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Progressive Ctholicism
Most scholars view the appearance of progressive Catholicism as a dramatic break with the past. The shift in attention toward solving the economic and political problems of the poor defines progressive Catholicism (Bruneau 45). Catholic progressivism in Latin America is typically dated from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). It was at this historic conference (originally designed to meet the challenges of modernization in Europe) that "democratic" reforms were first introduced and sanctioned by the papacy (Hewitt 123). Mass was to be said in the vernacular, Church members were to practice toleration for alternative ideas, and greater attention was to be paid to social justice. But, in reality, a few Latin American Churches anticipated these reforms by at least a decade, especially with regard to social justice. Brazil led the way. During the 1950s, bishops in Brazil expressed interest in land reform, literacy campaigns, and rural cooperatives (Mainwaring 128). These efforts went beyond the traditional alms giving favored in the past; instead, they represented a sincere desire to improve the long-term living conditions of the lower classes. Even before the convocation of Vatican II, attention also was given to promoting greater lay involvement in religious services in Brazil.
No event in Latin America crystallized the progressive movement more than the Second General Conference of CELAM, held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968 (Mainwaring 148). The purpose for gathering bishops from throughout the region was to apply the reforms and recommendations of Vatican 11 to the Latin American context. Under the leadership of progressive bishops such as Hélder Câmara ( Brazil) and Raúl Silva Henríquez ( Chile), this conference was celebrated for its declaration in favor of social justice, later called the "preferential option for the poor." Supposedly, the poor always possessed a special place in Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, the Brazil bishops thought it necessary to publicly declare support for this social group. Given the tarnished past of the Church when it came to serving the poor, this was the least they could do.
To put the preferential option into action, the participants at the Medellín conference advocated the development of comunidades eclesiales de base (CEBs), known in English As ecclesial base communities (Mainwaring 89). Overall, the range of CEB activity is quite broad. Despite their notoriety for radical political activity, no presupposition should be made regarding their ideological content. Most people participate in base communities primarily for their religious content and often ignore the political messages propagated by their progressive leaders.
The intellectual engine driving Catholic progressivism during the 1960s and 1970s was liberation theology. As defined by one of its founding fathers, Gustavo Gutiérrez, liberation theology attempts to reflect on the experience and meaning of the faith based on the commitment to abolish injustice and to build a new society; this theology must be verified by the practice of that commitment, by active, effective participation in the struggle which the exploited social classes have undertaken against their oppressors (Hewitt 56)
Two elements stand out in this philosophy. The first is its reliance on Marxist methodology. More accurately, liberation theologians base their understanding of Latin American poverty on dependency theory, a perspective that views poverty and repression in the Third World as a direct function of the world capitalist economy dominated by Western Europe and the United States. Central to the solutions for persistent underdevelopment offered by many dependency theorists and liberation theologians is the concept of class struggle. This provided radical Catholics the intellectual justification they needed to join revolutionary movements during the 1970s. Second, liberation theologians emphasize praxis, or putting the liberating words of the Gospel to work. For this reason, liberation theologians have been the most fervent advocates of CEBs, giving the base-community movement its reputation for political radicalism. Although both CEBs and liberation theology have had a significant qualitative impact on Catholic thought and action, these movements remain quantitatively small (Hewitt 55). Their primary influence has been to challenge non-liberationist priests and bishops to think more carefully about the plight of their poorest parishioners. Many bishops were receptive to this challenge, others not.
In terms of Church-state relations, Catholic progressivism manifested itself as opposition to authoritarian rule. Not only did several episcopacies denounce their respective military rulers, but they rejected authoritarianism as a method of rule per se. This represented a significant break with the Church's traditional preference for elite-based politics. In the past, whenever the Church felt its interests were somehow threatened by a given government, it would simply throw its support to those elites who opposed the sitting governors. Beginning in the 1960s, this strategy changed. Espousing a preferential option for the poor implied defending the interests of the popular classes against dictatorial abuses. The policies adopted by military governments during the 1970s had the effect of distributing income upward, away from the lower classes. In order to accomplish this task with a minimal amount of social resistance, dictators resorted to previously unseen levels of repression. Labor movements and other popular-class organizations bore the brunt of this assault. To show solidarity with the popular sectors, bishops publicly denounced both the economic policies and repressive tactics associated with military regimes. In addition, these bishops also attacked the philosophical underpinnings of authoritarian rule as being inherently unjust.
In Brazil, the episcopacy responded to the dictatorship (1964-85) by consolidating a number of progressive elements that were already developing in several dioceses. Base communities were expanded, though they still reached only a small fraction of the country's Catholic population. Episcopal criticisms of human rights abuses and economic injustice grew increasingly common beginning in the late 1960s with the appointment of Dom Aloísio Lorscheider as general secretary of the Church's episcopal conference and with the ascension of Dom Paulo Arns to the archbishopric of São Paulo in 1970 (Serbin 45).
Brazil witnessed the emergence of the region's most progressive episcopacies comparatively early, before Vatican II. This immediately raises the question of how Vatican II could have shaped progressive pastoral reforms in this country when it had not occurred yet. It is important that Brazil experienced rapid growth of non-Catholic religions during the 1930s and 1940s, when Protestant growth was still relatively slow elsewhere. Consequently, bishops in Brazil implemented progressive reforms in the 1940s and '50s in an effort to improve their credibility among the popular classes and slow the exodus from the Catholic faith. As for political alliances, each episcopacy sought state assistance from the democratic regimes preceding military rule, but there was a noticeable drift toward reformist parties that were more in tune with the masses.
The Brazilian bishops first sought to stave off the Protestant advance in the 1930s and 1940s by seeking prohibitions on the entry of missionaries into their country (Mainwaring 197). A renewed and strengthened alliance with the state under Getúlio Vargas enhanced their ability to take such defensive actions, although the state's cooperation on this issue was lukewarm at best. At a higher level, bishops tried using their connections with the political elite to impede the entrance of missionaries. Laws were passed, strengthened, or enforced in several nations making it illegal to import the Bible. At the urging of several bishops, president Getúlio Vargas pressured the United States government to limit the number of evangelical missionaries entering Brazil in the 1940s (Hewitt 44). This issue arose when the United States tried to persuade Brazil to join the Allies in World War II. Vargas, not particularly interested in getting militarily involved, delayed Brazil's entry until the war was assuredly won. The negotiations over Protestant missionaries, while directly beneficial to the Catholic hierarchy, probably served as one of Vargas's many stalling tactics, rather than representing a sincere desire to help the Church. The restrictions were never enacted.
Many Church leaders realized that a new pastoral commitment was needed if Brazil was to remain a predominantly Catholic nation ( Mainwaring 213). Learning from the success of Protestant missionaries, the Catholic hierarchy promoted numerous social projects and organizations aimed at improving the lives of the working class and poor beginning in the late 1940s. Many of the techniques employed by the Brazilian Church mirrored the efforts being made by the Protestants, including grassroots literacy campaigns centered around reading and discussing the Bible, health clinics, and rural cooperatives. Eventually, the Brazilian Church gave birth to the base community movement. However, in 1964 the Brazilian military came to power with the goal of demobilizing the popular sectors. After it became clear to the episcopacy that the regime intended to stay in power indefinitely, relations deteriorated. Having made a substantial commitment to the needs of the poor, it would have been difficult for the Church to maintain credibility had it supported a dictatorship that opposed their interests.
For most of its Latin American existence, the Catholic Church in Brazil enjoyed the comfort of being the sole provider of religious goods and services. This changed during the twentieth century. Although the doors for Protestantism opened as early as the mid-1800s, significant expansion waited until after 1930. Not only did Protestant missionaries challenge the hegemonic position of Catholicism, but an indigenous derivative of North American Protestantism--Pentecostalism--awoke many bishops and clergy to the fact that the region may not have been as Catholic as previously thought. If the Church was to remain a spiritual and moral force in Brazilian society, it needed to match the pastoral efforts put forth by Protestant churches. Having been associated with the political and economic elite for so long, a credible commitment to the poor meant publicly distancing itself from abusive governments.
It would be myopic to say that the need to compete with Protestantism was the only factor affecting the bishops' decision to oppose military rule. Growing poverty and repression, reforms promoted at Vatican II and Medellín, courageous decisions on the part of individuals, and martyrdom catalyzed the new attitude toward military rule. However, religious competition was a key component in explaining the variation in responses throughout the region. Competition furnished the wake-up call the Church needed to realize that poverty and repression were serious problems that demanded more than temporary acts of charity.
All this should not imply that bishops in the pro-authoritarian cases in Brazil were unconcerned about poverty and repression (no matter how callous their behavior appeared). But the costs of opposing the government (e.g., loss of funding for Church programs or physical repression) outweighed the benefits (measured in membership retention). Thus, the episcopacy had an incentive to maintain friendly relations with an unpopular government in the short term while hoping for better social conditions in the future. True, there were some who pleaded with the episcopacy to rethink its association with the ruling elite, but most parishioners just remained quiet, as they always had. In other words, there was no mechanism (or alarm) to inform the bishops they were not acting in accordance with popular desires.
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