Special
Report Seeds of the word in Chiapas
Bartolomé de Las Casas was named first bishop of what is
now San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, in 1543. The diocese
then embraced most of the heartland of the Mayan civilization with its
pyramids, its sophisticated astronomical and mathematical discoveries, its
domestication of corn (maize). Within four years he had been forced into exile
by the Spanish settlers because of his defense of the indigenous
inhabitants.
The 33 bishops who followed Las Casas did little to change
matters. They baptized, taught a few simple prayers in Latin and promised
eternal happiness as reward for a life of misery.
Bishop Samuel Ruiz García came to Chiapas in 1960 with
the same mentality. Ruiz recalls, I traveled through villages where
bosses were scourging debt-slaves who did not want to work more than eight
hours a day, and all I saw were old churches and old women praying. Such
good people, I said to myself, not noticing that these good people were
victims of cruel oppression.
Ruiz was fortunate. The Second Vatican Council (1962-65)
and the Medellín Conference of Latin American bishops (1968) opened new
horizons. Just as the second half of the 20th century saw the end of the
colonial era, he began to envision the end of ecclesiastical imperialism in
Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Ruiz learned the languages. He spun off more than half the
state into two new dioceses, keeping for himself the most deprived area with
1.5 million inhabitants, most of them indigenous people who speak several Mayan
languages. These people, hitherto despised, responded enthusiastically to his
invitation to tell him what they expected of the church.
A thousand communities representing 400,000 people prepared the
agenda for a Congress of the Indigenous held in 1974. The objective, as defined
by Ruiz, was to let the people speak. In three days of discussion in four Mayan
languages, with simultaneous translation organized by themselves, 1,250
delegates told the church what they expected from it: a catechesis that would
encourage the recovery of and respect for the peoples historical memory,
its ministries, symbols and values, and specifically the development of an
indigenous clergy.
The Congress proclaimed the right of the indigenous to land,
education and health, the right to organize their own cooperatives, to secure
adequate transport from farm to market and to process and commercialize their
products. They were the same demands the Zapatista rebels would formulate 20
years later.
Ruizs liberation theology and preferential option for the
poor were shaking the foundations of an unjust society and a colonial church.
The power brokers of Chiapas, who saw the church as protector of their
privileged status, were outraged. It was not long until a papal nuncio, Bishop
Girolamo Prigione, teamed up with government officials to get rid of Ruiz. The
Zapatista rebellion in 1994 saved Ruiz when he became the only person the
Zapatistas would accept as negotiator. Eventually, Ruiz was given a coadjutor
with right of succession, Bishop Raúl Vera López. Far from
curbing Ruiz, however, Vera López within a year had become a solid
supporter of Ruizs views. So Vera López apparently had to be
sacrificed. He was removed from Chiapas to a diocese to the north.
Few in Mexico accept the official Vatican explanation that Vera
López was removed for purely ecclesiastical reasons. Carlos
Fazio, author of a biography of Ruiz, wrote in the Mexico City daily La Jornada
that the motives were political and ideological, an authoritarian
decision of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano who rejected the
judgment of Papal Nuncio Justo Mullor.
Whoever takes over as bishop will inherit a diocese where the
people have a special awareness of their place in the broader church because of
Ruiz. How he has implemented his discovery that the seeds of the
word were already present in the mountains of the Mayan people before the
Europeans arrived is the subject of the following interview given to Gary
MacEoin, Ruiz biographer and Latin America expert, in November 1999. The
interview was minimally edited for space considerations.
MacEoin: The center of gravity of the church has
moved from the so-called Western World (European civilization) to the so-called
Third World, the world of poverty, in which European dress appears alien, even
hostile in the light of historical experience. In this context Id like to
ask three questions. To what extent have you been able to inculturate the
church in the Mayan culture? How much further do you think it is possible to go
within our present canonical structures? How much further do you think it is
desirable to go, assuming the appropriate canonical changes?
Ruiz: Let me start with a very general reflection.
The church has an official position on this issue, so that we dont have
to seek justifications or undertake investigations to find the answer. The
gospel must be incarnated in every culture. The African bishops -- and also the
Canadian bishops -- raised this issue at the Second Vatican Council. The Latin
American bishops touched on it at Medellín, [Colombia, 1968], went
deeper into it at Puebla, [Mexico, 1979] and still deeper at Santo Domingo,
[Dominican Republic, 1992], where there is an official mention. The bishops of
Africa, Asia, Canada and the United States have also raised it on various
occasions. Pope John Paul has also referred to it more than once -- at Oaxaca,
[Mexico], Yucatan and Mexico City -- as something already in progress. The
Department of Missions of CELAM [the Federation of Latin American Bishops
Conferences], has held reunions, as have other church entities, seeking to
determine specific approaches. In this way, reflection and practice are coming
closer together. We must conclude, accordingly, that an evangelical content
exists that is not identified with any given culture. The gospel was not born
in the West. It was born in the East, and with a specific dress.
For the primitive church the challenge of evangelization was to
decide whether Romans or pagans who became Christians had to undergo the
circumcision mandated by the Mosaic Law. Peter and Paul were agreed that, since
the Mosaic Law had ended, this was not necessary. Peter, however, out of
deference for converts from Judaism, did not eat pork, washed his hands and
observed all the other ceremonies laid down by the Mosaic Law when he ate with
[Jews]. But when he ate with pagans from the Roman Empire who had become
Christians, he ignored the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. So Paul told him
that this inconsistent conduct could easily give scandal and needed to be
clarified.
Before long the conflicting practices created pressures that
required the first ecumenical council, the Council of Jerusalem, to provide a
solution. The problem we are now dealing with is accordingly not a new one but
rather an old problem that recurs. What happened then was that the Christianity
that started in the East passed to the West and became incarnated in Western
culture. Because of the form it assumed during a long period of insertion,
incubation and presentation in the Roman Empire, it ended up by producing what
was called the Western Christian culture.
When Christianity later sent missionaries to China or other parts
of the world, they brought with them not only the gospel but the Western way of
life. They offered the Christian culture as the only dress in which
Christianity could be clothed.
Even church architecture.
Of course. It was natural. When missionaries came to this
continent, they took it for granted that they had to present Christianity
through the forms of Western culture. This meant that no opportunity for
interreligious dialogue arose 500 years ago. Christianity did not dialogue with
the pre-Colombian religions. Its theology rejected the possibility that there
was anything good in them.
All the works of the devil.
Exactly. Shadows of error and darkness of death was how the
missionaries described them, using the words of a psalm. Now, however, with the
Vatican Council we have a new situation and are questioning the attitudes of
the past. Both here and on other continents there is the same concern to
distinguish the gospel from its cultural dress. Of course, the cultural dress
is not irrelevant for the individual, because we all seek and express our
personality through our culture. But because cultures are different in
different parts of the world, the gospel message must be incarnated in
each.
However -- and this is the third point as regards your first
question -- we have to recognize with the council that there is not a presence
of Jesus Christ until an evangelization occurs. What all world cultures have is
a revealing presence of God, what the Greek and Latin Fathers called the seeds
of the word -- semina verbi -- hidden in those cultures. In consequence,
evangelization (and inculturation) is not -- forgive the expression -- an
attempt to determine how many goals from your culture you can score in the
indigenous culture, how much of Western culture the indigenous culture can
tolerate. The objective is rather to recognize the presence of a salvific
process, an Old Testament like that of the Jewish people, an Old Testament of
this cultural group, through which God has revealed himself. Recognition of
this presence of God means that this is a salvific process that continues
forward to the explicit encounter with Jesus Christ announced and testified to
by the church.
A cardinal prefect of the Congregation of the Evangelization of
Peoples put it this way: The theological reflection, the thinking of the
people of a given culture, is not simply a trampoline on which Christianity can
bounce. It is part of the content of the gospel mission. In other words,
we must start from the position that a salvific line of progression -- una
trayectoria salvifica -- exists. As Paul says in the Acts of the Apostles,
God has allowed himself to be revealed salvifically to the different peoples
until the time comes when all these peoples are called to form a people of
peoples, which is the new people of God.
The theory is accordingly clear. Practice depends on a variety of
circumstances, not just on the disciplinary aspect. To take the case of the
Mayan people of Chiapas, this is a people that continue to exist as such but
has lost many elements pertinent to its self-identification. So we are now
engaged in a process that may appear regressive, namely, a search for the
foundations of its identity, because when a people is conquered, it loses its
own history and is left with only that of its conqueror. This historic
situation has also caused it to lose many characteristic notes of its culture.
I recall a recent tragic experience. Some friends were talking to an indigenous
young woman about Jesus Christ. I dont want to hear another word
about Jesus Christ, she screamed, pressing her hands hard against her
ears. What I want is to be allowed to find out who I am. So that
she could then determine for herself her path to the future.
What this means is that the indigenous peoples did not have time
to engage from within their cultural identity in a dialogue with a religion
from outside. They lost not their identity, but the right to have an identity.
They had to accommodate. In order to be Christians they had to live
schizophrenically, with a deeply hidden ethnic identification while identifying
in public with a Western culture. That moment of schizophrenia is disappearing
on the continent. The indigenous peoples are emerging with an awareness of
their identity.
What is going to happen now
is that if the Christian
churches or Christianity do not quickly recognize this process of revelation in
the cultures and present a Christ in whom the seeds of the word become
explicit, the indigenous are not going to find an identity in Christianity but
will instead seek their identity in pre-Colombian religions. And their unity
will not flow from their Christian identity but from a cultural identity, even
if understood very differently. And this is what is uniting the indigenous
peoples.
I think that this kind of evolution is occurring throughout the
continent. People are identifying themselves as indigenous, not as Christians
or non-Christians. It follows that if Christianity succeeds in taking this step
of recognition of the salvific process and honors the encounter with an
announcement of a Christ already present in some way in every culture, then we
will have taken a step forward in what we hope for the continent. The church
will have been enriched by the cultural experience of all these peoples. Having
recognized the presence of God in these cultures, it will begin to make this
presence of God a critical element of its own culture and move forward toward
the elimination of present anti-values so that it can live more fully its own
cultural identity.
We are still dealing with a preliminary aspect of your first
question. Let us move on to the final part, which asks, How far has this
intra-ecclesial process already gone? I think it is advancing in fundamental
ways. First of all, the indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover
their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They
also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their
natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from
the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith.
Many different groups are working in this direction. Some are
Christians evangelized a long time ago who have forgotten the forms in which
they expressed their beliefs. They are trying to recover their identity by
means of their ways of thinking and the language they still retain, to see how
they can live their Christian values with the elements of their culture that
they still retain. They are changing rapidly as they recover their religious
books, et cetera. There is here the risk of taking a step backward. The
majority, however, understand that they have to look at their past and their
identity, but as now read from their new historic situation. That is to say,
from Christianity, so that they do not seek an identity that remains a hostage
of the past without recognizing the present in which they are living.
There are other religious groups that have not fully advanced to
Christianity, surviving as hidden individuals who continued to live their
pre-Colombian religious beliefs. These are on the path of the so-called Indian
theology, which reflects not Christian theology but that of their own religion.
They are preparing for the interreligious dialog that did not take place 500
years ago.
Expressed in Christian concepts?
That depends. Some were never evangelized, never had contact with
the settlements, for example, in the forests or in the Andes. Others were in
contact with the settlements and for long periods were unable to profess their
faith openly. They found ways to use Christian symbols. They are now
reformulating their pre-Colombian faith to enable themselves to engage in
dialog with Christianity.
As is happening in Brazil, for
example.
Yes, and in other places. We are making progress. I think we are
making serious progress.
In Chiapas, we have some 8,000 catechists, most
of whom are conscious of this situation. They are engaged in specific studies
to determine how the values of their culture can be expressed in Christian
faith, how they can live this faith. For example, the value of marriage, what
are the cultural attitudes to marriage, in order to find out how best to
express the values of the sacrament through their own cultural signs.
Thats moving ahead.
Other issues arise. Something that didnt happen before,
something that is a result of the presence of the gospel, is the movement of
indigenous women. This has resulted from serious reflection, not a rejection --
as in some feminist movements -- of the opposite sex, a reflection on how the
female sex was rejected. So now the woman is saying: OK, this is my
territory. Dont invade it. In the San Cristóbal diocese at
least we have a movement that includes men. To enable the women to come
together for discussions and reflections, the men have to stay home and take
care of the children. This means that husband and wife go forward together on
this road. Here we have a new fruit of an evangelizing program.
We also have 311 indigenous catechists who have been ordained
deacons. But the road to the priesthood remains a problem. What we have come to
understand is that in all indigenous communities in the continent, from Alaska
to Patagonia, human maturity is measured not by years but by the experience the
person has in the smallest social structure, the family. They ask, How
can an individual who does not have the experience of managing a family and
living in a family have the qualities needed to speak to an entire
community?
I think of a young man, a catechist, 28 or 29 years old. We were
at a meeting of catechists, some of them older people. They were discussing an
image. Should they take it to San Cristóbal to be painted or should they
bring the artist to the community to have the work done here. This young
catechist began to sum up the various viewpoints as if about to make his
contribution. An older man sat looking at him intently, then interrupted him:
You child, how dare you open your mouth? He was devastated. He
never opened his mouth for the rest of the meeting. He was a talented young
man, the head catechist in the community. But he was not married.
So what do they really think about the
priests?
There is a Western priesthood and a Western Christianity that they
continue to accept. They accept it the way it came and they similarly accept
the priest. Thats where we are. I have the crucial experience of two
indigenous seminarians. Conscious as I was of this situation, I said to them:
You have to work your way here locked into two cultures, and Id
like to help you to take that step. They understood what I was saying.
One of them, who had a good grasp of theology, said, Excuse me, my
bishop, but I cant continue here. I want to be a priest, but not a priest
from the outside. I have come to understand my culture. Before I did not
understand it. Now I feel and am an indigenous person. And I feel that I will
be accepted by my indigenous brothers and sisters -- but tolerated rather than
accepted. They will accept me because I come from the Western culture as a
mestizo priest. But thats not what I want. I want to be a priest of my
culture, of my own culture. And so he left. He is working now as a member
of our team.
And the other seminarian?
He left, too. One of them is now involved in social work, and the
other works for the diocese. There are other situations where they swallow
their pride and go on to ordination. But the pull of their culture is strong. I
remember the trauma of one. I came to the seminary, he told me.
In a matter of three or four days, the rector asked me: Do you have
a spade somewhere round here? Then he took a spade and began to dig
as if about to plant a tree. I took the spade, and with my soutane hitched up
to my belt, I asked if I should continue to dig. Thats
enough, he said. Were not going to plant a tree. Just toss
your Indian complexes into that hole, cover them up, and be the same as the
rest of us.
I felt like a fish that had to live out of the water. And I
learned to live out of the water. But after I was ordained, my bishop sent me
to my place of origin. My parents were still there, and I had forgotten the
language they spoke. And the people rejected me because I was a traitor to the
community. I had abandoned my culture for a different one. Then I forced myself
to relearn the language and made every effort to assimilate the culture again.
So one day they said to me: Father, we can now see that this brother
really wants to be with us. Then, about a week later, I hear the music of
the community band coming toward the parish house. Thats strange, I say
to myself. There is no saints day, no festival. Whats up? Its
not my saints day. Where are they off to? Next I see the community
president approaching, followed by the band and the entire community.
They stop at the door. Brothers, I ask,
whats the celebration?
Nothing special, padrecito. We just want to
tell you how happy we are because you are now indeed an Indian, and you are
telling us and we understand that you want to live with us.
Then the municipal president steps forward. As a
recognition of this fact, he said, here is my daughter for you to
marry.
I thought the house was shaking. It was like an
earthquake. Then he laughed: And, you know, she wasnt too
ugly. So I said to them: Let me see what the bishop says. The
bishop didnt help me much. Look, he said, do you want
me to change the whole law of the church just for your case?
You can see that this priest had come to understand the
psychological corrida [journey] of his people, and the level of
confidence they had reached. And that is the tremendous problem we have in this
continent. We can continue to have Indians who are ordained priests after
having passed through a mechanism of transculturation that we call seminaries.
We already have these kinds of priests, mestizo priests of indigenous origin,
but they are not indigenous priests. For that they would have to undergo a
formation within their own cultural situation. There is some progress in this
direction, but high-up people are afraid. We need theological reflection and a
strong and serious anthropological revolution before this step can be
taken.
There is still, however, an even more interesting issue here than
any of these, an issue not yet considered. Some points have been touched on,
but we have ahead of us here a bigger earthquake. Jesus Christ was not a priest
according to the Law of Moses. He was a layperson. He did not belong to the
tribe of Levi. Instead, he was a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
This was a pagan priesthood, not a Jewish one, and it may have anteceded the
Jewish priesthood, because the Jewish people did not exist until after their
liberation from Egypt. In its beginnings the Christian church operated with a
certain level of autonomy, because Jesus ordained his disciples after the
supper. At the Last Supper -- it is noted that it was after the supper, that is
to say, after the Jewish supper was ended -- he instituted the sacrament of the
Eucharist and also established those who were to continue this celebration. For
some time they continued on the margins of Judaism. They went to the Temple to
pray while celebrating the Eucharist in peoples homes. As Christianity
gradually grew, it moved to differentiate itself from the Jewish priesthood.
Later on, however, the Catholic church returned to the model of the Jewish
people. My bishops miter comes from that old priesthood.
The expectation now is that -- if we are talking about the
incarnation of the church in the cultures -- when the indigenous peoples of
this continent enter as autochthonous [indigenous] churches, their priesthood
will be able to merge with the priesthood of Christ according to the order of
Melchizedek, and not according to the Jewish priesthood. This calls for a
profound study, but from the viewpoint of theology it is an extremely rich
situation. I do not mean that the Jewish priesthood has not served up till now,
but it is not the cultural model. It is not according to the order of
Melchizedek.
In the priesthood according to the indigenous cultures, it
is clear that we are not engaged in just a cultural discussion, but also in a
transcendental and novel theological one. That means that it is not in the same
line as the discussions in Europe and elsewhere on whether or not priests can
be married, as they are in the Eastern Catholic churches. It is not a
discussion of theological schools, but of the concrete application of what the
council said. That means that it is not simply an abstract theological
discussion but a call to apply what the council said. It is true that the road
may be hard, but the theory is clear. We have no problem about justifying our
position. What we have to do is to promote a practice that is already fully
justified by pastoral theological positions.
We are simply talking of
applications?
Correct, absolutely correct.
In Chiapas, what about the sacrament of
matrimony. Are people looking for cultural forms?
What happened, when we began to talk about incarnating the church
in the cultures and to explain what this meant to the people, almost
immediately all the sacraments began to acquire a community dimension that they
previously lacked. Previously, people said: I want to arrange first
Communion for my child, [and] I want to have my child baptized on
such a day. All that stopped. Baptisms are arranged by the community.
And, as the communities are small, everyone is involved in the preparation and
celebration. They look into the practices of the parents and godparents to
ensure that they are living a Christian life. The entire community witnesses
the ceremony and testifies that this child should be baptized because the
parents and godparents understand what baptism means.
How long does all this take?
It varies. Three months in some places, up to a year in others.
They all know each other. When there are families that have not been practicing
the faith regularly, they take more time to ensure that they understand clearly
what is the commitment.
The same happens with marriages. When the individual approach
ended, interesting things happened. I remember a womens meeting I
attended. One of the women was saying: In the past my mother and father
would sell me. They waited until they had a certain quantity of wood or beef or
whatever, so that they could offer my hand to the family that asked for me. And
it never occurred to them to ask me whether I liked the boy or not. I was
watching a process of liberation in a very concrete context. And they are
looking for external signs. They have not yet found them, because their culture
was crushed so totally. Marriage in their tradition was destroyed.
Although so many customs were lost, some are being recovered in
one way or another. For example, we are trying to reach the point -- I think we
are almost there -- of not distinguishing between a customary marriage and a
church marriage so that they would no longer be separate events, and also that
the marriage would be recognized civilly without any additional ceremony. This
is a process that is moving forward gradually in the whole continent. And
already they have regained a community aspect. I have a concrete instance. A
Marist brother who left his congregation but continued to work in the diocese
decided to marry.
His name?
Vargas, Javier Vargas. He tells the community in which he is
living. Brothers, I am about to marry, but I want to tell you that I want
to continue to accompany you. Tell me, what do you think?
They say: Well, we have to see what is the woman like and to
find out if she also wants to stay here. When she came, they asked:
Sister, are you ready to serve wherever needed? She agreed to
undertake the normal preparation. It lasted three months, with the indigenous
who had themselves been instructed by Javier conducting her instruction. They
married and they continued to work in that community for several years, fully
accepted by the community, until they had to leave for the education of their
children.
As regards the Eucharist?
Without the Eucharist, without a priesthood that gives them the
Eucharist, there will be an imported priesthood. A distribution of the
Eucharist by deacons has strengthened the power of the community greatly. But
for this it is still necessary to have a eucharistic celebration. That is what
it means to be autochthonous. The council says that to be autochthonous is to
be able to reflect the faith in all your cultural forms, to express it with
your own values and also to have your own ministers within your own culture. It
speaks even of autochthonous bishops, autochthonous priests and bishops. In
this way a church comes into being with its own means. The word
autochthonous does not mean autonomous and it does not mean independent.
What it means is to be able to express your own culture, which has suffered
down the centuries.
I think that in this way I have answered your other questions.
Have you reached this point or are you in a
process that can move a distance farther but has a final goal that it is not
possible to reach?
We cannot get to that point at the present time, but we are
moving.
Is a situation possible in which the married
couple would be the priest?
Thats what we are talking about. That is what is on the
table. A priesthood according to the culture. It would still be within the
church, because in the church we have married priests. It is accordingly
something that is indisputable.
For us its a rather novel
concept.
In the Western church. But not in the Catholic church. Its
normal in the Eastern church. Thats the way it is in the Eastern
church.
National Catholic Reporter, February 18,
2000
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