spanish were urged to attend and dignitaries from the Puerto Rican community in New York were in attendance. The cathedral was filled to excess again in 1954((Ibid.)) and 1955. in 1954 the Spanish sermon was preached by one of the first two New York priests trained in Puerto Rico who had just returned from a year on the island.
After the third celebration of the fiesta in the cathedral in 1955, at the suggestion and urging of Fr. Illich a whole new style of celebration was planned for 1956. With the help of Fr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Encarnación Armas, an outdoor celebration was arranged at Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The idea was to create something of the ambience of a typical Puerto Rican “Fiesta Patronal” with elements of religious, civic and popular celebration. Besides the field Mass to open the fiesta, there was a Puerto Rican style barbecue, speech-making, songs, entertainments and children’s games. When a hoard of children and adults, scrambled for the sweets and gifts that fell from the piñata, the Irish-American police rushed to cover Cardinal Spellman fearing he might be in danger of being assaulted!
The Fordham celebration of the fiesta was a great popular success. However, the thirty thousand people who attended proved to be too much for Fordham’s campus. For the next year the rapidly growing event needed even more space and accessibility—it was decided to put it into a public stadium on Randall’s Island.
New York Diocesan Clergy in Puerto Rico
Also in June of 1953, a less public but equally important step was taken. Within a few weeks of their ordination, two of the new class of New York diocesan priests received a special assignment to reside and work in a parish in Puerto Rico for one year and hopefully to learn as much as they could of Puerto Rican ways and the Spanish language. Further, a group of six major seminarians interested in learning or bettering their knowledge of Spanish was sent to help out as lay assistants in one or another of the island parishes for six weeks of their summer vacation.
This same procedure was followed again in 1954 and 1955. The seminarians and priests sent to Puerto Rico certainly became familiar with the island and its people and there was a growing awareness of Puerto Rico among the seminarians in general. The program had its limitation, however. First, there was little formal study of the Spanish language. Not everyone can easily “pick up” a new language just by being exposed to it, especially the seminarians who were there for a relatively short while. Second, the rate of increase of the Puerto Rican population in New York was so great that not even two priests a year was enough deployment of personnel for them.
In 1956 Cardinal Spellman made an even more bold and unusual decision. After their ordination one-half of the new class of priests was assigned for summer study at the Foreign Service Institute of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. There they had a two months intense, total immersion program in conversational Spanish utilizing one of the most effective and advanced language teaching methods available anywhere. Like the fiesta, the program for training the newly ordained in spoken Spanish quickly outgrew its new location. The next year half the class of newly ordained priests was assigned to summer study of spoken Spanish according to the same methodology, but this time in Puerto Rico itself. The best features of the previous years were combined with other dimensions of pastoral practice, and training in intercultural communication skills was added.
The Coordination Plan
What was especially dear to Msgr. Connolly’s heart was a grand design for an overall “. . . Plan of Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action for the Archdiocese of New York.” He gave his immediate attention to it. In his own words, “The plan has been formulated only after careful thought about the survey of Father George Kelly, after deliberate reflection upon the functions of the various Archdiocesan departments, and after six months of active personal experience with many of the priests, people and problems of the Spanish-American Catholic population of New York.”(( Joseph F. Connolly, “ A Suggested Basic Plan for the Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 885. (quoted, with minor emendations, in “Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,” op. cit., p. 3.).))
Msgr. Connolly told the tale of the p1an’s development and adoption: “The first draft was submitted in its entirety to the Cardinal Archbishop and to the priests heading the very many separate departments of the Archdiocese. Their commentaries were incorporated, in one way or another, into the final draft. The final plan was discussed at a meeting attended by sixteen or eighteen priests outstanding in the Apostolate for the Spanish-Americans in New York. His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman, who had previously supplied a written commentary on the plan, presided. During the course of the meeting, which lasted between two and a half and three hours, oral discussions served to highlight and clarify elements in the plan which were still doubtful or debatable. The plan, in its basic elements, was approved.”(( Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York.”).))
The Coordinating Council. The first part of the plan called for the creation of a “Coordinating Council of Archdiocesan Departments” for Spanish Catholic Action consisting of priests representing the various departments. To this purpose Msgr. Connolly devised a kind of table of organization of the archdiocese with eleven major department heads. The rationale for this coordination mechanism was excellent and of value as a permanent principal: “The problems and needs of the Spanish-American Catholics are of the same variety (and) . . . are substantially as staggering in volume as the problems and needs of the rest of the Catholic population. Consequently the Spanish-American problems should be referred to and resolved by the department already existing in the particular sphere to which the problem belongs. The particular department already has an organization, staff and experience for its own proper work. It simply extends its efforts to encompass more and new peoples having these problems pertaining to its function. . . .Any alternate plan of coordination seems impossible, if it be a matter of one person trying to handle matters pertaining to any and all existing Archdiocesan departments. . . . Briefly, the principle underlying the plan of a ‘Coordinating Council’ is the principle of unity. There should not be two distinct departments performing the same function.”(( Connolly, op. cit. (“A Suggested Basic Plan for the Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York” (original draft).) (revised draft substantially quoted in “Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,” op. cit., pp. 4-5.).))
The Laymen’s Committee. The second part of the plan called for the creation of a “Committee of Laymen for Spanish Catholic Action” along the lines of “The Coordinating Council of Catholic Lay Organizations in the Archdiocese of New York.” Apparently the main purpose of such a committee was to ensure a representation of the archdiocese at any and all “ecclesiastical and secular Spanish-American societies” and “at all and sundry ‘conferences,’ ‘workshops,’ ‘seminars,’ ‘committees,’ etc.”((Ibid., (pp. 5-6.).))
The Office of Coordinator. The third part of the plan called for a continuation, along new lines of definition, of the office of “Coordinator of Spanish-Catholic Action.” The principal function of the office was defined as “to serve as the clearance center for and liaison between the Spanish-American people and our own Coordinating Council and Committee of the Laity, as well as the many other ecclesiastical, civic and social agencies in New York pursuing similar activities.”((Ibid., (p. 6.).)) Specifically, the functions of the office were described as threefold: “1. clearance of all matters affecting the Spanish-American population to the proper departments of the Archdiocese; 2. contact with all agencies and individuals, ecclesiastical and civil, concerned with matters affecting the Spanish-American population of the Archdiocese, active or passive; 3. communication with all agencies and individuals, ecclesiastical and civil, concerned with matters affecting the Spanish-American population of this Archdiocese.”((Ibid., (p. 9.).))
The three-part general plan, as described above, was followed by a section that offered a mine of information and specific recommendations concerning priests, parishes, chaplaincies, Catholic Charities, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, the Marriage Tribunal, the Displaced Persons office, colleges, the Catholic Teachers Association, adult education, catholic schools, radio and television programs, vicar for religious, the major and minor seminaries, social action (legal matters, educational matters, housing) and vocations.((Ibid.,( pp. 6-8.).))
Importance. The coordination plan was a magnificent vision and design for the mobilization of the archdiocese on behalf of the Puerto Ricans. It took the scientific data of Fr. Kelly’s survey and his suggestions and elaborated and translated them into a highly specific set of recommendations—a complete program of development and action. The thoroughness of the plan, the process of individual consultation with department heads, the discussions involving the cardinal, all in themselves helped to create a new and deeper awareness of the needs of the Puerto Rican community and of the archdiocese’s responsibility. A special value of the plan was its articulation of the principle of unity for pastoral action in behalf of Hispanics and its call for “an integration of these, our newest and numerous Catholic citizens, into the existing pattern of archdiocesan life” so as to “avoid the unhappy and undesirable evolution, in effect, of a separate diocese within the Archdiocese.”((Ibid.))
Unfortunately this elaborate and well thought out design was never implemented as planned. Many important components such as the Coordinating Council and the Laymen’s Committee were never set up as Msgr. Connolly had hoped, although sixteen years later in another situation one of his successors did establish a kind of coordinating council along somewhat different lines. The Spanish Catholic Action office did continue as a growing and effective advocate of Hispanic interests and concerns and as an agency for specifically Hispanic actions.
Activities in Other Departments
As a result of the coordination plan itself or independent of it, a great variety of new programs were initiated and existing programs and institutions were mobilized better to serve the needs of the Puerto Ricans:
Clergy. In April of 1955 Msgr. Connolly reported, “New York now has more Spanish- speaking clergy, very many of them native New Yorkers, than the Diocese of Ponce in Puerto Rico. There are now seventy-two parishes in New York with at least one Spanish-speaking priest listed.”((Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,”) p. 6.))
Catholic Charities. From the beginning the staff of Catholic Charities was cognizant of the numbers and needs of the Puerto Ricans in New York and responded accordingly. A special study was undertaken within the organization, and a program inaugurated at the central and district offices.((Connolly, op. cit. (“A Suggested Basic Plan for Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York.”).)) In 1954 approximately one-third of the population served by the thirty-nine agencies of the Child Care Department were Puerto Rican. The percentage of Puerto Rican clients seen at each of the four offices of the Family Service Department was 98% in East Harlem, 34% in the central office, 23% in the Bronx, and 13% in Washington Heights. An even higher percentage of Spanish speaking staff served in that department.(( Edward Head, “Direct Service of Catholic Charities,” Report of the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955 (New York: Archdiocese of New York, 1955), section III, pp. 8-9. (Mimeographed.).)) Msgr. Connolly reported in April, 1955, “Let it be sufficient to say that this program is probably the largest single organized effort of the Church for Puerto Ricans—on or off the Island of Puerto Rico—with the possible exception of the Catholic Education program in Puerto Rico.”((Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York.”), p. 7.))
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. A library of Spanish catechetical materials was assembled. A teacher training program for bilingual catechists to teach adults was inaugurated. Spanish pre-Cana and Cana conferences were prepared.((Ibid.))
Marriage tribunal. Two Spanish speaking priest canon lawyers were added to the staff of the curia, forms were prepared in Spanish for the many Spanish speaking clients and procedures were modified and adjusted better to meet the needs of Hispanics with matrimonial problems.((Harry J. Byrne, “What the Tribunal of the Archdiocese of New York is Doing to Meet the Special Needs of Puerto Rican Migrants Who Are Involved in a Marriage Problem Requiring a Decision of the Tribunal,” Report on the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955 (New York: Archdiocese of New York, 1955), section III, pp. 10-13. (Mimeographed.).))
Adult education. A variety of successful adult education programs were inaugurated or carried on in parishes such as Holy Name, St. Cecilia, St. Paul, St. Stephen and St. John Chrysostom and in Casita María by the local clergy and religious, Los Trabajadores Sociales Católicos Españoles, the A.C.T.U. and others.((Joseph F. Connolly, “The Spanish American Population – Some Points of View,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 885 and Connolly, op. cit. (“A Suggested Basic Plan for the Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York” and “Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,” p. 7.).))
Catholic schools. Msgr. Connolly reported in April, 1955, “On the grade and high school levels, the number of Puerto Rican pupils has notable increased. Individual schools are attempting various measures to meet the educational needs of Puerto Ricans.”(( Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York”), p. 7.)) A model of such attention was Commander Shea School, founded in 1942 as an annex to St. Cecilia’s school. The school was overwhelmingly Puerto Rican and classes were grouped, graded and divided in creative ways better to attend to the children’s needs. An active parents association existed as well. Cathedral Girls High School was especially receptive to Puerto Rican girls graduating from Commander Shea and some even went on to Marymount College.
The Catholic Hour. The first radio programming in Spanish by the archdiocese was a weekly fifteen minute program on WHOM Saturday evenings at 9:45, the “Spanish-Catholic Hour.”((Ibid. p. 8 and Connolly, op. cit. (“A Suggested Basic Plan for the Coordination of Spanish Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of New York.”).))
Seminary. Six seminarians studied in Puerto Rico during the summer of 1953. In October Msgr. Connolly spoke to the student body about the work of Spanish Catholic Action. Weekly workshops led by the seminarians who went to Puerto Rico were held. A “Spanish Catholic Action Room” was set up. A series of conferences and discussions involving priests and laity active in the Hispanic community were given. A rapid Spanish language course, “Spanish Through Pictures,” was added to an existing Advanced Spanish Seminar led by Fr. Leandro Mayoral, C.M.. In 1954 seminarians went to the island again and by the next year there were fifty-five seminarians in the rapid course and twenty or so in the advanced.((Ibid. and Connolly, op. cit. (“The Spanish American Population –Some Points of view.”).))
Other Activities of the Spanish Catholic Action Office
In addition to the inauguration of the San Juan Fiesta and the language training programs the Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action began several other programs:
Guía Católica. A directory of Catholic churches in New York with Spanish language services was published by the Spanish Catholic Action Office. One hundred thousand copies were distributed in New York and another one hundred thousand copies were sent to Puerto Rico for distribution to people leaving the island for New York.(( Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York”), p. 6.))
Migrant farm workers. In July of 1954 a program of visiting camps of the approximately 300 Puerto Rican farm workers working in the Kerhonkson valley, west of Kingston, was begun. On August 15, 1954 Mass began to be celebrated on the camp grounds on Sunday evenings for the duration of the season.(( Gerard Micera, “Assistance to Migrant Farmers,” Report of the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan Puerto Rico, April11th to 16th, 1955 (New York: Archdiocese of New York, 1955), section III, p. 13. (Mimeographed.).))
Marian Year pilgrimage. A Marian Year pilgrimage with all prayers and hymns in Spanish brought 2,400 people to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on September 12, 1954.(( Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York,” p. 9 and “The Spanish American Population — Some Points of View.”).))
New York Excelsior. A Spanish language Catholic weekly for the Archdiocese of New York was inaugurated on March 25, 1955 with an initial circulation of 5,200 copies. The paper, a New York edition of the national newspaper Excelsior, included the general features of the national edition and two pages of news of the archdiocese under the responsibility of the Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action.(( Joseph F. Connolly, “Memorandum for His Eminence (Francis Cardinal Spellman),” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 885 and Connolly, op. cit. (“Coordination of a Pastoral Program for the Spiritual Care of Spanish-Americans in New York”), p. 9.))
The Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants
A very important meeting took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico in April of 1955, the first Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants. Although it was convened under the auspices of the bishops of the two Puerto Rican dioceses of San Juan and Ponce, Cardinal Spellman gave it his strong personal and financial support and agreed to underwrite the participation of the priests from the mainland who attended. The official organizer of the conference was Fr. Thomas Gildea, C.SS.R. of St. Augustine’s parish in San Juan; most of the preparations and plans were made by Fr. Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J. and Fr. Ivan Illich from New York.
The conference, the first of its kind ever held, was directed by Fr. William Ferree, S.M., Rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. Thirty-five priests from sixteen mainland dioceses attended and seventy-five priests from the two dioceses in Puerto Rico. The purpose of the conference was to make an honest and open review of the spiritual care that was being provided for Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland; to examine some historical, cultural and religious elements in their background and the surroundings into which they were plunged after arrival on the mainland; and to discuss methods and practices which could be suggested for the consideration of priests faced with this challenge.(( William Ferree, Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, and John D. Illich, “Foreword,” Report on the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11thto 16th , 1955 (New York; Archdiocese of New York, 1955), pp. 1-2. (Mimeographed.).))
The final report on the conference was prepared by Fr. Ferree, Fr. Fitzpatrick and Fr. Illich. Cardinal Spellman offered to underwrite the cost of its publication and he asked Msgr. Connolly to distribute copies in sufficient number to all the agencies of the archdiocese which were engaged in the apostolate for the Spanish speaking as well as to all bishops who had Puerto Ricans in their dioceses and to the bishops of the Southwest Conference.(( Francis Cardinal Spellman, “Dedication,” Report of the First Conference on the Spiritual Care of Puerto Rican Migrants Held in San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11th to 16th, 1955 (New York; Archdiocese of New York, 1955), pp. 3-4. (Mimeographed.).))
The conference had one interesting and very important consequence. Fr. Ferree was so impressed by the capabilities of Fr. Illich that he requested Cardinal Spellman to loan his services to the Catholic University of Puerto Rico as vice-rector. The Cardinal agreed and the following year Fr. Illich went to Ponce to assume this new position.
The Policy of the Integrated Parish
The initial reaction of the archdiocesan authorities to the increasing presence of Puerto Ricans and other Spanish speaking people in New York had been to utilize the tried and tested pastoral structure for immigrants, the national parish. When Cardinal Spellman came to New York he declined to continue to establish national parishes; in 1939 he turned the local or territorial parish of St. Cecilia over to the care of the Redemptorists. The parish remained a geographical one staffed by American priests who continued to serve the earlier Irish and German parishioners but who also could make the adaptations in parish life needed for the newcomers.(( Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, Puerto Rican Americans (Englewood Cliffs: Prentiss Hall, 1971), pp. 124-125.))
With the data acquired through the survey about the sheer number of Puerto Rican immigrants and the extent of their rapid dispersal throughout the city, a radical new approach to pastoral care was established by Cardinal Spellman: wherever Puerto Ricans lived, the local parish would adopt itself to them. Wherever necessary, parishes would begin to function in a bilingual, bicultural way. The model of St. Cecilia was made normative for the archdiocese, except now it applied to the parishes staffed by the diocesan clergy as well. The implications of this pastoral decision were enormous: local clergy and religious would have to acquire new communication skills and adjunct, Spanish speaking clergy and religious would have to be recruited; all diocesan programs, offices and agencies would have to begin to address themselves to a bilingual, bicultural reality; and these new immigrants would not be ecclesiastically isolated but involved immediately in the life of the local parish.(( Robert L. Stern, “The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans,” Migration Today, Vol. V, No. 3 (June, 1977), p. 18.))
Rationale, The principal reason prompting this decision of the cardinal was the lack of Puerto Rican priests. Speaking of the influx of Puerto Ricans, Cardinal Spellman observed, “They arrive on our Continental Mainland with the Cross about their necks and in their heart . . . but with no priests to attend their migration. Theirs is the first such Catholic group in the history of the American Migration. It is an unfortunate distinction. But it is an unavoidable distinction. Their priests do not come with them only because they cannot come with them. There are not enough priests in Puerto Rico to care for those remaining at home. In the Archdiocese of New York 2,500 priests serve 1,400,000 people. In the two dioceses of Puerto Rico, San Juan and Ponce, 310 priests serve 2,250,000 people. And less than 25 percent of these priests are native Puerto Ricans. Considering these two only of the very many distinctive features of the Puerto Rican Migration, the American Catholic is faced once again with a responsibility. It is not a new responsibility. It is a responsibility as old as American Migration. The term for that responsibility is ‘integration’…By Divine Providence every priest in New York has become a missionary to these people of Puerto Rico, so desperately in need of the priestly ministrations the heroic, zealous priests on their own little island could never have given because they are so few in number.”(( Spellman, op. cit., p. 2.))
Another reason, Fr. Fitzpatrick observed, was that “the history of the national or language parishes was beginning to reveal important disadvantages. When the third generation of Germans, Italians or Polish had grown up, few of them still spoke the language of their forebears and most had become assimilated to American ways and were moving away from the area of the language parish. As a result, clusters of old national churches, sometimes two and three in a few square blocks, continued to exist with a handful of members, . . . The integrated parish might involve problems of adjustment for the first generation, but it would be free of the problems of the third generation national parish that had lost its usefulness. Finally, as Puerto Ricans moved into poor areas from which older residents had departed, the existing geographical parish had valuable resources in the form of church buildings and parochial schools which could be used for the newcomers.”(( Fitzpatrick, op. cit., p. 125.))
Effectiveness. An inherent limitation of the decision to have integrated, not national parishes was that it tended to perpetuate among the Puerto Ricans the feeling that they were newcomers who were inheriting something established rather than creating something of their own. Besides not having the confidence of knowing that this parish, church or school was “theirs” in the sense in which previous immigrant groups knew the national parish was “theirs,” often the church or school they inherited was old, decaying and in need of costly repairs and maintenance. Also, in practice, the integrated parish, at least initially, meant that special Masses and services were provided for Puerto Ricans in their own language, but often in a basement chapel, a school hall or a small chapel elsewhere in the parish.(( Fitzpatrick, op.cit., p. 124.)) It was inevitable that in many parishes the Puerto Ricans felt themselves to be “second class” parishioners.
T0day more than one hundred of the local parishes of the Archdiocese of New York, over one-quarter of the total number, are ministering to Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic people in their own language as well as in English. In very many of them the Hispanics are now the dominant ethnic and cultural group; many have become “Spanish” parishes after all!
IV. THE HEYDAY OF SPANISH CATHOLIC ACTION
The genius of Msgr. Connolly was vision, planning and bold beginnings; it was not necessarily patient perseverance in long-range implementation of goals. By 1956 for a variety of personal reasons he was not in the position to give the care and attention to the office of in Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action that it required. In November, another diocesan priest, Fr. James J. Wilson, was named acting coordinator and in May of 1957 he was named permanently to the position to replace Msgr. Connolly. During the next six years he provided the coordination and leadership that achieved a real consolidation and expansion of the archdiocese’s commitment to Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic Americans.
Expansion of the Fiesta of San Juan Bautista
The new style of observance of the feast of St. John the Baptist at Fordham University in June of 1956 had proved to be an outstanding success—too much of a success, actually, for Fordham to cope with it. The model was excellent however; the fiesta had to have a popular dimension in addition to the liturgical.
For 1957 Fr. Wilson hired the city stadium on Randall’s Island and announced the celebration of the fiesta there. As stadiums go, it was out of the way. Although near to Manhattan island, especially the Spanish Harlem neighborhood, the stadium was adjacent to the Triboro Bridge approach and hard to get to. Even so about thirty or forty thousand people turned out for the fiesta. It was a great Catholic spectacle: hundreds and thousands of Hijas de María marched in their white dresses, the rosary was recited, great floats with tableaux of the mysteries of the rosary passed and people marched with their parish society banners. A pontifical Mass was celebrated at a great altar especially erected in the center of the stadium’s field. Cardinal Spellman was escorted into the stadium by a huge procession of laity, altar servers and clergy. He was greeted with shouts of !Viva el Cardenal!, !Viva la Iglesia! and great roars of applause.(( Robert Stern, “Hispanics and New York — Happenings and Pastoral Plans,” Clergy Report, Vol. 8, No. 9 (November 1978), p. 1.))
The Mass was followed by an elaborate civic and cultural program. Special dignitaries were introduced, long and short speeches were given, congratulations were offered on all sides and a distinguished assemblage of artists, musicians and other entertainers, Puerto Rican and Latin in general, both professional and amateur, entertained the crowd. The celebration was meant to be a typical Puerto Rican fiesta patronal. As the formalities of the liturgy concluded, the great crowd gradually dissolved into clusters of family picnics, games and song. The stadium is in the center of a vast public park on Randall’s Island and the area was carpeted with Puerto Rican families intermixed with the clergy and religious who spoke their language.
The new pattern of the San Juan Fiesta was set. From year to year under Fr. Wilson’s guidance it became bigger and better. The spectacle varied, there were ever new dignitaries present, but the combination of religious-civic-cultural events held. As the fiesta became an institution, people vied to become associated with it. Fr. Wilson organized a Citizens’ Committee for the fiesta that met regularly during the year to plan and promote it and which became in its day one of the most prestigious of Puerto Rican Catholic organizations. A high honor was the naming of the new president of the fiesta at the conclusion of each year’s ceremonies. A distinguished roster of Puerto Rican lay leaders tells the tale of this office.
In its day, the San Juan Fiesta was a very important thing in the life of the Puerto Rican community. It corresponded to a deeply held Puerto Rican value: respeto. At that time all of what the public at large thought they knew about Puerto Ricans in New York was that they were poor, they didn’t speak the language and they were the ones that were ruining the city. Of course that is the story of every immigrant group; it was said about the Irish, the Italians, the Blacks and everybody else. The fiesta offered an opportunity for a public demonstration of the religious and cultural values of the Puerto Rican community, for until then they had no special expression of their culture, language or dignity. It was the first city-wide event that recognized the presence of the Puerto Ricans; there was nothing else. For several years it remained the main Puerto Rican event in New York.((Ibid., p. 2.))
Formation for the Pastoral Care of Puerto Ricans
The necessary concomitant to the policy decision to strive for integrated parishes throughout the archdiocese was the need of an extensive program of training of non-Hispanic church personnel—seminarians, priests and religious—in the spoken Spanish language and in Puerto Rican culture and Catholicism. The sending of seminarians and priests to Puerto Rico in 1953, 1954 and 1955 certainly provided experience of the latter. The intensive language training at Georgetown University in the summer of 1956 of half the newly ordained class of priests definitively gave a superior formation in the language.
The Ponce program. Now Msgr. Ivan Illich, in his new capacity of Vice-Rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, suggested an ideal solution for the training of church personnel. The seminarians, priests and religious would be sent to Puerto Rico. They would experience the shock of adjustment to another culture and learn to appreciate the values of Puerto Rico, its people and its church. But they would also have the benefit of the most up-to-date and effective methodology in language training. The Foreign Service Institute method of teaching spoken Spanish at Georgetown University would be utilized as well at the Catholic University in Ponce. In the summer of 1957 Msgr. Illich inaugurated a special training program primarily designed for mainland church personnel working with Puerto Ricans under the title of the Institute of Missionary Formation of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
If the newly ordained priests who met with Cardinal Spellman in June of 1956 were surprised to receive an assignment to Washington, imagine the reactions of the class of 1957. In those days the style of assignment of clergy was quasi-military: orders were given and no preferences were asked. The cardinal now made the even bolder move of assigning half of his new priests not just out of the diocese but, so to speak, out of the country. The same procedure was followed for the next few years, so the possibility of a summer assignment to Puerto Rico became a routine expectation of the newly ordained New York priest. By 1959 there began to be some concern to ascertain the degree of interest in such an experience among the priests to be ordained and this influenced the decision about assignment. Experience proved that motivation had a lot to do with success in learning the language and adapting to the culture.
The Puerto Rican assignment was not just for priests. A large group of religious sisters and brothers as well as seminarians were sent each summer to Ponce, sometimes forty or fifty in all. Usually the clergy had an eight-week language training program and the religious, six. In addition to the six or seven hours a day of drill in small groups in spoken Spanish, there were courses given on Puerto Rican, Latin American and American culture and in the particular problems of intercultural communication by a variety of experts in all these different fields. Besides the theoretic study of the challenges of operating in a culture other than one’s own, there was a highly personal experience of these challenges, deliberately heightened and aggravated by Fr. Illich. Climate, scheduling, food, style of organization, attitudes about punctuality, the manner of celebration of the liturgy, the constant use of Spanish—all conspired together to “Puerto-Ricanize” the unsuspecting students.
A specially significant part of the program for the priests were weekend assignments to assist at one or another of the parishes of the island. For better or worse, each was thrown into a professional situation with a demand for communication. The experience was challenging and enriching. The interactions on the weekends forced the utilization of newly acquired language skills, exposed the priests to the living Puerto Rican culture and enabled them to experience the warmth and affection of the people. Usually at the end of the summer there was an opportunity for the students, especially the clergy, to spend an additional four weeks living in a Puerto Rican parish and assisting in pastoral ministry there
The Puerto Rican experience profoundly influenced a generation of New York priests. Standing outside their own culture, however briefly, they acquired a critical perspective of it. The contact with Hispanic Catholicism helped them to discern the Irish quality of New York’s church. The experience of pluralism stood them in good stead as the whole Church began to change in the days of Vatican II. The Puerto Rican trained clergy became the pastoralist vanguard of the archdiocese.
The Hayes program. Pleased by the success of the Ponce program in 1957, Cardinal Spellman not only assigned half of his 1958 class of priests to Puerto Rico but on July 30, 1958 he “requested Catholic University of Puerto Rico to extend its courses of Missionary Formation to New York in order to insure the preparation in the shortest possible time of an adequate supply of priests, sisters and lay people for effective (missionary) work among some 500,000 ‘hispanos’ in the Archdiocese.”(( Ivan D. Illich, “General Plan for the Preparation of New York Archdiocesan Personnel for Effective Apostolate among Spanish Speakers,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 885.))
Msgr. Illich prepared a draft of a proposal for a “General Plan for the Preparation of New York Archdiocesan Personnel for Effective Apostolate among Spanish Speakers” which he planned to present to Cardinal Spellman before November 15th and circulated it among a select group for evaluation, criticism and correction. The tenor of the paper was that “a considerable lag still exists between personnel needed and personnel available” and that “this lag must be filled as quickly and as well as possible”—i.e. between December 1958 and September 1961. The paper proceeded to outline the specific needs of the Spanish speaking in New York and how they were to be met by the church, to forecast how the number and distribution of Spanish speaking in need of special attention would change by 1970, to estimate the minimum number of priests and other specially prepared personnel that would be needed, to propose a program of missionary formation for the Archdiocese of New York and finally, to estimate a three-year budget for the operation of the proposed program.((Ibid.))
Not many of the large number of specific recommendations of Msgr. Illich were adopted or implemented; one that was, was that for a language training program for religious similar to that given in Ponce, but which could be offered in New York. January 29, 1959 Monsignor John P. Haverty, Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese of New York, announced that “a special twelve-week course in Spanish designed for teachers in the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese will be given at Cardinal Hayes High School…commencing Saturday, March 7th. This program enjoys the sponsorship of His Eminence the Cardinal and is being given under the auspices of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico.”(( John P. Haverty, “Memorandum to the Reverend Superiors and the Reverend Directors and Directresses of Studies of Communities Teaching in the Elementary Schools of Manhattan and the Bronx,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 1012.))
The purpose was both to provide a continuation of the Ponce program to the teaching religious who studied there the previous summer and to initiate those who planned to study in Puerto Rico the following summer. Interested lay teachers who planned to take summer courses at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico were also welcomed to these classes. The classes consisted of two sessions of intensive drill in spoken Spanish of two hours and of one and one-half hours in duration.((Ibid.))
Institute of Inter-Cultural Communication
Technically the new spring program and the projections for its continuance were a contracted project of the Institute of Missionary Formation of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico and, of course, the summer program was the basic expression of this institute. As a point of fact, it was a New York priest who was responsible for both programs and who had designed both with the needs of New York foremost in mind. In 1959 it was determined to refer to these programs in a new way as activities of the Institute of Inter-Cultural Communication and in December of that year the newly named institute was incorporated in New York State.
The incorporation placed full control of the institute in the hands of the Archdiocese of New York. The institute continued to operate regular weekly language training programs at Cardinal Hayes High School for the fall and spring semester each year and gradually it added a second, alternative evening of class at Hayes and occasional classes at the archdiocesan seminary and other regional centers. During the summer months the Institute of Inter-Cultural Communication ambiguously was identified as an institute of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. In fact it was a special program directed by the New York archdiocese utilizing the services and buildings of the Catholic University. While a New York priest was vice-rector or rector of the university, there was no great need to clarify some of the ambiguity. Later, when the university had a lay rector and a somewhat more proper autonomy, the relationship between the archdiocese and the university as regards the summer program became a matter of formal, contractual agreement.
For the next ten years the style and substance of both programs, Ponce and Hayes, remained basically the same. A New York archdiocesan priest was named by the cardinal as the director of the institute, a part-time job during the school year and a full-time one during the summer. A measure of the degree of importance and the extent of involvement of the archdiocese in both these programs was that they represented an annual expenditure of at least $100,000.
The Cursillos de Cristiandad
A short range goal for the archdiocese was to train as quickly and as extensively as possible non-Hispanic clergy and religious to minister to the needs of its Puerto Rican and other Hispanic peoples. A very long range goal was the development of indigenous leadership in New York’s Hispanic community, first a well formed lay leadership and then, hopefully, religious vocations from strongly church affiliated Hispanic Catholic families.
Msgr. Wilson was very interested in the importation of a new and widely successful instrument of evangelization and conversion developed in Ciudad Real, Spain, that was producing electrifying results in Spain and in Mexico and other parts of Hispanic America, the Cursillo de Cristiandad, or Brief Course in Christianity. After an earlier, first and unsuccessful experiment, the Cursillos began to be given on a regular basis in the archdiocese in September of 1960. At that time a team of Mexican American laymen from Laredo, Texas, came to give the first cursillo. Although it was enthusiastically received and extremely effective, it was the original Spanish pastoral design twice removed. In December, at the archdiocese’s invitation, an expert pair of Spanish laymen came from the mother diocese of the Cursillo movement in Spain to give New York’s second and third cursillos.
The cursillo is actually a highly and tightly organized, three-day, study-retreat weekend with a strong emphasis on community experience. In content it addressed itself, especially in its original form, to the distortions and inadequacies of traditional popular Hispano-American Catholicism and to a theological understanding of the sacramental life, Christian maturity and the responsibilities of the lay person in the Church. After attending a cursillo, the average participant is enthused, highly motivated and disposed to active involvement in the apostolate in his local parish.(( Stern, op. cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans”), p. 19.))
At first the Cursillos were given at Tagaste Seminary of the Augustinian Recollect fathers. By December of 1961 the archdiocese established St. Joseph’s Center on West 142nd Street in Manhattan for the Cursillo movement and other works of formation under the direction of the Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action. The Augustinian Recollects undertook to staff it. In March of 1962 the Cursillo movement had grown to such an extent that it was deemed appropriate to set up the recommended diocesan structure of governance for it, the Secretariat, the members of which are named by the bishop of the diocese.
During the past two decades and more the Cursillo movement has been the chief instrument of Hispanic lay leadership formation within the Archdiocese of New York. Several thousand lay men and women have “made” a Cursillo and thousands of them have received further and specialized formation for the apostolate in the associated programs of the Cursillo movement at St. Joseph’s Center.((Ibid.)) The “cursillistas” have provided the nucleus of Hispanic lay leadership in almost every Hispanic parish of the archdiocese. Perhaps one reason for the rapid spread, great popularity and considerable impact of the Cursillo among New York’s Hispanics is that this diocesan-wide, city-wide movement provided a framework and community to the individual Hispanic immigrant otherwise submerged in New York’s dominant non-Hispanic culture and in danger of losing his identity as Hispanic and Catholic. Its religious celebrations and great rallies and assemblages both made each Hispanic cursillista very aware that he was not alone in New York and gave him great opportunities for self-expression, recognition and leadership.
Caballeros de San Juan Bautista
An earlier and less effective attempt to strengthen their Catholic identity and to provide fraternal support to Hispanic lay men was the institution of the Caballeros de San Juan Bautista, or Knights of St. John the Baptist, a Catholic Hispanic fraternal organization begun in Chicago. After three months of study and planning, in December of 1957 the Caballeros de San Juan Bautista were organized in New York. Councils were quickly established in Holy Agony, Milagrosa and Our Lady of Lourdes parishes; beginnings were made at Holy Name, St. Michael and Nativity parishes and a school for prospective leaders was held weekly at St. Matthew’s parish. Orientation lectures were given on such subjects as house visitation, credit unions, housing, employment opportunities and the necessity of learning English. Spiritual formation was promoted by days of recollection and holy hours.(( James J. Wilson, “June Report to His Eminence the Cardinal, 1958,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 979.))
Msgr. Wilson had great hopes that “this program of the Caballeros has great possibilities of serving as a transition organization to welcome and orient the new migrant and put him in touch with the Church and established Church societies. As a city-wide Catholic organization it has the advantage of providing a much needed anchor for men recently arriving and living in parishes where parish societies have not yet made provision for those who only understand Spanish.(( Wilson, loc. cit.)) These great expectations were never realized. The Caballeros never became what its founders hoped for, but the Cursillo movement more than fulfilled most of the dreams for the Caballeros.
The Gran Misión
In several parts of Latin America in the late l950’s a special missionary project called the Gran Misión had remarkable success. An international team of priests—local clergy, other Latin Americans and Spaniards—would concentrate on a city or diocesan-wide mission over a period of several months. Coordinating their activities according to a master plan and timetable, they would pastorally “saturate” an area. The mission included a pre-mission phase of some months of home visitation and parish preparation; a full mission program for men women, and young people in the classic parish mission style and a post-mission, follow-up program. It had astounding results in numbers of people contacted, sacraments administered and the fervor and enthusiasm it provoked.
Msgr. Wilson thought of adopting this technique for the revitalization of the Puerto Rican and Hispanic community in New York City. The massive approach utilized in the Latin American cities was not possible in New York for a variety of reasons. First, New York was not an entirely Spanish-speaking and Catholic city, so the Gran Misión could never have the public and total impact it was designed for. Also, financially it was unthinkable to transport, house and finance hundreds of Hispanic mission preachers. However six priests experienced in the Gran Misión in Latin America and specialists in census and home visitation techniques did come to New York early in 1961 for a period of time ranging from a few months to a year or two and worked in St. Lucy and Ascension parishes in Manhattan and in Sts. Peter and Paul parish (including the national parishes of Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Pity and St. Adalbert) in the Bronx.(( James J. Wilson, “Memo for the Use of His Eminence at the Priests’ Retreats, June, 1961,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 979.))
Pastoral Contacts and Communications
As the Spanish Catholic Action office became a regular part of the life of the archdiocese it began to acquire dozens of routine functions in addition to the stimulation of new activities or the establishment of new archdiocesan level programs. The coordinator would be called on repeatedly to attend meetings, dedications, religious services, banquets and other social functions to represent the archdiocese and the cardinal. Further, the office became a kind of counseling and orientation center for any and all Spanish speaking persons with any kind of question, complaint or problem. During the course of time that Msgr. Wilson served there several important services were rendered:
Ayuda Católica para Emigrantes Puertorriqueños. For many years at the airport in San Juan the Legion of Mary would interview all Puerto Ricans leaving the island for the mainland, filling out a data form giving as many particulars as possible about their identity, religious status and destination. These forms would be forwarded to the mainland dioceses for follow-up. By way of cooperation with them, Msgr. Connolly had prepared the Guía Católica to Catholic churches in the archdiocese which was given to migrants in San Juan as they left. In New York the forms about arriving Puerto Ricans began to be received in increasing quantities. By the time of Mgr. Wilson, a major task of the coordinator’s office was to receive these forms, determine by the address of destination the parish where the new arrival would be living and inform the pastor or Spanish speaking priest there so that personally or through the Legion of Mary the newly arrived could be contacted and assisted.
In 1959, for example, Msgr. Wilson could report to Cardinal Spellman that “through volunteer aid, principally the Legion of Mary both here and in Puerto Rico, the Archdiocese has been able to follow up contacts made with migrants at the San Juan airport. During the last two years approximately 10,000 were visited by workers armed beforehand with useful information as to the migrant’s spiritual status, purpose of migration, degree of English spoken, etc.”(( James J. Wilson, “Report on Spanish Catholic Action (Prepared for the Ad Limina Visit of the Cardinal in 1959),” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 979.)) It is hard to say how effective the program was. Its inspiration was very good but somewhat paternalistic. It was more feasible in theory than in practice. Often the New York address was tentative and inaccurate, and even if the person was visited it was unrealistic in many cases that religious problems of long-time duration would be addressed by the migrant in the midst of so many immediate challenges to material survival. But, it did provide thousands of friendly and welcome contacts with local parishioners, priests and churches.
Seasonal farm workers. If contact with new arrivals to the city was a frustrating business, even more so was the pastoral care of migrant farm workers. The New York archdiocese never had very large numbers of them. However, continually during the summer months there would be visits to the migrant camps, occasional Masses and other religious devotions, and catechetical instruction for children. It was difficult to do much, for usually the workers were out in the fields from dawn to dusk and they were present here only for a short while. Again, it was not the opportune time for most of them to resolve long-standing problems of religious practice, but, at least, as Msgr. Wilson reported, they “are not forgotten; they receive services and instruction in Spanish during their comparatively short stay, carrying back to Puerto Rico the memory of the Universal Church serving them in a strange land, often under trying and unfavorable material conditions.”((Ibid.))
Guía Moral del Cine. A service initiated by Msgr. Wilson was to publish the Spanish language equivalent of the Legion of Decency’s ratings of current motion pictures. This was made available to the Spanish language press in New York City as well as sent to each parish and Spanish speaking priest.
Notes to priests on Spanish Catholic Action. A regular newsletter was mailed to all Spanish speaking priests in the archdiocese and to many outside it to keep them informed of interesting pastoral developments locally and elsewhere. Also, clergy meetings and conferences were held periodically for the same purpose, often with guest speakers from within or outside the archdiocese.
Mass booklets. Another valuable service rendered by the coordinator’s office was the preparation of Spanish language Mass booklets, with prayers, hymns and songs for use in the parish.
Labor schools. Labor schools in the Spanish language under the auspices of the A.C.T.U. helped to provide New York Hispanic workers with the knowledge and principles necessary to defend their rights and to follow the social encyclicals.((Ibid.))
Inter-Diocesan Meeting of Priests
In October, 1957 in New York City, Msgr. Wilson convoked and presided at an Inter-Diocesan Meeting of Priests Concerning the Apostolate to the Spanish-Speaking of the East. Forty priests were present representing twenty-two dioceses. The purposes of the meeting were to review the present activity of the dioceses represented; to determine what their major difficulties and their most successful methods were; to discuss what organizations had been most effective; to decide whether coordination between the dioceses was advisable and, if so, what form it should take; to determine how the dioceses could cooperate better with Catholic Aid to Puerto Rican Migrants in San Juan; and, finally, to decide whether a large scale conference, either of clergy alone or of clergy and laity, was necessary or advisable.(( “Report of the Inter-Diocesan Meeting of Priests Concerning the Apostolate to the Spanish Speaking People in the East,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 1105.))
This meeting was the first regional initiative of the Archdiocese of New York. In subsequent years, because of the sheer numbers of its Spanish speaking population and because of the great development of the apostolate to the Spanish speaking within the archdiocese, New York continued to exercise a kind of informal leadership of the dioceses of the northeast and to assist them with information and programs of various kinds. It was only with the establishment of the Northeast Catholic Pastoral Center for Hispanics many years later that this role ceased.
V. SPANISH COMMUNITY ACTION
Some years before he took on the responsibility of Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action, Msgr. Wilson had spent seven years in the Philippine Islands where he had begun to study Spanish. He had continued that study upon his return to New York. Consequently, unlike Msgr. Connolly, when Msgr. Wilson was named coordinator he could express himself fluently in that language. More important, in the Philippines he had acquired a missionary perspective which influenced his work in the archdiocese of New York. Appreciating the value of the Church’s work in other countries and cultures, he strongly advocated the Puerto Rican experience for New York clergy and religious, encouraged mastery of the language as an apostolic tool and drew upon pastoral programs tried with success in other places such as the Caballeros de San Juan Bautista, the Cursillos de Cristiandad and the Gran Misión.
His successor, Msgr. Robert J. Fox, was formed in part by the very programs Msgr. Wilson helped to initiate. Shortly after his ordination Fr. Fox was sent to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. for graduate studies in social work. During the summer of 1958 he studied spoken Spanish and Puerto Rican culture at the Institute of Missionary Formation of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico together with the newly ordained priests of that year. After three years in the Family Service Division of New York Catholic Charities, in August of 1961 he was appointed to a Fulbright lectureship in social work in Montevideo, Uruguay, for a year. Consequently, when he was named Coordinator of Spanish Catholic Action in July of 1963, he not only was totally fluent in Spanish and had experienced and studied the life of Puerto Rico and Latin America but also brought the interests and social concerns of a highly trained social work professional to his new position.
Msgr. Fox inherited responsibility for the many projects and programs of the Spanish Catholic Action Office developed under Msgr. Connolly and Msgr. Wilson and continued to develop them. But, more importantly, he galvanized and inspired the many young, trained Spanish speaking priests and religious, till then left pretty much to their own devices in terms of pastoral care and programs, by a series of creative and innovative programs designed to promote personal interaction and community development in the inner city. In fact the very name of the Spanish office was changed to reflect this new emphasis. He became the Coordinator of Spanish Community Action.
Summer in the City
As the summer of 1964 drew near. Sr. Margaret Dowling of the Sisters of Charity of Mt. St. Vincent approached Msgr. Fox with the idea of utilizing the services of religious sisters in inner-city Hispanic neighborhoods on a volunteer basis during the vacation months. Msgr. Fox came up with a project that was tried out with great success at the Lillian Wald Houses in St. Brigid parish that year—with so much success, as a matter of fact, that requests came from other communities of religious to become so involved in the future. During the fall and winter, Msgr. Fox communicated and met with the Spanish speaking priests in the inner-city parishes and plans were made for extending the same experience to thirty-five parishes in the summer of 1965.
The plans were seriously and positively affected by the establishment that winter of the federal Office of Economic Opportunity, the beginning of President Johnson’s “war on poverty.” Originally the summer project was planned to operate on a completely volunteer basis. The archdiocese had agreed to give each participating religious a nominal stipend of $20 a month and to provide housing in convents for all. Since a complete project description was already drafted and the new Office of Economic Opportunity was ready and willing to fund local community programs, an application was made and a grant for a quarter of a million dollars was received. Summer in the City was launched!
The organizational manual for the new program described it as “a combined effort of many persons attempting to establish an environment conducive to increased relationship and communication between persons and among groups within a neighborhood.…Too frequently barriers, deeper than language, separate persons one from the other. External pressures rising from social censures, living standards, and even norms of dress combine with internal forces founded in traits of personality (and) differences of background to form seemingly insurmountable obstacles to genuine communication of ideas.…Spontaneous creative expression is an important element in the growth and development of human relationships. . . . The need of such a response is seen in all areas but especially in depressed sections where withdrawal and escapism in their varied forms are evident. Growth in appreciation of oneself and appreciation of another’s individuality are the foundations of genuine relationship. . . .(( “Summer in the City, Information for Center Directors, Board members, etc.,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 99, p. 9.))
“All aspects of the program—educational, recreational, and cultural—must be infused with creativity. . . . The composite group of distinct persons making up the staff is a deliberate effort to foster relationship among persons of varied backgrounds. . . . Another factor necessarily connected with the concepts of relationship and creativity is the visibility of the program. By its very nature, if the program is to make a worthwhile contribution to the neighborhood, activities must be conducted in the open forum. Every effort must be made to involve people in places where they naturally congregate.”((Ibid., pp. 9-10.))
The combined efforts of the priests, religious volunteers, professionals in creative arts, paid project and recreation assistants from the neighborhoods and other volunteers under the leadership and coordination of Msgr. Fox had immediate and enormous success. At the close of Summer in the City in 1965 and after an evaluation of the experience, plans were made to repeat it in the summer of 1966, and a proposal was developed for an umbrella funding organization, the Institute for Human Development.
New York Institute for Human Development
After some months of planning, the proposal for the institute was completed and it was incorporated as a New York State membership corporation on April 14, 1966. According to its certificate of incorporation, its prime purpose was “to plan, establish and conduct programs of research, training and demonstration and studies, surveys and other activities designed to develop, test and carry out ways and means of ascertaining and ameliorating the causes and effects of poverty and other social problems and satisfying the needs and aspirations of economically disadvantaged and culturally deprived citizens in the City of New York and elsewhere; and in connection therewith to promote interpersonal and intergroup relationships designed to aid in the attainment of such objectives, and to identify, coordinate and cooperate with existing and future community programs and resources and existing and future Federal, state and local governmental programs and resources directed toward the achievement of such objectives or any of them.”(( Certificate of Incorporation of New York Institute for Human Development, Inc., Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 979, p. 1.))
Even before the Institute was fully incorporated a proposal for a continuation during the year of the work of Summer in the City under the name of Project Engage was drafted and submitted to the New York Economic Opportunity Committee. After nine months of deliberation by its staff and various committees, it was finally approved for $1,200,000 of funding in August of 1966. However the fact that the City of New York was not then eligible for any new funds from the Office of Economic Opportunity and the increasingly chaotic state of the New York Economic Opportunity Committee coupled with its unmistakably negative attitude toward the church made it unlikely that the proposal would ever be fully funded as proposed.(( Robert J. Fox, “Memorandum for Archbishop Maguire, Re.: Follow-up for Summer in the City, September 7, 1966,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 986, p. 1.))
Meanwhile, the second Summer in the City program in 1966 had a success similar to that of the year before. Msgr. Fox reported that “although funds were allocated for only thirty centers, Summer in the City operated in forty-six parishes. While it is true that some good was accomplished in all of the parishes, we feel that a sound base for a continuing operation was established in thirty of the forty-six centers . . . In each of these thirty parishes the board (of local residents which was recruited for the program and formed during its operation) is anxious to continue on a year round basis . . . the momentum achieved by Summer in the City is a significant reality in neighborhoods where apathy and lethargy are major problems. . . . the urgent problem at this moment is to maintain and employ the momentum which has been generated in the thirty centers. . . . (so that they will) grow into neighborhood community action groups truly capable of analyzing community problems and generating remedial and preventative programs for which multiple sources of funds are avai1able.”((Ibid., pp. 1-2.))
Project Engage
By November of 1966, twenty-four parishes had agreed to participate in the continuing operation of their Summer in the City centers under the title of Project Engage. Each of them had a non-sectarian board of directors in whose hands responsibility for the local program was vested. Each of them had a budget of S300 per month to cover the cost of renting a storefront and employing a part-time director. The beginning step in each center was a training program for the board members called “Mansight,” a program geared to increase their awareness of the realities of the city neighborhood through considering together and discussing a series of thirty-two pictures selected for the purpose. Also, each center was assigned three or four part-time religious volunteers to assist with beginning concrete services such as tutoring, creative arrangement of the storefront and contacting neighborhood people.(( Robert J. Fox, “Progress Report, Memorandum to: Archbishop Maguire, Bishop Cooke, November 22, 1966,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 979, p. 4.))
The Institute for Human Development had begun to function on October 24, 1966 with the minimal staff necessary for the initial phase of operations with funds provided by a grant from the Grace Foundation. One of its functions was to assist the local parish centers to develop programs by providing five central services: consultation in community development, education and training, evaluation and research, fiscal supervision and funding consultation, and public relations.((Ibid.)) As guidelines for federal funding changed, the plan of the institute to be an umbrella organization to receive and disperse monies for the operation of the local centers had to be dropped and each local center had to prepare and submit individual funding proposals to its own community board.
In the summer of 1967 each of the local parish centers continued a similar programming although there was no overall project as such. The same spirit and style permeated all the different local activities and the same three cardinal principles of Summer in the City inspired the execution of all their programs: public forum, creativity and relationship. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this at work were the street processions in Spanish Harlem to counteract the riots there.
The Thing in the Spring
The street riots and racial tensions of the summer of 1967 were but one symptom of the increasing polarization in New York between the inner-city poor and the more comfortable and predominantly suburban middle class. It was agreed that the networks of parish centers and communities together would try to address themselves to this problem and to find some common, personal, creative and visible response to it. All during the year preparations were made for an event in the spring where suburbanites would come to the inner-city neighborhoods to meet, share and work with the local residents in the improvement of their material conditions as well as in celebrating their quality of life.
Some of the magic of Summer in the City filled the plans for The Thing in the Spring. It was not so much a task-oriented project as relationship-oriented. Whatever common task or celebration took place was above all else to mediate relationships and build mutual respect, trust and friendship. A tremendous amount of time went into preparing all the people who would participate, especially helping the city folk to realize that they were to be hosts not clients. On April 20, 1968, “5,000 suburbanites and an equal number of inner-city residents came together on 43 inner-city streets all over Manhattan and the Bronx for a massive day of renovation. They cleaned backyards and basements, painted the facades of houses, made minor repairs and even painted wall murals. They gave a dramatic face-lift to the blocks, helping fill the neighborhood with enthusiasm and energy and providing the groundwork for relationship between peoples.”(( “The Saturdays of Spring,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 986.))
After that day twelve more blocks experienced similar days of renovation and nearly fifty blocks went on (often with their suburban partners) to develop block clubrooms, credit unions and consumer cooperatives, pre-school and after school centers, darkrooms and a teen cafe and to make a start at turning empty backyards and lots into parks. Numbers of the suburbanites who participated continued to work, create and recreate with their inner-city friends and the April experience led many of them to deeper and more creative involvement in the problems of their own suburban towns.((Ibid.))
For the next year, 1969, a more ambitious and similar project was planned involving thirty blocks for seven Saturdays of renovation and interaction with the title, “The Saturdays of Spring.” This proved to be the last of the plans developed by Msgr. Fox as the Coordinator of Spanish Community Action however, for by now it was clear that all these creative community action programs were a full-time job in themselves and he asked the archdiocesan authorities to be freed to work with them.
Full Circle Associates
The 1967 street processions to counteract the riots received a tremendous amount of publicity and acclaim, but they also triggered some disturbances within the Institute for Human Development. Not all the staff members were agreed about that intervention or about the role of the newly developed parish centers or the involvement of suburbanites. The internal dissension culminated in the board of directors asking for the resignation of the staff. For someone like Msgr. Fox for whom trusting and open relationships were the essence of any program the situation was untenable. He left association with the organization he had founded and during the next six months proceeded to reorganize with the same spirit a new entity called Full Circle Associates, “a network of people of all races, creeds, classes and generations who share a conviction that in this crisis of alienation, division and hatred it is (the human person) who can make the difference.”((Ibid.))
Pastoral Programs and Other Activities
Although Msgr. Fox was fully involved in these many new programs of community action, he was still at the same time providing the coordination and direction of existing and newly established programs for the pastoral care of Hispanics in the archdiocese.
The Spanish center in Cornwall. Since his assignment to Eastern Correctional Institute in Napanoch, New York as Catholic chaplain after a year spent in Puerto Rico following his ordination, Msgr. Matthew Killian was a kind of circuit rider and visiting missionary priest for the many growing Puerto Rican and Hispanic communities scattered in the small cities and towns of the rural regions of the archdiocese. The need for more personnel in the area was urgent. So, when the Spanish congregation of the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer wrote to Msgr. Fox in September of 1963 offering to work in New York and to establish a residence for young women there,(( Robert L. Fox, “Memorandum, To: Bishop Maguire, Subject: Letter from Sister Isidora de los Ángeles, September 16, 1963,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 880.)) he countered by asking them if they would be willing to work in pastoral ministry in the rural areas.
By the same time next year a whole structure of apostolate was worked out. A farm property in Cornwall belonging to the archdiocese was renovated as a convent residence and an adjoining barn was later converted into an all-purpose hall. Six sisters would live there and minister to Hispanic communities in towns such as Haverstraw, Ellenville, Newburgh and Beacon. Their work consisted of home visitation, catechetical instruction, counseling, adult education, preparation for the sacraments and assistance with liturgy as well as all kinds of social service referrals and advice. Also an ingenious but awkward funding arrangement was set up. The pastors of the parishes in the towns where they worked would jointly support the sisters. The Spanish Catholic Action office would act as a middleman and broker. For several years this arrangement continued as one more routine task of the coordinator. The sisters worked closely with Msgr. Killian and under Msgr. Fox’s direction.
The Catholic Migrant Bureau. Under the name of Catholic Migrant Bureau a special program of spiritual and social assistance for Spanish speaking migrant farm workers was begun in the summer of 1968, expanding the previous informal programs in favor of these workers. The 1969 program consisted of a priest, deacon, seminarian and three religious sisters working full time in Orange County during the summer months. Masses were celebrated in Spanish on Sundays at two camps and on Wednesday at a third. A special fiesta and Mass were celebrated on August 15th at Pine Island. The seminarians and sisters spent most of their time in visiting, social assistance and in developing recreational programs.(( Robert L. Stern, “Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970,” (personal files of the author), p. 3.))
The San Juan Fiesta. By the early 1960s sixty thousand people were attending the San Juan Fiesta on Randall’s Island every June. But all good things begin to come to an end and so it was with the fiesta, at least in its original style. Although the day continued to be as popular as ever if not more so, the participation in the formal program especially in the religious celebration began to decline drastically, No longer would the crowd fill the stands of Downing Stadium for the procession and pontifical Mass and the character of the festivities throughout the park during the day was increasingly critized as too secular. The first year Msgr. Fox had responsibility for the fiesta he continued it in the traditional style, choosing as a special focus the theme of the Spanish speaking community’s tribute to the Christian humanism of the late president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
In 1965, 1966 and 1967. to reemphasize the religious and spiritual dimensions of the celebration and to challenge its participants to a more active involvement in them, the fiesta began at 5:00 a.m. with a Mass initiating a “Dawn Service.” The Mass was celebrated at this time as a symbol of the “dawning” or the reawakening of the Spanish community to a realization of their full potentialities as creative, integrated individuals. After the Mass a light breakfast was served to all attending. Various other events followed. For example in 1966 at 7:30 a.m. a special Way of the Cross was presented with fourteen stations exhibiting photos and banners portraying aspects of the life of the Spanish community in relation to the passion of Christ and a fifteenth station depicting the resurrection. In the afternoon there was an elaborated program involving a procession, dramatic presentation, Mass and the traditional civic festivities.(( Archdiocese of New York, Bureau of Information, “News Release,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 997.))
As a result of strong feelings about what some considered “experimentation” with the format of the fiesta, the planning for 1968 was left to the Citizen’s Committee under the leadership of Luis Fontánez and the fiesta was returned completely to the traditional structure developed in the days of Msgr. Wilson. But there was no greater success with this form of celebration then than there had been a few years before. In 1969 Msgr. Fox decided to make a complete break with all past models and announced a two part fiesta celebration: the religious fiesta consisting of an outdoor, midnight Mass in Downing Stadium on Saturday night and the civic fiesta in traditional style on Sunday afternoon.
Although the Mass was reverent and beautiful, this too did not satisfy many of the critics. There had been a growing discontent among many of the lay leaders in the Spanish speaking community who usually worked to develop the fiesta. They felt that their views and assistance were not solicited or valued. The accuracy of the complaints notwithstanding, a public protest was made in the Spanish press which had to be confronted by Msgr. Fox’s successor.
Spanish language radio programming. In February of 1969 a series of twenty-four radio dialogues in Spanish between a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister were begun on WBNX radio and continued through the succeeding months. This was in addition to the regular program assistance that the Spanish Community Action office had been giving for Christmas, Good Friday and other special observances to area radio stations. In addition a weekly religious information program was presented for some time over WADO radio and a daily program of a few minutes at 6:00 a.m., “A Minute With God.”
Nueva York Hispano. In 1964, Fr. Marcelino Pando, A.A., director of the Centro Cató1ico de Información, founded eleven or twelve years before by the pastor of Our Lady of Esperanza Church, decided to initiate a new Spanish language magazine, “Nueva York Hispano.” It was y well received but lacked adequate financial support. From the start Fr. Pando desired to draw Msgr. Fox into involvement with the enterprise and in 1965 he appealed directly to Cardinal Spellman for financial assistance.(( Marcelino Pando, A.A., letter to His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman, May 25, 1965, Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 880.)) Help was given and for a few years the magazine continued with some success.
Cursillo movement. Although St. Joseph’s Center was originally set up as a special project of Spanish Catholic Action under the supervision of the coordinator and, with the establishment of a secretariat to govern the Cursillo movement, the coordinator was ex officio the “delegado episcopal” or bishop’s delegate for the movement, for some time the center and the Cursillo movement had been operating with increasing autonomy. For a variety of reasons, Msgr. Fox found it difficult to satisfy the expectations of the Cursillo movement leaders and found collaboration with them strained. He decided in 1967 to resign his position as delegado episcopal to the movement and as supervisor of the center.
Liturgy. From 1964 the Spanish Community Action office was increasingly involved with the development of materials to assist in the greater utilization of Spanish in liturgical celebrations. It regularly supplied new hymns, correct translations and suggestions for celebrations to the parishes that had services in Spanish. A special project was the creation of a sung Mass in a style that would truly capture the musical taste and imagination of New York’s Hispanic people.
VI. PASTORAL REORGANIZATION AND COORDINATION
As Msgr. Fox necessarily became more and more involved in the community projects that he had originated and inspired, it became clear that it was not possible for him to give adequate attention to the wide variety of other administrative and pastoral concerns associated with the coordinator’s office. The Senate of Priests of the archdiocese became interested in the future of the office and appointed an ad hoc committee to evaluate it. In November of 1968, Msgr. Fox recommended to the new archbishop of New York, Terence J. Cooke, that he be free to give all his attention to Full Circle Associates and Fr. Robert L. Stern, then Assistant Chancellor of the archdiocese, succeed him. After much consideration Cardinal Cooke accepted the recommendation and named Fr. Stern as “Director of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate” for a three-year term beginning in August of 1969.
Like Msgr. Fox, Fr. Stern had been formed by many of the programs he began to supervise. He had entered the seminary in 1953, participated in the newly established Spanish language classes there and studied in the Ponce program in the summer of 1959 and again in the summer of 1960 as a participant in a special program of Latin American studies. After a pastoral experience of three years in a Hispanic parish he was trained in Canon Law at Rome as a preparation for chancery work. Archbishop Maguire had recommended to Cardinal Spellman that the immediate chancery staff include a Spanish speaking priest with parish experience in the Hispanic community. Fr. Stern brought to the new position of Director of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate a practical grassroots experience of work in the inner city as well as administrative and organizational skills from his experience in the chancery office.
Redirection of the Spanish Office
When Cardinal Cooke gave Fr. Stern his appointment the cardinal choose a new name for the office. He made it quite clear that the work of the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate should be primarily spiritual and pastoral and that his immediate working superior should be the vicar general as the head of the pastoral office of the archdiocese. Another change introduced by Cardinal Cooke was the consolidation of all the operational programs of the archdiocese involving the Spanish speaking under the responsibility and supervision of the new director. Finally, the cardinal stressed that a major goal and focus of the newly defined office should be the development of lay leaders, especially at the grass roots and parish levels, who would be prepared gradually to take on increasing responsibilities for the church in New York.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972,” (personal files of the author.).))
Supervision of Institutions and Programs
In accordance with the reorganization called for by Cardinal Cooke, the immediate supervision of existing institutions and programs of the Spanish speaking apostolate was undertaken by the director and the central office. Two major programs regularly operated directly by the Spanish office were the San Juan Fiesta and the summer program at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. Several other existing programs and institutions were affiliated with the Spanish office and to some extent were under its supervision. Finally the changing pastoral situation and challenges called for some new programmatic initiatives.
San Juan Fiesta. The first task of Fr. Stern was the reorganization of the San Juan Fiesta. The fiesta was at its peak around 1962; since then had been steadily declining in spite of creative initiatives to reanimate it. By 1969 there was resentment among many Puerto Rican civic leaders and other interested persons previously associated with the fiesta that they were not consulted about it and were excluded from decision making concerning it. Fr. Stern held a series of public meetings with civic leaders about the fiesta and a fortunate outcome of this was the revival of the Committee of Fiesta Presidents, the election of a new president and a firm commitment to collaborate together in future.
In 1970, in view of the refusal of the New York City Department of Parks to allow the fiesta to be formally celebrated on a Sunday afternoon because of the excessive crowding of Randall’s Island the previous year and also in view of the poor attendance the previous year at the civic and popular program within Downing Stadium, it was decided to limit the formal fiesta observance to a vigil Mass on Saturday night, following the schedule of the previous year’s liturgy.
With the assurance of support from civic and community leaders it was decided to try very hard to revive the fiesta and restore it to its original style for 1971. Fr. Stern asked a young Puerto Rican priest, Fr. Luis Rios, A.A., to serve as the first priest-coordinator of the fiesta. Working closely with the fiesta president he contacted over seven thousand people concerning suggestions and interest in the fiesta and the traditional citizen’s committee for the fiesta was revived; about two hundred interested persons became its active members. A tremendous amount of time and effort went into organizing the fiesta for that year. The result was an organizational triumph, healing all of the divisions within the civic community, but a real disappointment from the point of view of public participation in the style of program planned.
One positive result of the 1971 fiesta was that the lay leaders no longer blamed the decline of the fiesta on “experimentation” with its format or on their exclusion from planning and decision making. For 1972, full responsibility for decision making was in the hands of the Comité de Ciudadanos and the committee of past presidents, but planning progressed very slowly. Meanwhile the Coordinating Committee for the Spanish Speaking Apostolate recommended that a Mass be held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the picnic celebration on Randall’s Island be allowed to go its own way. Cardinal Cooke, however, wanted the fiesta be celebrated in the traditional way in Downing Stadium as it had been the year before even at the risk of poor attendance.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970”); Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972”); and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re.: San Juan Fiesta, May 17, 1972,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3396.))
It is difficult to analyze all of the factors involved in the decline of the fiesta. One reason, perhaps, is that it no longer occupied a unique place. For several years it had been the only public manifestation of the faith and culture of Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic Americans in New York City. Later, other popular institutions developed such as the Desfile Puertorriqueño or Puerto Rican Day Parade, which certainly was a great show of the power and presence of Puerto Ricans in New York with about a hundred thousand people marching up Fifth Avenue, and the Fiesta Folklórica Puertorriqueña or Puerto Rican Folk Festival, which gathered another hundred thousand people for a great midsummer picnic in Central Park. There was no longer any need for the church to be the vehicle of expression of Puerto Rican presence and culture, so the San Juan Fiesta necessarily had to become reduced in scale.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Hispanics and New York – Happenings and Pastoral Plans”).))
Summer institute at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico. The program of the Institute of Inter-Cultural Communication at the Catholic University of Ponce had always been jointly sponsored by the university and the archdiocese. Since a New York priest had been associated with the university and the program from the beginning, there had been little need to formally define the relationship of the university and the archdiocese. However, when the first lay rector was appointed to the university, he displayed an interest in placing all of its programs and institutes on a formal, professional basis. Other factors prompting a reexamination of the structure of responsibility for the summer program were the need to physically relocate its quarters, the decision of the university to discontinue its own complimentary programs of linguistic and cultural formation during the regular academic year and criticism of the conduct of the summer program.
After meetings in New York and Ponce, a written agreement was concluded between the archdiocese and the university defining the joint sponsorship of the summer institute, the right of the university to appoint the director of the institute after consultation with the archdiocese and the duties and responsibilities of the director. The summer of 1971 the university assumed an increasing share of responsibility for the program at Cardinal Cooke’s suggestion. In 1972 they assumed full responsibility for it and the first lay director was appointed.
Because of the increasing number of Dominicans in the archdiocese, in the summer of 1970 Fr. Stern initiated a program of pastoral work in the Dominican Republic in addition to the usual program in Puerto Rico for students in the language courses.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970”) and Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972”).))
Language training program at Cardinal Hayes High School. By 1969 the language training program at Hayes needed attention and reorganization. The program was completely reorganized in September of 1971 with a layman, Miguel Martínez, named as director for the first time. The old Institute of Inter-Cultural Communication corporation was allowed to lapse and the program continued as the Language Institute of the office for the Spanish Speaking Apostolate. Classes were offered two days a week at Hayes and occasionally at other local centers.
In January of 1970 a meeting was held with the rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary, the dean of students and the director of pastoral programs to discuss ways of familiarizing the students with the Spanish language and Hispanic culture. It was decided to establish a special branch of the language training program at the Seminary.((Ibid.))
St. Joseph’s Center and the Cursillo movement. With the appointment of a new director of St. Joseph’s Center in September of 1969 and the assumption of the role of episcopal delegate for the Cursillo movement by Fr. Stern after a vacancy of two years, a process of redefining the role of the Secretariat and the goals of the movement within the archdiocese was initiated. In addition to clarifying and confirming the working relationship between the Augustinian Recollect Fathers and the archdiocese through the Spanish office, Fr. Stern gave a tremendous amount of time to an organizational renewal of the Cursillo movement. The secretariat of the movement was reorganized and its responsibilities were redefined with the positive result that there began to be real and major assumption of responsibility for the movement by laymen in a way that had not taken place for the first several years of its life.((Ibid.))
Newburgh-Beacon area ministry. By August of 1969 there was considerable dissatisfaction among the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer about their work in the county areas and a possibility of their complete withdrawal. After a series of visits and meetings with them, a reorganization of their work responsibilities and an appropriate financing were established with the pastors in the area. Due however to the personal decision of their newly appointed provincial, the sisters retired completely from the mission the following summer.
In August of 1970 a new position of Coordinator of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate for the Dutchess-Putnam and Rockland-Orange vicariates was created and Fr. Neil Graham was assigned to it. One of his prime responsibilities was to coordinate and direct the work of the sisters in the area and he devoted much of the year to recruiting other sisters for the work. He arranged for another congregation of Spanish religious, the Hijas de Jesús, to assume responsibility for the Spanish Center in Cornwall and to work in the area. They began their ministry in the summer of 1971 and continued in the area until the summer of 1982.1
Migrant ministry. After an evaluation of the 1969 program it was decided to reorganize the program entirely. In September of 1979 a Spanish speaking priest was assigned to St. Joseph’s parish in Middletown with responsibility for the Spanish speaking there and for the migrant program as well. An advisory board consisting of previous church personnel who worked in the program, the pastors of the area and the Spanish Apostolate director was established to assist him.1
Dominican seminarians. In January of 1970 Fr. Stern went to the Dominican Republic to meet with some of the bishops and to discuss ways of greater collaboration between the Dominican dioceses and the Archdiocese of New York as regards the pastoral care of the increasing number of Dominicans in New York. One result of the visit was an invitation extended to major seminarians there to work in parishes in the archdiocese for the summer months in exchange for travel expenses, room, board and a small weekly stipend. The purpose of this new program was twofold: to provide assistance especially to those parishes with large numbers of recently arrived Dominicans and to familiarize candidates for the priesthood in the Dominican Republic with the particular challenges confronted by immigrants here. That summer a group of sixteen arrived and after a two-day orientation session was given parish assignments. Once a week they met together with New York seminarians to review their work and to get to know the city better. The program was successful and was repeated again for the next few years.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970”) and Stern, op. cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans”), p. 21.))
Pastoral theology seminar. In addition to the decision to establish a branch of the language training program at St. Joseph’s Seminary, a commitment was made to develop some kind of pastoral preparation integrated into the overall curriculum of the seminary. By was of experiment, to sound out the students and develop the approaches for a major course, Fr. Stern agreed to conduct a special seminar during the spring semester of 1970. Rather than treat exclusively of pastoral problems relating to the Spanish speaking, a broader theological and sociological presentation was adopted. Fifteen to thirty students attended various sessions of the seminar. A strong sentiment among them was that the course should be non-academic, inter-disciplinary, open to all students and continued on a regular basis. Regrettably the course was not repeated and the projected integration of some kind of pastoral preparation especially as regarding ministry in the Hispanic community into the overall seminary curriculum was not accomplished.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970.”).))
Development of Pastoral Plans and Structures
Consequent to the mandate of Cardinal Cooke for a reorganization and redirection of the Spanish speaking apostolate, Fr. Stern began immediately to create structures to promote the broadest possible participation in planning and development on the part of existing church leaders, clerical, religious and lay, in the Hispanic Catholic community. In the fall of 1979 he asked eleven people each to accept special responsibility for some are of pastoral concern and to develop a working group to assist them with advisors and experts as needed. Eleven task forces were organized for the areas of research and pastoral planning; linguistic and cultural formation; apostolate of religious; apostolate of priests; formation for the lay apostolate; lay apostolates; community relations; ecumenical relations; press, radio and television; liturgy; and catechetics (cf. Pastoral Planning Organization).
Archdiocesan Coordinating Committee. Regular meetings of these eleven coordinators of particular apostolates began in October. Some of them successfully developed working groups and programs during the first year; others for a variety of reasons were unable to accomplish the work projected. The coordinators group gradually acquired the dimensions of a central coordinating committee for all works of the Spanish speaking apostolate. Initially it was composed of the director of the apostolate and the eleven task force chairpersons; later it also included those priests, religious or lay leaders having a special responsibility for movements, programs or institutions at the service of the Spanish speaking apostolate. The committee met at least monthly, usually for an entire day, and over a period of three years gradually matured into an effective organism of consultation, planning and coordination. It also had the effect of introducing more Hispanics, especially lay persons, into leadership on the diocesan level.((Ibid.; Stern, op. cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans”), p. 21 and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum Re.: Spanish Speaking Apostolate.” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3396.))
Priests’ meetings. In April of 1970, Fr. Stern invited all the priests involved in the Spanish speaking apostolate, diocesan, religious and adjunct, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, to a three-day meeting at St. Joseph’s Seminary. The stated purpose was to provide a much needed opportunity for all the priests engaged in similar work with common concerns to reflect together on the pastoral challenges posed by a diocese that was almost half Spanish speaking, to discuss overall pastoral priorities and goals and to begin to consider the possibilities of archdiocesan pastoral planning and a collegial responsibility for the apostolate. The meeting proved to be a great success; the sessions were attended by sixty-two priests. A general consensus was to plan a two-day meeting in the same spirit every two months.
A two-day meeting was held in June attended by forty priests including Cardinal Cooke. The focus of the discussion was the Cursillo movement in the archdiocese. A critical evaluation of the existing movement was made and plans for its further development and thrust were suggested. It was decided to have monthly meetings of one-day duration beginning in September of l970, each focused on a particular topic of pastoral concern. Topics treated that year included the parish, apostolic movements and a pastoral plan, the young Hispano and the formation of a Hispanic youth movement, the Hispanic family and the church, the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, the lay diaconate, and programs for leadership formation. In view of Cardinal Cooke’s suggestion that meetings of the priests be held less frequently, the pattern of monthly meetings was not continued the next year.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970.”).))
Research and pastoral planning. In December of 1969 Fr. Peter Gavigan convoked the first meeting of a special task force on research and pastoral planning for the Spanish speaking apostolate. An immediate first step was the collection and display of basic population statistics gathered from the various available sources. An attitudinal survey of the clergy concerning the Cursillo movement in the archdiocese as well as a questionnaire concerning the condition of the movement in each parish was prepared and sent to all Spanish speaking priests in preparation for their June 1970 meeting.
Later a detailed personal questionnaire was prepared and sent to all the clergy in any way identified as Spanish speaking which attempted to assess the training in Spanish, degree of fluency and interest in the apostolate of each of the priests. Another questionnaire was sent to each parish considered to be “Spanish speaking” for the purpose of determining precisely what services and programs were conducted in Spanish or were directed towards Spanish speaking persons. It also included questions about the parish population and the number of Spanish baptisms and weddings during the previous decade. This latter information helped to identify the direction of the movement of Spanish speaking Catholics in the urban areas of the archdiocese.((Ibid.))
At the close of 1971 the Archdiocese of New York had approximately 136 Spanish speaking diocesan priests, 6 of whom spoke Spanish as a native language. Of the total, three were in service outside the diocese, twelve were teaching, eight were in archdiocesan offices and two served as chaplains of institutions. Of the 111 priests assigned to parishes, 89 were in parishes with full bilingual services. Of these, 21 were pastors and 68 associated pastors.(( Spanish Speaking Apostolate Newsletter, January, 1972 (personal files of the author.).))
With the development of the Office of Pastoral Research and the Archdiocesan Personnel Board the need for this function within the Spanish Speaking Apostolate Office ceased.
Workshop for women religious. A workshop on the Puerto Rican woman in New York was sponsored by the task force on the apostolate of religious coordinated by St. Pauline Chirchirillo, P.B.V.M. on May 23, 1971. Over sixty religious sisters attended the program. It began with a discussion of theology, culture and the New York experience. During the afternoon there was a para-liturgy and a cultural presentation plus panels and discussions of careers and current attitudes concluding with supper.((Ibid., May and June, 1971.))
Luz y Vida. The task force for formation for the lay apostolate under the coordination of Fr. David Arias, O.A.R. was asked to explore new ways and programs of formation for the apostolate. It began to focus its concern on programs directed towards awakening people to the implications of Christian adulthood and equipping them to assume greater responsibility for the work of the Gospel. The main result of this effort was the publication of a series of home-centered dialogues and paraliturgies concerning the basics of Christian faith called “Luz y Vida.” With the collaboration of lay leaders of the Cursillo movement this program began to be implemented throughout the archdiocese in the local parishes.(( Stern, op. cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans”), p. 21.))
Youth ministry. In January of 1970 a series of planning meetings concerning the promotion of a youth apostolate were held under the auspices of the task force on lay apostolates coordinated by Mr. Luis Fontánez. A first concern of the group was to evaluate the existing Juventud Obrera Cristiana (JOC) or Young Christian Workers movement in the archdiocese. Although it had been established for some years with a center at West 106th Street and Broadway, it had never flourished or had formal recognition by the archdiocese. Meetings were held with its leaders to plan a revitalization and extension of the movement.
Another concern was to introduce some kind of formation program into the archdiocese similar to the successful Jornada and Cursillo de Vida movements in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. An attempt had been made to introduce the Mexican style Jornada program some years before and several Jornada weekends had been given at St. Joseph’s Center but with little fallow-up.
After lengthy consideration a decision was made to develop a total program for the formation of Hispanic young adults from eighteen to twenty-five years of age rather than just programs for apostolic leadership formation and militants. With the appointment of a young priest of Puerto Rican descent, Fr. José McCarthy, O.F.M. Cap., to a full-time responsibility of coordination of the youth apostolate, the planning for this total program advanced rapidly. Gradually a multi-stage program was designed: a weekend experience designed to knit a collection of individuals together into a group; a relatively non-directed series of weekly meetings to reflect on life experiences and values; a weekend experience designed to awaken young people to the nature and challenges of the Christian life; a series of weekly meetings to reflect on Christ and Christian stances in life situations; and a program of retreats, formation and specialized apostolates such as the JOC.
At the beginning of 1972 special funding for the youth movement was received from the Campaign for Human Development and on August 23rd of that same year the movement was incorporated as “Equipos Unidos.” A series of special training workshops through Training for Living were given to parish youth groups assisting them to develop leadership skills and skills in group processes and dynamics. Another young priest of Puerto Rican descent, Fr. Anthony M. Stevens, C.P., joined the youth movement staff and by the end of that year almost three hundred young adults had participated in one or another phase of the movement. Successively the priest assessors of the movement were Fr. McCarthy, Fr. Stevens and Fr. César Ramírez, a priest of the Archdiocese of San Juan. The youth movement continued until early 1973 when the archdiocesan authorities decided to terminate it.((Ibid. and Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970.”).))
Movimiento Familiar Cristiano. Out of a concern for strengthening the family life of Hispanics in the archdiocese, the task force on lay apostolates recommended the development of a specialized apostolate for married couples. It was decided to utilize the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano. This was not merely a Spanish translation of the Christian Family Movement; the Latin American family movement had a different genesis and a different style. Along with the English movement, it was concerned with a serious study of marriage and family and used the familiar methods of apostolic action first developed in the early Jocist movements.
The movement deliberately grew slowly; even so within a few years it included several hundred married couples in several key areas of the archdiocese. The Director of Christian and Family Development and the moderator of the (English language) Christian Family Movement within the archdiocese encouraged the separate development of the Spanish speaking group by the Spanish apostolate office.
In the summer of 1968 a group of leaders of the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano in Spain came to the United States to introduce the Encuentro Conyugal or Marriage Encounter, a special kind of weekend retreat for married couples designed to help them deepen their mutual communication and better to confront the challenges of their marriage. Since that date Encuentros Conyugales have been offered regularly at St. Joseph’s Center and, later, through the archdiocesan Movimiento Familiar Cristiano.((Ibid.))
Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral. The Coordinating Committee for the Spanish speaking apostolate felt the need for some additional program of further formation for lay leaders and began to consider different possibilities for it.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, December 11, 1971 (personal files of the author.).)) After consultation with priests, religious and lay leaders involved in the Spanish speaking apostolate at a meeting in January of 1972,99 José L. Álvarez, “Conclusiones de la Reunión de Sacerdotes, Religiosos y “Líderes laicos envueltos en Apostolado con Hispanos” (personal files of the autor.).)) plans were developed for an archdiocesan pastoral institute, a kind of school for the formation of lay leaders.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, February 5, 1972, March 4, 1972, May 6, 1972, November 4, 1972, December 9, 1972 (personal files of the author.).)) It was agreed that this pastoral institute should be a program for the formation of leaders in general and not be limited to a diaconate program. However it was recommended that it be so structured that after two years a student would be prepared for ordination as a deacon if desired by all concerned. Other recommendations included that there be a full-time priest-director assisted by a mixed American and Hispanic team and that students be involved in the apostolate.
After a preliminary review of the idea by Cardinal Cooke and the vicar general, a sub-committee chaired by Fr. Thomas Leonard was established to develop detailed plans. A recommendation to the cardinal that a pilot program be held at Cathedral Preparatory Seminary beginning February 1973 was approved under the supervision of Fr. Leonard. Classes were conducted one evening a week involving courses in theology, scripture, church history, sociology and other related disciplines and in particular pastoral skills. To date several hundred select parish lay leaders have had up to three years of training in this program.(( Stern, op. cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans.”).))
Radio and television programming. The Spanish office continued to develop Spanish language radio and television programs under the leadership of the full-time coordinator, Mr. Ángel Pérez. A similar program to the existing “Cara a Cara en el Mundo de Religión” began on Channel 47 television in October, 1969 as part of the program series “Tribuna Hispana” and continued on an experimental basis monthly, for four months. For Christmas of that year a special one hour ecumenical program was broadcast by Channel 47 preceding the Midnight Mass.
In October of 1969 a Mass celebrated in Spanish began to be broadcasted live on WBNX radio every Sunday from St. Christopher’s Chapel in Manhattan. Every week a different parish came to celebrate the Mass there bringing its own celebrant, servers, lectors and choir. In 1970 the Mass was begun to be taped at a parish church instead and then broadcast a few hours later.
In November of 1969 Channel 41 began to televise weekly a celebration of the Sunday Liturgy pre-taped in their studios the week before. Again, groups from different parishes participated regularly in the program. Like the radio Mass, although primarily presented for shut-ins and those otherwise impeded from attending Mass in a church, this televised Mass had an important function of diffusing knowledge of the new liturgy and of catechizing people for it. On Palm Sunday of 1970 the presentation of the Mass was switched from noon to a prime evening hour. During the winter and spring months independent audience rating services calculated that it was viewed in 20,000 to 30,000 homes in the metropolitan area.
In February of 1970 a weekly eight-minute ecumenical religious news broadcast, “Noticiero Re1igioso,” produced by the Spanish office began to be televised live on Channel 47. Also, in the spring of 1970 a grant was received from the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for liturgical and catechetical television programming.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Annual Report, September 1, 1969 – August 31, 1970.”).))
Liturgy, When permission was received to introduce the new Ordo of the Mass into use in the archdiocese on the first Sunday of Advent of 1969, the Spanish Speaking Apostolate office prepared an extensive mailing for all the clergy of the archdiocese offering them the new texts of the Ordo and information concerning the purchase of the necessary liturgical books in Spanish. Fr. James Welby, who coordinated the work of a group concerned with Spanish Liturgy under Msgr. Fox and Fr. Stern, was asked to serve on the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission in July of 1970 as a liaison with the Spanish speaking liturgical committee.((Ibid.))
Newsletter. Starting May 1970 a monthly bilingual newsletter was sent to all the Spanish speaking clergy, religious and lay leaders of the archdiocese. In December of 1972 it was incorporated into the archdiocesan “Clergy Report.”
Special Projects
Las Hermanas. With the assistance and encouragement of Fr. Stern, Sr. Armantina Peláez, a young Cuban-American religious working in the archdiocese, organized the first meeting in the New York area of “Las Hermanas,” the national organization for Hispanic women religious, on November 6, 1971. The purpose of the meeting was to consider how better to serve the Spanish speaking people, to deepen the sisters’ own Hispanic identity and to find a form of organization to promote so1idarity among the sisters.(( Spanish Speaking Apostolate Newsletter, November, 1971 (personal files of the author.).)) There proved to be solid and sufficient support for the permanent organization of Las Hermanas in the area. Regular meetings continued to be held((Ibid., January, 1972.)) and through the Spanish office—which served as a kind of regional office for Las Hermanas—Sr. Rosamaría Elías, M.S.B.T. continued the promotion of the organization.
Interdiocesan Coordinating Committee for the Spanish Speaking. In November of 1970 the Division for the Spanish Speaking of the United States Catholic Conference sponsored a meeting in Manhattan of the diocesan coordinators of the Spanish speaking apostolate in the metropolitan New York area. Representatives of the dioceses of Bridgeport, Brooklyn, Camden, Newark, New York, Paterson, Rockville Center and Trenton attended. The need for an area pattern of inter-diocesan communication and collaboration was discussed as well as the advisability of a northeastern regional office of the Division for the Spanish Speaking.((Ibid., December, 1970.))
At Fr. Stern’s suggestion it was agreed to continue the group as the “Interdiocesan Coordinating Committee for the Spanish Speaking” with representation from each of the eight dioceses in the tri-state New York metropolitan region. It was clear that with the pattern of mobility within the region of the Hispanic and total population, the shared use of the same media and the common pastoral challenges that collaboration was necessary. The committee agreed to meet monthly to develop cooperation and collaboration in the Spanish speaking apostolate in the region better to respond to the needs of its over two million Spanish speaking residents.((Ibid., January, 1971.))
Pastoral workshop for priests. In June, July and August of 1971 the Coordinating Committee of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate had a series of two day meetings devoted exclusively to the discussion of the elements of a pastoral plan for the next program year. It was clear that the plan would have to arise from the interest, need and experience of local lay leaders, religious and priests. It was decided to have two workshops to reflect on pastoral theology, planning and goals, one for priests and another for selected lay leaders of parishes and apostolic movements.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, June 11-12, July 9-10 and August 13-14, 1971 (personal files of the author.).))
Another important decision taken was to invite Fr. Edgard Beltrán of the pastoral department of the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano and director of the Instituto Pastoral Latinoamericano to New York to be one of the principal participants at both workshops and to assist in planning them. Their three main themes were ecclesiology, anthropology and pastoral directions. The first workshop, for priests, was held from September 21st to 23rd at the seminary. Every parish with pastoral services for the Spanish speaking was asked to send at least one priest representative; clergy from nearby dioceses in the northeast were also invited.((Ibid. and September 19, 1971 and Spanish Speaking Apostolate Newsletter, May and September, 1971 (personal files of the author.).)) The workshop was attended by 94 priests and religious. It was not only successful as an enterprise for pastoral planning in the Archdiocese of New York but it also gave a stimulus to pastoral planning and collaboration on a northeast and even national scale.
Primer Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral. At the conclusion of the pastoral workshop, “during one of the discussions related to the needs and concerns of the Spanish speaking ministry, Father Edgard Beltrán proposed the idea of a National Encuentro for Spanish Speaking leaders of the United States. The group explored further the importance and timeliness of such a National Encuentro and unanimously supported the idea. The recommendations of this meeting were then presented in November to the Interdiocesan Coordinating Committee for the Spanish Speaking . . . (which) delegated Fr. Robert L. Stern of the Archdiocese of New York and Father John O’Brien, Diocesan Director of Brooklyn to discuss the possibility with Paul Sedillo, National Director of the Division for the Spanish Speaking, United States Catholic Conference. . . . (He) enthusiastically supported the recommendations from the Northeast and Miami Congress (of Religious Educators) and presented them to the General Secretary of the United States Catholic Conference in January 1972. Bishop Bernardin readily endorsed the proposal. On February 9-l0, 1972, an expanded Planning Committee met at the Center for Continuing Education, University of Chicago to develop the plan and details of this first National Spanish Speaking Conference to be held in the Spring of 1972. . . ”((Ibid. and September 19, 1971 and Spanish Speaking Apostolate Newsletter, May and September, 1971 (personal files of the author.).))
A delegation of eighteen persons from the archdiocese attended the Encuentro in June including the vicar general, the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate, priests and religious from diocesan offices and institutions relating to Hispanics, and the priest-assessors and the lay leaders of the Hispanic apostolic movements.
Pastoral workshop for lay leaders. The second of the two pastoral workshops, this one for lay leaders, was held from September 24th to 26th at the Convent of Mary Reparatrix. Members of the secretariat of the Movimiento de Cursillos de Cristiandad, the secretariat of the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, the Equipo Central Provisional of the Movimiento Juvenil and selected additional leaders of the movements were invited. Forty-seven of them participated.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, August 13-14, 1971 and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, September 29, 1971, Re.: Weekly report of activities” (personal files of the author.).))
At the conclusion of the workshop there was considerable enthusiasm about the prospect of continuing this new experience of collaboration among the various lay leaders. They decided to set apart a weekend every six months to conduct seminars for lay leaders and priests together, to request the Coordinating Committee to add the principal lay leaders of each archdiocesan movement to its membership and to request a personal meeting of lay leaders with the cardinal to discuss the Spanish speaking apostolate, To implement this last decision, a special committee of eighteen persons was elected.(( Antonio M. Stevens Arroyo, Prophets Denied Honor (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980), 43. Lay People’s Encounter Workshop, pp. 146-150.))
The lay leaders’ special committee met in October. They prepared a draft of a letter to Cardinal Cooke which they wished to have considered by a plenary session of the lay leaders on January 8, 1972. Subsequently it was decided to invite Spanish speaking priests and religious to it as well. At that meeting, the discussions and ideas went beyond those originally proposed. The more than 100 persons participating decided on a series of priority recommendations for the future of the Spanish speaking apostolate. Another decision was to restructure the committee to include members of the Coordinating Committee as well, so that it would be representative of all the constituencies of the Spanish speaking apostolate in the archdiocese. It was agreed that Fr. Stern was not to be considered part of the group since he was part of the cardinal’s staff but that his presence at the meeting be requested.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, February 5, 1972 and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, January 12, 1972, Re.: Report on activities, December 12, 1971 – January 8, 1972” (personal files of the author.).))
Fr. Romeo F. Saldigloria, S.J., one of the priests of the Gran Misión who had come to work in New York, had prepared an extensive document for the January 8th meeting entitled, in Spanish, “Religious Problems of the Hispanics – New York City – 1972.”(( Stevens, op. cit., 49. Religious Problems of the Hispanos in the City of New York, pp. 166-169.)) It was agreed to include some of the data from this report in the prefatory part of the letter although it was cautioned that not all his data might be accurate.
Spanish Apostolate Leaders’ Meeting with Cardinal Cooke
After a series of preparatory meetings, on March 13, 1972 a formal letter was sent to Cardinal Cooke signed by 159 Spanish speaking lay leaders, religious and priests. The carefully planned letter was in itself a review of the status of the Hispanic population of the archdiocese. After presenting some detailed demographic and socioeconomic data, the letter went on to discuss the religious condition of New York’s Hispanics and to present specific requests for involvement in leadership and decision making:
The overwhelming majority of the Spanish speaking migrants arrive here in New York as Catholics. . . . Not only are there relatively few priest to care for the Hispanic Catholics of the Archdiocese, but they are even less proportionately represented in decision making and leadership positions. . . . Pastoral care of our people is overwhelmingly in the hands of associate pastors and visiting and extra-diocesan priests. . . .
Our migration to New York is the first great non-European migration and the first to come unaccompanied by a native clergy. Historically in former migrations, that clergy assumed a role of natural leadership for the migrant community, not only with regards to the religious ministry, but in the whole process of the development of the migrant. The present structures of the New York church were developed in response to the needs of a particular people and in the past served well that people. Our presence in New York without our clergy has presented a new challenge to this church, one that has not been adequately responded to.
We are Hispano-Americans and we are Catholics. We believe that, although what has been done thus far is insufficient, it is possible to mobilize the resources of the Church in the City to further the development of our people as human beings and as children of God. As a first step towards achieving this goal and as a sign of hope and leadership in the Hispanic Church we ask the following:
1. That an Episcopal Vicar for the Spanish speaking be appointed with the consultation of the Coordinating Committee of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate and that person chosen be Spanish speaking, totally identified with the Spanish people and their culture, and have all those faculties expressed and implied by such a position in accordance with Canon Law.
2. That on the next occasion of appointment of a Vicar General a Spanish speaking priest be named.
3. That the Vicar General and the Episcopal Vicar for the Spanish speaking consult and work closely with the Coordinating Committee of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate in all matters affecting the Spanish speaking community of the Archdiocese
4. That on the next occasion of appointment of new Auxiliary Bishops in recognition of the Spanish speaking community at least one of them be of Hispanic origin and experienced in pastoral work in New York and that this appointment be made with the consultation of the Spanish speaking community through the Coordinating Committee of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate.((Letter to Terence Cardinal Cooke, March 13, 1972, Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3396.))
The letter concluded with a request for an appointment with the cardinal for a delegation of eleven persons empowered to discuss these matters on behalf of the signatories.
On March 29, 1972 the cardinal met with the delegation for two and one-half hours. He invited the vicar general, the director of Catholic Charities, the secretary of education, the chairman of the Archdiocesan Personnel Board and the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate to be present as well.(( Luis M. Fontánez, “Report on the Meeting of March 29, 1972 with Cardinal Cooke,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3390.))
The main areas discussed in the meeting were alleged discrimination by pastors and other priests towards Hispanic laity and clergy, the need for Hispanic religious vocations and the reasons for the lack of them, the need for accommodating the diaconate program to the situation of Hispanics, the educational needs of Hispanics in Catholic schools, the preparation of seminarians for the Spanish speaking apostolate, the further development of Hispanic leaders, programs to help youth deal with problems of drugs and crime, the participation of Hispanics in decision and policy making, the four requests in the letter, the role of the office for the Spanish Speaking Apostolate and the availability of the cardinal for communication and consultation. There were no decisions or definite resolutions as regards the four specific points presented. It was agreed only that the vicar general, Msgr. James P. Mahoney, and Mr. Luis Fontánez on behalf of the delegation would prepare a joint report of the meeting.((Ibid. and “Results of the Meeting of March 29, 1972 with Cardinal Cooke,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3390.))
In the course of the meeting it became clear that there were different expectations about its purposes and mutual apprehensions about motivations among its participants but they were successfully brought to light and discussed. On the part of the delegation, because of the long and till then inconclusive study of the reorganization of the Spanish speaking apostolate by the vicar general, there was some questioning of the sincerity and good will of the archdiocesan authorities. On the part of the cardinal, although the background preparations for the meeting had been reported in the minutes of the monthly meeting of the Coordinating Committee, the weekly memoranda giving a report on the Spanish Speaking Apostolate to the administrative staff heads of the archdiocese, and the monthly newsletter of the Spanish office as well as discussed personally beforehand with the vicar general, he appeared suspicious of the motives of the letter and the delegation and occasionally annoyed at the points of view raised.(( Fontánez, op. cit..))
Despite the difficulties the meeting was a very positive one. For the first time the authorities of the Archdiocese of New York heard directly from the leaders of New York’s Hispanic Catholics and heard both their gratitude for the archdiocese’s pastoral, educational, and charitable services to them and their desire to share greater responsibility for the church in New York and to participate in making decisions about it. The meetings symbolized a coming of age and, in that sense, the fulfillment of Cardinal Cooke’s mandate to develop lay leaders. The Hispanic Catholics of the church of New York wished to exercise leadership, not just be a client population; in the words of the Gospel, they wished not to be served but to serve.
VII. DISINTEGRATION
The very success and the rapidity of the pastoral reorganization and development of new structures for coordination and promotion of the Spanish speaking apostolate by Fr. Stern and his associates provoked, ironically, a serious questioning of the role of the office for the Spanish Speaking Apostolate.
The Future of the Spanish Office
In July of 1971, Cardinal Cooke’s new vicar general, Msgr. James Mahoney, and Msgr. Joseph P. Murphy, chancellor of the archdiocese, had met with the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate ostensibly to review the program and budget of the apostolate for the coming program year. However, at that time rather than examine the proposed budget the question of the limits of growth was placed and a study of the purposes and future of the Spanish speaking apostolate and its relation to other diocesan institutions was initiated.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, August 13-14, 1971, op. cit.)) Major questions raised at that meeting were:
– Should the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate continue to have direct administrative responsibility for all operational programs of the archdiocese concerning the Spanish speaking?
– Should not each archdiocesan department, office, and agency be of service to all the people; that is to say, should they not each have a bilingual, bicultural (or multilingual, multicultural) approach and staff, rather than leave attention to most matters touching half the Catholic population of the archdiocese to one necessarily limited department?
– Should not the prime function of the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate, Hispanic pastoral concerns, be closely tied into the office of vicar general as the one with overall responsibility for pastoral matters and the title and authority of the director revised accordingly?
– Should not each existing program for the Spanish speaking apostolate be assumed by some other department of the archdiocese and the special office for the Spanish speaking apostolate as such ultimately cease to exist?((Ibid. ))
Fr. Stern was asked to prepare a position paper and a draft proposal for the future development and reorganization of the Spanish office in light of the discussion and to submit it as a basis for further study.((Ibid.; Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re.: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972”) and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Msgr. Mahoney, July 23, 1971, Re.: Coordination of Pastoral Care of Spanish Speaking,” (personal files of the author.).))
Assimilation versus integration. Seventeen years earlier, Msgr. Connolly had anticipated the very difficulties brought up at the meeting. In fact, that was why he had strongly urged that the coordinator’s role be disassociated from the assumption of responsibilities appropriate to archdiocesan departments, agencies, and institutions. In effect his design, which was not accepted, called for the coordinator to be a combination of what we would now call an episcopal vicar for the Spanish speaking or Hispanic concerns and an ombudsman.
A rationale to justify the historical development that did take place in the evolution of the Spanish office can be found in one of the basic principles articulated by the first national Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral: “The right development of Spanish speaking Christian leadership necessitates appropriate institutional forms. This criterion is not separatist but unifying. True integration is achieved when diverse groups are at positions of relatively equal strength and prestige and have mutual respect. Attempted integration of minorities into majorities prematurely results in an undesirable assimilation, not integration. Such assimilation means cultural absorption or, from the other point of view, cultural domination and replaces the mutual enrichment which is the fruit of true integration.”((Proceedings of the Primer Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral, op. cit., p. J1.))
In that sense it was appropriate that a department for Hispanic concerns had been created, that that office and several other semi-autonomous programs for the Spanish speaking apostolate should have developed and flourished, and also that the type of consolidation and centralization mandated by Cardinal Cooke should have taken place. What was now at stake was whether the time was ripe to move towards integration. The risk was that such a move might prove to be premature and a certain disintegration might occur.
Planning for integration. Fr. Stern brought the same enthusiasm, creativity, and administrative skills to charting the phasing out of the office of the Spanish speaking apostolate as he earlier had brought to its reorganization and development. He was convinced that this was appropriate and opportune, and he later reported to Cardinal Cooke, “From many points of view, the Spanish office from its beginnings has been an anomaly, although it was a bold creation of Cardinal Spellman nineteen years ago; in a certain sense, in a diocese where half the baptized population is of Hispanic origin, it almost can become a kind of tokenism. I was surprised and delighted to find this spirit expressed by Msgr. Mahoney when he began his work as Vicar General of the Archdiocese.”(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re.: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972.”).))
As requested, Msgr. Stern offered a first draft of a proposal for integration to the vicar general.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Msgr. Mahoney, July 23,1971, Re.: Coordination of Pastoral Care of Spanish Speaking.”).)) A week later a second meeting was held with the vicar general and chancellor to consider the proposal and a revised budget that was submitted with it.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Msgr. James P. Mahoney, August 17, 1971, Re: Coordination of Pastoral Care of Spanish Speaking (2),” (personal files of the author.).)) Subsequent to the meeting Fr. Stern was directed by the vicar general to meet with Msgr. Eugene Clark, Director of Communications, to discuss the assumption of responsibility for contact with and attention to the Spanish mass media by that department. In early August the Coordinating Committee also reviewed the draft plan and made a series of suggestions and recommendations that were shared with the vicar general.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, August 13-14, 1971, op. cit.))
Since Msgr. Mahoney expressed his intention of reorganizing the Spanish speaking apostolate by September, another meeting was held with him in August to make final revisions of the reorganization plan. It was readied for distribution to department heads by the end of that month.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Msgr. James P. Mahoney, August 27, 1971, Re: Coordination of Pastoral Care of Spanish Speaking (3),” (personal files of the author.).)) It included seven specific proposals:
1. The Spanish office should be continued at this time; however, it should not be considered a permanent office and department of the Archdiocese—ideally, there should not be ethnic departments; however the immediate and particular needs of immigrant groups do require special understanding, attention, and programs . . .
2. Administrative responsibility should be separate from pastoral responsibility, in so far as possible, and the latter should be the prime concern of the Spanish Office— . . . administration of operational programs should be surrendered— . . . administrative supervision of autonomous institutions and programs should be assumed by the appropriate department.
3. If the prime concern of the vicar general is pastoral matters, then the priest with responsibility for Spanish pastoral affairs rightly should be considered as part of the immediate staff of the vicar general — pastoral planning for such a large part of the diocese without relation to the rest is undesirable and necessarily weakened accordingly — There is a need to clarify the responsibility of the priest in charge of this area. Its relation to him personally as a kind of vicar for the Spanish-speaking rather than to a department head should be stressed — This will clearly place all pastoral affairs immediately under the vicar general and will facilitate the transfer of programs and functions from the Spanish office to other departments . . .
4. The transfer of programs and functions to other departments should be a gradual process over a period of time — The Communications Department is being reorganized and renewed and is in a condition to function on a bilingual basis; not all other departments are about a reorganization at present — Heads of departments need time to plan and develop programs so that they can effectively service the needs of the Spanish community.
5. The vicar for the Spanish speaking should continue to supervise the pastoral programs presently under development in the Spanish-speaking apostolate — At the present . . . a unified vision and pastoral plan has been developed that should not be fragmented — There is a need to have a unified plan of formation in all the programs of the apostolate that is supported by sound theology and spirituality — The coordinator of Spanish pastoral affairs should continue to serve as the liaison with and the coordinator of apostolic movements among the Spanish-speaking (e.g. Movimiento de Cursillos de Cristiandad, Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, Movimiento Juvenil) and other programs of a pastoral nature.
6. Of the existing functions of the Spanish Office, the following should be assumed and developed by the proper agencies and departments of the Archdiocese.
– Special ministries. The direction of special ministries involving the Spanish speaking (e.g. Newburgh-Beacon area, Middletown-Pine Island area) should be under the vicar general and chancery as are all other pastoral assignments.
–Liturgy. Responsibility for the correct celebration of the Liturgy in Spanish and for advising priests of textual materials and changes should be assumed by the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission.
– Pastoral formation of seminarians. Programs for the pastoral formation of seminarians and newly ordained priests are logically the responsibility of the seminary. Concern for the training of seminarians in Spanish and for the preparation to work in a bilingual, bicultural pastoral situation should be assumed by the seminary staff.
– Research and pastoral planning. These functions should be assumed by the to-be-established office.
– Communications. At present Channel 47 regularly televises a Sunday mass in Spanish and occasional special radio and television programs are presented. Further, news releases and information are regularly supplied to the Spanish Language press. All these functions and others might be best assumed by the Department of Communications.
– St. Joseph’s Center. Although the contractual agreement with the Augustinian Recollect Province concerning the staffing of the center provides for the pastoral work of the priests there to be conducted under the supervision of the Spanish Office, the center administrator should deal directly with the financial department of the diocese in purely administrative matters.
7. Some matters, although not specifically pastoral, would best be left for the present under the responsibility of the Spanish Office; that is:
– San Juan Fiesta. The future of the Fiesta needs considerable study. However, it still will represent a special religious function on the diocesan level for the Spanish community
– Language Schooling. . . . When its future is stabilized, responsibility for it may be assumed by the Department of Education.((Ibid.))
Deferrals, revisions and reversals. In September the plan was not submitted to the consideration of the administrative department heads, although they had continued to be informed regularly of the fact of the reorganization study.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, July 28, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, August 4, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, September 1, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, September 29, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, October 20, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, November 10, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, December 1, 1971, Re.: Weekly report on activities;” ”Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, December 15, 1971, Re.: Biweekly Report on Activities (December 2-11);” “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re.: Report on Activities (February 20 – March 4,1972), March 8,1972;” and “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re.: Report on Activities (August 20 – September 2, 1972), September 6, 1972.” (personal files of the author.).)) The vicar general decided further study and modification of the plan was needed and in the interim no operating budget was approved for the continued operation of the Spanish speaking apostolate office.
After another September meeting with the vicar general and chancellor, Fr. Stern was requested to submit “a series of particular proposals . . . to implement the policy discussed and agreed on.”(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Msgr. James P. Mahoney, September 29th, 1971, Re: Coordination of Pastoral Care of Spanish-speaking (4),” (personal files of the author.).)) Thirty-five specific proposals were drafted implementing the wishes of the vicar general and chancellor. In summary, they called for a position of vicar for Spanish speaking to be established to replace the director of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate and for the vicar to be accountable directly to the vicar general and be considered part of his staff and office; for all programs and activities of the existing Spanish Speaking Apostolate office to be transferred immediately to other, appropriate offices, departments, or agencies or directly to the supervision of the vicar general himself; and for the new vicar’s physical office to be limited to two rooms with two staff members.((Ibid.))
This new plan for reorganization, the most radical of all to date. was further reviewed and modified once again by the vicar general in October(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Oct. 20, 1971, Re: Weekly report on activities.”).)) Although he was satisfied with the general lines of the proposal, he had come to the conclusion that it was not necessary to establish a vicar for the Spanish speaking and instead proposed to recommend to the cardinal that the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate be made a vice-chancellor for Spanish pastoral affairs.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, November 13, 1971, (personal files of the author.).)) The vice-chancellor was to be accountable directly to the vicar general and considered part of his staff and office.
When this final revision was submitted to Cardinal Cooke he “endorsed the notion of the development of attention to Spanish-speaking by all departments with a gradual transfer of function from the office of the Director of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate; he did not accept the recommendation for a redefinition of Fr. Stern’s responsibility and title as proposed.”((Ibid.))
First separation of functions and programs. In December responsibility for attention to the Spanish language communications media was transferred to the Office of Communications. Fr. José Álvarez, who had been working in this area on a part-time basis for the past year, joined the staff of the communications office. Further, Miss Anita Díaz of the Spanish speaking apostolate office staff left to join the communications department staff as a full-time translator.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, December 1, 1971, Re: Weekly report on activities.”).))
A few days later the draft budget of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate was reviewed once again. Msgr. Murphy asked for separate budgets to be submitted for six programs (Institute for Inter-cultural Communications, Language Institute, Migrant Ministry, Movimiento Juvenil, Newburgh-Beacon Area Ministry, and San Juan Fiesta), presumably to facilitate their future transfer, and a very reduced budget was established for the Spanish Speaking Apostolate as a department of the pastoral office. Only the latter budget was tentatively approved at that time;(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, December 15, 1971 Re: Biweekly report on activities.”).)) the others continued to be studied.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on activities (February 20 – March 4, 1972), March 8, 1972.”).))
A Crisis of “Confianza”
After the meeting of the delegation of Hispanic leaders with Cardinal Cooke in March of l972, Fr. Stern had an opportunity the following month to discuss personally with him the inconclusive study and reorganization of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate. He shared with the cardinal his concern that the insecurity about the future and the inability to make long range plans had had a very serious effect upon attitudes and morale and that the lack of a clear definition of the scope and authority of his responsibility was making it increasingly difficult to operate.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Meeting on April 29, 1972, May 15, 1972.”).))
Subsequently Cardinal Cooke asked Msgr. Mahoney and Fr. Stern to submit a new joint recommendation as regards the definition of the office of director of the Spanish-speaking apostolate.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to His Eminence, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Director of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate, January 24, 1973,” (personal files of the author.),))
The vicar general informed Fr. Stern in June that his plans of the previous year for the Spanish office were again modified. The vicar general now envisaged two distinct positions: one, a vice-chancellor with responsibility for matters concerning parishes, clergy, and canonical affairs; the other, a coordinator of programs of apostolic formation. He first suggested that Fr. Stern now take the latter position and then in August he urged him to consider accepting a pastorate. The next day the vicar general met with the delegation to the cardinal and announced to them that the new program of lay leadership formation, which had been planned and recommended by the Coordinating Committee and which was to be one of the chief responsibilities of Fr. Stern’s new role, was to be initiated and directed by the seminary.((Ibid.))
Meanwhile, Cardinal Cooke wrote to Fr. Stern expressing his satisfaction with his first three years of work as director of the Spanish speaking apostolate and renewing his appointment for another period of three years.(( Terence Cardinal Cooke, letter to Reverend Robert L. Stern, August 30,1972, (personal files of the author.).))
The dismissal of Miss Díaz. After the reappointment by Cardinal Cooke, the vicar general did not discuss any new plans for the Spanish office nor did he discuss anything further with Fr. Stern. However in November a new situation arose which served further to erode confidence in the intentions of the archdiocesan authorities. Msgr. Eugene Clark, the director of communications of the archdiocese, terminated the position of full-time translator on the basis of insufficient work to justify the position.(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on Activities (November 5 – December 9, 1972), December 13, 1971,” (personal files of the author.),)) This was of great concern, since Miss Diaz had been the administrative coordinator and executive secretary of the Spanish speaking apostolate and her reassignment to the office of communications symbolized the beginning of the “integration” of the Spanish speaking apostolate, the first transfer of a major responsibility to another department. Efforts to restore that position were unsuccessful;(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to His Eminence, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Director of the Spanish Speaking Apostolate, January 24, 1973.”).)) however, Fr. Álvarez did continue in his responsibility for the Spanish media.
The Coordinating Committee had not been informed concerning the matter and took issue with the decision made. They strongly questioned the sincerity of interest in the Spanish speaking on the part of some diocesan authorities and saw the dismissal of Miss Díaz as a further cutback in attention to and deployment of resources in favor of the Spanish speaking.(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, December 9, 1972, (personal files of the author.).))
Fr. Stern’s resignation. The long, painful, and inconclusive process of reorganization of the Spanish speaking apostolate, the frequently changing directives of his superiors, the attempts to reduce budget and staff. and now the reversal in the matter of the communications department persuaded Fr. Stern that what was taking place was not the process of integration that he had so readily embraced. In December he spoke with Cardinal Cooke and asked to be relieved of his responsibilities as director of the Spanish speaking apostolate and to be allowed a sabbatical for rest, prayer, and study.(( Robert L. Stern, letter to His Eminence, Terence Cardinal Cooke, January 5, 1973 and “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on activities (December 10, 1972 – January 20, 1973), January 24, 1973,” (personal files of the author.).)) The request was motivated by Fr. Stern’s conviction “that he had outstayed his usefulness in the post and lacked that confidence of his superiors that he felt necessary to his continuance.”(( Minutes of the Coordinating Committee, January 6, 1973, (personal files of the author.).))
The cardinal met again with Fr. Stern in January to discuss an orderly transition of responsibilities to a new director and the future orientation of the office.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on activities (December 10, 1972 – January 20,1973), January 24,1973.”))
The Senate of Priests. Subsequent to the dismissal of the full-time translator from the Communications Department, the Pastoral Renewal Committee of the Senate of Priests of the archdiocese began to question the translation services of that department. With the resignation of Fr. Stern, the committee began to question plans for the Spanish speaking apostolate. In January of 1973 the Senate established a sixteen member Ad Hoc Committee on the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate which had three meetings with Fr. Stern to gather information and documentation.(( Senate of Priests, Archdiocese of New York, ” Progress Report,” January, 1973; Ad-Hoc Committee (on the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate) Minutes, (Senate of Priests, Archdiocese of New York), January 25, 1973, (personal files of the author); and Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on activities (January 21- February 3, 1973), February 7,1973,” (personal files of the author.).))
The committee met in February with the vicar general who outlined to them a proposal to create two separate offices, a vice-chancellor for Spanish affairs and a director of the Spanish speaking apostolate. Two days later the appointment of a new vice-chancellor for Spanish pastoral affairs was announced, much to the committee members’ surprise. The committee continued to work even so to describe the responsibilities of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate office and to develop a profile of the characteristics of a new permanent director.(( Senate of Priests, Archdiocese of New York, “Progress Report,” March, 1973.)) The committee submitted its final report in May.(( Senate of Priests, Archdiocese of New York, “Progress Report,” May, 1973.))
The Vice-Chancellor for Spanish Pastoral Affairs. Although the vicar general had met not only with the Senate committee but also the previous day with the Coordinating Committee for the Spanish speaking apostolate,(( Robert L. Stern, “Memorandum to Coordinating Committee, Re: Meeting of the Committee, February 16, 1973,” (personal files of the author.).)) in both cases to share with them his plans for the future of the apostolate, neither group was prepared for the sudden announcement that Fr. Francis P. Gorman was named Vice-Chancellor for Spanish Pastoral Affairs and Interim Director of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate. This announcement seemed to have been made in response to a telephone inquiry earlier that same day from the New York Daily News asking for official comment about an article they were preparing concerning the archdiocese and Hispanics including the condition of the Spanish office and Fr. Stern’s resignation.(( Ana María Díaz Ramírez. “The Life, Passion, and Death of the Spanish-speaking Apostolate of the Archdiocese of New York,” Prophets Denied Honor, Antonio M. Stevens Arroyo, op.cit., p. 213.))
A few days later Fr. Stern was given a leave of absence from his position of director of the Spanish speaking apostolate and left for Rome with a scholarship from the cardinal to attend a three-month theological renewal program there.
VIII. THE DIMINISHED SPANISH OFFICE
Fr. Gorman had returned to the archdiocese in May of 1972 after serving for three years in the parish of San Francisco de Asís in the archdiocese of Caracas, Venezuela, a parish sponsored and staffed by the Archdiocese of New York from its inception in 1969 until the New York diocese turned it over to the Caracas diocese in December of 1974. He was a fluent Spanish speaker and familiar with Latin American pastoral problems. However he did not have an enviable job. Abruptly chosen and relatively unfamiliar with the diocesan coordination of the Spanish Apostolate, he had to confront immediately not only a complex and now ambiguously defined set of administrative responsibilities but a strong and in some cases public reaction to the events of the immediate past. Initially there were demonstrations, the organization of a protest group, Spanish American Christians for Justice, and further critical publicity in The New York Times and Daily News. The Coordinating Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee of the Senate of Priests continued to press for a satisfactory explanation of the reorganization of the Spanish office and to offer suggestions for a permanent director.
An immediate and demanding responsibility facing Fr. Gorman was the organization of the traditional San Juan Fiesta and the summer language study program of the archdiocese, in addition to all the routine tasks of the Spanish office. With the appointment of a permanent director of the Spanish speaking apostolate six months later, he was able to concentrate on his chancery responsibilities. Gradually his principal involvement in the Spanish speaking apostolate as such became the direction of the Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral, supervision of the Newburgh-Beacon area ministry, and the supervision of and participation in the migrant ministry program in the Middletown-Pine Island area.
In August of 1977 he left his chancery position to assume a pastorate in the area where he had been working in migrant ministry. No successor was named.
The First Hispanic Director of the Spanish Office
In August of 1973 an innovative appointment was made when the first native Hispanic was named to a three-year term as director of the Spanish speaking apostolate to replace Fr. Gorman in his capacity as interim director. Fr. Joaquín B. Beaumont was selected, a priest from Spain with experience in New York parishes and then in the process of incardination into the archdiocese.
An implicit difficulty for Fr. Beaumont was to define his own job responsibility. In spite of all of the studies about the future of the Spanish apostolate, nothing specifically had been communicated to him by way of redefining the position. The relationship between the two archdiocesan positions was also ambiguous. Although the position of vice-chancellor implied a good measure of canonical authority on his part and he was considered part of the immediate staff of the vicar general, the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate was also a departmental head who reported to the vicar general. Fortunately the relation between the two men was amicable and conflicts of authority and jurisdiction were successfully avoided.
In May of 1974 Fr. Beaumont was able to report to Cardinal Cooke that “after almost one year in the new position and after continuous communication with the proper channels, I reached the following understanding of my position:…I think that it is the job of the Director of the Spanish-Speaking Apostolate to direct and/or coordinate and advise three different areas of activities…AREA I: Preparing personnel to work better with the Spanish portion of the Archdiocese and helping Spanish speaking Priests and Sisters to become better integrated into the Church of New York. This area includes two different types of programs:…Language Institute…Intercultural Institute…AREA II: This area includes the organization, coordination and direction of annual Hispanic religious celebrations in New York…AREA III: This office coordinates the apostolic movements where Hispanics are involved.”(( Joaquín B. Beaumont, “Memorandum to His Eminence, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Report to His Eminence, May 30, 1974,” Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3396.))
Intercultural institute. The summer that Fr. Beaumont began to work as Spanish apostolate director the language program was organized by Fr. Gorman. Following the policy of training clergy and religious in other areas besides Puerto Rico, he sent a large group for summer language study to Bogotá, Colombia. As soon as Fr. Beaumont assumed responsibility for the summer program he gave considerable attention to its improvement and reorganization. When the Catholic University of Puerto Rico declined to offer the usual summer program, training was concentrated in Bogotá and in the Dominican Republic.
San Juan Fiesta. Initially Fr. Beaumont continued the model of the San Juan fiesta that he had inherited, with a religious-civic-cultural celebration in Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island. In 1974 to clarify any doubts concerning the nature of the fiesta, the executive committee of the fiesta stressed that it “is a religious demonstration…from the Puerto Rican people…in union and community with the other Hispanics under the supervision of the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of New York.”((Ibid.)) In spite of Fr. Beaumont’s best efforts as well as those of his predecessors, it proved impossible to present a dignified and popular religious spectacle at Randall’s Island and it was agreed to move the celebration to a location in the heart of the city, Central Park. A reduced style of fiesta observance in Central Park proved to be far more manageable than the previous ones and this format is still followed at present.
Our Lady of Altagracia celebration. On January 12, 1973 the first public celebration of the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia, Patroness of the Dominican Republic, had been held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The celebration was organized by Fr. Milton Ruiz under the supervision of Fr. Stern. About four thousand persons jammed the cathedral for a special liturgy celebrated by Coadjutor Archbishop Hugo Polanco of Santo Domingo, and Cardinal Cooke addressed the congregation after communion.(( Stern, op. cit. (“Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on activities (December 10, 1972 – January 20, 1973), January 24, 1973” and “Memorandum to Administrative Staff Heads, Re: Report on Activities (January 21 – February 3, 1973), February 7, 1973.”).))
Fr. Beaumont continued to lend encouragement to the celebration of the feast and began to involve the Spanish office more directly in the organization of the celebration for 1975. This began to set a pattern for other religious celebrations in the cathedral of a national character and in the next few years a variety of new annual observances were initiated reflecting the increasing diversity of country of origin of New York’s Hispanic Catholics.
Hispanic Columbus Day observance. For several years a tastefully staged and well organized parade had marked an annual observance of the celebration of the discovery of America, el Día de la Raza. In 1974 Fr. José Álvarez of the communications department of the archdiocese assisted the parade committee in organizing a religious celebration in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in conjunction with the parade. Fr. Beaumont decided to take full responsibility for the next year’s religious celebration and to make it into a really Hispanic, not just Spanish, event.(( Beaumont, op.cit.)) This continued to be an annual involvement of the Spanish office.
The Encuentro Arquidiocesano. The very successful first national Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral held in June of 1972 sparked a series of regional and diocesan encuentros.((Proceedings of the Primer Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral, op. cit., p. J4.)) In the next few years, there was a genuine “encuentro movement” across the entire country. In New York, the Coordinating Committee for the Spanish speaking apostolate suggested to the new director, Fr. Beaumont, that a diocesan encuentro should be held. The few lay leaders’ meetings convoked by Fr. Stern had been well received and productive but they were suspended after his departure from the Spanish office. The time seemed ripe for an even more broad consultation and bringing together of the leaders of the Hispanic Catholic community in the archdiocese. The Coordinating Committee developed the idea further and established a special working subcommittee chaired by Fr. Beaumont to prepare for the encuentro.(( Joaquín B. Beaumont, circular letter to participants and others interested in the archdiocesan encuentro, undated (probably July, 1974), Record Retention Center of the Archdiocese of New York, box 3396.)) In his report to Cardinal Cooke, Fr. Beaumont characterized the suggested plan for an encuentro as “something that can be risky and challenging, but nowadays unavoidable. It seems to me that it can very useful for the Spanish Apostolate….We have been careful in the planning and people seem to be in the right spirit…”(( Beaumont, op. cit. (“Memorandum to His Eminence, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Re: Report to His Eminence, May 30, 1974.”) .))
The encuentro was held on June 15, 1974 with great success. It was a positive experience, providing a much needed opportunity for clergy, religious and lay leaders from local parishes as well as those in positions of responsibility on the diocesan level to share and express their concerns. A series of priority recommendations emerged from the encuentro for the future development of the Spanish apostolate, some of which were later effectively responded to by the archdiocese:
– the Church should establish an immigration center to orient immigrants about matters concerned with legal residency, proper papers, work and other social services.
– the archdiocese should initiate programs for the ordination of Hispanic permanent deacons.
– the Church should reorganize and revive the Hispanic Movimiento Juvenil (youth movement) and offer it full support and try to obtain a center for its activities.((Beaumont, op. cit. (circular letter to participants and others interested in the archdiocesan encuentro.).))
The Northeast Regional Encuentro. In November of 1974 the first Northeast Regional Encuentro was held at Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was originally convoked through the Division for the Spanish Speaking of the United States Catholic Conference. In the months preceding the event regular planning meetings were held involving the diocesan directors of the Spanish speaking apostolate of the dioceses of the region and priests, religious and lay leaders in the apostolate. A large delegation from the archdiocese attended headed by Cardinal Cooke.
At the encuentro a Northeast Regional Pastoral Committee for Hispanics was elected and began to meet on a regular basis in January of 1975. The committee concentrated on the preparation of a northeast regional pastoral center for Hispanics. The center was inaugurated in February of 1976. Although not a project of the archdiocese as such, it was strongly supported by the archdiocesan authorities from its inception. The New York diocese is its major source of diocesan financial support and in August of 1977 the center moved its headquarters to the New York Catholic Center.
Counseling services. Although the Spanish office as such was a pastoral-administrative department of the archdiocese, whenever someone Spanish speaking came to the New York Catholic Center with a personal need not obviously identifiable as falling within the scope of service of any other department, that person was sent to the Spanish office. Fr. Beaumont encouraged this and tried to make of the office a center where people were warmly received and would receive sympathetic attention and counseling, looking towards a solution of their problems and not just a referral to an appropriate agency.
A frequent problem brought to the office concerned the civil status of immigrants, the plight of undocumented newcomers to New York. Fr. Beaumont became increasingly concerned with this as did many others as well since such a high percentage of the Hispanic Catholic population of New York was involved. He was instrumental in calling together a group of priests to study and discuss the matter and a general workshop on the undocumented and immigration law and policies was offered for priests and lay leaders. One Specific result of that workshop was the recognition of the need of some kind of specialized archdiocesan office or program for immigration concerns.
Priests’ meetings. There had been no regular get-togethers for the priests in the Spanish speaking apostolate since the regular meetings had been discouraged in 1971. Many had expressed a desire for such a meeting, so Fr. Beaumont decided to plan a day that would provide an easy and informal opportunity for dialogue as well as an opportunity for prayer and convivencia. In June of 1976 an all-day program was held at Dunwoodie, the archdiocesan major seminary. Fifty-one priests visited or participated in one part or another of the meeting, twenty-one Hispanics and thirty non-Hispanics.(( Francisco T. Dominguez, A.A., “Report on the Spanish Apostolate Day at Dunwoodie, June 1, 1976,” (personal files of the author.).))
The program offered a much needed opportunity for fraternization among the native Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants. Since the development of the Asociación de Sacerdotes Hispanos three years before, native Hispanic priests had enjoyed frequent occasions for dialogue among themselves but, paradoxically, this very success was distancing them somewhat from the non-Hispanic or “American” clergy. There was general satisfaction and an expressed desire for more such gatherings in the immediate future.((Ibid.))
Steps Forward and Backward
When Fr. Beaumont accepted his three year term of office in 1973, he was very optimistic about the possibilities of development of the Spanish speaking apostolate and the Spanish office and convinced that with sufficient tact and deference on his part considerable progress could be achieved. However by the end of that period he realized that his optimism was somewhat naïve. Although he brought to his position considerable pastoral experience and psychological insight, for he had a professional specialization in that field, he was disadvantaged by his relative unfamiliarity with the structure and workings of the administrative bureaucracy of the archdiocese. He gradually experienced the same frustration as regards the lack of definition of his responsibilities and of clear delineation of his authority as had his predecessor and he decided to ask for a return to a pastoral assignment at the conclusion of his term.
In October of 1976 he was replaced by another priest distinguished by his pastoral experience and effectiveness in the Spanish speaking community, Fr. Ignacio Lazcano, C.R.L.. Fr. Lazcano, a Basque from Spain and a member of the religious congregation of the Canons Regular of the Lateran, had been one of the members of the missionary team of that order active in parish work in the archdiocese for many years. Forthright, candid and deeply committed to lay leadership development, he immediately embraced the curious, mixed package of responsibilities that was the Spanish apostolate director’s office. To the thoughtful observer his appointment had an ambivalent symbolism. On the one hand an activist, pastoral and creative native Hispanic was named to a position of diocesan leadership, which also had the additional positive dimension of providing recognition of the important role played by religious clergy in the life of the archdiocese. On the other hand, the diocese had come full circle: Before 1953 the main responsibility for the Spanish apostolate had been in the hands of the religious clergy, predominantly the native Hispanic, and now, symbolically, it was theirs once again.
“El Pueblo Habla.” Almost immediately upon assuming his new responsibility Fr. Lazcano began an extensive archdiocesan preparation for the second Encuentro Nacional Hispano, “El Pueblo Habla,” to be celebrated the following year. The national plan called for a broad consultation of the Hispanic people at the grass roots level across the United States. In New York a working group Fr. Lazcano convoked prepared a detailed questionnaire that was sent to over 12,000 people throughout the archdiocese, including all parishes, apostolic movements, special groups and programs, and consulates.
The replies were carefully studied, tabulated, placed in priority order and presented to a diocesan wide convocation of 355 lay leaders and 75 priests representing all the Hispanic parishes and movements of the archdiocese. The participants finalized the diocesan recommendations for the national Encuentro and selected a delegation of 12 persons to represent the archdiocese at it.
Undocumented immigrants. Another concern receiving Fr. Lazcano’s immediate attention was the need for some official archdiocesan attention to the special needs of undocumented immigrants. The Encuentro Arquidiocesano of 1974 had requested the establishment of an immigration center and Fr. Beaumont had convoked meetings and workshops to address the issue.
Planning meetings continued to be held by Fr. Lazcano and a design for a network of vicariate level counseling centers was developed. The archdiocesan authorities were very supportive of the plans and a budget for the development of immigration services was approved. A point not entirely decided was whether the program would be an exclusively Hispanic one associated with the Spanish Speaking Apostolate office or a general program associated with the Social Development Office of the archdiocese.
Recruitment of Spanish adjunct clergy. A growing problem among those concerned with the clergy personnel of the archdiocese was the lack of Spanish speaking priests. In spite of the projections made by Msgrs. Kelly and Connolly in 1953 and the later plans and recommendations of Msgr. Illich, the language training programs of the diocese had proportionately declined instead of expanding. A major cause was the increased element of personalism in seminary training and clergy assignments. For several years, instead of half the newly ordained class of priests being assigned to Spanish language studies, only a much smaller percent were trained who had volunteered for the experience as seminarians. In the seminary itself there was a reluctance to demand proficiency in the Spanish language and it was only in 1981 that some study of Spanish became a general requirement.
Rather than move in the direction of making a minimum bilingualism a pre-condition for ordination in the archdiocese, the diocesan authorities opted for a deliberate recruitment of foreign, Spanish speaking clergy. Early in 1977 a delegation of diocesan officials including Fr. Lazcano and Fr. Gorman went to Spain to establish official contacts with the Spanish hierarchy for the contractual loan of Spanish diocesan clergy to the archdiocese for ministry here for specified periods of years. This supplemented similar previous contacts and agreements with major religious superiors of several Spanish-based religious congregations having houses in New York concerning the loan of clergy for other than their own ministries in the archdiocese.(( Stern, op, cit. (“The Archdiocese of New York and Hispanic Americans”), p. 22.))
The effort symbolized another coming full circle. The Spanish apostolate in New York had begun with predominantly Spanish religious clergy. A great achievement of Cardinal Spellman had been the mobilization of the archdiocesan clergy for the Spanish speaking apostolate. Now that thrust was faltering and what some would consider a pastorally retrogressive step was being taken as an immediate solution to the situation created by an inadequate response to a long standing pastoral challenge. However, for better or worse, the recruitment mission had little success and it was not further pursued with any seriousness.
Spanish speaking auxiliary bishops. In June of 1977 the Catholic weekly newspaper of the archdiocese heralded that three Spanish speaking priests were to be ordained bishops, auxiliaries to the archbishop of New York. This was officially represented as a great and unprecedented response to the increasing numbers of Hispanic Catholics in the archdiocese and their pastoral needs and one of them, Bishop Francisco Garmendia, was named also as “Episcopal Vicar for Spanish Pastoral Development.”
Bishop Garmendia was a Basque priest who just a few years before had left his religious congregation of the Canons Regular of the Lateran to become incardinated into the archdiocese. For many years he had served with distinction in local Spanish speaking parishes and enjoyed the reputation of a dedicated, hard-working, traditionally minded parish priest totally at the service of his people. His ordination as bishop catapulted him into an entirely new role and level of responsibility. Previously he had hardly ever been involved in any pastoral activities at the diocesan level and now he was prominent even nationally as the archdiocese’s first Hispanic auxiliary bishop.
Within a few months of his appointment as vicar for Spanish pastoral development the office of vice-chancellor for Spanish pastoral affairs was vacated and allowed to lapse. The new vicar inherited the same ambiguity of relationship to the director of the Spanish speaking apostolate that had existed earlier in the case of the vice-chancellor. Canonically the episcopal vicar enjoyed the full authority of the ordinary of the diocese in his designated area of responsibility but in practice he was the pastor of a relatively poor inner city parish with no chancery office space or staff. After a few frustrated, well-intentioned attempts to take over the total direction of the Spanish apostolate of the archdiocese, Bishop Garmendia came to assume a role of symbolic leadership and official representation of the cardinal in addition to the consultative responsibilities attached to his office as episcopal vicar. The director of the Spanish speaking apostolate continued in his traditional responsibilities, both men collaborated amicably and fraternally, and the office of vicar for Spanish pastoral development remained largely ceremonious.
The two other Spanish speaking bishops were both non-Hispanic archdiocesan officials, Msgr. Theodore E. McCarrick, the secretary of Cardinal Cooke, and Msgr. Austin B. Vaughan, the rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary. Msgr. McCarrick had assisted Msgr. Illich during the summer months in the direction of the Institute of Missionary Formation of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico in 1959 and 1960 and had directed the program himself for the next three summers. He served with distinction as the rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico for four years previous to his return to the archdiocese in 1969. Although neither he nor Msgr. Vaughan had been active in the Spanish speaking apostolate within the archdiocese previous to their episcopal ordination, as bishops they both began to involve themselves in Hispanic functions and activities. Bishop McCarrick was named episcopal vicar for the east side of Manhattan including Spanish Harlem and gave himself immediately to local pastoral concerns in addition to his considerable archdiocesan administrative and developmental activities, and he continued in that office until his appointment as the bishop of the new diocese of Metuchen in 1981. Bishop Vaughan became the pastor of St. Patrick’s parish in Newburgh, New York, and episcopal vicar of Orange County.
The resignation of Fr. Lazcano. The appointment of Fr. Garmendia as auxiliary bishop had one entirely unforeseen and unpredictable consequence, Fr. Lazcano’s resignation of the office of director of the Spanish speaking apostolate. Bishop Garmendia had been for many years a member of Fr. Lazcano’s religious congregation. The bishop’s former associates and still good friends and compatriots in the congregation who were working in the archdiocese considered the total lack of consultation with the congregation’s religious authorities by the Apostolic Delegate concerning Fr. Garmendia’s fitness for episcopal office a serious irregularity. They felt that some expression of their sentiments was appropriate. Prompted especially by these circumstances Fr. Lazcano asked to be relieved of his office. In December of 1977 he was reassigned to a parish and in February of 1978 Fr. David Arias, O.A.R. was named as his successor.
The Spanish Office at Present
The appointment of Fr. Arias had some similarities to that of his predecessor. He was a Spanish religious order priest, a member of the Province of St. Augustine of the Augustinian Recollect Fathers, and had been working in the Archdiocese of New York for the previous eight years. Unlike his predecessors, his experience in the archdiocese was not parochial ministry but that of director of St. Joseph’s Center and priest-advisor of the archdiocesan Movimiento de Cursillos de Cristiandad. As such he brought to his new responsibility an extensive personal knowledge of parish Hispanic lay leaders and experience of lay leadership formation as well as a familiarity with diocesan level pastoral planning and some participation in it since the time of Fr. Stern.
Strengthening of existing programs. In addition to providing the administrative supervision and guidance of the during-the-year and the summer language training programs, Fr. Arias began to give much of his time and concern to continuing and strengthening the apostolic movements and related programs of the diocese. The secretariat of the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano was revised and renewed and twice a year seminars were held for the leaders of the movement from the twenty-five parishes with active teams. Fr. Lazcano had assisted the Camino Youth Movement to relocate to the new Grace House for youth ministry. Fr. Arias helped them get established there and assisted in the formation of the Camino youth council and the organization of the school of leaders.
A creative program for lay leadership formation, Luz y Vida, had been developed by the task force on formation for the lay apostolate chaired by Fr. Arias and had been propagated widely throughout the archdiocese during his tenure as director of St. Joseph’s Center. He continued to give it his fullest support and began to convoke two workshops each year, one for the parish coordinators of the program and another for all the local group leaders. The first of these convocations at Holy Cross parish had over two hundred persons present representing the approximately two hundred local groups in forty different parishes. The second one was held at Holy Name parish.
In May of 1980 he organized a successful and well attended “Simposio Arquidiocesano” as a follow up and response to the northeastern regional symposium on the conclusions of the second Encuentro Nacional Hispano. Over three hundred persons attended the symposium including delegates from each of the Hispanic parishes of the archdiocese. The symposium offered many pastoral recommendations for the future of the Spanish speaking apostolate.(( Spanish-Speaking Apostolate, Archdiocese of New York, “Conclusiones del Simposio Arquidiocesano Hispano, Mayo 23-25, 1980,” (personal files of the author.).))
Migration services. A major activity of Fr. Arias during his first year in the Spanish office was to continue and finalize the planning for the development of counseling and legal services for immigrants that was initiated by his predecessors. The result was that in September of 1978 an archdiocesan Office of Immigration Services was established under the direction of Fr. Francisco Dominguez, A.A. to counsel and assist immigrants in all matters concerning their status and that of their families. Although not specifically a program designed for Spanish speaking immigrants, they are the majority of the clients served.
In the Spring of 1980 a Cuban Resettlement Program was set up by the archdiocese in response to the massive arrival of Cubans at that time. This was actually a revival of the earlier Cuban Resettlement Office which had been terminated as a special project a few years before after settling about 25,000 Cuban refugees over a period of three or four years.
National celebrations. Since the inauguration of the archdiocesan observance of the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia in the cathedral in 1973, ten other national celebrations were established, the most recent of which was the celebration of Our Lady of Divine Providence, patroness of Puerto Rico, in November of 1981. In almost every case the celebration consists of a solemn liturgy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral involving typical music and styles of celebration, visiting ecclesiastical dignitaries, consular and other civic officials and a capacity congregation. Under Fr. Arias the role of liaison with each of the planning committees and active participation in their work has come to be a major function of the Spanish office.
Communications media. In 1980 Fr. Arias arranged for a half-hour weekly program, “Pueblo en Marcha,” to be presented in Spanish on Channel 47 television. The program was placed under the direction of the Office of Communications of the archdiocese and had a magazine format especially involving interviews of persons active in the Hispanic community and the work of the church. It continued for about one year. He also arranged for the resumption, after a lapse of several years, of a weekly televised Sunday Mass in Spanish on Channel 41 beginning on Pentecost Sunday in 1982. The program is also directed by the Communications office. In addition to these programs, a new monthly newsletter in Spanish for lay leaders was inaugurated in September of 1982.
Diocesan Programs Independent of the Spanish Office
For reasons particular to each case, four formation programs developed since the centralization of activities of the Spanish speaking apostolate in the early 1970s continued relatively independent of the Spanish office. Also, the Office of Pastoral Research of the archdiocese undertook an independent study of the religious and social situation of the Hispanic community in the archdiocese.
Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral. As previously described, the recommendations of the Coordinating Committee for the Spanish speaking apostolate for the creation of a pastoral institute for lay leadership formation were accepted by Cardinal Cooke in early 1973; however the supervision and governance of the new program and institute were not associated with the Coordinating Committee nor the Spanish speaking apostolate office but were given to Fr. Thomas Leonard, ostensibly because of his position on the major seminary staff.
When Fr. Leonard was transferred to the chancery office, the responsibility for the institute accompanied him there. After his departure from that office it was taken on by Fr. Gorman as vice chancellor for Spanish pastoral affairs. After Fr. Gorman’s transfer it was administratively in limbo with responsibility for directing the institute given personally to Sr. Marian Pohlner, a Spanish speaking religious attached to the office of Christian and Family Development. At the urging of the faculty of the program a board of directors was established for it and the program was placed under the supervision of the vicar general through directors appointed by him.
Camino youth movement. A strong interest of the archdiocesan secretariat for the Cursillo movement was to have some kind of program for the spiritual development of youth, especially the sons and daughters of people who themselves had been strongly influenced by the cursillo experience. After the termination of the Movimiento Juvenil in 1973 there was no program at all for youth leadership formation and even that one had not been considered adequate to satisfy the need felt by some cursillo leaders. The interest in reviving the Hispanic youth movement or developing a new program for formation of Hispanic youth was shared by the Coordinating Committee and coincided with the recommendations of the June 1974 Encuentro Arquidiocesano.
In November of 1974 the Cursillo secretariat sponsored an all day “Hispanic Youth Retreat” at St. Joseph’s Center with great success. The program was designed for the situation of Hispanic young people and was bilingual and bicultural in style. It was repeated in January of 1975 at St. Paul the Apostle parish in Manhattan and in May at Sacred Heart parish. The developers of the program really wanted it to become a three-day experience somewhat like the cursillo itself. An opportunity presented itself to use a building of the cathedral parish of the diocese of Paterson, so the expanded weekend program began to be offered there. The retreat was called “Camino.” After being given at the Paterson center for two years it was relocated to the new Grace House for youth ministry opened in Manhattan in the spring of 1978.
It has enjoyed tremendous success and has been very effective in communicating with and motivating Hispanic young people. A large team of people have cooperated in presenting the retreats and the entire program is guided by a Camino council involving the youth themselves. A training school for Camino youth leaders was established as well and weekly sessions are held throughout the year.(( Bruce Nieli, C.S.P., “Camino,” Clergy Report. Vol. 8, No. 4, (April 1978).))
Permanent diaconate program. In the summer of 1975 Cardinal Cooke decided to authorize a separate program to be conducted in Spanish for the formation of Hispanic candidates for the permanent diaconate. Fr. Raúl del Valle was named an associate director of the archdiocesan permanent diaconate program with the special mandate to develop the Hispanic program. One of his first decisions was to establish an advisory committee composed of priests involved in the Spanish apostolate and formation.(( Raúl Del Valle, “Memorandum to His Eminence Terence Cardinal Cooke, Subject: Progress Report concerning the Permanent Diaconate Program for Hispanics, October 3, 1975,” (personal files of the author.).))
In September general guidelines for the admission of candidates and for the training program were decided upon. It was agreed to utilize the courses given at the Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral as part of the formation for the diaconate but in addition specific training and formation for the diaconate was to be conducted on a weekly basis and periodic special retreats and meetings for the candidates and their wives were to be held.((Ibid.))
The Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral was then into its third year of operations. For the first two years as the program was in development courses were gradually added as needed. By early 1975 it was decided to have a three-year program consisting of three trimesters each year, the second and third years of which would be presented on alternate years. It was suggested that the purpose of the Instituto be redefined as “the further development of Hispanic lay leaders and the selection and formation of permanent deacons of the Christian community.”(( Francis P. Gorman, letter to all members of the Admissions Board for the Hispanic Branch of the Permanent Diaconate Program, October 8, 1975, (personal files of the author.).))
A special, accelerated program was adopted for a select group of candidates with extensive previous personal formation through the Instituto and elsewhere and in June of 1976 the first Hispanic permanent deacons for the archdiocese were ordained by Cardinal Cooke in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Successive ordinations have been held annually since then.
In March of 1980 the advisory board recommended that after four years of experimentation with the permanent diaconate for Hispanics a serious evaluation of the training program and also of the ministry of the ordained Hispanic permanent deacons be conducted. Further it was suggested that the structure of the program be modified to make it more flexible in regard to the curriculum and the places of teaching and that a full time director be appointed to the program with additional responsibility for the continuing education and spiritual development of the ordained Hispanic deacons.(( Raúl del Valle, “Memorandum to His Eminence Terence Cardinal Cooke, Archbishop of New York, the Rev. Msgr. Joseph T. O’Keefe, V.G., the Rev. Msgr. John J. Mescall, and the members of the Advisory Board of the Permanente Diaconate Program for Hispanic Candidates, Subject: Progress report on the special program to train Hispanic Candidates to the Permanent Diaconate, May 18, 1980,” (personal files of the author.).)) The matter is presently under advisement.
Centro Carismático Católico Hispano. Bishop Garmendia, the vicar for Spanish pastoral development, had a strong personal interest in the movement for charismatic renewal. He thought to utilize the former convent building of his new parish of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Bronx as a center for the movement among Hispanic Catholics. He broached his plans to Cardinal Cooke and in January of 1978 the cardinal appointed him director of the Hispanic charismatic renewal and approved the establishment of a Centro Carismático Católico Hispano which was inaugurated in the fall of that year. The bishop’s responsibilities included the formation of leaders of the movement and the safeguarding of its unity and correct development. After staff was recruited for the direction of the center, courses, workshops, meetings and retreats began to be held there on a regular basis for Spanish speaking parish lay leaders of the movement.
The following year Bishop Garmendia decided to conduct formation programs principally through existing vicariate pastoral centers rather than at the Centro Carismático itself. In the fall, programs were initiated at the archdiocesan Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral and at the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference’s Institute for Ministry; in the winter, at the South Bronx Pastoral Center. The Centro Carismático continued as a meeting place and resource center available to Hispanic Catholics and is utilized by most of the eighty-four local parish prayer groups. A wide variety of programs and activities continue to be presented there.
The Hispanic study. Early in 1979 both the Hispanic committee of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission and the Ad Hoc Committee for Hispanic Evangelization recommended to Cardinal Cooke that a study be made of the religious and social situation of the Hispanic community in the archdiocese. The cardinal accepted their recommendation and commissioned the Office of Pastoral Research of the archdiocese to conduct the study and investigation.
As a first step, in July Mrs. Ruth Doyle, director of the Pastoral Research Office, convoked a meeting of persons involved in Hispanic ministry in the archdiocese in many different areas and at different levels of responsibility and proposed that they serve as an advisory and steering committee for the study. The committee began to function and to delineate the purposes, issues and expectations of the study. By October a detailed proposal was drafted and submitted to the cardinal with the steering committee’s recommendation. During the following year foundations were approached for major funding and meetings were held; a technical committee of sociologists developed the design. In 1981 staff was hired and the study initiated. The target date for completion is the fall of 1982.
Vicariate and Area Programs
Local needs in three different areas of the archdiocese prompted the development of regional and local programs of lay formation in addition to those already offered by St. Joseph’s Center and the Instituto Hispano de Formación Pastoral.
LESAC Institute for Ministry. The Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference, an association of twenty-one parishes and other catholic institutions located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, during the fall of 1974 and spring of 1975 prepared an area wide pastoral master plan which included a call for a pastoral center to be established as a “possible base for a specifically area-level approach to church life and a resource center to the parishes for programs in liturgy, religious education, lay leadership training and other matters.”(( L.E.S.A.C., “A Report to the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council on the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference,” (personal files of the author.).)) One of the major developments of the pastoral center’s work was the Institute for Ministry, which described itself as “a school sponsored and conducted by the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference designed to enable lay persons, clergy, and religious of the area to prepare for an active, educated, and skilled participation in the ministry of the Church in the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side.”(( L.E.S.A.C., “Institute for Ministry” (personal files of the author.).))
In the spring of 1976 the first classes of the institute were given in English and in Spanish. Courses are both theoretical and practical and periodically are complemented by workshops for training in certain ministries. The institute runs on a three-year cycle, with two semesters of ten weekly sessions each in the spring and fall. Training programs are offered in the areas of liturgy, church and community, prayer, religious education, families and youth.(( L.E.S.A.C., “Report to the American Board of Catholic Missions,” (personal files of the author), pp. 4-7.)) The first graduating class of the institute numbered fourteen persons and a measure of its success was that during its first three years over four hundred persons registered for one or more of the institute’s programs.(( L.E.S.A.C., “Report for the 1978-1979 Pastoral Year,” (personal files of the author), p. 8.))
South Bronx Pastoral Center. In September of 1978 a similar program begin in the South Bronx vicariate. The idea for this South Bronx Pastoral Center grew out of the concern of the South Bronx Catholic Association for adult religious education and the development of lay leadership, the call of the episcopal vicar of the South Bronx for a school of ministry, and the experience of the Institute for Apostolic Development of Our Lady of Victory Parish. The Center described itself as “a school and training center for persons who wish to prepare themselves to participate more fully in the life of their local churches and communities. It offers programs in English and in Spanish that are designed to acquaint the persons who participate in them with the roots of their religious and cultural traditions and to equip them for exercising greater responsibility in shaping the quality of life in their communities.”(( South Bronx Pastoral Center, catalogue, “General Information,” (personal files of the author.).))
The center offers courses three times a year, in the fall, winter and spring. Each course consists of ten weekly sessions. There are two main types of courses or training programs. The four-year program of general Christian leadership formation consists of courses in the areas of religious studies and communication skills; the shorter, specialized training programs are concerned with formation for liturgical, sacramental, educational, catechetical and community action ministries on the parish level.(( South Bronx Pastoral Center, “Proposal for Funding of the South Bronx Pastoral Center,” (personal files of the author.).))
In September of 1979 the center began to operate with a fulltime staff with a priest director assigned by Cardinal Cooke. It is organized as a New York State not-for-profit corporation operated under the direction of a twenty-one member board of directors and the supervision of the archdiocese. To date over one thousand lay men and women from forty-nine different parishes have received training through the Center.
South Bronx People for Change. Another program that was sponsored by the South Bronx Catholic Association for the South Bronx vicariate was South Bronx People for Change. It began to function with a full-time director in January of 1979 after several months of planning and a series of training workshops conducted the previous year. The genesis of the program was a wide-spread concern for the revitalization of the South Bronx area and a desire to assist lay people to become agents of social change by assisting them to analyze neighborhood, national and world structures, to spotlight their interrelationships and to organize themselves around vital issues. Its long-range goal is to develop Church people as leaders and to heighten within them the awareness of community affairs and power structures so that they may be competently sent forth to represent themselves and their Christian values in responsible positions of leadership within the community.(( Neil A. Connolly, circular letter to members of the Church in the South Bronx, May 15, 1978.))
To date the movement and program have been established in seven neighborhoods in the South Bronx through the local parishes. Neighborhood community action groups have been recruited, trained and assisted to function by the staff of South Bronx People for Change in collaboration with the parish staffs. There are over two hundred members of the movement at present, with several hundred others affiliated though various local organizations and projects. The movement functions under the direction of a board of directors made up mostly of the members of the local groups.
Northwest
CONCLUSION
Today, eighty years after the establishment of the first Spanish parish in the archdiocese and thirty years after the inauguration of special archdiocesan programs for the Spanish speaking, Hispanics are on the verge of becoming—or in the estimation of some are—the majority of the baptized Catholic population. They no longer are overwhelmingly Puerto Rican and immigration from other Caribbean countries, Central America and South America is rapidly increasing. They are the youngest, fastest growing and poorest of the ethnic or national groups in the archdiocese.
Over one-quarter of the 412 parishes of the archdiocese are ministering to Hispanic peoples in their own language as well as in English and in somewhat more than half of these parishes there is a Spanish speaking pastor. Seven of the eighteen episcopal vicars of the archdiocese speak Spanish, two of whom are native Hispanics. In addition to the special offices and institutions that exist exclusively or predominantly for Hispanics, most diocesan offices and agencies have either Hispanic sections or Spanish speaking staff members.
Probably no other diocese in the United States has done as much as the Archdiocese of New York did to respond to the pastoral challenge posed to it by the massive arrival of so many Spanish speaking Catholics in the span of one generation. Although other dioceses may include more Hispanics and they may have been there longer, it is hard to find a parallel to the New York experience in terms of numbers, rapidity of immigration and scope of response. A legitimate question to pose is, has the Archdiocese of New York done enough?
It is clear that there are discernible stages and directions to the pastoral response to the Hispanic migration by the New York archdiocese. The 1950’s were a time of great beginnings and enthusiasm. Not all of its projections were realized nor all of it hopes fulfilled but a great movement of “concientización” and pastoral development began which has still not entirely lost its impetus. As the Hispanic part of the archdiocese grew, paradoxically the very structures and institutions established for the development of Hispanic ministry began to outgrow their usefulness. When Hispanics were a minority they were best served by specialized structures; as they approach a majority there is need instead for a bilingual and bicultural dimension to almost every aspect of the life of the archdiocese.
Looking backwards, there are moments of great boldness and dynamism in the history of the evolution of Hispanic ministry in the archdiocese and moments of hesitation and loss of dynamism as well. Not all has been perfect, but still there is a proud record of achievement.
The real good of all that has happened should be seen perhaps in an entirely different perspective. Let us celebrate not so much what has been accomplished by the Archdiocese of New York for its Hispanic members as the providential enrichment and revitalization of the church of New York by the Puerto Rican and other Hispanic peoples who have become part of it.
(Available in
Spanish translation)