The Revolution of the Latin American Church

196 Pages·1978·47.964 MB·English

by  Hugo Latorre Cabal

Translated from the Spanish by
Frances K. Hendricks and Beatrice Berler
DISCARDED
8T. VINCENT CCLLfc'QE. Lit
University of Oklahoma Press: Norman
Books by Hugo Latorre Cabal
La Hispanidad(Bogota, 1950)
Mi Novela (Bogota, 1961)
El Comandante Guevera en Pun fa del Este (Bogota, 1961)
The Revolution of the Latin American Church (Norman, 1978)
1 3 3
C.A
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Latorre Cabal, Hugo.
The revolution of the Latin American church.
Translation of La revolucion de la iglesia latino-americana.
1. Catholic Church in Latin America—History.
I. Title.
BX1426.2.L33513 282'.8 77-9117
ISBN 0-8061-1449-5
Copyright 1978 by the Uni%'ersity of Oklahoma Press,
Publishing Division of the University.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
I. From Pope Alexander VI to Pope John XXIII Page 3
II. The Aggiomamento 11
Vatican Council II 14
A Step Forward: Populorum Progressio 18
A Step Back: Hutnanae Vitae 24
Why Do You Come. Brother Paul? 34
III. The Social Aggiomamento 39
In the Quadrilateral of Hunger 39
Three Roads for Camilo 49
The Revolution of the Cassocks 54
Two Hierarchies 59
On the Other Bank of the River 64
Between Lautaro and Maritain 65
The Pond Becomes Turbulent 70
Religion, the Opiate of the People 74
When Disillusionment Comes 75
5ft
Between Two Terrors 78
Solentiname is an Archipelago 81
Colonialism, Voodoo, and Communists 84
IV. The Scientific Aggiomamento 89
Cuernavaca 89
Psychoanalysis for Religious Vocation 90
Social Research without Dogmatism 99
Science and History 111
V. The Priestly Aggiomamento 119
VI. The Two Synods 128
VII. Left and Right in Relation to the Young Church 143
vm. A Catholic Continent 152
v
The Revolution of the Latin American Church
Epilogue Page 160
Revolution by the Democratic Route 164
The Broken Guerrillas 170
The Indifferent Ones 174
Mexico 177
Index 181
vt
“Any cultivated man is a theologian,
and to be one, faith is not indispensable.”
Jorge Luis Borges
THE REVOLUTION
OF THE
LATIN AMERICAN CHURCH
From Pope Alexander VI to Pope John XXIII
Conformists and rebels disembarked together on that day of dis­
covery. After land had been sighted from the Pinta, the chief
of the expedition in his admiral’s array, with Christ’s standard
in one hand and the insignia of the Catholic monarchs in the
other, took possession of the new territory with Portuguese pomp
in the name of the Church and State made one by theology and
law. He proclaimed. “Our Redeemer gave this victory to our own
most illustrious King and Queen and to their Kingdoms famous
for such a noble cause, therefore all Christianity should rejoice
and celebrate great festivals and give solemn thanks for an achieve­
ment which will join so many people to our Holy Faith."
The Indies—Latin America—became the bastion of dogmatism
for the Bishop of Rome and a suffering part of the Spanish exis­
tence. In the same year Ferdinand and Isabella had given thanks
to God for victory over Mohammed and for the gift of the New
World. Called upon to ratify these divine intentions, without,
however, being dearly independent of the temporal powers (Spain,
Portugal, and France), the venerated, yet manipulated and chas­
tised Vicar of Christ on Earth legitimated the rights of the Spanish
crown to the Indies. Since Columbus’ action at Guanahant' was
provisional only, it was necessary' to obtain juridical confirmation
with ecumenical validity for the claim to all he had discovered.
As only the Pope could provide such a title, the two naval
powers, both Catholic and imperial, applied to Alexander VI.
the most controversial of all popes, to determine the respective
rights in the New World of his most powerful vassals and greatest
sources of income. Though Ferdinand and Isabella had Columbus'
discovery in their favor. John II of Portugal had an authorization
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The Revolution of the Latin American Church
from the previous Pope to discover lands within an immense
and poorly defined area which, apparently, the Spanish were wrong­
fully invading.
Spain, just as Catholic as Portugal but more powerful, had
the advantage in that arbitration. Alexander VI was a Borgia
from Valencia. On May 4, 1493 he issued the bull Inter Coetera
dividing the non-Christian world between the two powers along
an imaginary line one hundred leagues west of the Cape Verde
Islands. The bull did not satisfy John II. but it was morally and
juridically adequate to sanctify the Spanish title to the Indies.
The Holy See made the Spanish crown the owner of Latin America
with full jurisdiction and absolute authority. By fulfilling its obli­
gation of converting the aboriginal peoples to the Catholic faith,
the crown was able to establish its exploitation of the New World.
Church and State, perniciously overlapping, tended in the ensuing
centuries to fuse the interests of the bishops and the encomen-
deros (holders of right to tribute from the Indians).
A year after Christopher Columbus' disembarcation at Guana-
ham'. the papacy, exercising its function as the highest inter­
national tribunal, extended its exclusive prerogatives over the con­
sciences. lives, and well-being of the men of the New World Spain
had discovered. The immediate exercise of the right opened dis­
cussions between two well-defined wings of the Church.
On returning from his first voyage Columbus paraded several
aborigines, part of Spain's booty, through the streets of Seville
and Barcelona. Differences of opinion, which would become a
resounding public controversy, immediately broke out. Those said
to be. sincerely or falsely, defenders of religion upheld the opinions
of Pedro Martir of Angleria that “never had God created men
more steeped in vices and bestialities, without any leavening of
goodness or good breeding," and of Sepulveda that “the coarse­
ness of their wits, their servile and barbarous nature make them
subject to those more advanced, like the Spanish." In connection
with the concept of the “noble savage.” rationalists developed
a whole ideology supported in their Annual Relations by the
Jesuits who exalted the good features of the aborigines and even
justified their negative aspects.
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From Alexander VI to John XXIII
After his second voyage Columbus dispatched a cargo of in­
digenous people to the Peninsula to be sold. The crown sanctioned
the proposal on April 12. 1495. The next day. however, another
royal disposition ordered that the money received from the sale
be retained until theologians had clarified the issue of the morality'
of the transaction—the first manifestation of a controversy which
was to intensify with the passage of time: this was the first episode
in the long struggle for justice in Latin America, the baptismal
ceremony of the Old Church and the New Church.
The unity of Castile in the name of the Catholic faith followed
the victory' over the Arabs, the persecution of the Jews, and the
recovery of the fiefs, all in the name of protection of the Catholic
faith. Men prided themselves on their purity of doctrine, became
fanatics, and grew rich. The Spanish had also become a “nation
of theologians"—the wise men of the 1500’s—and a nation of
mystics—saints of the Sigto de Oro.
At the time of the conquest, ecclesiastics in Spain and America
reflected different faces of Spain. Some theologians and holy men
sided with the oppressed, representing from that time the rebel
Church, while the great churchmen and many chaplains of the
expeditions of conquest were with the oppressors and represented
the conformist Church.
Exemplifying the rebel Church, a Dominican friar, Francisco
de Vitoria, impugned the Spanish emperor’s claim to the right
to take land from the people and press them into bondage. He
condemned rhe unjust war; he absolved the aborigines from the
sin of irreligion: and he denied that the pope had civil and political
sovereignty in the temporal realm. Another, Fray Antonio de
Montesinos. directed his indignation at the Church for failing to
suppress the cruelty of the first settlers from Spain. From the
pulpit he denounced their merciless treatment of the Indians,
stating that because of such treatment they had forfeited their
hope of eternal salvation.
In the same revolutionary' spirit, the Jesuit Juan de Mariana
justified tyrannicide. Juan Luis Vives, a pacifist and a witness
of the misery of his times, and to a small degree initiator of
modern psychology', said with respect to the Inquisition, “we have.
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The Revolution of the Latin American Church
in truth, the souls of torturers.'' There was also Francisco Suarez
who laid down the proper limits of Church and State, and based
liberty on the social contract. Others, too, worked the furrow
opened by Erasmus for "new Christians.”
The Spanish humanist current persisted throughout the period
of conquest and colonization, and during the republican epoch
as well, expressed by clergy who denounced the infamy hidden
by a semblance of grandeur. Some clergy actively and directly
attacked slaver)’ and the misery inflicted on the aborigines. When
Charles III expelled the Jesuits in 1767. he turned them into
active agents of sedition. Father Pablo Vizcardo Guzman, creole
of Arequipa, Peru, launched a revolutionary program, entrusting
its spread to English Protestants, allies of American liberty, the
resentful lower clergy, and the proscribed Jesuits. Within the
humanist element of the Latin American Church, the minority
turned to medieval piety through the Franciscanism which licked
the sores of the slaves and led them to the altars.
But Antonio de Montesinos. Bartolome de las Casas. Antonio
de Vieyra. and Luis Beltran, among others, denounced and op­
posed the oppressive system, demanding change. They launched
their attack against the arrogant authority of the nobles and the
Indian caciques who joined forces with the high ecclesiastical
dignitaries. Toribio de Benavente. the Jesuit Manoel Nobrega,
Pedro de Gante. Alonso Sandoval, and Pedro Claver found balms
for misery and escape from reality in their visionary spirituality’.
They sought to smooth rocky ways with compassion and piety.
Though they endeavored to assuage the pain of wounds with the
daily miracle of love, they looked upon the causes of those wounds
with resignation.
That was not the case with the others, the fighting rebels. Wit­
ness a sermon preached to the island's settlers bv Antonio de
Montesinos in a rude church in Espanola. Just a few’ years after
the discovery’, the Dominican thundered.
Tell me by w’hat right and under what law do you hold these Indians
in such cruel and horrible servitude.-’ By what authority do you make
such detestable war against these people who were dwelling gently
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