From the Editor

From the Editor:

 At the 2008 Annual Colloquium and General Meeting of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, ACHTUS honored two of its founding members by awarding them the Virgilio Elizondo Award for distinguished achievement in theology, in keeping with the mission of the Academy. The awardees were Roger Luna, SDB, and C. Gilbert Romero. Dr. C. Gilberto Romero was the only one of the founding members with an academic specialization in biblical studies. The words of the Award Citation honoring him make it clear how very significant his contribution has been: “In Matthew’s Gospel: “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matthew 13:52). C. Gilbert Romero, priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, teacher, pastor, biblical scholar, and founding members of ACHTUS, is just such a scribe. His pioneering book, Hispanic Devotional Piety: Tracing the Biblical Roots, marked a groundbreaking step forward in bringing the practices of Latino/a popular religion into productive conversation with foundational texts from the Bible. In so doing, he challenged pastoral ministers to recognize the ways in which these practices that express the living faith of our people as heirs of a wisdom ever ancient and ever new. He challenged a view of Latino/a popular religion that disparaged such practices, inviting pastoral ministers and theologians alike to recognize the dynamic ways in which these practices are in fact practices by which the traditions and the values of Christian faith are embraced, celebrated, and handed on to new generations.” We are pleased to present the readers of this journal with another contribution by Romero, entitled “Symbolic Interpretation: Latino Theology Confronts the Bible.”

In his contribution to this journal, “The De-Construction of Latino Maleness: Postcolonizing Machismo,” Dr. Hjamil A. Martínez-Vázquez of Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, takes up a challenge that he frames in these terms: “The traditional and stereotypical understandings of what it means to be a Latino have to be transformed.” He suggests that storytelling from the margins can serve as a source for new counter-hegemonic knowledges, knowledges he calls conocimiento, which hold the key to deconstructing machismo.

ACHTUS Past-President Dr. Miguel H. Díaz of St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, Collegeville, MN, presents “Human Beings at the Crossroads of Divine Self-Disclosure: Otherness in Black Catholic and Latino/a Catholic Theologies and the Otherness of God,” a revised version of the Presidential Address he delivered at the 2006 ACHTUS Annual Colloquium and General Meeting held in San Antonio, TX. The theme of this Colloquium was “Latino/a Catholic and Black Catholic Self-Disclosure,” and the members of ACHTUS met together with members of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium (BCTS) to explore common ground in biblical studies, theological anthropology, historical theology, and Christian ethics. In his essay, Díaz taps into the work of Orthodox Christian theologian John Zizioulas to nourish a rich Trinitarian theology of otherness.