Remapping Catholicism in the U.S.: An Interview with Timothy Matovina
- Remapping Catholicism in the U.S.: An Interview with Timothy Matovina
Before we begin the interview let me introduce Dr. Matovina’s many important accomplishments. He is a Professor of Theology, and he was recently named Executive Director of the Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre Dame. His education was completed at Indiana University, Toronto School of Theology, and has a Ph.D. in the history of Christianity from the Catholic University of America in 1993: In addition to Notre Dame, he has taught at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He served for a number of years as the William and Anna Jean Cushwa Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame before transitioning into his new position.
Citing his publications would take up the entire time of the interview, but I would like to highlight his edited volume, Virgilio Elizondo: Spiritual Writings, published with Orbis Books in 2010; and Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present, published with Johns Hopkins in 2005. I’ll mention one book chapter, “Horizons of Faith: San Antonio Tejanos in the Texas Republic”—because I think it’s indicative of a very important topic of which he is practically the world expert—in By The Vision of Another World: Worship in American History, edited by James Bratt, published by Eerdmans in 2012. Matovina has received a number of awards, of which I’d like to cite two: the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of The United States’ very prestigious Virgilio Elizondo Award for distinguished achievement in theology (in keeping with the mission of that academy), and the Julian Zamora Award (named after a great scholar of Latino Studies at Notre Dame), for his dedication to research, teaching and service in the empowerment of Latino and Latina students, by La Alianza Students at Notre Dame.
Timothy Matovina, welcome to DePaul.
Thank you, Peter.
Your book is fascinating; it’s got very high acclaim from all sides. Could you begin by explaining, after your detailed research on Our Lady of Guadalupe, and on tejanos, why you decided to write a synthetic book weaving together so many different important themes from your past research? Can you give us just a little bit of information about the overall shape of the book and what the main contribution is?
Well, part of the response to that question is personal. After having written various case studies, I thought it was time to try to bring things together, as you said, more synthetically. A part of it is the changing in the Latino communities around us, especially the immigration of the last twenty years, which has changed the realities tremendously from what I was writing about twenty-some years ago when I started in this work. The perspective of the book is what’s important to me as well, and the reason I wanted to do something synthetic, and that is a perspective of mutual transformation: how the U.S. Catholic Church, U.S. society, and Latinos are mutually transforming one another. A lot of books, including some of my own, have taken more of the perspective of how Latinos have tried to retain their culture, retain their tradition, in the U.S. context, church, and society. This book takes a different slant. How are Latinos being transformed and how are they transforming the Church and the society of which they are forming more and more of a part, both numerically and in terms of their influence? And so, each of the topics in the book, I look at them from the perspective of mutual transformation. The topics include public Catholicism, immigration, worship [End Page 65] and devotion, leadership, young Latinos, apostolic movements/parishes and other topics such as that. But in each case, the lens is mutual transformation.
That’s really interesting. I want to turn for just a second to the contribution you state your book might make to the field of Latino Studies. Scholars in Latino Studies and DePaul students in Latin American/Latino Studies are well aware...
