New universalism’ will bring about ‘a new creation,’ liberation theologian tells Presbyterian conference
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, January 28, 2003
SAN ANTONIO – The apostles of a “new universalism” will help bring about a “new creation in the Americas,” a liberation theologian told nearly 200 participants on the second day of the biennial conference of the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association.
“The Church can be agents of reconciliation in our homes, neighborhoods and cities,” the Rev. Virgilio Elizondo said Jan. 25. That reconciliation will arise within the Mexican-American mestizaje – “the process by which two totally different peoples mix biologically and culturally so that a new people begins to emerge¹” – and will enable them “to reaffirm their integrity and liberate themselves from extraneous powers.”
Condemning what he called “structural sin,” Elizondo said the “primary function of a Christian is in the marketplace” helping to “change the structures that will make life better for everyone.”
Elizondo, director of programming for Catholic Television in San Antonio and a professor and lecturer, is considered the father of Latino theology in the United States. A day earlier, he told the conference about the mestizaje experience – what happens when cultures collide and new cultures emerge.
On this day, he said globalization is changing the world and forcing immigration upon people and countries. “Clothes are not made in the United States,” Elizondo said, explaining that nothing that he was wearing had been made in this country. So, people are leaving their own countries and emigrating to other countries for work.
“Coffee prices are all going down,” he said as another example, and that “is forcing people to immigrate.” Elizondo called this an “economic war” and said that, “for the Church, there is no such thing as an illegal. Make a special effort to make the Church a sanctuary for the victims of the economic war of globalization.”
The compassion of God that will aid this “new universalism” and make possible the sanctuary of the church, he said, is brought out in the Guadalupe experience – the mysterious apparition of Mary to an Indian Christian near Tepeyac on a hillside northwest of Mexico City in 1531.
“In the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we Mexican-Americans celebrate the common mother of all the inhabitants of the Americas. As it was the ones in greatest need, the despised and rejected Galileans, who first experienced the unlimited and compassionate love of the Father through Jesus, so it was the ones in great need at the time of the birth of the Americas, the conquered and despised Indians who first experienced the unlimited and compassionate love of the mother of God,” he wrote in Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise.
“The new universalism of the Americas, which would slowly break through the barriers of caste and class, started among the ‘Galileans’ of Mexican society of that time – the conquered Indians who lived on the periphery of power and civilization. It was through Juan Diego and the subjugated and despised Indians that the new creation would begin. Who was to tell them that they were to be the apostles of a new universalism? Our Lady of Guadalupe has been the one to enable the Mexican and the Mexican-American peoples – pueblos mestizos – to reaffirm their integrity and liberate themselves from extraneous powers.”
Elizondo said, “We need a real meaning of the spirit of forgiveness. If you cannot forgive, you’re totally dependent on the person who is unforgiven.”
Reach out in ways for healing, he said, citing such areas as insurance coverage, feeding people, the Church getting involved in creating jobs and improving the quality of public education.
Jesus went “to Jerusalem to confront the temples of society,” Elizondo said. “We need to go to Jerusalem to confront globalization” and to be the “agents of a new creation.”
Endnote
1. The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet by Virgilio Elizondo; Meyer-Stone Books; 1988; Page 17