The birth of a local theology

IN LATE December 1945, I went to Havana, Cuba, to the first Catholic Inter-American Social Action Congress.
The week-long meeting revealed some important facts about the Catholic Church in Latin America. Social concerns were so low on the bishops' agenda that not a single one bothered to attend. For almost all the participants, the Church had only two serious challenges: a shortage of priests and the growing Protestant penetration of the region. No concern was
expressed about the need for land retorm, the rapid population growth without a corresponding expansion of the economy, the social issues raised by urbanisation.
All of this was constant with the history of the church in Latin America. It had arrived as a department of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchy, charged with caring for the health and education of the relatively small part of the population needed as a service sector for the oligarchy. Beyond that, its role was limited to socialising the masses into acceptance of their obligation to serve, using the sacraments and other sacred symbols to sanction its authority and that of the state.
Big change began in the late 1950s, when Pope Pius XII appealed to the US Church and other missionary-sending churches to allocate 10 per cent of their priests and sisters to Latin America. Many who went from the United States had been expelled from China, and nearly all arrived with traditional concepts of the missionary's role. For most, this meant creating in Latin America USstyle parishes to serve as pilot projects which the Latin Americans would embrace and replicate.
This model quickly proved dysfunctional. The society lacked the economic base for such structures. A parish plant, even if built with external funds, served only a privileged handful in a parish of a 100,000 scattered over a vast area. Many missionaries gradually reached the conclusion that radical social change should be a of priority, on the grounds that people must live as humans before they can live as Christians. These attitudes were reinforced by Vatican Council II (1962-1965), with its new emphasis on the people of God and the Christian's role in bringing the human condition in all its aspects to the perfection envisaged by the Creator.
The many experiments that were soon being tried had one important element in common. They stressed the need fdr active involvement of the entire people of God, a far cry from the traditional approach, which presumed a transfer of knowledge — and of faith from one who possessed it to others who lacked it.
They also stressed implementing in practice the conclusions reached intellectually. More and more people were picking up bits of the theory elaborated by Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator exiled by the military dictatorship in 1964 and then teaching Chileans about "conscientisation," the process by which one becomes aware of one's reality and decides to act to change it.
I observed this process as it developed in several countries in the late 1960s. a trained pastoral worker, sometimes a priest, more often a nun, occasionally a lay person would assemble a small group in a slum. They would pray, read Scripture, discuss their concerns and work on some community problem: the water supply, a school or whatever they agreed they most needed. It was the beginning of the Christian base community.
That is the radical change in the Church in Latin America since 1945, a change that has resulted in the emergence of Central America's people as the new historic subject committed to take control of its destiny.
There is something of a chicken-and-egg relationship between the Christian base community and the theology of liberation. Peruvian Fr Gustavo Gutierrez, who as its founder ought to know, says liberation theology is the systemised formulation of the theological wisdom generated in the Christian base communities. It seems clear in any case that the two movements are reciprocally supportive and mutually enriching.
The base communities do not become political movements, nor do they ally formally with political movements. But their members incorporate themselves into whatever organisations are available that they judge will promote the objectives they seek.
In Central America, as in all Latin America, this movement has given the church a broad base it previously lacked. (I shall discuss later how this base articulates with the traditional superstructures). It has also resulted in an enormous release of emotional energy that has expressed itself in the religious and political spheres.
to be continued next week