A View From The Palace Window
NO SOONER WERE THE MEDELLIN CONference doors closed than the backlash began. In the decade following the conference, a growing number of bishops felt marginalized by its declarations as they...
...so were two well-known advocates of indigenous rights, Bishop Proafio of Ecuador and Bishop Llaguno of Mexico...
...Vekemans and L6pez Trujillo also sought to "defund" progressive church institutions, and were able--through German pressure-to cut funding to a number of base community projects...
...But in ordering Boff to Rome, Ratzinger chose to bypass the structures of collegiality, arguing that the translation of Boff's book into other languages made it no longer a local matter but one of international concern...
...Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, October 12, 1984...
...They included "the crisis of moral values," and "the mystery of sin" as well as "the absence of structural reform in agriculture...
...Lernoux, Cry of the People, pp...
...Under pressure to restore "discipline" among his men, Kolvenbach promptly ordered an investigation of the theology of El Salvador's Jon Sobrino, and was or- dered by the Vatican to force Nicaraguan Education Minister, Jesuit Fernando Cardenal, to choose between the order and the Sandinistas...
...5 (September-October 1978), p. 44...
...Furthermore, Ratzinger's behavior was quite graceless...
...Ratzinger's ability to bring about his "restoration" was evidently less than many had initially feared...
...4 A NUMBER OF FACTORS INFLUENCED THE reaction against Medellin...
...If conservatives VI, who had closed the Council, had already shifted saw the indecisive Pope Paul as a Vatican Jimmy Carthe papacy back on to a conservative track, feeling that ter, then Wojtyla was surely their Ronald Reagan...
...The challenge to the church, then, was from "ideologies," not from economic and political structures...
...Cited in James Goff, "The Church: Right or Left?," in Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Ratzinger had used the local bishops' conferences when it suited him, and bypassed them when it did not...
...First, the Vatican was emerging from Paul VI's "reorganization" in 1967...
...There are many liberation theologies, L6pez Trujillo would argue...
...Over the course of two weeks, the Puebla documents went through four drafts...
...Hengsbach provided the money and the international lobbying...
...The alliance of Marxism and the Gospel of Christ has been a preposterous and cynical charade from its inception...
...It was a marked departure from the style of Catholic Action, which started by studying papal teachings and then turned to see how they could be applied locally...
...Hundreds of lay leaders were jailed or killed...
...The Colombian rejected the idea of a "preferential option," arguing that, "The 'poor' of the Gospel do not constitute a class," but rather "a state, an attitude of openness and receptiveness" to the word of God, "which often coexists with economic necessity...
...A VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW 1. Gustavo Gutidrrez, "La Fuerza Hist6rica de los Pobres," in Celadec 6, pp...
...That was the message of Exodus: God will lead the poor out of oppression and judge the conduct of nations...
...First, the Brazilian hierarchy abandoned a planned dialogue between First and Third World theologians after the Curia put pressure on the U.S., Canadian and French bishops...
...4 2 After the Instructions' release, John Paul declared that it should be treated only as a CDF working document...
...142-147...
...In Nicaragua, where their 75 priests make them by far the largest order in the country, the overwhelming majority of the Jesuits have supported the Sandinistas and opposed SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 198533 1 Joseph Ratzinger: a holy warrior against liberationists Managua's Cardinal Obando y Bravo...
...National Catholic Reporter, October 16, 1981...
...The role of the laity, the pope insists, is first and foremost to be "united with their pastors [bishops] and inspired by the magisterium" or papal teachings.45 Central American laity have shown their support for this authority in cases where the bishops have endorsed the kind of social transformation sought by the poor...
...The tactic was to "insistently repeat that they preach armed struggle, that they are linked with international communism, and that they were sent to Bolivia with the sole purpose of moving the church toward communism...
...The conservatives gave special attention to reining in the religious, who make up 60% of Latin America's 225,000 clergy and nuns...
...3 7 Ratzinger's warning against "deviations" was potentially sweeping in its application...
...28 In the Dominican Republic he warned against viewing "the poor as a class, or a class in struggle," and urged believers to "resist the temptation of anything that can weaken the communion of the church as a sacrament of unity and salvation, including those who ideologize the faith or pretend to build a popular church that is not of Christ...
...The noted theologian Karl Rahner echoed the sentiments of Jesuit Superior Arrupe and others when he issued a letter in early 1984 stating that the use of "modern" Marxist analysis was valid...
...Embittered by Allende's 1970 election victory in Chile, Jesuit Roger Vekemans abandoned his Catholic centers in Santiago and moved to BogotA, where he formed the Research Center for the Development and Integration of Latin America (CEDIAL...
...Instead, the modem Church would look to the theologian as someone immersed in social realities and familiar with the social sciences, for guidance in evaluating and fine-tuning papal teachings...
...This, the Instructions argued, would lead to atheistic materialism and totalitarianism...
...At the same time, though, the pope is undermining the very structures of the bishops conferences...
...Until the advent of Solidarity, it had carved out the only viable opposition to the Communist Party, through using the symbols of its office...
...In Bolivia, Peru and El Salvador, dissident priests called for the removal of the papal nuncio.' 5 In 1974 Colombia's progressive "Priests for Latin America" presented the Bishops' Synod in Rome with a statement signed by 500 priests, calling on the bishops to choose between "two types of Christianity--one allied with the political and economic system and another dedicated to changing it...
...IN 1972 VEKEMANS FOUNDED A NEW PUBlication, Tierra Nueva, forum for the arguments that would come to dominate the conservative offensive against liberation theology...
...CIA "black propaganda" projects were undertaken in Ecuador, Brazil and Chile...
...gians and base communities to find their own truth...
...Under L6pez Trujillo, CELAM devoted itself to the polemic against liberation theology...
...Overriding these concerns, however, is the quest of When the conservative princes of the Church his papacy for doctrinal orthodoxy...
...He spoke against viewing Jesus as "someone involved in the class struggle," explaining that, "This conception of Christ as a political figure . . does not tally with the Church's teaching...
...But that was wishful thinking...
...This was not Boff's first investigation...
...The Polish Government and the Catholic Church represented, in his words, "two concepts of the world which are diametrically opposed...
...2 3 Paul also unsettled "the priority of labor over capital" and supported the those who wanted absolute answers from the papacy, principle of worker management...
...2 He wagged his finger at the liberation theologians, and admonished any attempt by priests to set up "an authority parallel to that of the bishops...
...Where the liberation theologians wrote of social classes, they spoke of peoples and nations, and claimed that peace would come through "com- munion" and "integration" among different "groups, classes, factions...
...Salvation, they concluded, is "a social event...
...32 Retirement rules were strictly enforced for liberals like the Argentinian Eduardo Pironio at the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, who was replaced by Jerome Hamer, "a hard man" from the CDF...
...292-304...
...HE POPE'S FIRST MOVE TO RESTORE authority was to rescind the teaching license of theologian Hans Kung for questioning papal infallibility...
...In seven Latin American countries, clergy had formed left-wing organizations...
...They used the liberation theologians' method of observing life around them, and then turning to the Bible for answers...
...The first issue led off with an article by L6pez Trujillo...
...He had led the pope to believe that 34REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34 REPORT ON THE AMERICASMaryknoller in Peru: politically changed by the experience the local doctrinal commissions of the Latin American bishops had seen drafts of the Instructions, which was not the case...
...Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, October 12, 1984...
...Ibid...
...Pope Paul Medellin had dealt to its credibility...
...Vatican sources reported that when the pope saw the CDF's largely negative statement, he ordered the addition of a long introductory section on social injustice...
...L6pez Trujillo had caught the attention of conservative power circles in Rome, having studied there and written his doctoral dissertation on Marxism...
...The clergy considered themselves bearers of God's promise...
...The question of personal redemption far outweighs social concerns...
...29 John Paul's theology emphasizes the "primacy of the spiritual," an attitude first reflected, perhaps, in his decision to respond to the 1939 Nazi occupation of PoA liberal in Brazil, a conservative in Nicaragua land by withdrawing from "the politics of despair" and entering the priesthood...
...T HE 2000 JOURNALISTS AT PUEBLA-TEN for every voting delegate-were less concerned with the bishops than with the telegenic new pope...
...But absent from Puebla were such celebrated progressives as the Brazilian bishops Casaldiliga and Balduino, the Mexicans Samuel Ruiz Garcia and Sergio M6ndez Arceo, and many others...
...Interview with Cardinal Ratzinger, reprinted in SEDOC International no...
...The Pope also reportedly distanced himself from Ratzinger's pressures on the Peruvian bishops, leading to press speculation that he had "restrained the Holy Office...
...Protests to Rome over these exclusions eventually secured an increase in the representation of religious, from four to 20.'9 Women, who comprise more than half the fulltime church personnel in Latin America, made up 4% of the Puebla delegates-nonvoting, of course.2 Among the bishops sent by their own national conferences were some progressive voices...
...Ibid., pp...
...When the bishops offered the compromise of a majority censure with a minority defense, the dissatisfied Ratzinger ordered them all to Rome for an extraordinary two-week consultation in the autumn of 1984, and pushed them to agree on a condemnation...
...With large sectors of the Catholic population supporting Nicaragua's Sandinistas, and hostile to the governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, and with most of their bishops conservative in inclination, the battle for authority in the Central American Church has moved into the foreground...
...Liberation theology" was barely a pair of words at Medellin...
...The liberation theologians sense a return to the oldstyle Christendom, with its vision of the Church's relationship to temporal authorities.' The significance of the fact that the current campaign is being waged out of the office of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)-successor to the Holy Inquisition-is not lost on Latin Americans...
...Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, April 20, 1984...
...These had originally been "ecumenical" initiatives, in the spirit of Vatican II, but when Catholic funds were halted, the liberal Protestant World Council of Churches found itself in the awkward position of being the main funder for predominantly Catholic groups...
...Lernoux, National Catholic Reporter, August 17, 1984...
...The New York Times, February 5, 1985...
...and 282 expelled or exiled...
...39-69...
...Tierra Nueva 1 (1972), p. 11, cited in Enrique Dussel, De Medellin a Puebla: Una decada de sangre y esperanza (Mexico City: Editorial Edicol, 1979), p. 287...
...Utopie der Befreiung (Aschaffenburg: Pattloch, 1976), p. 10, cited in Dussel, De Medellin a Puebla, p. 285...
...A number of dioceses saw clashes between clergy and bishops...
...his bold criticisms of the dictatorial and paternalistic structures of the Church had brought him to the attention of the CDF in 1975, and again in 1980...
...Then, when Sdo Paulo's Cardinal Arns began planning a conference of Third World theologians in 1980, many of the invited bishops received stern letters from their local nuncios, warning of Rome's disapproval.34 L6pez Trujillo was quick to cultivate close relations with the inner circle of the pope's Polish advisers...
...No longer were they to be the intellectual footmen of the Curia, explaining and justifying papal policy...
...Since the protagonist was considered to be the people as a whole, the problem was portrayed as one of culture rather than class, and specifically as one of secularization...
...Lrpez Trujillo, "iLiberaci6n o liberaci6n...
...MacEoin and Riley, Puebla, p. 60...
...He viewed Vatican II as the "unchaining within the church of latent aggressive, polemical, centrifugal-and perhaps irresponsible-forces...
...liberals are optimistic that a synod is the best arena for resisting domination by the Curia and exploring the difficulties of communication...
...Juan Luis Segundo, Theology and the Church (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, forthcoming), excerpted in National Catholic Reporter, August 16, 1985...
...The New York Times, October 10, 1984...
...in Colombia the agency financed anti-communist propaganda "under the guise of a Church radio literacy program" which had a million peasant listeners...
...MacEoin and Riley, Puebla, p. 59...
...Christine Gudorf, "Ratzinger, Gutirrrez and the Bishops of Peru," Commonweal, (February 8, 1985...
...Ibid., pp...
...The new mandate for the theologians implied that there was no monopoly on truth-a notion which never sat comfortably with the Curia...
...3 Instead, they worked with him on a 50-page response to Ratzinger, and took the unprecedented step of accompanying him to Rome...
...Jerome Hamer, head of the Vatican Congregation on Religious and Secular Institutes, argued against their formation during Council debates in 1963...
...Yet in the context of Latin America, where the relevant question is not the existence of God but the nature of God's relationship to people's daily lives, it is an eminently political project...
...30REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30In the eyes of anxious conservatives, Polish Cardinal Church restore its positive, forceful presence in the Wojtyla was elected as a response to the erosion of world and recover from the blows which Vatican II and papal authority stemming from Vatican II...
...This change was signalled by the 1973 appointment of Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, a sympathizer of the ultra-conservative lay organization Opus Dei, as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (CAL...
...And Father Juan Luis Segundo, an Uruguayan Jesuit, declared that the charge of Marxism was a red herring...
...He advanced a new code of canon law, and declared that responsibility for implementing Vatican II rested with the Curia...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 198529 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 29Visions of the Kingdom But it was no longer L6pez Trujillo's party...
...7. Msgr...
...He became a bishop in a church where quarrels among bishops, or between bishops and their priests, were unacceptable...
...He condemned "imperialistic monopoly" and supported declared in 1971 that, "In view of the varied situations the call by the Third World for a redistribution of the in the world, it is difficult to give one teaching to cover world's resources...
...The conservatives insisted that the of the Church and, ironically, as inconsistent with John Paul II: the travelling pope, Puebla, Mexico SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 31Visions of the Kingdom Church tradition...
...The 52 bishops were divided down the line...
...Even before the official version was bound, 3000 unofficial copies went on sale in Mexico and Brazil...
...Together, the pair took aim at the liberation theologians in CELAM's pastoral and educa- tion departments...
...Pope Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens (May 15, 1971), cited in Hebblethwaite, "The Vatican's Latin American Policy" (Oxford, England, mimeo, 1983), p. 9. 25...
...The letter condemned "the regrettable alliance" between Adveniat and Vekemans, given his receipt of CIA funds in Chile...
...6 Vekemans was soon joined by an ambitious young priest, Alfonso L6pez Trujillo, who in 1971 had been made auxiliary bishop of Bogotd at the age of 35...
...In Peru the pope denounced new interpretations of the Bible "inspired by political vision...
...They are "reconcilers" of the divisions within capitalist society, and not promoters of a vision that alters the traditional distribution of power...
...As pope, Wojtyla would continue to determine the political direction of the church in this way, using symbols wherever possible, but the coercive power of his office when necessary...
...L6pez Trujillo and Vekemans, the intellectual arguments...
...421-422...
...Gary MacEoin, "Sobre Puebla: Qui6n pag6," Noticias Aliadas (Lima), February 15, 1979...
...4 Even if they were immune to the crude accusations of communism among their clergy, many bishops were still alarmed at the prospect of a Church in rebellion...
...This removed him from his post as the Vatican equiva- lent of prime minister, where he had been able to block hardline initiatives from the likes of Ratzinger...
...Its decentralized educational and pastoral institutes were closed down and reorganized in BogotA under his direct control...
...Bishop Padin of Brazil, an outspoken critic of the Doctrine of National Security, was there...
...The papal nuncio bolstered their fight by backing conservative appointments...
...Cited in Lernoux, Cry of the People, p. 430...
...Ratzinger had asked them to analyze the "deviations" of liberation theology...
...Clodovis Boff, "The Illusion of a New Christendom: A Critique of the PD of CELAM III," LADOC 9 (September 1978), pp...
...His list of 84 religious experts excluded every single advocate of liberation theology, and instead drew mainly on European theologians working in Latin America...
...But in Ratzinger's lexicon this meant any use of Marxism at all: "If one tries to take only one part, say, of the analysis, one ends up having to accept the entire ideology...
...As Paul grew more fearful of a split in the church during the 1970s, he allowed conservatives to recover the primacy of the Curia over the bishops, thereby stifling the prospects for the new collegiality proclaimed by Vatican II...
...his replacement there was Cardinal Gantin of Benin, a man "not known for his independent thinking...
...The process seemed a metaphor for the broader struggle within the Latin American Church: the conservatives laid down the structure, while the progressives bent the categories to accommodate their interpretations, NDER JOHN PAUL II, THE LATIN AMERIcan church has in turn become a symbol for the overall conflict between traditional and modem forces within Catholicism...
...Conservatives were delighted...
...That experience underlies John Paul's conviction that the world is a battleground of opposing forces, and his sense that the Church faces an omnipresent threat...
...He has tried to undermine the region's base communities by portraying them as contrary to Church authority...
...17 (April 1985), pp...
...The document which L6pez Trujillo had tried to conceal was a 214-page review of conservative theology in response to Medellin...
...Protocol dictated that the controversy be dealt with by the Brazilian Bishops Conference, through its commission on the doctrine of the faith...
...In 1981, the new pope appointed as head of the CDF the conservative German Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich...
...In February 1983 he had mailed them his critical "observations," urging them to issue a speedy declaration on Gutidrrez...
...He reas- serted control over the clergy, reinstating uniform training of priests under direct Vatican supervision...
...instead, they concluded that it had both positive and unacceptable currents...
...6 L OPEZ TRUJILLO AND THE CONSERVAtives saw CELAM's general conference at Puebla, Mexico, slated for late 1978, as a chance to institutionalize their views...
...DeRance supported both CELAM and Vekemans' CEDIAL, as well as conservative Catholic groups in the United States and Rome...
...several hundred priests and laity urged the expulsion of Guatemalan Archbishop Mario Casariego...
...They found comfort in returning to old ways of thinking, freshly expressed by a small group of intellectuals linked to the conservative theological tradition of Europe...
...IN 1968, IT WAS HARD TO FORESEE THE INfluence that the new theological currents would come to have...
...1-18, cited in Berryman, "What Happened at Puebla," p. 68...
...so concerned were the conservative planners about progressive influence that they ordered the participants to be locked into the grounds of the seminary...
...A S JOHN PAUL'S MEN SETTLED IN, THE Vatican became more assertive in Latin America...
...Ratzinger has made his opposition clear since 1965, and today calls for "restor[ing] the personal responsibility of each bishop" in running the church-another way of saying that Rome should deal directly with the individual bishop rather than the conferences...
...This was John Paul II's first trip outside Europe, and for many observers, the contours of the new papacy were hard to discern...
...Next, he imposed conservative leadership on the rebellious, overly-collegial Dutch hierarchy...
...3 In Poland, it was the bishops who oriented the position of Church's posture towards the state...
...Lernoux, National Catholic Reporter, October 19, 1984...
...National Catholic Reporter, July 6, 1984...
...Accompanied by a photo of a "guerrilla priest," a bandana around his neck and a pistol around his waist, saying mass before a makeshift altar in a jungle clearing, the article condemned several liberation theologians by name, and dismissed their ideas as un-Christian for their reduction of faith to "a fundamental Marxist opSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 33Visions of the Kingdom tion...
...In March 1983 he publicly outlined his approach in an essay published in the Italian Catholic lay magazine 30 Giorni...
...But its ambiguous wording and reductionist caricature of Marxism left room for many theologians to declare their acceptance of the document, however reluctantly, explaining that their own analysis did not fall within the scope of Ratzinger's criticism...
...In July of the same year, 40 Brazilian churchmen, including Cardinal Lorscheider, published an open letter in support of the liberation theologians...
...The "certainty" which the pope has insisted on in Latin America is that "the preferential option for the poor" must include "all forms of poverty," including the "so many rich men who are terribly poor in spirit...
...The most overt challenge to Latin America came out of the old Office of the Inquisition, now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF...
...T E BIGGEST QUESTION MARK ABOUT THE pace of the "restoration" hangs, of course, over the role of the pope himself...
...the Catholic Actionstyle organizations he is promoting preach the need for a "new Christian civilization," free from the pernicious influence of "capitalist or socialist ideology...
...In Peru, Guti6rrez avoided condemnation because numbers and friends were on his side...
...Evaluations, critiques and study pamphlets flooded off the presses, and all over the continent the document became a focus for base community discussion...
...Several of them were allied with radical secular programs, especially in Chile, where several Christian groups backed Allende, and in Argentina, where the Movement of Third World Priests supported the left wing Peronists...
...The Catholic agencies Adveniat and Misereor, the single largest source of funds to the Latin American Church since the 1960's, came under the direction of Germany's military vicar, Bishop Hengsbach of Essen, who believed that the "consequence" of liberation theology "is communism...
...There he mounted a crusade against liberation theology, which SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 27RVisions o the AKingdom Visions of the Kingdom he denounced as a "contagious virus" and "a Marxist theory of violent revolution...
...Ratzinger's campaign against liberation theology extended back to 1976...
...L6pez Trujillo's campaign benefitted from "the discreet support" of various powerful figures in the Curia, including members of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.' Cardinal Baggio was considered his "power broker" at the Vatican.' From his CAL office, which shared its Rome premises with CELAM, Baggio knitted together the coalition of international financial agencies, Curia members and Latin American conservatives which acquired so much power over Latin American theological-and political--debate...
...Under John Paul II, the bishops-as link between Rome and the believer-feel torn in two directions...
...In the Gospel, the CEBs found a Jesus whose life was a symbol of justice for the poor, and whose death was the result of his conflict with the religious and political authorities...
...His 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens heralded it is to decide," he once lamented...
...And redemption comes from obedience to the teachings of the traditional Church...
...One document often contradicted another: while one paper endorsed the base communities as a means to helping the church "discover the evangelizing potential of the poor," another directed support to the Catholic Action style organizations...
...Then, just as the official document was released-timed so that critics would have only one month to prepare their challenge-Pope John Paul I died in his sleep, forcing a six-month postponement in the conference...
...Church liberals point to the rumors of John Paul's disputes with Ratzinger as evidence that he might seek accommodation rather than victory over liberation theology...
...By the end of 1984 his only success was in the Rio de Janeiro archdiocese, where his ally Cardinal Eugenio Sales withdrew the "canonical mission"--the permission to teach-from the Servite Clodovis Boff and the Franciscan Antonio Moser...
...6. Ibid...
...National Catholic Reporter, October 12, 1984...
...Ibid...
...Cardinals Lorscheider and Arns, who were already on the committee, joined protests against the pope's highhandedness...
...When, after some delay, the Jesuits held their election, they chose the less outspoken Peter-Hans Kolvenbach...
...Changes within Latin America, too, had their impact...
...Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff retorted that the Instructions referred to a "Latin America seen through the windows of a palace...
...In response to "the promise of God for the poor," they denounced "the contagion of Marxism...
...Vekemans and L6pez Trujillo argued their interpretation in countless consultations, seminars, and publications around Europe and Latin America...
...But what makes John Paul II such an enigma is his adroitness as a politician...
...He tends, for instance, to mirror the sentiments of the bishops' conference in whichever country he is visiting...
...One is the practice of submission, the other of liberation...
...In Venezuela, he disregarded the teachings of Vatican II with his criticisms of those liberation theolo- gians who "proclaim not the truth of Christ but their own theories," and told the bishops that their duties involved "above all impeding those who abuse the authority received from the church...
...For many, the danger is that the bishops will leave their flock behind-or vice versa...
...272-291...
...In Brazil, it funded the ultra-conservative Tradition, Family and Property...
...The Polish hierarchy believed that only unity could guarantee its survival in the face of a Communist Party bent on circumscribing its public influence...
...The text of the letter promptly appeared in the Mexican daily Unomdsuno, causing L6pez Trujillo to weep "with anger and vexation...
...The Council had endorsed a new role for theologians...
...Following the arguments already developed by L6pez Trujillo and Vekemans, it outlined "a concept of the poor that is creative and complex," encompassing everyone on the continent...
...This in turn provoked charges of "interference" by Catholic conservatives...
...Baggio remained at the CAL after his retirement in April 1984 from the Congregation for Bishops...
...Growing conservative influence in the powerful West German Catholic Church during the early 1970s also had repercussions for Latin America...
...3 S OON AFTER THE RELEASE OF THE Instructions, Boff was summoned to Rome for an interview with the CDF...
...R ATZINGER, IT SEEMED, WAS OVERPLAYing his hand, having failed to reckon with the outpouring of support for Guti6rrez and Boff, both from the base communities and the international theological community...
...So upset were the Brazilian bishops by Ratzinger's behavior that they threatened to resign en masse from the commission, staying on only at Boff's insistence...
...With Baggio's help, CELAM developed ties to the Christian Democrats in Germany, Italy and Chile, and to social democratic REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28parties in Latin America...
...He wrote, "Even if Marxism did not exist-and today many of the more famous theologians in Latin America have no more than a polite relationship with it-liberation theology would still be condemned as a humanistic, earthly and secular reduction of the Gospel of salvation...
...One is a genuinely Latin American notion, a spiritual one, as opposed to the "political" interpretation imported from Europe...
...Overall, the Puebla declarations were a step forward from the first conservative drafts, but an unsteady one...
...in Brazil he is liberal...
...The 48 invited priests and deacons were known for their conservatism...
...John Paul assumes that Church doctrine contains universally applicable truths-the absolute reverse of the liberation theologians' approach, which begins with the study of reality, and only then moves on to Gospel and Church teachings...
...This was an expansion of personnel and a gradual power shift in favor of the sectors which were upset over the changes in Vatican II-the "Congregations"--and away from the new secretariats, such as Justice and Peace, which were products of the Council...
...The individuals who led the counterattack against Medellin and liberation theology set the tone for the political debates that followed...
...But their carefully laid plans were overtaken by a series of accidents, some of them tinged with surrealism, which turned Puebla into a public drama...
...2. Figures from the Federation of Christian Communities (Mexico), cited in Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 448...
...4 3 Ratzinger's movements were not those of a man in control of the game...
...43-44...
...Restoring the authority of the papacy means bypassing the principles endorsed by Vatican II and Medellin...
...In 1983, the pope summarily added L6pez Trujillo to a 12-man committee which had been elected by a large group of international bishops to prepare for the coming synod...
...His the post-conciliar Church had moved from "self-criti- mandate was "to smile...
...The document reflected their disagreements about the validity of using a Marxist analysis, but they took pains to point out that both Marxism and liberation theology contained many variations and called for a nuanced response...
...In founding a CEB, the clergy gathered together anywhere from a dozen to 25 peasants or urban poor for discussion of their daily problems and Bible study...
...In the end, the bishops pieced together an eclectic set of resolutions which indicated agreement about the continent's problems, but no consensus on their cause...
...Elsewhere, he has especially on the relation of Church and politics...
...His belief that the gathered after the sudden death of John Paul I, these Church can-and should-be an agent for social rewere still fresh memories, made sharper by the rumors form does not allow for an alliance with secular proof John Paul I's intention during his brief tenure to re- jects, unless at papal initiative...
...The first target was the Brazilian church, which had picked up the progressive mantle after Puebla...
...He has made millions of cism to self-destruction...
...after 1973 the conservatives' concerns became an international priority for the offices of the Roman Curia...
...5. Cited in Diana Johnstone, "New Inquisition in Liberation Theology," In These Times (Chicago), November 21-December 4, 1984...
...The widespread portrayal of this as a duel between the Vatican and Marxism misses the point...
...2 The largest concentration was in Brazil, but base communities also blossomed in Central America, Peru, Chile and elsewhere...
...Conservatives view it as a chance to correct the "abuses" of Vatican II...
...Some insiders saw the hand of L6pez Trujillo's group in drafting the pope's speech, with its chastisement of "socio-political radicalism...
...Through the CEBs, Christians came to the conclusion that political and economic structures that deprived people of lives of dignity were expressions of social sin and represented a nation's moral failure to build a society which glorifies God...
...But the "deep roots" of the continent's problems read like a shopping list...
...The bishops did affirm Medellin's "preferential option for the poor," and the documents contained a strong denunciation of injustice, inequality and repression...
...A large number of bishops stand firmly behind the base communities, in flat defiance of the Vatican argument that they represent some kind of parallel Church...
...At Medellin, the Latin Americans carried the theme one step further: not only is God operative through history, but the historical God is partisan, favoring the poor...
...The documented cases of repression from 1964-78 tell the story: 46 priests, bishops and religious killed...
...But Peru's five Opus Dei bishops, supported by conservative German bishops, are lobbying Rome for a conservative successor to conference president Cardinal Landazuri Ricketts-who defended Guti6rrez-when he retires in 1988...
...It is in fact a campaign with profound theological, ecclesial and social origins, aimed at restoring pre-Vatican II lines of authority which demand unity around a tradi- tional vision of the Church...
...The Brazilian Church, for one, with its 358 bishops, looms as an insoluble contradiction for the Vatican...
...His influence grew so rapidly that one high-ranking Latin American church official was led to remark, "I get the impression that L6pez Trujillo has more power over Latin America than the pope himself...
...His choices included Bogota's Cardinal Mufi6z Duque, an honorary Army General, and Peru's military vicar, Bishop Mendoza Castro...
...Yet, by 1980, an estimated 2-3 million Latin Americans had been organized into more than 100,000 distinct base communities (CEBs...
...Cited in Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, October 16, 1981...
...The Curial heavyweights are all longtime opponents of the idea of bishops' conferences...
...in Nicaragua he is conservative...
...Asked whether he was pursuing a "restoration," Rat- zinger explained, "[I]f by restoration we mean the search for a new equilibrium after the exaggerations of the indiscriminate opening towards the world--given so many highly affirmative interpretations of the agnostic and atheistic world-well then, yes, this restoration is desirable, and . . . in full forward motion...
...THANKS TO THE DELAY, THE INVITATION list was also subject to scrutiny and protest...
...One of their editors explained that "European Christians have the obligation . . . to liberate Latin America from the trauma of liberation theology...
...915-920...
...Sales of the major works of liberation theology skyrocketed...
...It is no coincidence that John Paul should have chosen the eve of a visit to Latin America to call for a special synod of bishops in Rome for November 1985 to evaluate the gains and excesses of Vatican II...
...They lined up other sources of funds as well, including the DeRance Foundation of Wisconsin, the largest religiously oriented foundation in the United States...
...The Wall Street Journal heralded the Instructions, declaring that, "The communist effort to destabilize the entire Latin American continent has just been dealt a stunning blow from the world's leading anti-Marxist dissident-Pope John Paul II...
...The clergy's conviction that Medellin had mandated it to carry out organizing work at the base level brought it into direct conflict with many Latin American governments...
...Faced with clergy engaged in such projects, the pope abandons all talk of participatory structures, and his steely authoritarianism takes over...
...Yet he N STRICTLY SOCIO-ECONOMIC ISSUES, lacked the assertiveness required to neutralize liberal John Paul II has a passionate commitment to reinfluence...
...Since 1978, John Paul II has made it a priority to delegitimize currents of Christian inspiration beyond his control, and the offensive against liberation theology has taken on global dimensions with his redefinition of the Church's "social project...
...L6pez Trujillo's ability to further his agenda was greatly enhanced by his election as General Secretary of CELAM in 1972...
...B Y THE MID-1970s THE CLIMATE HAD turned ugly, with charges of "communist infiltration" levelled at activist priests and nuns throughout Latin America...
...The Brazilians Dom Helder Cimara and Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, brave advocates of human rights, were present...
...L6pez Trujillo forced out the progressive theologians, including Guti6rrez, Comblin, and the Chilean Segundo Galilea, and brought in the conservative Brazilian theologian Boaventura Kloppenberg to direct pastoral work...
...Many bishops fear that the potential for Church renewal among the poor is inversely related to the pace of restoration of traditional papal authority...
...the existence of the base communities when their faith expression varies with tradition...
...The invitation list omitted the Argentinian head of the Vatican's Congregation of Religious, as well as the directors of the Latin American Confederation of Religious (CLAR), whose 160,000 men and women members in 457 religious orders make up the majority of the clergy and nuns in Latin America...
...Many people, not least the pope himself, portray the conflict in terms of theological geopolitics, of totalitarianism versus Christianity...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 0 02 SP Z 32_I John Paul carried out a thorough housecleaning of the Curia, strengthening conservative positions...
...it ordered Leonardo Boff to be silenced, and forced the priests in the Nicaraguan government to choose between their posts and their orders...
...Paul's style had become in- people feel good about being Catholic," observed The creasingly authoritarian with his growing political an- New York Times' religion editor Kenneth Briggs...
...8. Dussel, De Medellin a Puebla, pp...
...If "to do justice is to know God," then to take part in actions that would bring justice about was an expression of faith...
...T HE VATICAN'S CHALLENGE TO COLLEgiality, liberation theology and the base communities must confront the complexities of the Latin American Church...
...Nowhere has the pope campaigned more strongly against the base communities than in Central America, especially in Nicaragua...
...John Paul insisted the Church would promote and defend the poor, but he cautioned against "rereading" the Bible under the influence of "foreign ideology...
...It means ignoring the collegiality among bishops, when the bishops disagree with him...
...Evidence is multiplying," they wrote, "that the campaign conducted by influential circles of the Catholic church of Federal Germany against the theology of liberation and many Latin American movements close to it . .. is becoming so virulent that we must make a public protest...
...Rome has replaced talk of the "preferential option for the poor" with a "theology of reconciliation," which refuses to recognize that a Christian can take a stand in the midst of social conflict...
...A two-week synod can barely set an agenda for the future, and it cannot possibly alter the obstacles that stand in the way of the conservative offensive in Latin America...
...As the Vatican responds to opposition by bypassing collegial structures, the bishops fear that they may be losing Forced to choose: the Church or the Sandinistas REPORT ON THE AMERICAS opportunities to express their discomfort...
...From his own philosophical standpoint, John Paul's andless in Brazil,1977: the strongest base communities project seeks to com bat secularism and restore the role 26 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26 a z 0 II I REPORT ON THE AMERICASof the Roman Church as sole mediator of human interaction with the world...
...but the rules were bent for two Opus Dei sympathizers, who headed the Congregation for Clergy and the congregation charged with selecting saints...
...To the conservatives, this robbed religion of its transcendental quality...
...2 " guish, and after 1970 his failing health increased his isolation and his dependency on the Curia...
...Lernoux, Cry of the People, p. 289...
...The roots of the dispute lay in Vatican II, and its backing for the view that God operates through history...
...And it voiced concern about a possible relationship between the attack on liberation theology and the CIA's "Banzer Plan," a propaganda campaign designed to divide the Church, which had been instituted in eleven Latin American countries in 1975...
...But they did not invent those debates, any more than Comblin and Guti6rrez had pushed a private agenda at Medellin...
...Cited in Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, September 21, 1984...
...It is too progressive to ignore, yet too large to push around, despite L6pez Trujillo's threat to Cardinal Lorscheider that he intends "to do in" the Brazilian Bishops' Conference before CELAM's next regional meeting in 1992...
...The Congregation is also the hub of the Vatican's intelligence system, keeping copies of the minutes of each country's episcopal conferences and pastoral seminars, as well as nuncio reports on local church conflicts and profiles of troublesome clergy...
...His announcement, made without con0 C, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 35Visions of the Kingdom suiting any of the bishops who make up the synodal commission, violated the principle of collegiality...
...He has used his frequent visits to Latin America-six in as many years-to underline what he calls these "certainties of the faith...
...A campaign by the base communities in support of Boff generated 50,000 letters to Rome, and photocopies of the response to Ratzinger by Leonardo Boff and his brother, Clodovis, circulated in Rome like samizdat...
...Similarly, rather than condemn liberation theology outright, the conservatives appropriated its vocabulary...
...The tape in fact contained a dictated letter to a conservative ally, laying out L6pez Trujillo's plans and containing some unbecoming characterizations of his opponents...
...R TZINGER NOW BEGAN INVESTIGATING the liberation theologians individually...
...4. Calculated from Appendix, in Lernoux, Cry of the People, p. 466...
...3. Jon Sobrino, "The Witness of the Church in Latin America," in Sergio Torres and John Eagleson, eds., The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981), p. 163...
...Ratzinger had been a theology professor and was close to the far-right Bavarian Christian Demo- crats, having publicly endorsed the unsuccessful candidacy of Franz-Josef Strauss in the October 1980 West German elections...
...CLAR, the new home for Gutierrez and his colleagues after their departure from CELAM, had vigorously exercised its voice and vote at Medellin...
...Groups of priests in Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina demanded the resignation of their bishops...
...At issue was his book, Church: Charism and Power, which likened the Vatican to a totalitarian state...
...Ratzinger tried to block their attendance at Boff's hearing, but they warned Secretary of State Casaroli that if this happened they would tell the world that the conduct of the Curia was even more outrageous than Boff's mild criticisms suggested...
...as many as a third of them had never even read Guti6rrez...
...National Catholic Reporter, December 9, 1983...
...He must have been a frustrated man by year's end, for he also failed to obtain the sweeping condemnation of liberation theology he wanted from a secretive CELAM meeting of 28 bishops in Bogoti in March...
...But the themes which John Paul laid out at Puebla were symptomatic of a larger ecclesial and political dispute, on which his entire papacy has pivoted...
...First revealed in Bolivia, the program attacked, in the words of a Bolivian government memo, "only the church's progressive sector . . . not the church as an institution or the bishops as a group...
...In the decade following the conference, a growing number of bishops felt marginalized by its declarations as they viewed a Church in apparent rebellion...
...The very fact that Latin American theologians were advancing such arguments reflected another aspect of Vatican II...
...Berryman, "What Happened at Puebla," p. 62...
...Ten bishops dared to criticize the pope after he silenced Leonardo Boff...
...The Jesuits, too, found themselves under attack for their outspoken stand in Latin America...
...L6pez Trujillo's problems multiplied when he offered a Mexican journalist a supposedly blank tape cassette to conclude an interview...
...Ratzinger backed down...
...The New York Times, January 27, 1985...
...When Arrupe suffered a stroke the following year, the pope removed him and, in an unprecedented move, appointed his own "personal delegate" as interim head of the order...
...Lernoux, National Catholic Reporter, September 14, 1984...
...This "alternative pole" was bolstered by winning control of CELAM in 1972...
...These organizations' methods included publishing lists of "subversive clergy," and taking out ads in the local press calling individual church officials "unpatriotic...
...In 1973, Bishop Hengsbach began to work closely with L6pez Trujillo, flying to Bogota to launch the Latin American study circle "Church and Liberation" and a new series of publications...
...Latin America also assumed a higher place on Rome's list of priorities...
...In 1977, over one hundred influential Catholic and Protestant theologians from Germany, including Karl Rahner and Johannes Metz, felt compelled to respond through an open letter...
...Local political initiaform the Vatican power structure and liberalize policy tives by the clergy are seen as endangering the mission on birth control...
...Several blocks away, a group of 30 Latin American theologians and social scientists who had been excluded followed the proceedings carefully, thanks to some 40 participating bishops who managed to circumvent seminary security...
...The German fund, Adveniat, was crucial to this effort...
...The Colombian press gladly aired their charges of communist infiltration in the Latin American Church...
...First of all, the page proofs of the secret working document containing the conservative strategy were smuggled out of the office of a printer who had been sworn to secrecy...
...To the Cardinal's chagrin, the bishops issued a statement on their return to Peru that was generally supportive of Guti6rrez and liberation theology...
...indeed, for John Paul, it is the only true path to social justice...
...XII, no...
...Father Gustavo Guti6rrez' pathbreaking book, A Theology of Liberation, was not published in Lima until 1971, with an English translation in 1973...
...Cited in Peter Hebblethwaite, National Catholic Reporter, October 14, 1983...
...The liberal Cardinal Casaroli, author of the Vatican's Ostpolitik, was moved upstairs as Secretary of State...
...When Boff arrived, it was with a cardinal at each elbow, his supporters Aloisio Lorscheider and Paulo Evaristo Arns...
...9. Lernoux, Cry of the People, p. 413...
...7 The characteristic style of the conservative challenge was never to condemn Medellin, but rather to insist on a return to the bishops' "original intent...
...the new pope's conservatism ran deeper, and those who listened attentively could identify his main concerns...
...See also Lernoux, Cry of the People, pp...
...It may be that the weak links in the chain-Peru, Central America-will be the point of rupture in the present standoff...
...Witness on behalf of life," wrote theologian Jon Sobrino, "constitutes the deepest root of the church's activity in Latin America," because "life is being threatened and annihilated by structural injustice and institutionalized violence...
...This is not our intention, or even our mission.' '24 equality between rich and poor, and called on the interConservatives saw an abdication of leadership, with national financial community to abandon its demands the future of the Church thrown to the liberation theolo- for austerity measures by debtor countries...
...The DeRance Foundation, which financed half the conference expenses, also had representatives on hand...
...The Gustavo Gutidrrez: an outpouring of support editorial staff of Vekemans' Tierra Nueva quickly became the dominant theological influence within CELAM...
...Baggio's power was extensive, since he was also Prefect to the Congregation of Bishops, which selects and reviews the world's 3200 bishops...
...Cited in The New York Times, September 6, 1984...
...The struggle carries with it implications that go far beyond the concerns of the Church alone...
...such opportunism raised the hackles of many Latin American bishops...
...As draft declarations emerged, the liberation theologians were able to messenger back their suggestions on how to respond to the conservative initiatives...
...When the halls of the Curia buzzed with surprise at the crudeness of Ratzinger's attack, the cardinal suggested that the draft article had been stolen off his desk and did not reflect his full thinking on the topic.' 6 The release of the Instructions on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation by Ratzinger's office in August 1984 was aimed at first glance against those who used Marxist analysis "in an insufficiently critical manner...
...580 arrested or kidnapped...
...Jesuit General Superior Pedro Arrupe had irritated the Vatican in 1980 when, after consulting "68 Jesuit experts," he issued a letter contending that one could employ a Marxist analysis without coming to the political conclusion of endorsing violent class struggle...
...Where Vatican II called on the bishop to "walk as a shepherd with his sheep," John Paul demands that they stand in unity with their Church---in other words, with his papacy...
...In 1985 the Vatican's assault on liberation theology became more direct and coercive...
...To a certain degree, it is a waiting game...
...Cited in Gary MacEoin and Nivita Riley, Puebla: A Church Being Born (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 50...
...Having been nuncio in Chile for 16 years, Baggio was well versed in the politics of the Latin American Church, and had helped the Chilean bishops' offensive against the Christians who organized in support of Allende...
...Lopez Trujillo had managed to rewrite the selection rules to weigh against the large episcopal conferences (Brazil being the target), and then added to the 177 elected bishops an additional dozen...
...Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio gained greater influence in foreign policy, especially over Latin American affairs...
...For eleven years he dominated the institution, first as secretary general and later as presi- dent, until his appointment as Cardinal of Medellin...
...In 1969 Wojtyla himself argued for limiting the autonomy of the conferences and reducing their size...
...How easy it is to study, to study, how hard form...
...His efforts to secure a condemnation of Gustavo Guti6rrez by the Peruvian bishops also backfired...
...In Latin America he has backed them all or to offer a solution which has universal land reform, decried the "intolerable abyss" of invalue...
...The Washington Post, February 3, 1985...
...22 The conference was held in an unusual atmosphere...
...The special synod in November 1985 offers one such opportunity...
...Because of the pirate publication and the postponement of the conference, there was a tremendous level of response to the document...
...But the pope insists that politics have no role to play...
...Lernoux, National Catholic Reporter, November 16, 1984...
...the reflections of the theologians when their premises depart from his...
...He stopped all publications promoting "conscientization" and issued new ones which stressed a sort of pre-conciliar mission to "dispense salvation...
...The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1984...
...The attacks brought into question the very survival of CLAR, as its European funding was cut way back and the Vatican appointed a commission to study the possibility of abolishing CLAR altogether...
...l2 Penny Lernoux, in her well-documented book Cry of the People, chronicles numerous efforts--often CIAinspired-to turn public opinion against the progressive Church...
...Now, as pope, his high-profile world travels, with extravagant media coverage, can be seen as a means of weakening the collegial principle by establishing a direct link between the papacy and the faithful...
Vol. 19 • September 1985 • No. 5
