The Catholic Social Imagination: Activism and the Just Society in Mexico and the United States (Morality and Society Series)

328 Pages·2007·1.452 MB·English

by  Joseph M. Palacios

the catholic social imagination
morality and society series
Edited by Alan Wolfe
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The Catholic
Social Imagination
activism and the just society
in mexico and the united states
Joseph M. Palacios
The University of Chicago Press :: Chicago and London
Joseph Palacios is assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies
at Georgetown University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2007 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64500-1 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64501-8 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-64500-2 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-64501-0 (paper)
Palacios, Joseph M.
The Catholic social imagination : activism and the just society in Mexico
and the United States / Joseph M. Palacios.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64500-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-64500-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64501-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-64501-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Christian sociology —
Catholic Church. 2. Christian sociology — United States. 3. Christian
sociology — Mexico. 4. Catholic Church — Doctrines. 5. Church and
state — United States. 6. Church and state — Mexico. I. Title.
BX1753.P28 2007
261.8088(cid:2)2827 — dc22
2006036514
(cid:2)(cid:3) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations xi
part one The Catholic Church Takes on Social Justice as Doctrine
1 The Mission and Struggle of Roman Catholics
to Create a Just Society 3
2 Political and Cultural Construction of the
Catholic Social Doctrine 21
part two One Church, One Border, Two Justices
3 The U.S. Case: Pragmatic and Practice Oriented 65
4 The Mexican Case: Doctrinally Oriented 133
part three A Faith That Does Justice?
5 The Catholic Social Imagination as Doctrine and Practice 205
Appendix A: Principles of Catholic Social Justice Doctrine 233
Appendix B: Research Sites and Instruments 246
Notes 255
Bibliography 283
Index 303

preface and acknowledgments
The motivation for writing this book goes back to my undergraduate days at the
University of California at Santa Cruz, when I was given the opportunity to
spend two quarters at a very exciting educational center in Cuernavaca, Mex-
ico: the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC). In the early 1970s
CIDOC was a crossroads for Mexican, North American, and European aca-
demics, Catholic missionaries, and activists. There we took minicourses from
the likes of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, who helped change the course of Latin
American political culture through their discourses on liberation theology and
conscienticization. I had my own despertar or “awakening” as a young Chicano
political and religious activist — particularly in my involvement with a comuni-
dad de base (base community) in a poor neighborhood of Cuernavaca where I
was renting an apartment.
Through the years I have wondered how people, particularly those of re-
ligious faith, become motivated to become civic and political activists. Prior
to my graduate studies in sociology I worked in a variety of activist positions
in the private sector, the government, and the Catholic Church. When it came
time to choose a dissertation topic, I decided to draw upon my earlier experi-
ences in Mexico and my work history in affi rmative action, political consult-
ing, and religious-based community organizing. I kept thinking about the or-
dinary people who made a commitment to become part of the public square,
the plaza pública. What motivates ordinary persons to become public persons?
How do people move from “private” concerns of family and job into the “pub-
lic” spaces of civic and political associations? And how do Catholics use various
aspects of their faith — particularly the Church’s social doctrine — in making
these decisions?
Like many sociologists, I found that my research has been shaped by the
people I have encountered and the opportunities placed before me. I started
the present study in 1996, when I began fi eldwork in the San Antonio neigh-
borhood of Oakland, California, and a master’s paper focused on faith-based
community organizing under the direction of Ann Swidler, Margaret Weir,
viii † preface and acknowledgments
and Kim Voss. Later, with the encouragement of Laura Enriquez and Peter Ev-
ans, who administered the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Program for Latin
American Sociology at UC Berkeley, I reframed my research as a cross-national
study. A predissertation grant during the summer of 1997 allowed me to travel
throughout the Mexican state of Michoacán. During this research trip I met
a group of civic activists from Guadalajara who were in Morelia attending a
national conference on Mexican migration. These people invited me to attend a
year-long leadership training program offered by the Instituto Mexicano de De-
sarrollo Comunitario (IMDEC) during 1999. Attending this training allowed
me to meet a diverse group of Mexican civic and political actors from all parts
of the country. Using the snowball approach of social research, I met people
who pointed me toward the many religious and civic actors and institutions
that became a part of this study. I was able to conduct two years of fi eldwork in
Mexico with the generous aid of the Mellon Foundation’s dissertation fellow-
ship for Latin American sociology. I also received assistance from the Univer-
sity of California’s Chicano/Latino Policy Project.
I was fortunate to have a hands-on dissertation committee, whose mem-
bers have become my colleagues. My mentor in sociology and religion, Rob-
ert Bellah, helped guide the theoretical dimensions of my work and provided
critical advice on how to organize chapters. He has been an inspiration to me
over the years and has helped me understand my vocation as sociologist and
Catholic priest. Ann Swidler served as my chair and has since encouraged me
in my writing and research interests. She is an excellent editor and a tough
but friendly mentor. Margaret Weir helped me with more empirical elements of
doing a cross-national study of many levels of a society. She kept me focused on
the logic of inquiry.
During the spring of 2000 I was a visiting scholar at El Colegio de México
in Mexico City. There Roberto Blancarte helped me develop a nuanced under-
standing of Mexican religion and society, especially the concepts of laicidad
and the transición. He also provided a new Latin American perspective on the
sociology of religion. The staffs of the sociology department and the computer
center at El Colegio were most gracious in giving me direction on how to use
their facilities.
This study could not have happened without the many people who gener-
ously allowed me to interview and observe them and their institutions. In the
United States, these organizations included St. Anthony’s Parish in Oakland,
Oakland Community Organizations (OCO), the Pacifi c Institute for Commu-
nity Organizing (PICO), the Catholic Diocese of Oakland, the Catholic Cam-
paign for Human Development (CCHD), and the United States Catholic Con-
ference (USCC). Key groups and institutions in Mexico were the parish of San
Francisco de Asís in Las Pintitas, El Salto, Jalisco; the Pastoral Social of the
Archdiocese of Guadalajara; IMDEC; the Instituto Mexicano de la Doctrina So-
cial (IMDOSOC); DEMOS; the Centro Mexicano de Filántropia (CEMEFI); and
preface and acknowledgments † ix
the Pastoral Social Nacional of the Conferencia Episcopal Mexicana (CEM). My
contacts were engaging in interviews and conversations and willing to let me
participate in their meetings, activities, and civic actions. In particular I want
to acknowledge Efrén Orozco Orozco and Carlos Núñez Hurtado of IMDEC;
Manuel Goméz Granados of IMDOSOC; the Rev. John Baumann, S.J., of PICO;
the Rev. Robert Vitillo and Alexia Kelly of CCHD; the Rev. Eduardo Mendoza
of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara; and the Rev. Alberto Athié Gallo, formerly
of CEM. All these leaders provided me access to their organizations and shared
many fi ne moments of conversation over meals and coffee with me.
I must also acknowledge the American and Mexican Jesuit communities that
provided hospitality during my research. In the United States, these included
Jesuits of the Murray Community in Oakland, California; the Jesuit School of
Theology at Berkeley; the Gonzaga High School Community, the Georgetown
Jesuit Community, and the Woodstock Jesuit Community in Washington, D.C.;
the Boston College Community in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; the Fordham
University Community in New York City; and the St. Louis University Commu-
nity. In Mexico, the San Felipe Community in Guadalajara and the Coyoacán
Formation Community in Mexico City were my hosts. In these houses I was
nurtured with good food, comfortable rooms, and wonderful Jesuit conversa-
tion and camaraderie. The California Province of the Society of Jesus and its
benefactors provided support and encouragement each step along the way of my
graduate studies. I have subsequently left the Society of Jesus but am indebted
to the Jesuits for supporting the early stages of my career as a sociologist.
Over the years I have come to depend on friends and family to keep me
going, especially in the last months of the solitary aspects of writing and ed-
iting. My mother, Martha Escobar Palacios, and sisters Carrie Miller, Linda
Neuhauser, and Vera de Artola — as well as their husbands and children — have
always given me a sense of home when I really needed to take a break from
my work. My friends John McAndrew, Greg Eck, Doug and Connie Knive-
ton, Manuel and Ofelia Garcia, Cheri Cochran, Dennis Thiessen, John Hig-
son, Ricardo Ortíz, Christine Grisham, David Bholat, Christopher Frechette,
and Alexia Kelley were sources of tremendous consolation and repartee dur-
ing various stages of this project. And I must acknowledge the proprietors and
wait staff of the many coffeehouses where I have done my writing — most espe-
cially Café Mondo in Guadalajara, Zebra Café in Washington, and Starbucks
everywhere.
During the fi rst phase of this work, my writing group and Berkeley sociol-
ogy colleagues were not only friends but critical collaborators in the art of soci-
ological research and writing. These colleagues include Carolyn Chen, Russell
Jeung, Scott North, Jason McNichol, Harold Toro, Michelle Williams, Melissa
Wilde, Philip Fucella, and Mary Charlotte Chandler. In my fi nal writing phase
I was awarded a Pew-funded research fellowship by the Center for Religion and
Civic Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. While