THE POPE IN COLOMBIA TRYING TO DEFINE CHURCH’S STAND ON SOCIAL REFORMS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 14

THE POPE IN COLOMBIA TRYING TO DEFINE CHURCH’S STAND ON SOCIAL REFORMS

(Reprinted from "Newsweek'' by arrangement)

He had seen it all before: the courtly State officials and military guard awaiting his descent; the clutch of microphones and television cameras ready to record his first remarks; and behind all this, the swaying, gasping masses anxious, as always, to touch the hem of his garments. Yet the tumult which greeted Pope Paul VI in Bogota, Colombia, far transcended the welcome he had received on any of his other celebrated travels.

He was the first Pope In history to appear on. Latin American soil, and the thousands of the pilgrims who jammed Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport wept when the slim Pontiff knelt to kiss the ground as once another European traveller, Christopher Columbus, had done. Here, they proclaimed, was “the Pope of Hope” come to uplift a continent where tens of millions are mired in poverty. Paul had decided five years ago to visit the Latin continent, and the immediate occasion for his trip was dual: to address the 39th International Eucharistic Congress, and to open a crucial two-week meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (Celam). Conference Critical The Congress pageantry offered an exceptional opportunity for the Pope to remind Latin Americans of their Catholic roots and hopefully revive their flagging fidelity to the church. Though the continent nominally represents a third of the world's half-billion Roman Catholics, only 10 per cent of the population, at best, practice their religion. More important, the ratio of priests has fallen to one per 5000 faithful, and in many cities seminaries are virtually empty.

The Celam conference is critical to the future of Latin American Catholicism. More than in Europe and the United States, the Latin bishops are separated by theological and political extremes. Some view the world partially in Marxian terms, others think only in categories that were outdated at the Council of Trent. Celam was formed in 1955, long before Vatican Council II approved such regional organisations, and it has given the otherwise disparate Latin churches a measure of continental unity. Violent Change? Among the working papers prepared for Celam delegates is an analysis of social ills which argues that Latin oligarchies and foreign (principally the United States) businesses have created a “situation of violence.” “The alternatives are not the status quo and change,” the paper goes on. “Rather, they are violent change and peaceful change."

Vatican Curia officials tried to prevent the publication of the document but failed. Liberal Latin bishops admitted privately that they were delighted over the “indescretion.” They wanted the world to know that they were wrestling with real problems and hoped the Pope would respond vigorously to the subsequent

criticisms of conservative newspaper editorials. But Paul remained unmoved.

“Not Bread Alone”

Time and again he preached against revolution and condemned violence. To an unexpectedly small crowd of 35,000 campesinos—3oo,ooo had been predicted—he promised that the church would continue to denounce economic injustice, but reminded them that man does not exist by bread alone. “Do not place your trust in violence and revolution," he warned. “That is contrary to the Christian spirit.” Clearly, Paul was trying to negate his previous position, stated cautiously enough two years ago in “Populorum Progressio,” that violent revolution may be licit in an extreme case of “manifest and long-standing tyranny.” Many leftist Latin Catholics have since accepted the Pope’s words as an apt description of their societies and used his encyclical as moral justification for revolution. But it was soon apparent that Paul’s pilgrimage was part of a much larger effort by Vatican conservatives to prevent the Latin bishops from endorsing any radical social programmes at all. Many Churches The Pope’s trip tends to obscure the fact that the Catholic Church in Latin America is not a continental monolith. On the contrary, it is many churches, each with its ov.n relationship to secular government and society. Columbia’s is a State Church, supported by a concordat with the Vatican; the heads of State of Argentina and Paraguay must by constitutional law be Roman Catholies. In Cuba, the Castro revolution has been relatively kind to the Catholic Church. Few Cubans attend church, but then only 5 per cent were regular churchgoers before Castro came to power. Cuba's energetic Papal Nuncio, Msgr. Cesare Zacchi, has publicly praised Castro as “ethically, a Christian,” and encouraged Catholics to join in the work of the Communist Party. Actually, of course, Cuban Catholics have no othe. political choice, but the example of a church working alongside a Communist Government has exercised a powerful influence on Catholics in other Latin countries.

The church in Guatemala confronts a totally different society. Social and economic status follow strictly racial lines with a tiny minority of white Latins controlling the land, government, military and businesses (in conjunction with s-ich United States

industrial giants as the United Fruit Co.). The Castroite guerrilla cause is claiming the consciences of more and more priests, and the terrorism from both sides leaves little room for choosing non-violence. President Eduardo Frei Montalva's Christian Democratic Government in Chile represents the most successful effort by a Latin country to create a political party similar to the liberal Catholic parties of Western Europe. But today, the hierarchy and the Christian Democrats appear anxious to eliminate any lingering impression that the Government is tied to the church. On the contrary, there are signs that the JesuPs at the highly influential Centro Bellarmino in Santiago are ready to support those radical leftists among the Christian Democrats who regard Frei’s reform programmes as too gradual. Widest Extremes Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, embraces the widest ideological extremes among its 'bishops. Radical bishops must move carefully under the gaze of President Arthur da Costa e Silva’s military regime. Much of their effort is aimed at Catholic students who, with the support of progressive theologians, are fashioning a radical social programme whose goals are more revolutionary than those of the Marxist youth.

In light of these complexities, the Pope’s efforts to outline a common Catholic stance on social reform were all but hopeless from the start. His generalised appeals for agrarian reform and greater taxes on the rich fejl like familiar cliches on the ears of clergy who feel the desperate pull between violent and near-violent revolution. His concluding speech to the Celam delegates, in which he upheld his recent ban against contraception, illustrated the church’s dilemma.

For Many, Little Hope

In the final analysis, it seemed likely that the real effect of Paul’s South American pilgrimage would be found less in what he said there than in the image he left behind. Thus for the hundreds of thousands who cheered him, the visit was unquestionably a high point, indeed, and one they would long remember. But still larger numbers are apt to remember that their distinguished visitor, for all of his eloquence, brought them little hope that their lot may really be improved. They saw him as a great potentate from far away, who shared the speakers' platforms with Government leaders and proud representatives of the ruling oligarchs, and accordingly they seemed much more interested and impressed with the bread-and-circus aspects of the visit. Indeed, well before he boarded his aircraft for the flight back across the Atlantic to Rome, Paul’s initially tumultuous and moving reception had been somehow turned into a kind of Catholic carnival, with the Pope as the main attraction, thus underscoring once again the fact the Catholicism's roots do not run deep in Latin America's stony soil.