Taking on The Vatican

Latin America's bishops fight a shift toward conservatism

Until 1968 the Roman Catholic bishops of Latin America were seen by many as friends of the rich, supporters of the status quo and allies of oppressive regimes. Then, in a general conference convened that year in the Colombian city of Medellin, they declared their independence, denouncing "institutionalized violence" in Latin American society and vowing to campaign against "injustices and excesses of power." Medellin swiftly became a synonym for progressive action -and frequently radicalism -in the Latin American church. Under the banner of the "theology of liberation," many priests, nuns and lay people used an unusual synthesis of Marxian economic analysis and biblical theology to align the church with the continent's poor. The theology has had its price: for trying to put it into practice, more than 800 Latin American clerics have been jailed, kidnaped, expelled or, in some cases, killed since 1968.

Next October, for the first time in a decade, the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) will convene again, this time in Puebla, Mexico, and the encounter promises to be a heated one. Already a 214-page working paper for the Puebla conference, written by Latin Americans but backed by the Vatican to cool the enthusiasms of liberation theology, has touched off angry debate. The bishops of Panama had earlier denounced the working paper, and last week, meeting near Sao Paulo, 230 bishops of Brazil -by far the largest contingent headed for Puebla -added their own resounding rejection.

Critics condemn the working paper as a retreat to old-fashioned churchly paternalism and complain that it plays down Latin America's social and economic ills. In one section, for instance, the poor are promised the consolations of faith, which will allow them "to live in fortitude and enjoy that happiness of the kingdom of which no human sorrow can deprive them." Another section, clearly aimed at clerical activists, declares that "priests, monks and nuns should not under normal circumstances participate in political struggle." The theme of the Puebla conference is how to evangelize an increasingly urbanized society, but opponents of the draft document contend that it fails to reflect a key post-Vatican II teaching: evangelization is inseparable from social concern.

In part, the document is the revenge of conservative bishops who were caught off guard by the sudden move leftward at Medellin. Indeed, the secretariat that prepared the agenda for that 1968 conference was loaded with progressive and radical thinkers, among them a Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutierrez, who later wrote the influential A Theology of Liberation. But since 1972 the secretary-general of CELAM has been Bogota's Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, a staunch young conservative. With the Vatican's encouragement, Lopez Trujillo cleaned out the secretariat, installing priests and laymen with considerably less enthusiasm for revolutionary political change.

Lopez Trujillo and his allies in the hierarchy have the support of the Vatican, including Pope Paul, who fears repression of the church from Latin America's current regimes if Catholics too militantly press the case for a new social and economic order. In El Salvador, for example, two priests were killed and others were threatened with assassination by government-allied right-wing terrorists for espousing redistribution of property. According to Latin American experts in the Vatican, the Pontiff welcomed the zeal for social change that followed Medellin, but now feels that the emphasis has become too political. He wants the church to help correct social injustice without prescribing any single political approach for Catholics to follow.

That expectation itself may be unrealistic, especially where repressive regimes almost cry out for some sharp judgments. Brazil's bishops, for example, seemed in no mood to pussyfoot last week. Their own agenda for Puebla focused on "glaring social inequities" and "unjust division of land," and cited the enormous gap between rich and poor as "a social scandal in a continent thought to be Christian." At Puebla, the bishops' concluding statement urged, there must be "prophetic criticism of the socioeconomic and political systems reigning in Latin America." Medellin, obviously, will not be set aside, even on orders from Rome, without a struggle. qed

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