“The Conversations Continue”: A Mini-conference

More than 100 students, faculty, and staff as well as local community members attended the mini-conference, “The Conversations Continue: Engaging Contexts in Theology” on June 8 and 9, 2008, on Barry’s Miami Shores campus. This conference, following just after the 20th Anniversary of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS) and the 63rd Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, was cosponsored by Barry University and St. Thomas University.

An afternoon panel on the 8th was composed of renowned ACHTUS scholars Michelle González Maldonado, PH.D. (University of Miami and Barry U. Institute for Hispanic/Latino Theology & Ministry), Allen Figueroa Deck, SJ, STD (Loyola University and Barry U. Institute for Hispanic/Latino Theology & Ministry), Hosffman Ospino, Ph.D. (Boston College), and Maria Dolores Espino, Ph.D. (St. Thomas University and En Comunión) spoke on “Contemporary Trends in US Hispanic/Latino(a) Scholarship,” each participant addressing various issues.

Dr. González Maldonado addressed the need for more interdisciplinary work; the importance of critical race theory; and the theme of religious pluralism, noting the Muslim 800-year influence in Spain. Maldonado also boldly broached the topic of sexuality and the body both as it relates to the Church and victims of domestic violence and the U.S. cultural reduction of the Hispanic to the “erotic other.” Fr. Deck spoke on mestizje, new developments in liberation theology, and the nature of Catholicism’s encounter with the post-modern world. Dr. Ospino raised the questions related to the plurality growing within ACHTUS itself, its members no longer homogenous. He noted that all Hispanic/Latino(a) theologians still face marginalization and underrepresentation, and now these same theologians now need to respect the differences within their own theological reflections, born from different life experiences. Ospina also spoke to the need within the U.S. Catholic Church’s to truly embrace its intercultural makeup, the plurality of theological reflection within the Church, and the growing leadership role of the Hispanic/Latino(a) community within the U.S. Church. Dr. Espino, using her experience in En Comunión, addressed the need for reconciliation among all communities, including the newly arrived immigrant and the long-exiled Cuban, whose ecclesial/theological/socio-cultural experiences and needs may be very different.

That evening, Dr. Alex Mikulich, Loyola University, New Orleans, presented “The Challenges of White Privilege to U.S. Catholic Theology Academies.” Giving an overview of the history and legacy of white privilege, Mikulich spoke of the Catholic university’s mission to celebrate diversity and to work for the flourishing of all students through a preferential solidarity with those who have carried and continue to carry the burden of racial injustice, noting specifically the burdens carried by students of color today. Referencing Jesus’ way of compassion, Mikulich lead his audience toward the issue of transformation, challenging all present to address white “privilege authentically…(by) living (in) tension between (the) passionate celebration of God’s compassion and (the) task of subverting white privilege.” 

On the evening of the 9th, Dr. Shawnee Daniels-Sykes, SSND, Mt. St. Mary College, presented “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Healthcare, Is It a Right or a Privilege? An African American Catholic Response.” Dr. Daniels-Sykes discussed the plight of the medically uninsured in the United States, health care as a civil rights issue, changes brought by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the continuing need for reform, illustrating what health care reform might look like through a Roman Catholic dialectic. Noting Martin Luther King’s assessment of the injustice in health care as the most shocking and inhumane of all and the continuing discrepancies in health care between whites and blacks, Dr. Daniels-Sykes called for social solidarity on the issue of reform. Daniel-Sykes drew upon the concept of human dignity, grounded in vision of person as imago dei, and the vision of person as individual-in-community. She then paired that vision of the person with an acknowledgement of the structural marginalization of certain ethnic/racial/cultural groups viz-a-viz healthcare, thereby creating a powerful theological basis for desperately needed health care reform.