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A new survey suggests that, on issues such as women and L.G.B.T.Q.+ Church leaders and trans rights, Hispanic Catholics are well out ahead of the Pope.
that the presence of the first Pope from Latin America would spur the emergence of a distinctly Hispanic Catholicism in the United States. The P.R.R.I. report tells a different story. As of 2020, according to the survey, the United States is forty-two-per-cent white Christians.
Twenty-five per cent are Christian people of color; of those, a fifth are Hispanics, and almost seventy per cent of Hispanic Christians are Catholics. Six per cent of Americans are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, or other; and twenty-seven per cent are religiously unaffiliated. That last estimate has risen eleven percentage points since 2006. What’s striking about the report’s profile of Hispanic Catholics is that their rates of disaffection with religion track almost exactly with those of white Catholics. Since 2013, the proportion of Hispanic Catholics who go to Mass regularly has dropped in near-lockstep with the proportion of white Catholics who do . Meanwhile, the proportions of Hispanic Catholics and white Catholics who consider religion “not important” in their lives have risen together . Statistically, the particular traits associated with Hispanic Catholics have had no discernible effect; they are withdrawing from active participation in the Church in the same proportions as the ethnic Irish or Germans or Italians whose ancestors came to this country, as Catholics, a hundred or more years ago. What might explain this? It could be seen as an expression of simple assimilation: as Hispanics new to this country began to worship in predominantly white churches, their habits of affiliation came to resemble those of whites. But the P.R.R.I. survey data suggest otherwise. More than three-quarters of the respondents categorized as Hispanic Catholics said that they attend church in congregations that are mainly Hispanic, and three-quarters of those categorized as white Catholics said that they worship in congregations that are mainly white. For all that, those Hispanics who do remain Christians are more “optimistic about the future of their church” than their white counterparts are: more than eight in ten Hispanic Catholics, compared with seven in ten white Catholics. Together, those data points could be interpreted to mean that Hispanic Catholics who remain in the Church accept American Catholicism as it is. But data found deep in the survey suggest the opposite: that Hispanics are actually the group within the Catholic Church in the U.S. most eager for change. Of all the groups surveyed, only among Hispanic Catholics was there a majority that wished for more leaders of color. How about more women leaders? Sixty-four per cent of Hispanic Catholics surveyed want this . More L.G.B.T.Q.+ leaders? Thirty-nine per cent of Hispanic Catholics want this . Trans rights? A third want this . Open discussion of political divisions in the U.S.? Three-tenths want this . So Hispanics who remain Catholic are, by a clear margin, the progressive wing of the Church. They are more like the “Commonweal Catholics” of the post-Vatican II years—at once loyal to the Church and convinced that it must find new ways of doing things—than like the sturdy ritual- and devotion-oriented Catholics of theo-conservative stereotype. It’s common sense that Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. would wish for more leaders of color. But the other opinions resist simple explanation. There’s no single leader or movement whose influence might help explain Hispanic Catholics’ wish for more women leaders and L.G.B.T.Q.+ leaders or their eagerness for political strife to be discussed more openly. Credit can’t go to Pope Francis: although he has offered vague and fitful support for gay civil unions and has met with trans people before the cameras, he has not called for more gay Catholic leaders, and he has held his predecessors’ firm line against female clergy, even as he has promoted several religious women to positions of authority in the Vatican. Whatever the reason, it is clear that on these issues supposedly traditional Hispanic Catholics are well out ahead of the supposedly progressive Pope. Of course, there are many surveys, and the results vary. But the P.R.R.I. survey’s picture is significant. It suggests the limits of religious categories, as applied to Hispanics in particular. It suggests, in defiance of the conventional wisdom, that one way for the Catholic Church to retain Hispanic members in the coming years is through progressive internal reforms. And it suggests, as the 2024 election cycle begins in earnest, that the political pundits’ idea of the Hispanic Catholic as the present moment’s Reagan Democrat—a swing voter who can be reached by Republican candidates who make a conservative pitch on social issues in quasi-religious terms—is at least off base and possibly unfounded, and that, while plenty of Hispanic Catholics occupy such a position, it is now a minority position. ♦
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