This dissertation explores how a group of parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe (San Jose, California) developed a unique Chicana/o Catholic spirituality in the early 1970s, arguing that religious studies has been complicit in studying the institution strictly within its own terms, thereby excluding some of the areas crucial to understanding Chicana/o Catholicism. This work uses ethnography and oral history to capture a broader view of Chicana/o Catholic religious practices past and present; it closely examines the lived spirituality of widow and lay activist Phyllis Soto, Mexican-American Franciscan priest Anthony Soto, and their peers who used the Cursillo movement to empower themselves in terms of a religious, ethnic and gender identity. The Guadalupe parishioners claimed an unswerving spiritual identification with the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, yet dissented from the formal institution in significant ways, rejecting some symbols, drawing on others, recreating yet others. I draw on Cultural Citizenship theory to understand this community and these acts of dissent, not as a rejection of the institution, but rather the most intimate kind of engagement with it. The struggle to find a place within the institution eventually resulted in an uneasy accommodation, as members laid claim to a Catholic religious identity at the same time that they chose to operate independently of its accepted, and predominant liturgical form. This study offers a compelling portrait of both institutional Catholic spirituality and a locally defined, engaged, and ethnic-specific Catholic spirituality.