The Prophetic Burden for Philadelphia’s Catholic Puerto Ricans, 1950-1980

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on lay Catholic ministry to Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia when Frank Rizzo was mayor. Gramsci’s concept of “organic intellectuals” is employed to explain the praxis of the Philadelphia Young Lords, an organization formed in a Puerto Rican neighborhood during the confrontational politics of the 1970s. The dissertation advances previous scholarship on the Young Lords by offering reasons to consider these youthful leaders as lay Catholic advocates of social justice in Philadelphia and describes the role of faith convictions as they pursued social justice in the style of the biblical prophetic burden. Through interviews and textual analysis, the dissertation traces the evolution of lay volunteerism before the Second Vatican Council as foundational to the Young Lords’ application of liberation theology. The Young Lords in Philadelphia also followed the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party’s definition of the people’s multiracial identity and the Nationalists’ defense of Catholic principles. Their experiences are inserted into the general history of Philadelphia, a city which Quakers had founded as a cluster of urban villages, producing a distinctive pattern of ethnic enclaves of Philadelphia’s row house neighborhoods. The city’s Catholicism had structured parish life upon the civic culture, and initially extended this model to its Puerto Rican ministry. However, racial polarization at a time of municipal crisis under Rizzo invited new pastoral strategies towards civil right and the Vietnam War. Despite the Young Lords’ reliance on Marxist principles and the confrontational politics of the Black Panthers, local Catholic clergy supported many of their efforts. The dissertation explores the symbolic capital gained by the Young Lords which made them into a vanguard organization in the city’s fields of political and pastoral interaction.