Entre Amigos - Latino Column

In response to requests for opinion pieces from a Latino perspective, the USCCB Office of Media Relations will offer “Entre Amigos,” a monthly column with a Latino flavor to run in English and Spanish around the 15th of each month. Latinos are often gregarious. We like to sit down and discuss the happenings of the day, often around a table, with relatives and friends. No matter how grave or inconsequential the issue might seem from the outside, when things are discussed entre amigos every conversation takes on a life of its own, every topic is of the utmost importance and more than one generation usually weighs in. Among friends we dare to expose our inner selves, and our moral and religious beliefs, one way or another, always surface or give shape to the conversation. There is no looking at the watch. We may agree or disagree, and the conversation might get heated, but invariably at the end the old saying rings true: “ya terminamos de salvar el mundo” (“we just finished saving the world”) — and tomorrow we’ll get at it all over again.