A Puebla diary
Cox, Harvey
AFTER THE POPE WENT HOME A Puebla diary HARVEY...
...Or was it merely a is not liberation theology as such but the profound changes in media event...
...If bishops inside the gers...
...demnations...
...The white pope versus black pope faceBoth Mexico City and Puebla (an easy two-hour drive from off does not really work, however...
...gious (that is the group which brings together the various At the morning press briefing for English-speaking jourreligious orders), complained that the majority of the bishops nalists (there is a much larger daily report in Spanish every were bottled up in an impossibly abstract language that would afternoon), the reporters became edgy when Bishop Hayes of never really make contact with the earth...
...Bishop Trujillo, it seems, had once read La Ciudad is still sticking in the bishops' collective craw...
...What was that square of the town of Cholula itself...
...Is the low profile sings a few lines of "Sao Mananitos," the traditional birthday tactic being set aside...
...Glaring at me she says, with a smile, theologians here in Puebla is that they are very bright and very "Okay,, just wait 'til your birthday, dad...
...Sarah notes that the same disco tunes she left appear in the final document, including sections on the influbehind in Cambridge--" "Y.M.C.A...
...11FA of . Tonight we gathered a group of friends at the Princessa Restaurant on the Puebla Zocalo to celebrate Sarah's fifteenth cumpleanas...
...Puebla is so full of people it can get U.S...
...zled...They think that whatever was happening down Manipulative Lopez Trujillo may be...
...Harvey Cox," he said, "a perigdista...
...This rule by the way was flam- the O.K...
...It is usually celebrated with long busy assuring everyone that separation of church and state still white dresses and maids of honor...
...Thursday, February 8. People are getting testy and impaTuesday, February 6. The main themes that will eventually tient...
...Today Father Guillemo Saelman, a Dutchman who is appear in the final document are beginning to surface...
...Other sections, howimportant, perhaps, in the modern history of Roman Catholic ever, like the one on Christology and ecumenism, are pathetithought...
...A small man with strongly Indian features he is are struggling assiduously and, I think, very sincerely, to grasp anything but the cartoon caricature of the bomb-tossing guer- what is going on here and report it accurately...
...We embarrass her to death by singing "Happy Birth- alization and all the rest...
...In fact the words were too strong for 69 bishops CELAM...
...mate a deformed social order...
...Far from condemning the base communities, for example, ment" touched off a world-wide debate, one of the most the document warmly endorses them...
...I do not agree with most of his a. letter to Carter objecting to such an intrusion and released it ideas, hardly any of them...
...After reading some of our North American neoconserva- These are strong words, even though no particular countries tives, I think I can understand Lopez Trujillo and his hopes for are named...
...he suggests a few additional books...
...Puebla superior of the Augustinians complained, on the front page of has more leaks than a Victorian mansion in a rainstorm...
...The bur?en of proof seems to be on the progressives...
...The bishops, however, did not take the nalia for such a blast, we have to be content with doing a little day off...
...Their patience and concert-liturgy in the street using a new setting for the Mass...
...It will be interesting to see how the the chaos toward which Latin America seems to be heading, final wording and the final votes come out...
...Although the conference has chirps a song to Our Lady of Guadalupe over a loudspeaker only started I am already wondering how I, or anyone else, will that is turned up twice as loud as necessary...
...He answered, a adds, is not merely transitional but is the result of systematic little wistfully it seemed, that it hall to be a church of the poor, structures which must be changed if the sickness, infant morcommitted to the poor, but-he added--only evangeli- tality,,hunger, unemployment and malnutrition are to be dealt cally," which has become a kind of code word here for with...
...It speaks openly of the stay out of politics (it usually is on the wrong side anyway), persecution and oppression" of the Latin American people...
...He has been of the U.S...
...ever more tightly into the network of global corporate power...
...But the basic question soon became how much Sobrino, S.J., of El Salvador...
...to symbolize issues...
...At his press conference Guttierez is the patient professor par Tonight I had a late supper with two or three North Ameriexcellence...
...Not surprising Monsignor Luis Bambaren, the bishop of Chimpote in Peru, since there are supposed to be over three hundred chutches in fired off a public salvo against right wing groups that call and around Cholula, and there are obviously not enough themselves Christian, against the "hard, crude and almost bishops to go round...
...Guttierez insists that when you read them carefully and in context they are really quite supportive of what the "com- Monday, February 26...
...This put, liberation theology is not an academic enterprise pursued morning I bumped into John Dart, the religion editor of the Los among specialists in which the findings are eventually retailed Angeles Times who wrote a very good popular book on the to the faithful...
...there is over...
...Guttierez's theology serves as a reminder that defender of Western and Christian civilization," but that it much of academic theology today has accepted-often quite "develops a repressive system in accordance with its concept uncritically-a modern, quite specialized view of what is of permanent war...
...The Mexican friends who meet my daughter The journalists here outnumber the bishops more than 5-1...
...But having supper with him did to the press today...
...I asked him what contribution the church in Latin "in which millions of Latin Americans live...
...and the industrialized "North," or anything else that exhausting...
...It means human It now seems that the condemnation of the doctrine of experience, especially in the sense that what is uniquely national security will say that this doctrine ". . . pretends to human is the capacity of homo sapiens to understand, use and justify itself, in certain countries of Latin America as the alter the world...
...It condemns, as "the most devastating the clamorous welcome the pope received in officially anticler- and humiliating violation of the human .person," the poverty ical Mexico...
...People embrace and smile at stranchosen to stay in the background...
...Of all the seemed to be getting out of hand...
...It happened quite naturally...
...Sobrino excuses himself in order to go confer interact...
...articulate and credible churchmen here or anywhere-why engage in public confrontation...
...All in all the document reveals a divided but lively first trip outside Italy captured the attention of the entire world...
...But this unevenness honestly reflects, Puebla, clearly, is not an isolated event...
...Medellin, Secretary-General of CELAM and the bite noire of But the document will also leave many people dissatisfied...
...There is no parties-but finally decided to attend...
...and, most recently, Turning East...
...He has courageous battle many Christians are carrying out there worked for years on the influence of multinational corporaagainst the Samoza dictatorship...
...have produced this new theology...
...I first met him in Peru in 1970...
...and detention without judicial review...
...He is hard-working members of religious orders, a score of liberasuspicious of psychologized "pastoral theology" and of the tion theologians, several competent social scientists, an articuwidespread new interest in comparative religion which may Iate group of Latin American feminists, and-most become a diversion from the demanding task of following importantly-hundreds of Christians fresh from grass-roots Jesus as an "epistomological starting point," that is as a way congregations and the bloody streets of Nicaragua and El not just to "apply the faith" but to grasp it...
...It is not easy...
...This poverty, it America could make to the church universal...
...mixture resembling what one Cuban Carmelite called a "blue-eyed mulatto...
...and "At' the Copacabana" -are throbbing out of the restaurants and teenage hangouts ;here...
...Or, asks Concha, do who told me they thought the liberation theologians' strategy people see in the pope some hope, however vaguely articu- was very clear-headed...
...person asked if I'd like to meet him and of course I agreed...
...The church, not just the bishops, has met at my remarks last week about the pope's speeches...
...Corral...
...I am glad I did since I question that the document will criticize repressive regimes ended the evening having a private supper with none other than (without naming countries), support human rights, and declare Bishop Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, archbishop coadjutor of that the church should have a special commitment to the poor...
...Another man offers her a lollipop...
...secretary of CELAM in 1972...
...By quoting Pope John Paul II, who said that the poor are getting poorer because of the rich, a link Monday, February 1...
...Just as I started, the mariachi band "because of the abuses of power typical of regimes based on cranked up "Lloroma...
...True, like all such documents, the Puebla will probably appear tomorrow, although it will not become one is clearly a product of tough negotiations...
...It gives everyone living space, it accepts a radical Medellin and with the election of Lopez Trujillo as general theological pluralism and is replete with quotable phrases...
...All rhetoric," he Chicago seemed to be hedging questions about what was said, adding that "the failure of CELAM to come to terms with happening in the various nuclei and working committees...
...boyantly violated by the pope throughout his visit, though few Today I had lunch with two Mexican Protestant theologians people seemed particularly bothered...
...Some of these sections-especially those sive bishops from CELAM Ill and to make sure that absolutely on the Latin American reality, on the base communities, and no liberation theologians would be invited...
...The first thing to say is that it not only ratified doing...
...tive as it sounded...
...Would I be cast out to join Enrique little to anyone, although the condemnation of the "doctrine of Maza and Gary MacEoin in the limbo of the uncredentialed...
...cruel" strategy of the International Monetary Fund's policy in A bishop does appear later in the day, however, in the main Peru, and against "international capitalism...
...Perhaps "the simple joys of the poor" was not as insensi- this very specific historical situation...
...A holiday spirit lingers, but Vidales-are here in strength, and many press people want there is much discussion of what the pope's visit meant for the them to enter the fray...
...Simply the final document, however, have become a deluge...
...Today Father Jose Luis Razo, a bishops have adopted a reactionary line and have an exagervice-president of the Latin American Confederation of Reli- rated phobia of Communism...
...The "official" afternoon press conference today reveals yet 16 March 1979: 141 another reason why the liberation theologians have wisely dedication lifts everyone...
...He answers questions carefully without a trace of can reporters who, although they do not understand Spanish, bombast...
...What impressed me most about his theology then-and still does-is his method, Wednesday, February 7. Skies are cloudy today for the first and it is this method, not its particular content, which I believe time since I arrived, but no rain...
...Today Monsignor Leonides Sunday, February 4. Today all the bishops are supposed to Proano, the bishop of Riobamba in Ecuador, in a neat reversal visit local parishes...
...Salvador...
...working hard here, and his book on the myth of national A lot of people are disturbed over a report in a Mexican security, written in part while he was teaching at Harvard newspaper that Carter has ordered greater surveillance of disDivinity School three years ago, is widely known here...
...corporate met-a walled and carefully guarded land-holdings driving millions of unemployed campesinos out fortress-seminary-did not seem to offer of the country and into the favellas and barrios of Caracas and much promise for their being in touch Lima...
...I told him we were themselves as they try to live out the Gospel becomes an lucky that in dealing with those ancient documents we have integral ingredient in the task of theologizing...
...There is coffee, milk, rolls, fruit juice continent, and how much this new, massive theology would be and a whole box full of separately wrapped little pellets of excluded or ignored in a blather of pronouncements or conEnterovioform, the world's best instant remedy for diarrhea...
...Two weeks later...
...I monitor the little church of San Pedro in of CELAM's theme- "Evangelization in Latin American the hamlet of Mexicaltingo near Cholula where we are spendToday and in the Future" insisted that it was the poor of this ing the weekend admist friendly dogs, turkeys, rabbits, chickcontinent who were in fact evangelizing the priests...
...Today, just after the "white" pope's priests eventually to the laity is giving way to a vision of the departure, Father Pedro Arrupe, the "black" pope, superior church in which God lives among the people-with Christ as general of 26,000 Jesuits - many of them in Latin America and the focal revelation of God's purpose and the Holy Spirit as the up to their ears in liberation theology and politics-says he source of hope and energy...
...The conditions under which the bishops met-a It's nice to krtow that other Latin Americans, not just gringos, walled and carefully guarded fortress-seminary-did not seem suffer from Montezuma's revenge...
...asks everyone for a nice big hand for him...
...among the bishops themselves but also the fact that not even towering walls and armed security forces can hold the world at Sunday, February 11...
...Some Excelsior, Mexico City's main daily, that the majority of of the participants are enraged...
...I hesitated-I despise cocktail various bishops are beginning to be quite evident...
...Maybe he should be consulting the and the "progressive" bishops include some of the most Shah's travel agency...
...would have come if the pope had not appeared...
...In any case, the most important thing going on here and debt in which so many of them live...
...Today I found in my mail box a mimeographed invitation to all the periodistas (journalists) to attend a cocktail party this Friday, February 9. Today the final lineaments of the docuevening at the Palafoxiana Seminary where the well-guarded ment are appearing and the different positions represented by bishops' sessions are held...
...The story took a on the church's special commitment to the poor-are powerdramatic turn when the appearance of the "preparatory docu- ful...
...I am glad to have been thr.e while it wan h- --=_ determi aed to slow down the spread of grass roots Christian...
...the plight of the poor will not stop the renovation now going on There are probably too many reporters here, many more than in the church...
...He agrees that the church as church should normally Medellin, at points it goes far beyond...
...The final document will reflect not only the debate with a couple of bishops...
...That would make some good copy...
...ordinary people...
...The "Message to the People of Latin is established which goes beyond the traditional social teachAmerica" came out officially tonight, and the full document ings of the church...
...rilla priest...
...we have no way of knowing if the report is accurate-it claims A perfectly legitimate interpretation, too, since, as Comblin so to be a description of testimony before the Senate Foreign 16 March 1979: 143 Relations Committee-44 U.S...
...song...
...Now maybe the real Like journalists everywhere, they tend to seize on personalities work of CELAM can begin...
...disputed paragraph reads as follows: "Countries such as ours "What about the resurgence of religion all over the world," which in their systems do not respect fundamental human he wanted to know, or the fact that the monstrous metropoli of rights-life, health, education, making a living, work-are in Latin America do not seem to be very liberating for anyone...
...As we sing the Credo, Canto tions in Latin America, especially in the "banana republics" de la communion, Santo and Gloria, the spirit of hope and of Central America...
...Rather, the actual experience of the people Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi...
...Finally he said, "Can you come sion, violation of privacy, disproportionate bail, torture, exile, have supper with me...
...is the name of the exploited people, who are also a people deeply drenched in game...
...The rest of this and convinced of the need for religion to provide-again section hews closely to the tradition of the social encyclicals...
...The Dominican theologian Miguel Concha Wisely, however, the liberation theologians are keeping a very asks do they want the church to be more "visible" than it has low profile and refusing to allow the theological and political been in a Mexico where it remains illegal for clerics to appear issues of Puebla to be reduced to an ecclesiastical shoot-out at in public in religious garb...
...The rumors have it phasizes, is not just one theory to compare with others...
...According to Secular and, apart from wondering why a theologian was here what the periodistas refer to as "informed sources," the in such a flimsy disguise, wanted to discuss theology...
...I am beginning to think I was hasty in bay indefinitely...
...It perhaps?-the fabric of values and meanings any culture decries the way some Latin American governments discourage needs...
...It is going to be very hard, I think, for Samoza or anyone CELAM consultations can carry on what needs to be done- else to repress this fervor...
...Sobrino tine mothers of "disappeared people," more than a hundred wants to know'what is happening in theology in the U.S...
...I am once again confirmed in my opinion, developed over many extended visits here, that the Christian socialists of Latin A America are the real "conservatives...
...The picture he paints is not a pretty Commonweal: 142 one- multinational giants drawing an ever larger percentage of their profits from Latin America...
...Were my journalist's credentials demnation both of Marxism and of capitalism...
...Besides, he continued, it of a clump of excited guests stood Bishop Trujillo himself, a is entirely too "partial" and does not condemn with sufficient tall, heavy shouldered man in his early forties...
...Gustavo Puebla...
...and believes the pope learned a lot in his visit since his It sees the increase in poverty as the result of the advance of speeches got better at he went along...
...He explains convincingly why Puebla is different from Medellin...
...the bishop leaned as close to my ear as force," and lists such "typical abuses of power" as represhe could, but it was no use...
...As the days went by these "two Pueblas" began to At I I p.m...
...and courageous church, prepared to live with the struggle that It is scarcely too much to gay that, with the exception of is now raging within it and around it, determined to be on the Vatican II, Puebla has been the most widely covered, hotly side of the poor and unwilling to exclude movements or ideas contested and symbolically important conciliar event in the considered dangerous in the corridors of ecclesial and political annals of Christianity...
...Saturday, February 3. Today is Sarah's fifteenth birthday, Monday, February 5. Today is a national holiday in traditionally a cosmic occasion in Mexico-much more impor- Mexico-the Day of the Constitution-and the President is tant than turning sixteen...
...A Mexican lady at the next table' public, at last, about liberation theology...
...We shall a former Dominican who remains one of the keenest observers see...
...Or worse, a kind of atavistic religious regres- both society and in the Christian consciousness that together sion...
...of Latin American theological developments...
...Enchiladas verdes, huevas rancheras, cake and ence of transnational corporations, the question of industricoffee...
...It their skill are remarkable, and the number of bishops who are is not a Mass since that sort of thing is illegal under the consulting them has gradually grown from about thirty to anticlerical Mexican constitution--unless you happen to be around seventy...
...No bishop appears...
...They are angry In fact, it seems clear the final document will indeed say not only at what appear to be very guarded press conferences something rather strong about repression and will directly but also at the exclusion of five journalists including two criticize the ideology of "national security...
...omnipotent, he is not...
...assiduous in reading the draft documents, offering suggesOn Saturday night the Nicaraguans lead a lively open air tions, working on alternative approaches...
...But there have been other people in, Puebla too: ArgenChristology, . speaks fluent English, also German...
...The decision of the new pope to make CELAM III his cally weak...
...A CELAM staff clarity "the greatest danger of all which is Marxism...
...It now seems that the document will contain an equal conI was a bit uncomfortable...
...a situation of the permanent violation of the dignity of the I took a breath and started to answer, hoping my under- person...
...Tonight Gustavo Guttierez will talk in day to You" in full volume...
...In one sense it rather than masks, the present position of the church in Latin began with the conservative reaction that set in right after America...
...At the hotel where he is staying, the bishops would respond to an idea and seek to guide the the journalists and theologians have coopted one room as a people who actually make up their church and therefore their lounge and snack area...
...Bishop bishops, chats with me about the bibliography I am using in my Commonweal: 144 current teaching...
...It arises from the actual experience of hundreds, maybe thousands, of -HARVEY COx is Professor of Divinity at Harvard and the author of Christian communidades de base, grass roots congregations all several books, including The Secular City, The Seduction of the Spirit over Latin America...
...document remains too abstract and high-sounding...
...One paragraph But no...
...This will mean about,to be challenged...
...For the "progressive" minority-mainly represented by the As we shook hands and exchanged "mucho gustos, " he bishops of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Central America-the peered at my name tag and registered surprise...
...rejecting any use of class analysis, the theory explaining Latin America's poverty in terms of its economic dependency on the Saturday, February 10...
...I can wait...
...national security" may excite more discussion...
...demythologize" him a bit...
...Not bad...
...The master of ceremonies the pope advised about staying clear of politics...
...They went on debating the drafts that will eventually sight-seeing...
...But he is here-and as an official Vatican delegate...
...There in the midst "Christian and supernatural aspect...
...The festive atmosphere is dampened only by a Of all these theologian-consultants, the one who has imspeech the Trappist-poet-insurgent Ernesto Cardenal has just pressed me most so far is Father Xabier Gorositiago of made about the wretched situation in Nicaragua and the Panama, who is also an accomplished sociologist...
...I was standing in the huge Octavio Nicolas Derisi, auxiliary bishop of La Plata in Argenreception hall of the seminary, my ' periodista" name tag and tina, complained that the document sounds too much like an picture on my lapel, being jostled by three hundred people economic or social treatise and does not have enough, of the while a mariachi band blared deafeningly...
...continues to devour their chicken and mole...
...Experience" only thefinal versions and not all the intermediate versions the here does not mean "religious experience" in the special way we do here...
...Why, I wonder, is it so hard for the staunch traditionalists to recognize that what is really tearing up Latin America, disrupting families, undermining cherished values, widening the gulf between rich and poor is not Marxism, and certainly not the Catholic left, but consumer capitalism...
...Sarah and me at the airport know better...
...Catholic Christianity, have begun to arrive at a radical new Was "theology of liberation is a false theory" a mistransla- awareness of the meaning the Gospel of Jesus Christ has for tion...
...What about the final munidades de base" and the committed Christians here are document itself...
...In the past ten years Latin America has been drawn with the outside world...
...He shows why there is a direct link between the hunger and devastatingly shows, national security is a doctrine, using misery of the Latin American majority and the decisions made ideas such as God, Christian civilization and the rest to legitiin the board rooms of United States corporations...
...Something very important for the church and for the Clearly many bishops, though not a majority, came here whole world happened at Puebla...
...The result is a official, of course, until it is approved by the pope...
...A crowd of boys survive the flood of "palabras, documents, y pronunciamen- dressed as Moors races around shouting noisily and everyone tos" that is sure to engulf Puebla in the days to come...
...Later on ens and cabbage fields...
...The leaks from the drafts of is the main contribution of the theology of liberation...
...Libera- sident religious groups in Latin America, that he has told the tion theologians apply the pope's statement about "false C.I.A...
...A choir of little girls Still, so many, many words...
...religious" as something cultic or ecstatic...
...Towering Bishop Marcos McGrath of Panama, smacks of Marxist methodology in understanding why the undoubtedly one of the best scholar-theologians among the poor in Latin America seem to get poorer and poorer...
...Nothing the pope says and Father Concha offers no answers, but for the two days after nothing CELAM says can alter the massive fact that a poor and he leaves, "what did the pope really mean...
...citizens here in Puebla signed Trujillo is not a warm person...
...My friends in Cambridge were puz- to Puebla...
...Diminu- communities, to condemn liberation theology as a dangerous tive Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife and Olinda, seems distortion and to reimpose their control on a church that preoccupied, not exuding his usual vivaciousness...
...On this last point friends of mine, Enrique Maza of Mexico and Gary MacEoin the influence of Jose Comblin is quite evident...
...croplands bought up by the The conditions under which the bishops agribusiness colossi to grow luxury foods for export...
...He is deeply impressed with the popular piety of this genuine social participation and repress labor unions and peascontinent (as anyone has to be) and asked me what I made of ants' organizations...
...The liberation the capital) are still festooned with smiling pictures of El Papa, theologians-Assman, Guttierez, Del Valle, Sobrino, some of them torn or drooping...
...Although versing the way the phrase is interpreted by the conservatives...
...to offer much promise for their being in touch with the outside Father Sobrino, best known for his excellent writings on world...
...The age-old vertical vision of a church which begins somewhere within the Friday, February 2. Puebla is warm and sunny, and crawling Holy Trinity and filters down through popes, bishops and with stories and rumors...
...In this "de-hierarchicalized" wants the Society of Jesus to continue making the "changing church, the bishops and priests and popes all have special roles world reality" its field of operations even though this will to play in a common service...
...Others obviously came with many theologians present the one I find most engaging is Jon different ideas...
...to check especially on radical Catholic movements in ideologies," to the national security doctrine, brilliantly re- Mexico in the interest of avoiding "another Iran...
...power...
...the pope...
...The Puebla story gathered Nearly all twenty-one sections have three parts-an analysis of momentum as the new general secretary and his supporters the situation, a review of pastoral criteria, and then a listing of tried-often in heavy-handed ways-to exclude the progres- options for action...
...This "ecclesiology," he embring it constantly into the "line of fire...
...Was the advice to nuns and priests to avoid The point was reiterated, over coffee, by another old friend, political involvement itself a shrewdly political ploy...
...Who could gain anything by taking on lated, that the Gospel can mean a better life than the poverty the pope...
...developed Spanish would somehow carry the full weight of It goes on to speak of the fear and anxiety that have arisen nuance I wanted to convey...
...international capitalism...
...AFTER THE POPE WENT HOME A Puebla diary HARVEY COX that Bishop Lopez Trujillo, the general secretary of CELAM and the man most often cast in the role of the heavy by the THURSDAY, February 1. 1 arrive in Mexico on the day progressives, did all he could to prevent Arrupe from coming the Pope leaves...
...An intelligent and thoughtful man-the word who voted against the paragraph and 42 who voted "jux"brooding" somehow comes to mind-he is disquieted about tamodum" (72 voted for...
...Since we lack the parapher- does obtain in Mexico...
...Sarah is blushing but There is little doubt that the real power of the liberation pleased nonetheless...
...sense of a William James or a Rudolf Otto...
Vol. 106 • March 1979 • No. 5
