Posted on 04/01/2007 12:47:35 PM PDT by siunevada
If any corner of the globe should bear the imprint of Catholic values, it's Latin America. Catholicism has enjoyed a spiritual monopoly in the region for more than 500 years, and today almost half the 1.1 billion Catholics alive are Latin Americans. Moreover, Latin Americans take religion seriously; surveys show that belief in God, spirits and demons, the afterlife, and final judgment is near-universal.
The sobering reality, however, is that these facts could actually support an "emperor has no clothes" accusation against the church. Latin America has been Catholic for five centuries, yet too often its societies are corrupt, violent, and underdeveloped. If Catholicism has had half a millennium to shape culture and this is the best it can do, one might be tempted to ask, is it really something to celebrate? Mounting defections to Pentecostalism only deepen such ambivalence.
After my recent jaunt in Honduras, I understand the question.
In this tiny country of seven million, violence is so endemic that even the guards at the Pizza Hut across the street from our hotel carried automatic weapons. According to the World Health Organization, Honduras has a murder rate five times the global average, largely due to the maras, or drug-related gangs. One sign of the times: Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa loaned us his driver and vehicle for some of my appointments, which meant that we moved with a military escort because of death threats against the cardinal, an outspoken opponent of the drug trade. (I confess that I sometimes wondered if we might actually be safer in a cab.)
Most of the estimated 30,000 young Hondurans who belong to these gangs, it's worth recalling, were baptized as Catholics and raised in Catholic families.
Corruption is also ubiquitous. To take one example, electrical blackouts are chronic because the state-run electric company is perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. In a classic vicious circle, revenue shortfalls due to corruption have produced a staggering national "electricity tax" of 49 percent, prompting people to refuse to pay their bills, making breakdowns even more routine. Once again, the officials responsible for this mess are overwhelmingly Catholic.
In light of such realities, I repeatedly put the question to my hosts: Why haven't five centuries of Catholicism left a more impressive social fingerprint?
To my surprise, the response I anticipated -- that despite the best efforts of the church, Latin America is hostage to meddling from the United States, as well as neo-liberal economic systems -- wasn't at the top of the list.
To be sure, Hondurans understand the role that American interests, both political and commercial, have played in destabilizing their country. Honduras is the original "banana republic," where U.S-based fruit companies long wielded more power than the government. In the early 20th century, U.S. Marines landed in Honduras no less than four times to protect the banana trade.
More recently, the United States played a huge role in Honduras during the 1980s, when the country formed a critical corridor between the Contra revolt against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and El Salvador's efforts to put down the Marxist FMLN. John Negroponte, today deputy secretary of state, cut his teeth as ambassador to Honduras, where critics say he turned a blind eye to human rights violations by the military, especially the infamous Battalion 316, thought to be responsible for thousands of "disappearances."
Post-Communist economic globalization has hardly been an unmixed blessing either. While CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) is generating new wealth for Honduran elites, 80 percent of the country lives in poverty. Rodriguez believes that export economies won't work here, given that his country's principal products -- bananas, minerals and vegetable oil -- have been devastated by a collapse in international prices. Today, Rodriguez says, his country's real exports are "illegal immigrants and drugs."
Despite all this, most Hondurans seem determined not to blame outside forces for their struggles.
Fr. Ricardo Flores, pastor of San Jose Obrero parish in Tegucigalpa, told me that in his view, globalized economic systems and American policy "are not the big problems we face," and don't explain why Honduras is in crisis. He said the real issues are corruption, a lack of social solidarity, and inadequate investment in education -- all of which, he said, are basically home-grown.
Thus the original question: Why hasn't Catholicism had a more positive effect?
The most frequent explanation I heard boils down to this: For most of the 500 years since the arrival of Columbus, Catholicism in Latin America often has been skin-deep. People were baptized into the faith, married and buried in it, but for a variety of reasons there was precious little else.
To be sure, the church exercises considerable political clout. But that influence, many observers say, often masks a superficial Catholicism at the grass-roots.
At first blush, the claim that five centuries haven't afforded enough time for real evangelization might seem a terrible indictment. Honduran Catholics told me that, given its scarce resources, the church never stood a chance. Moreover, they say, baptismal counts notwithstanding, the region has never been ideologically homogenous.
For example, some Hondurans assert that during the Cold War, the dominant ideology was not Catholicism, but Marxism, which had a much greater impact in shaping the attitudes of political and social elites. That's the view at the new Catholic University of Honduras, founded in 1993 and named "Our Lady Queen of Peace" in honor of the reputed apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
During my visit, rector Elio David Alvarenga Amador and members of his staff explained that the university was founded by lay Catholics who taught at the secular national university, and who were frustrated with what they saw as Marxist indoctrination, especially in education and the social sciences.
Vice-rector Virgilio Madrid Solís, who keeps an image of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, on his desk, though he's not a member, minces no words in describing the new university's mission: "To change Honduras."
Erika Flores de Boquín, another vice-rector, unpacked the point. She told the story of a recent engineering graduate who went to work for the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, where he was asked to sign what Flores described as a falsified environmental impact study, presumably skewed by corruption. The engineer lost his job, but he made a stand for principle.
"Little by little, such acts will transform this country," Flores de Boquín said. "The church is starting this work only now."
Hondurans also point to a severe priest shortage as limiting the extent to which Catholicism took hold. With just over 400 priests, the ratio of priests to people in Honduras today is 1 to 13,000.
"At the time of independence from Spain, most of the Catholic clergy were expelled," Rodriguez said. "We had one bishop and 15 priests for the entire country."
That shortage left vast sections of the population with no regular access to the sacraments, and no meaningful catechesis. The few clergy on hand, mostly foreign missionaries, did their best, but dreams of Honduran Catholicism shaping culture in the sense that one associates with Poland under Communism, local Catholics say, was never in the cards.
Ruminating on these explanations, I'm reminded of the famous quip from G.K. Chesterton: The problem is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but rather that it's been found difficult and never tried. Repeatedly, that's the story I was told by Hondurans. The problem is not that Catholicism has failed, but that authentic Catholicism has never been tried.
That view would appear to have been more or less endorsed by CELAM, the Conference of Bishops of Latin American and the Caribbean. In the lineamenta for their upcoming Fifth General Conference in Brazil, the bishops flagged inadequate religious formation, a mix of Catholicism and indigenous religious practices, and a lack of coherence with Catholic beliefs among the faithful, as central challenges.
Rodriguez, the first cardinal in Honduran history, emphatically believes that deep evangelization is a work still to be done, and thinks the church in Latin America is now developing the muscle to pull it off.
In that light, it will be especially interesting to watch the upcoming CELAM conference in early May in Brazil. Benedict XVI will be in attendance, and one imagines he too will be looking to see if Rodriguez's brother bishops share his confidence -- and, more importantly, what ideas they have to make it a reality.
Look at Haiti and its predominant Voodoo cult for an answer.
Um ... canon law is not civil law. Are you expecting the Church to make a coup d'etat and run the government?
It educated them in what was important in an English dominated society where being French was looked down upon and speaking and writing it discouraged - the faith. You do recall that English speaking elites completely dominated Quebec until a few decades ago, don't you?
And the literacy of England and New England did very little for their eternal souls. Most of these people had lost their Christian faith by the 1850's. Wonderful, they could read and write - so the first thing they did with such skills was to take up Unitarianism, Evolutionism, and Universalism.
Amen...."social gospel" instead of getting their souls to HEAVEN is the reason....plus they aren't exactly civilized and haven't got a judicial system based on "SO HELP ME GOD".
Ah yes, and the World Health Organization has the perfect solution - abortion! That would bring the murder rate down to a percentage more in line with the "enlightened" nations. (as long as you don't include the murdered infants)
Is the writer, John Allen that little guy in the dark rimmed glasses?
A rather unprofessional post.
Really. This is a forum for anyone to discuss common interests. It is not an academic enterprise to flash credentials. It is very unseemly.
Oh, I thought it was just a bunch of scolds looking for someone to jump on.
No, but the priests do not teach on this subject and too often, view private property as not-quite Christian. FWIW in many countries such as Guatemala the Catholic Church does greatly influence who is elected.
Most Catholics (and Protestants, but since this is about Catholicism...) are culturally Catholic. They have no real commitment to the church or even to Christianity. They are Catholic because their parents and grandparents were Catholic.
You posted a statement which seemed to support the simplistic and ridiculous theory that "that Glory of Rome and Western Civilization was dragged down into the Dark Ages by the degenerate Catholics."
I challenged it. Perhaps not in the best way, I admit. Your friend then defended you, even though he seems to agree with me in principle. Odd. But okay. It's a free country.
History may be variously intepreted to "prove" various conflicting theories. Historians who possess doctorates may totally disagree with one another in their various interpretations.
History is not a hard science. Holding a doctorate in history does not automatically make one infallible in interpreting it. If it did, there would not be so much disagreement among those who hold doctorates in history.
You must have a chip on your shoulder. All you want to do is bicker and fight. Consequently, I don't think you have contributed anything but animosity.
Apparently, you have read history, but it is not uncommon for a history buff to know a lot of facts but be unable to handle something like my questioning the premise of the article. You took that personally.
Of course, degrees and credentials never make someone right on their own. That doesn't make them meaningless. The idea that flashing credentials is unprofessional is just populism. Usually, public display of credentials is required by law and people who practice without licenses are jailed as quacks.
This is all just a spat about who is out of his league. That only interests imposters and doesn't interest people who earned their expertise, at all.
My dear, I have no interest in a fight. I actually wrote that in my last post, but somehow the last paragraph was not included in the post.
If you subscribe to what is in Wood's book, we are in agreement. Why continue this?
I wrote "seemed to be" not "was". I am very sorry if I did not make myself more clear. I posted earlier that it all appears to be a misunderstanding, and thought this statement with "seemed" would be understood in that light, that I considered it a simple misunderstanding.
Except for blacks, of course. You are aware that it was against the law to preach to blacks or teach them to read in several British-dominated Southern states, aren't you? One state even had the death penalty for anybody who taught the slaves to read, although I don't think they ever enforced it. The British feared that if they permitted the baptism or religious instruction of slaves, or permitted them to marry, they would have to treat them like human beings and grant them rights. Hence they took great pains to prevent their instruction.
The people who came here from England came from a literate culture and they never tried to spread it, except for one brief moment in New England when several scholars worked on translating some parts of Scripture into an Indian language. But they abandoned that attempt fairly early on.
By contrast, the people the Spanish instructed were not literate and didn't even speak a European language. In fact, the Spanish created picture books, based on what symbols they could determine from fragmentary scraps of documents and sculpted designs on walls, to instruct the indigenous people in the Faith. Furthermore, even the soldiers who came to the New World were expected to know their basic catechism and were sometimes assigned to teach catechism classes to the Indians.
bump for later
why does no one ask why protestantism hasn't had a more positive effect.
abortion, secularism, all manner of sin promoted by 'clergy' in the name of God.
I can understand why the priests interviewed in the article wouldn’t come up with an answer such as you gave. You said that Vatican II, with its emphasis on the collective rather than on the individual response of faith, is at fault. I agree.
On October 4, 1965 during the Fourth Session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI flew to the US to address the United Nations General Assembly saying, “We bring to this Organization the suffrage of our recent predecessors, that of the entire Catholic episcopate and our own, convinced as we are that this Organization represents the obligatory path of modern civilization and world peace.”
Obligatory path?
Wow. No wonder when he thinks about his apostolate, a Honduran priest is going to wonder about the gang problem and corrupt government officials more than hearing everybody’s confession at least once a year.
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