Let's capture the Hispanic imagination.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN BEING Hispanic and being Catholic were synonymous. Such a familiar correlation can no longer be made. Thousands of Hispanics are now members of other religious institutions--Protestant, Jehovah's Witness, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal--even Mormon. Such numbers, unfortunately, are more than converts to these groups but defections of former Roman Catholic Hispanics to institutions in which they have found a home.

Such large numbers of defections have alarmed the Catholic Church, and much blame is placed on the aggressive tactics of these institutions. Although I do agree that aggressive proselytism is part of the cause, it most certainly cannot carry the full share of explanation for this sad but true exodus of Hispanics from the Roman Catholic Church to other churches.

Total reliance on this reasoning would have one believe that Hispanics are fickle or swayed by sentiment or emotion rather than faith. No one who has seen the ardor, intelligence, and good works of these new Hispanic converts to other churches could maintain such a simplistic answer to this alarming phenomenon. It is, after all, not a Protestant problem or a Mormon problem but a Catholic problem. And we ought to at least entertain the most certain thought that perhaps the cause of this growing Hispanic exodus has its roots right here in the Catholic side of the promised land. I write this as a former member of that exodus, a former Lutheran pastor, who realized at last that the Catholic Church held the roots of my Hispanic Christian faith and returned.

The reason I left the church is the same reason I came back: the Catholic religious imagination. Let me explain. I am a Cuban refugee who was baptized, confirmed, and received First Communion in the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba. Though pre-Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba was not some clone of a standard Latin ritual. We had our own brand of Catholicity. The Virgen del Cobre listened to our petitions, and Saint Martin of Porres comforted us in our trials.

This all changed when my family and I found ourselves exiled in the United States. The winds of change from Vatican II were just beginning to stir the entire church. Rightly so, Vatican II had called for the Mass to be said in the language of the people. Unfortunately for us, this meant English.

My alienation with the church increased when my family left Miami, where there were a lot of Cubans, and moved to Ohio, where there were almost none. Instead of finding nourishment and strength, I found misunderstanding and alienation. I left the church during my high-school years with the harsh judgment only teenagers are capable of having that the church itself was a spiritually bankrupt institution.

Several years later, I married a Lutheran woman who gently brought me back into the Christian Church, but it was not Catholic. I found the Lutheran church very welcoming and inviting. I was treated with respect and encouraged to be Hispanic. This was easier said than done. As I got deeper into the life of the Lutheran church, I found another type of alienation. It was not an alienation from the church but an alienation from myself, from my own roots as a Hispanic. No matter how hard I tried, the worship, the spirituality, even the famous hymn singing of the Lutherans could not reach the depths of my soul.

The Lutherans had a very tidy and biblical approach to their spirituality and tradition. This approach fit their Nordic backgrounds quite well. The Lutheran religious imagination worked wonders for those of Northern European descent, but the imagination that fed my soul could not find a home there. Mine was fed by the Virgin of Guadalupe, Martin of Porres, meatless Fridays, and the Via Crucis. I did find the Bible exciting, but it only came alive for me through my religious imagination. It eventually dawned on me that my harsh judgment of the Catholic Church had been done as a confused teenager in an alien environment. The English-speaking Catholic Church was but one brand of the Catholic religious imagination. What I had been searching for all along was my Hispanic Catholicity.

I returned to the Roman Catholic Church to rediscover it. I returned to a very different church from the one I had left. If the Catholic Church is losing Hispanics to other churches, it may be, in part, because they are discovering now-rapidly disappearing parts of the Catholic Church that once fed and sustained Hispanic religiosity. Now these elements are being discouraged or, even, looked down upon by an increasingly modern church. The fundamental problem is that the modern Catholic Church is increasingly losing touch with the religious imagination. The emphasis on "proper" liturgical procedure, for example, has discouraged the continuation of messy, sentimental, "improper" liturgies common to Hispanic popular religiosity. A case in point is the mini-conflict my Hispanic community recently experienced this past Advent.

As it happened, the Third Sunday of Advent coincided with the very popular Hispanic feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The liturgical director of our church kept insisting that none of the regular Sunday services could be changed because "proper" liturgical practice gave priority to the Sunday celebration. The "local" celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe would be improper. Finally we were able to persuade her to allow an extraordinary Mass to be celebrated at 5 a.m. in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which would not interfere with the already planned Advent Masses. I suppose part of what persuaded her was the belief that no one would come to a 5 a.m. Mass in the middle of winter. It became obvious that Sunday that this particular liturgical director did not understand the religious imagination.

At a quarter to 5, the vans and cars of the Hispanic community began to arrive to begin the Mass by singing the Mananitas ("the little morning") to Our Lady. A crowd had gathered at the front of the church when the priest walked out to greet us. His jaw dropped when he saw the entire block covered with people, men, women, and children, even infants, standing in the chill of that December 12 before the sun had yet risen. As we processed in, the church became filled. There was standing room only. The religious imagination had captured the Hispanic dimension of the Catholic Church and delivered it at the altar.

THE MODERN CATHOLIC CHURCH IS IN DANGER of losing this imagination. The Hispanic exodus is one of the symptoms. Lest I be misunderstood, let me state that I am not against the practice of the liturgical year. The liturgical year, on the other hand, used to be full of the religious imagination. The liturgical year used to be significantly modulated by the Martyrology of the Church. Saints' feasts sometimes took precedence over the Sunday liturgy. Now it seems, the modern Catholic Church is embarrassed by her saints and her angels. Even the Virgin of Guadalupe of Hispanic religiosity tends to embarrass some of our religious leaders. Moreover, the liturgical year included what the church would now classify as non-liturgical celebrations: the local feasts and traditions that gave not only color and vitality to the church but also were a mark of its catholicity. Many of these feasts and local traditions did not fall on a Sunday.

The religious imagination is part of the antidote to the Hispanic exodus. If Hispanics are finding a home in other churches, then, ironically, the reason may be that they have been more successful at capturing the Hispanic Catholic imagination than the Catholic Church has. It is this imagination that has allowed the church to survive these 2,000 years through a myriad of crises and to thrive in a multitude of cultures. The Hispanic exodus ought to alarm the church not because other churches are stealing their flock but, rather, that the Catholic religious imagination may be dimming.