Posted on 12/29/2006 8:37:29 AM PST by Alex Murphy
TUCSON -- The New York Times magazine Sunday suggested that American Catholicism is being "Hispanicized." As usual, when the subject is the Catholic Church, the "good, gray" Times is tone-deaf. The Irish Catholic model of Catholicism, which sometimes for weal and sometimes for woe has shaped the American church, is adjusting to a new and powerful model. Catholicism always tries to do that since it is a pluralistic church that believes, in principle any way, that Catholic means, as your man Jimmy Joyce put it, "here comes everyone." The outcome will be neither Mexican nor "Anglo" (which is what they call us Celts out here in the desert) but a combination of both, a blend of "Irish" rules and "Mexican" celebration. Catholicism means "both/and" not "either/or".
The popular religion of Mexico is a rich rain forest of devotions, saints, customs, celebrations and theological insights such as "God is part of our family, and when we celebrate as a family, God comes and celebrates with us."
At the center of it is the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe, once perhaps a pagan goddess, but now unquestionably the patron of the Mexican peon with whom she identifies. I tell students that if they want to understand what Catholicism was like before the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, they should look at Mexican popular Catholicism and read the plays of Shakespeare. The "religion of the border" (as my colleague James "Big Jim" Griffith calls it) does not need, for example, the approval of the Congregation for the Making of Saints to proclaim their saints -- just as Catholics did for a thousand years.
Sometimes these saints disturb us Celts. I have in my possession (but never wear) a medallion of San Juan Malverde, the patron of the narcotrafficantes. In Perez-Reverte's great novel "The Queen of the South," the protagonist prays fervently to both Malverde and Guadalupe without any sense that there might be an inconsistency in such devotions.
Go figure.
The project as Latino Catholicism and North American Catholicism absorb one another is to retrieve some of the fervor and enthusiasm and energy and, yes, the freedom of Christians before the Council of Trent.
From the fall of Rome to the beginning of the 16th Century, outside of the monasteries and some of the cathedral cities and the occasional feudal court, Christianity was more of a religious culture than a formal church. It was a mix of stories, songs, art, deep faith, angels and saints, the Madonna, festivals, celebrations, and local devotions and customs, many of which might be thought today to be superstitious. In times of economic and social chaos, this was the best an illiterate population, often led by only semi-literate clergy, could do.
In the later Middle Ages, a demand emerged for "reform," which meant organizing, regularizing and purifying this religious "blooming, buzzing" culture. There was a Catholic "reform" in England, for example, well before Henry VIII. However, the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation both strove to impose discipline, order and orthodoxy on a recalcitrant peasant population. The Council of Trent at the end of the 16th Century made a vigorous and systematic attempt, not always successful, to transform popular religious culture into a church. Trent was an utterly necessary turning point in Catholic history.
However, the Conquistadors left Spain before the Council. Despite the efforts of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries, Trent had little impact on Hispanic America. The church in the United States mostly is the post-Trent Church; the Church in Latino America is mostly a pre-Trent Church.
Despite what many church leaders try to persuade themselves, Vatican Council II was as dramatic a turning point in Catholic history as was Trent. Among its many achievements was the creation of a greater openness. Trent was not repealed but adjusted to be more tolerant of diversity. Hence efforts of many parish priests (Latino and Irish -- some of them even Irish-born!) to absorb the best of Mexican-American religion into American Catholicism are not attempts to return to the religious chaos of the Middle Ages. They, rather, are efforts to retrieve and integrate into American Catholicism all that is good and true and beautiful in Latino Catholicism, especially its joy, its love of celebration, its delight in festival.
As I tell Latino students, rules are necessary, but celebration and joy are more important -- even for us Celts. Our ancestors in the Middle Ages had one thing right: Jesus had preached good news, which demands celebration.
Greely's also wrong, because Trent did affect Latin America. One of the things never acknowledged is that the Church had a huge number of indigenous American peoples to convert. The native population of South American was much higher than that of North America, and in addition, the Catholic approach was to attempt to approach and convert rather than to exterminate. Even though the Spanish government paid for missionaries, it was difficult to find enough to supply the needs in the Americas (including Florida, which was a Spanish possession and had enormous trouble getting priests to work with the Indians).
A lot of superstitious peasant practices were not entirely eliminated but were at least held at bay in the following centuries. I really think that the big problem was the lefty politicization of the Catholic Church after Vatican II. If you take away from people their good pious practices - the blessing of animals, prayers to St. Anne, the processions, etc. - they will be out looking for this level of religiousity in all the wrong places (santería, for example).
IMHO, Vatican II (or the "spirit" thereof) was 100% on the side of the Puritans; it was essentially an iconoclast movement, and it destroyed a Catholic culture that had been built up from the shared experience of many centuries, not just since Trent.
If you want to read a great essay, read Joseph Bottum's piece in the November First Things. I think it was entitled something like "Will the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano?" It dealt with the destruction of Catholic practice and culture. I don't agree with some of his analysis, but it is a great image.
With all due respect, this is about becoming more fully Catholic rather than Orthodox. I fear that you have a distorted few of the Catholic faith because of your encounter with it in the U.S. The present U.S. church is mostly the product of the Irish clergy whose own faith was damaged by its subjugation by the English protestants. This resulted in a faith that is more rationalistic and intellectual, loosing the truly Catholic charismatic and experiential elements of the faith. We can see this reflected in the acceptance of the Low Mass as the norm for the liturgy.
Even 50 years ago the Irish clergy were threaten by the more vibrant faith of the Italian immigrants whose practices they often viewed as superstitious and semi-pagan. In Europe, the further you go south and get away from the Protestant areas the more did the Catholics retain their historic ways of belief and worship. Even in Germany you will find the faith of the Bavarians quite different from their Rhineland Catholic brothers. Coming from an Italian background, I can tell you that the Anglo-Celtic experience of the faith is not the only one nor the norm for the Church at large. So what you see here is the Church in the U.S. shedding some of this damage and returning to our true Catholic roots.
"In Europe, the further you go south and get away from the Protestant areas the more did the Catholics retain their historic ways of belief and worship."
Its got to do with the climate and Magna Graeca! :)
I guess that explains why Southern Italian men would rather play cards on Sunday while their wives (less so now than in the past) go to Church.
"I fear that you have a distorted few of the Catholic faith because of your encounter with it in the U.S. The present U.S. church is mostly the product of the Irish clergy whose own faith was damaged by its subjugation by the English protestants. This resulted in a faith that is more rationalistic and intellectual, loosing the truly Catholic charismatic and experiential elements of the faith. We can see this reflected in the acceptance of the Low Mass as the norm for the liturgy."
No doubt. Half my family is Irish Catholic. I went to school with Irish nuns. Their religion has no joy in it at all. In fact the whole operation is/was run like an ecclesiastical terror regime. I've seldom run into a group of people more terrified of God. The French Canadian priests and nuns ran the same kind of show with the same results. Interestingly, the Roman Church made the same compromises with the English both in Ireland and in Quebec.
"I guess that explains why Southern Italian men would rather play cards on Sunday while their wives (less so now than in the past) go to Church."
I suspect it does, except in Greece it was tavli at the caffeneion. :)
Test Greeley's theory a little. Ask the Mexicans that you know which of the Basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe (which stand side by side) they prefer. Over 80% will say, "the old one." The new one has Vatican II written all over it. Sorry Andy. Also, who is Trent? I'd like to meet him. Sounds like my kind of guy.
Do not mistake this for the norm of Catholicism. If you were to go to a feast in an Italian parish you would come away convinced that we belonged to two different religions.
"...........Opposition to the Reformation's affirmation of Protestant Heresy".
And Protestants say the Reformation was a reaction to Roman Heresy.
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