You could be forgiven for thinking that the title of this magazine refers to the United States, yet it does not. “The name America,” the editors wrote in the first editorial in 1909, “embraces both North and South America, in fact, all this Western Hemisphere.” From its founding, the name of this review has signified a social and political reality that transcends the borders of the United States. Our publisher, in fact, is the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. The flags of both Canada and the United States are prominently displayed in our office lobby, located, appropriately enough, on the Avenue of the Americas in New York City.

I mention all this because in common parlance “America” is often synonymous with “United States” and excludes our neighbors to the north and south. Perhaps this is just a homonymic accident, but I suspect that a collective myopia is also at work. That is unfortunate, for such shortsightedness prevents the United States from fulfilling the duties and seizing the opportunities that come from its membership in this hemispheric community. Those opportunities are great. As President John F. Kennedy once observed, the United States shares more than a land mass with our nearest neighbors. “This New World of ours,” he said in 1961, “is not a mere accident of geography. Our continents are bound together by a common history, the endless exploration of new frontiers…. And our people share a common heritage, the quest for the dignity and the freedom of man.”

From its founding, the name of this review has signified a social and political reality that transcends the borders of the United States.

That shared history and aspiration make the announcement that the Trump administration will end the program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) all the more morally egregious and in practice self-defeating. The so-called Dreamers came to this country through no choice of their own, brought here by parents who often feared for their lives. As a nation of immigrants, drawn from every quarter of the globe, the United States has a moral duty to ensure that the bridge of opportunity our forebears crossed is not burned behind us in a moment of panicked xenophobia. Historically speaking, the distinction between those who came legally and those who do not is today a distinction without a real difference. There were no laws against immigration from most countries for much of U.S. history. Saying that one’s forebears came legally is akin to saying that one’s grandfather is to be congratulated for not breaking the speed limit on the autobahn.

For Catholics, the obligation to welcome the stranger, who is in fact our neighbor, is even more compelling. “We are more responsible than our non-Catholic fellow citizens,” the editors wrote in that first editorial, “for the welfare of thousands of immigrants of our own religion who come to us weekly, and for their amalgamation into the national life.” This is as true today as it was then, not just because the new immigrants are our fellow Catholics but because the moral imperative of the Scriptures is so clear.

For Catholics, the obligation to welcome the stranger, who is in fact our neighbor, is even more compelling.

You could also be forgiven for thinking that the whole question of the role of Latinos in the life of the Catholic Church and the United States principally concerns the question of immigration. And yet it does not. Latinos “are [this country’s] latest immigrant wave to transform the country,” Antonio De Loera-Brust writes in this issue, “but some have lived in this land since before the United States existed.” Indeed, the first non-indigenous language spoken in what became the United States was Spanish, not English, and two-thirds of Latino Catholics in the United States today were born in the United States. The Latino experience is not only about the future of the church, therefore, but its past and present as well. Yet too often members of the church think of the Latino experience strictly in terms of immigration, ignoring the equally difficult problems of overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and underrepresentation in the Catholic education system.

For these reasons the present issue of America kicks off a multiyear initiative in which we will examine the future of the church in the United States and how to incorporate Latino Catholics fully into ecclesial life. I am grateful to the private foundation that is funding this program and to our senior editor, J.D. Long-García, who is not only overseeing the editorial content related to this initiative but the series of events, videos and podcasts that are also a part of it. This initiative will also form a part of the ecclesial conversation taking place during the Fifth Encuentro Initiative sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“True to its name and to its character as a Catholic review,” the first editors wrote, “America will be cosmopolitan not only in contents but also in spirit.” Our hope is that America the country will also better understand its obligations to all those who reside within its borders and will begin anew to look beyond its borders, to those neighbors and friends who are, in a fundamental way, our fellow Americans.

Sign up for Convivir, a new newsletter from America Media.
Each week, it will highlight news, culture and trends related to Latino Catholics. To receive this important expert analysis in your inbox, sign up here.

This article appears in April 16 2018.