CHURCH AND POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA Church and Politics in Latin America Edited by Dermot Keogh Department of Modern History University College, Cork Foreword by Graham Greene Palgrave Macmillan UK ISBN 978-1-349-09663-3 ISBN 978-1-349-09661-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09661-9 © Dermot Keogh 1990 Foreword © Graham Greene 1990 'God and Man in Nicaragua' © Conor Cruise O'Brien 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-44534-1 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, StMartin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 FlfSt published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-02815-2 Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Church and politics in Latin America I edited by Dermot Keogh ; foreword by Graham Greene. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-02815-2 I. Catholic Church-Latin America-History-20th century. 2. Christianity and politics--History-20th century. 3. Latin America-Church history-20th century. 4. Latin America-Politics and govemment-1980- BX1426.2.C46 1990 261.7'098-dc20 89-37269 CIP Contents Notes on the Contributors vii Preface XI Foreword by Graham Greene XV PART ONE The Vatican and the Latin American Catholic Church 1 1. The Path of Latin American Catholicism Emile Poulat 3 2. The Catholic Church and Politics in Latin America: Basic Trends and Likely Futures Daniel Levine 25 3. The Vatican's Latin American Policy Peter Hebblethwaite 49 4. CELAM - The Forgetting of Origins Franr;ois Houtart 65 5. Latin America and the Special Rome Synod Jon Sobrino 82 PART TWO Theological Perspectives on the Latin American Reality 95 6. Central America: The Political Challenge of the Faith Jon Sobrino 97 7. Liberation and New Creation: A Theological Conversation Enda McDonagh 118 PART THREE Politics and the Gospel in Central America 129 8. God and Man in Nicaragua Co nor Cruise 0' Brien 131 9. The Rise and Fall of Social Catholicism in Costa Rica Rodolfo Cardenal 176 10. The Catholic Church and the Politics of Accommodation in Honduras Rodolfo Cardenal 187 v VI Contents 11. Radical Conservatism and the Challenge of the Gospel in Guatemala Rodolfo Cardenal 205 12. The Martyrdom of the Salvadorean Church Rodolfo Cardenal 225 13. Elegy for the Murdered Bishop /tala Lopez Vallecillos 247 PART FOUR The Catholic Church, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Latin America 251 14. Fidel Castro, the Catholic Church and Revolution in Cuba Margaret E. Crahan 253 15. Continuity and Change in the Mexican Catholic Church Soledad Loaeza-Lajous 272 16. The Call to do Justice: Conflict in the Brazilian Catholic Church, 1968-79 Leonard Martin 299 17. The Catholic Church and Politics in Chile Brian Smith 321 18. The Catholic Church and State Tension in Paraguay Andrea 0'B rien 344 19. The Catholic Church, Human Rights and the 'Dirty War' in Argentina Emilio Mignone 352 20. The Disappeared: A New Challenge to Christian Faith in Latin America Patrick Rice 372 21. Catholicism in Latin America: Conclusions and Perspectives Dermot Keogh 398 Bibliography 404 Index 417 Notes on the Contributors Rodolfo Cardenal is a member of the Jesuit community in San Salvador. He is professor of history at the University of Jose Simeon Canas, San Salvador. He is the author of El poder eclesiastico en El Salvador and Historia de una esperanza. Vida de Rutilio Grande. Margaret E. Crahan is Luce Professor of religion, power and political process, Occidental College, Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a number of studies on religion and politics in Cuba and Nicaragua. Conor Cruise O'Brien is a diplomat, historian, political scientist, literary critic and politician. Seconded from the Irish foreign service to the United Nations, he was UN representative in the Congo when Katanga tried to secede. He was an academic in Ghana and New York and later a member of the Dail and an Irish government minister from 1973 until 1977. He was editor-in-chief of The Observer in London from 1978 until 1981. Among the many books which Dr Cruise O'Brien has written are: Maria Cross-Imaginative Patterns in a group of Catholic Writers and To Katanga and Back. Graham Greene, the distinguished novelist, has had a long associa tion with Latin America. His novel, The Power and the Glory, explored the theme of Church and politics in Mexico. More recently, Graham Greene has written Getting to know the General - the Story of the Involvement. This is based on his five-year friendship with Omar Torrijos, who ruled Panama from 1968 until 1981. The book also contains an essay on Nicaragua where he has been a frequent visitor in recent years. Peter Hebblethwaite is Vatican affairs writer for the National Catholic Reporter. He joined the Jesuits at seventeen, studied philosophy in France and took a first in French and German at Oxford. He read theology at Heythrop College. In 1965 he went to Rome to report the final session of Vatican II. He was made editor of The Month in 1967. He left the Jesuits in 1974. His books include In the Vatican, The Runaway Church, Christian-Marxist Dialogue and Beyond, The Year of Three Popes, and John XXIII, Pope of the Council, for which he vii Notes on the Contributors Vlll was given a major award in the USA. He is working on a biography of Paul VI. He is a journalist. Fran~ois Houtart is professor of sociology at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and director of the Centre Tircontinental. He was an adviser to the Latin American bishops at the Second Vatican Council. Fr Houtart is the author of over twenty books on religion in the third world, many of which were written in collaboration with Professor G. Lemercinier. He has worked as a consultant on socio-religious problems in South America, Africa and Asia. De!_Jilot Keogh is a lecturer in the Department of Modem History, University College, Cork. He is the author of The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics, 1919-1939; The Rise of the Irish Working Class; Romero: El Salvador's Martyr; Ireland and Europe: a study in diplomacy, 1919-1948, and editor of Central America: Human Rights and US Foreign Policy. Daniel H. Levine is professor of political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of many publications, including Religion and Politics in Latin America: the Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia, and Conflict and Political Change in Venezuela. He is the editor of two volumes of essays: Churches and Politics in Latin America, and Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America. Soledad Loaeza-Lajous is a professor at the Colegio de Mexico where she teaches European and Latin American political history. She has written extensively on Church-State relations in Mexico. Enda McDonagh is professor of moral theology, Pontifical Univer sity, Maynooth. He was a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge in 1978, and Husking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1979-81. He is a consultant editor to Concilium, The Furrow and Irish Theological Quarterly. He is the author of, among others, Between Chaos and New Creation, The Making of Disciples, The Demands of Simple Justice, Social Ethics and the Christian, and edited Irish Challenges to Theology. Fr Leonard Martin is professor of systematic and pastoral theology in the Institute de Teologia e Pastoral, Fortaleza-Ce., Brazil. He has Notes on the Contributors IX worked in Latin America since 1974 as a missionary and as an academic. His ministerial experience includes assistance to the emerging base Christian communities in Goias and in Cear, and youth ministry in Rio de Janeiro. In July 1983, he was one of the invited assesores at the Fifth National Congress of Base Christian Communities in Caninde, Ceara. More recently, Fr Martin, who is a member of the Redemptorist order, has worked as a visiting pro fessor in Kimmage Manor Faculty of Missionary Theology, Dublin. His current research interests include Brazilian ecclesiology and the pastoral challenges posed by the variety of popular religions. Emilio Mignone was born in 1922 in Argentina. He is a lawyer and a specialist in political science and human rights. He is President of the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) in Buenos Aires. He played a central role as a lawyer in opposition to the military during the 1970s in his country. Dr Mignone is the author of Iglesia y Dictadura - El papel de la Iglesia a la luz de sus relaciones con el regimen militar which has been translated into English as Witness to the Truth- The Complicity of Church and Dictatorship in Argentina. Emile Poulat is a sociologist and historian. He is a director of research at the Centre Nationale de Ia Recherche Scientifique in Paris, and director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He was a former director of Groupe de Sociologie des Religions and founder of the journal, Archives de Sociologie des religions. He is the author of over twenty books and has been a visiting professor at universities in Canada and Mexico. Patrick Rice has worked in Latin America for the past twenty-five years as a priest and human rights organiser. He 'disappeared' in Argentina in 1976, was discovered in jail after vigorous inquiries by Irish diplomats and was expelled from the country by the military. He was a founder member of Federaci6n Latina-Americana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos. He was director of FEDEFAM in Caracas until 1987 when he returned to Buenos Aires to work with human rights organisations. Brian H. Smith is the author of The Church and Politics in Chile: Challenges to Modern Catholicism. Jon Sobrino is a member of the Jesuit community in San Salvador. He X Notes on the Contributors is professor of philosophy and theology at the Centre for Theological Reflection, University of Jose Simeon Canas, San Salvador. He is the author of Christology at the Crossroads and The True Church and the Poor. Italo Lopez Vallecillos is one of El Salvador's most distinguished poets and writers. He was director general of Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana (EDUCA) and professor at the Universidad de El Salvador and at the Universidad de Costa Rica. He is the author of Biografia del Hombre Triste, Puro Asombro, El Periodismo en El Salvador, and Gerardo Barrios y su Tiempo. His poetry has been translated into Italian, French and English. He died in exile in 1985.