Cover story:
Analysis America synod, Rome agenda
By GARY MacEOIN
In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1992 when he presided at
the fourth general assembly of the bishops of Latin America, Pope John Paul
proposed "a still wider exercise of episcopal collegiality."
He was thinking, he said, of a meeting of representative bishops
of the Americas to help "unite even more closely all the peoples that make up
this great continent; ... to find ways to solve the dramatic situations of vast
sectors of the population who aspire to a legitimate overall progress and to
more just and decent living conditions."
A truly laudable objective. It was repeated in 1994 in Tertio
Millennio Adveniente, John Paul's apostolic letter for the upcoming third
millennium. Now we have a further step in the process: the publication by
Cardinal Jan Schotte of the Vatican's Synod of Bishops of the
lineamenta, a preliminary document intended "to foster a common
reflection and prayer on the topic as well as to generate suggestions and
observations." The meeting will occur before the year 2000.
But is that the whole story? When the project was first unveiled
at Santo Domingo, many who had been involved in or had been following the Roman
curia's 24-year campaign -- ever since the Medellín Conference of 1968
-- to domesticate or emasculate CELAM (the Council and Conference of Bishops of
Latin America), suspected that this was yet another curial scheme.
CELAM and the Synod of Bishops are radically different bodies. To
replace the Conference of Latin American bishops with a Synod for America
(North, Central, South, Caribbean) would mean a major dilution of the identity
of the church of Latin America, as well as a major recentralization of
decision-making in Rome. The power struggle has been going on almost from the
creation of CELAM in 1955 at the initiative of Bishops Manuel Larrain of Chile
and Helder Camara of Brazil. Its constitution -- confirmed by Pope Pius XII --
gives it substantial autonomy. The curia, resenting a body not under its
control, quickly set up the Commission on Latin America, to ride herd on
it.
In the anti-Curial atmosphere of the Vatican Council, however,
CELAM succeeded after a bitter struggle in establishing its autonomy. The
result was the historic 1968 meeting at Medellín, Colombia, at which the
Latin American church made its preferential option for the poor, calling for
"global, daring, urgent, and radically renewing change," and offering a concept
of a liberating God to replace the God of unrestrained greed.
It was an enormous somersault for a church that for centuries had
lived in comfortable concubinage with the powerful. When the bishops went home
and discovered that the dictators were ready and willing to torture and kill
not only lay leaders but even the priests and bishops who had previously
enjoyed a taboo-like protection, many began to waver.
Within four years a conservative backlash had made Archbishop (now
Cardinal) Alfonso Lopez Trujillo head of CELAM. A hard-nosed, hard-driving
business executive, Lopez lost no time in getting a firm grip on CELAM's
administrative machinery, centralizing its major activities and agencies -- now
staffed by his own people -- in Bogota.
The mystique of Medellín, nevertheless, survived.
At Puebla, Mexico, where the Latin American bishops held CELAM III
in 1979, the Lopez Trujillo onslaught, although solidly backed by curial
friends, achieved only a stalemate. The final document was schizophrenic in its
repeated efforts to shift the focus from oppression (the Latin American
reality) to secularization (the European reality).
It denounced the growing poverty, which it correctly identified as
systemic. But when it came to solutions, it ignored its own analysis, insisting
instead that the problem was secularization, to be resolved by evangelization
of the culture and not oppression of the poor calling for a radical change of
the social system. Evangelization of the culture has ever since been the slogan
of the opponents of Medellín, a slogan the content of which remains
ill-defined.
The assault on Medellín was renewed still more vigorously
and openly, at times with little regard for either truth or fraternal charity,
during the two years leading up to the 1992 CELAM meeting in Santo Domingo. But
once again the bishops refused to be steamrolled. There was theological
recession, but the principles of Medellín and Puebla were not
repudiated. The conference ended in a draw, neither side giving an inch.
So what is the next step? If the unwavering goal of the curia is
to reverse Medellín, to get rid of liberation theology and put back in
the bottle the genie of the preferential option for the poor, why not try a
Synod of Bishops?
Thanks to the decisions made by Pope Paul VI when he created it in
partial fulfillment of a petition of the Vatican Council, this body has no will
of its own. The pope summons it into existence if and when he wishes. He sets
its theme. Its role is limited to advising him on that theme. He can accept or
ignore its recommendations. Indeed, not only can he rewrite its recommendations
and present the revisions as its work, but he has done so.
In the Synod for America, for which no date has been set, the
Latin American voice will be diluted by those of the United States and of
Canada. And the American voice will be further diluted by an as yet unknown
number of outsiders -- Cardinal Schotte has said they can form as much as 49
percent of the delegates -- to be named by the pope.
Now come the lineamenta, or working document for the
gathering. Bishops are asked to comment as the process moves toward a final
draft. Within this context, their purpose is clear. The first thing that leaps
from a perusal of the document's 20,000 turgid words, is what Jesuit Fr. Jon
Sobrino said of the conclusions of Santo Domingo: Historical reality is no
longer seen as a sign of the times in a theological sense. The See-Judge-Act
approach developed by Belgium's Young Christian Workers and integrated into
liberation theology has become Judge-See-Act. Theology accordingly comes first,
then observation of the world, and finally the application of theology to the
world. This means, says Sobrino, " 'judging' from God's viewpoint what has not
yet been 'seen.' "
The change simply gets rid of liberation theology, a theology that
is radically historical because it considers the liberation of the poor and
oppressed of the Third World -- not just people who happen to be poor, but
people who have been made "artificially" poor by unjust structures -- as the
central problem of our times. The change also introduces a different
Christology, one no longer based on Jesus of Nazareth but on an abstract
Christ. The historical Jesus disappears, and we are left with two
irreconcilable visions of church: a vertical relationship of people to God with
the church as mediator, channel of grace, proclaimer of truth, dictator of
rules; and a horizontal relationship seeing God concretely in the neighbor and
placing the essence of religion in love expressed in action on behalf of the
oppressed neighbor.
Everything else follows. We are back in a world in which the "way
of salvation" is strictly individual and ahistorical: Receive the word, be
converted, believe, be baptized, receive forgiveness of sins and, later, the
gift of the Spirit. This is to return to a cosmetically modernized version of
the European, pre-Vatican II church, a church stressing authority that is
sacral, hierarchical, monarchical and canonical, an authority based on an
anthropology that is feudal and opposed to the contemporary world.
The cosmetic modernization takes the form of a "theology of
solidarity" to replace the theology of liberation. Webster defines solidarity
as "unity that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and
standards." A theology so defined denies the obvious fact of class conflict,
insisting on a community of interests and objectives in society.
For the lineamenta, solidarity is "a morally necessary
reaction to the existence of injustice in social conditions which many
individuals suffer today." Note that injustice has ceased to be a social
reality, the "institutionalized injustice" of Medellín. It is a problem
affecting individuals, not groups or classes.
We are no longer in the world of Medellín "faced with a
situation of injustice that can be called institutionalized violence." What we
need, says the document, are dedicated people who run centers of charity and
assistance, because the shared task of solidarity provides the laity with "a
great potential for generosity."
Solidarity would thus seem to be nothing more than another name
for charity. Clearly it is quite different from justice, a word that is
operationally absent from the document. Not only absent, but superfluous,
because "most of the problems afflicting the various peoples of the continent
have their origin in socioeconomic causes, which can be overcome if each person
or group -- including nations -- applies the principle of solidarity." So much
for Medellín's clarion call for "global, daring, urgent, and radically
renewing change."
It has long been clear that many in the Vatican resent liberation
theology as the product of "colonials" who think they are entitled to share in
what had long been a European monopoly. But that is not the whole story. In the
final analysis, we have here the confrontation of a Christian church with its
own evangelical identity.
The challenge of liberation will persist as long as do the
conditions of oppression. Shall we deal with it simply as something peripheral,
the object of alms, or as a questioning of our raison d'etre as church?
This is the issue the document does not face. Its authors are
struggling with words designed to obscure their real purpose, which is to get
rid of that troublesome theology of liberation. How could they evoke in the
reader or hearer the emotions of Amos or the emotions of Romero, the emotions
of anyone who had heard the cry of the people, the suffering people?
Gary MacEoin attended and reported on Vatican II and the Latin
American bishops conferences at Medellín, Puebla and Santo Domingo. He
is currently traveling in China. NCR will soon carry his reports of that
trip.
National Catholic Reporter, October 25,
1996
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