Who’s the norm, and who’s the diversity? So wonders this Latina theologian, who suggests that tensions in a parish may not be such bad thing after all.

Asked to introduce herself at a Hispanic ministry meeting a few years ago, Carmen Nanko-Fernández gave her name and then added, tongue firmly planted in cheek, “I’m a theologian, and my preferred theological method is pastoral hostility.”

It was mixed company, Nanko-Fernández recalls. “The folks who were not Latinos started to laugh. The Latinos didn’t laugh. They came up to me later and asked me, ‘Can you explain more about this hostilidad pastoral?’ ” They immediately appropriated it into Spanish and adopted it as “the oxymoron that best suited the reality of our ministries,” she says.

While obviously called to pastoral care, Nanko-Fernández says those who minister in the church today find that “our ability to care may at times be compromised by frustration, loss, fear, and even anger.” Faced with societal issues such as injustice, discrimination, and cycles of poverty and violence, and church problems such as parish closings, resource cutbacks, and abuse scandals, pastoral workers face an uphill struggle that can seem overwhelming. So she calls for pastoral “hostility” as a way to recover the prophetic role of naming and fighting injustice.

Nanko-Fernández describes the growing body of U.S. teologías latinas as “theologies dreamed in Spanish, articulated in English, and lived in Spanglish.” In her own theological work, she places great emphasis on taking daily lived experience—lo cotidiano—more seriously.

You’ve been concerned about the way the Catholic Church defines and deals with diversity. What’s wrong with it?

I’m always intrigued that we want to start things with unity because there’s somehow an impression that if there’s not unity, then there must be division. Being a “hybrid” causes me to look first not at unity but at points of intersection.

Properly understood, diversity is the condition of the United States, it’s the condition of the church, it’s the condition of creation.

There are two common approaches to diversity. In the first approach people highlight differences, but the critique is that we never get to a point of understanding.

The other one starts with commonality, but my fear is that, especially in our churches, it’s usually a synonym for assimilation to what is seen as “normal.” In that approach diversity is used to describe those who are different from an unspoken normative understanding of the church. So then the question becomes: Who’s the norm, and who’s the diversity?

You could ask: If Latino/as today are already the largest population in the U.S. Catholic Church, the “big dog” in the house, how come we aren’t considered the norm in the church today? Why isn’t everybody else coming along and doing things latinamente (in a Latino/a way)?

But as in the recent restructuring of the bishops’ conference, diversity tends to get used to lump together the ever-increasing presence of so-called minorities and immigrant populations. In that approach the differences of generations of immigrants from across Europe—with their own linguistic, cultural, economic, and ethnic particularities—are homogenized and seen as the norm, while the African American, Hispanic, and Native American communities, who actually predate the majority of the European presence in the United States, are categorized as the “new” diverse face of the church.

How would you define and approach diversity instead?

I prefer to approach diversity from what some have called our “multiple belongings.” In Latino/a theologies that has often been expressed by the term mestizaje. I prefer terms like hybridity. We look at our diversity as these points of intersection that we then need to navigate and negotiate.

Truth be told, that navigation and negotiation is often tense and involves misunderstandings. Sometimes we end up doing things that could be culturally offensive because we didn’t know. But part of coming to a truer unity is being able to humanly deal with those tensions, negotiate and navigate, and apologize when we need to.

One place where that negotiation and navigation occurs and often leads to tension and conflict is in parishes. What feeds those tensions?

I think it is often fear that sparks tension—fear of someone we don’t know, which happens on both sides. Then there is often a good deal of stereotyping and ignorance about each other. In the United States sometimes it’s the notion that “my people” had to lose their language and had to assimilate, so now it’s “your people’s” turn.

In the parish in the Bronx where I grew up it was actually the reverse from how it usually happens. Our parish had been predominantly Italian, and the fights were between the Italian majority and the minority of English-speaking Irish Catholics. Still the fight was a familiar one over resources: Who celebrates Mass in the church, and who is put in the basement?

Sometimes it’s a fight over time—a misunderstanding of how other people see time. In some parishes Mass is built around parking lot times. There’s a reason that the Mass has to be out by no later than 11:30 because we have a big group coming in for the next Mass.

That makes sense, but the Koreans, the Latinos, or the Poles will linger because they want to talk. After Mass is their catch-up time, and church is the social space for that.

So the older English-speaking community is accusing the Polish community of being insensitive to the fact that the next Mass is starting, and the Polish community is accusing the English-speaking community of not caring about the relationships that are also part of being a community.

What might parishes gain if they work through rather than avoid these kinds of conflicts?

Tensions make us nervous because we don’t really want to think that we don’t like each other. It takes time and space and getting to know each other. We Americans like things fixed, and we like to move on and all be together, whether it’s under one flag or one church.

Maybe the value of tensions is that they cause us to pay attention to our relationships. They can slow us down and help us to find ways to talk with each other and be with each other.

But if we work through them, we’ll be able to go beyond the usual approach that says, let’s all bring our ethnic food, let’s all wear our costumes and celebrate. “Oh, I love that bread,” and “That’s a lovely dress. Can you dance in it?” Too often that’s all that’s happening—a greeting-card ecclesiology where we all get our turn to be appreciated and happy. I appreciate you, you appreciate me. Is our heritage month over yet? OK, time to move on.

Hispanic ministry has been recovering popular devotions. What’s their significance for you?

My favorite recent Chicago story is “Our Lady of the Underpass,” where people saw an apparition of Mary in the stains on the walls of an expressway underpass. Some people laughed at that, but I found it a fascinating expression that God is with us.

What was fascinating was that it pulled two very different communities together. If you went to the Fullerton underpass, you found a shrine with candles, flowers, pictures, and prayers that was, and still is, well kept. And you found two flags: Mexico and Poland. The shrine was kept by Mexican and Polish immigrants.

So what was going on in those two communities at that time? Pope John Paul II was dying, and the Polish community went through this enormous heartbreak. And there also was a crackdown by the immigration authorities in immigrant neighborhoods that hit Poles and Mexicans very hard.

So as life’s anxieties were getting to them, suddenly something appeared that told people that God is with us right here at the side of the road.

What that tells me is that maybe we’ve sanitized too much at church. Maybe we don’t pay enough attention to the affective part of our faith that popular devotions reflect. Maybe there’s an accompaniment aspect to devotions that we are not experiencing as viscerally at church as we should.

The flip side is that it’s also challenging because if you read the notes and prayer requests on that wall, they say, “Please help me get through my immigration issue,” and “Please help me with the illness of my child.” Who’s that written to? It’s addressed to Mary and to God, but it’s also a challenge to the community. It involves a God who pays attention to our needs.

As opposed to a God who . . .

A God who can be distant, a God that’s only accessible through interpreted texts from an authority figure. I think it’s a way of respecting the wisdom of a barrio church, or church of the streets.

To me the challenge is, if I see that as a sign that God is present, then how does that influence my daily life? If I come home and kick you, turn you in to immigration, or exploit you on the job, then we have a problem. But if God’s presence sends me into a better relationship, makes me live more justly and caring, then this is a good thing.

It’s always been a part of the richness of our Catholic tradition that to us the sources of revelation are not restricted or limited, that God can speak to us in many encounters.