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Mexico and cuba

At the Heart of a  People
He arrives as a pilgrim and is welcomed by thousands of enthusiastic believers. He invites everyone to follow Jesus, in whose light reality can be understood most deeply. The Pope’s visit to Latin America last March points the way to true liberation: “If we allow the love of Christ to change our heart, then we can change the world.”

by Lorenzo Albacete

I often wonder why it is so difficult for Americans to grasp the importance of Latin America. Were it not for the threat posed by Cuba during the years of the Soviet Union, the meaning of the Cuban Revolution for Latin America would have never been a subject of interest to most Americans. After the threat ended, Cuba and the rest of Latin America disappeared back into Hollywood stereotyping and academic circles.
Except in Miami, of course (especially during election time), where Cuban Americans continued to keep reminding the country of the tragedy of their ancestral land. As for Mexico, its importance has been kept alive mostly by fear of illegal immigration, cultural impact, and narco-traffic violence. Even American Catholics are mostly ignorant of what is going on in the Latin American Church.
Not so for the Church and the Holy See. Two words summarize the intense concerns of the Holy See about Latin America since the Second Vatican Council: evangelization and liberation. In a way, much of the efforts of the Church in Latin America for the past 40 years or so have been to understand , proclaim, and live the proper relation between the two.

Overcoming schizophrenia. It was Blessed Pope John Paul II who, visiting Haiti, launched the term New Evangelization to bring together the various responses of the Church to the challenges of the age. Although without a doubt Pope John Paul sought to correct the errors in the different theologies of liberation, he left that task primarily to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger pursued this task with great zeal, recognizing in the proposed theologies of liberation a greater threat to Catholic doctrine than what most of its opponents realized. Ratzinger realized that the greatest danger of liberation theology was not its flirting with Marxism; he saw it as a potential if not actual rejection of the Incarnation itself, and thus the destruction of Christianity itself. The question was: “What is God like according to liberation theology and how does it compare to God as revealed by Jesus? Is Jesus absolutely necessary for our knowledge of this God, or are there other possible modes of revelation through which God can be known? If that is the case, what is the nature and mission of the Church?”
On the airplane on its way to Mexico, one reporter asked the Pope about his message to all of Latin America, now celebrating the bicentennial of the independence of most of its countries. He phrased his question thus: “In spite of its economic development, it continues to be a region of social contrasts where one finds a sharp contrast between the very rich and the very poor. At times, it seems that the Catholic Church is not encouraged to commit herself to deal energetically with this situation. Is it possible to continue to speak about a ‘theology of liberation’ in a positive manner, after certain excesses concerning Marxism and violence that have been corrected?”
The Holy Father replied as follows in terms that, in my opinion, summarize well the content of his message to the entire continent, including the United States. These were his words: “Naturally the Church must ask herself whether she is doing enough for social justice in this vast continent. This is a question of conscience which we must always pose to ourselves. We must ask what the Church can and must do, what it cannot and should not do. The Church is not a political power, or a Party, but it is a moral reality, a moral power. Inasmuch as politics must be fundamentally a moral reality, the Church, at this level, has fundamentally something to do with politics. I repeat what I have already said: the first thought of the Church must be how to educate the conscience and thus create the necessary sense of responsibility... be it at the level of individual ethics or at the public level.”
There is, continued the Pope, a problem, a lack, shown by many Catholics, a kind of schizophrenia between individual morality and a public one. It is imperative, he said, to educate on how to overcome this schizophrenia. This is the purpose of the Social Doctrine of the Church. In effect, the Social Doctrine of the Church as clarified and expanded to respond to today’s thirst for justice, is for Pope Benedict the Magisterium’s response to liberation theology. It is, so to speak, the reasonable dimension of the faith of the Church engaged with the facts of today’s struggle for justice. It is a response free from ideologies in the analysis of these facts, ideologies which then fashion theologies to correspond to their analysis of the current situation of society.

A common rationality. “Certainly,” said the Pope, “the light of faith allows us to see better what reason also sees,” thus it can liberate reason from the darkening effects of deceitful interests, creating “within the social doctrine models that allow for political cooperation, above all for overcoming this social division. I do not know if the expression ‘liberation theology’ ...would be of much help. What is important is the common rationality to which the Church offers a fundamental contribution,” fulfilling her mission of the education of conscience in public as well as in private life.
The secular media made much of the Pope’s rejection of Marxism, but failed to clarify the context of his remarks. The Pope was asked how he expected to continue the dialogue between the Cuban Church and the Marxist Cuban government begun with the visit of Pope John Paul II 14 years ago, and he replied that he saw his visit to Cuba as a continuation of this dialogue (inserting it within the Church’s efforts in the entire continent). In this context, he implied that the once strong influence of Marxism in the continent had ended because today it has become evident that the Marxist ideology as it was conceived did not correspond to reality. (Notice that it is to reason that the Pope is appealing in his dismissal of Marxism as irrelevant. Whatever is not reasonable, whatever does not “correspond to reality,” will sooner or later become irrelevant.) Marxism, he said, can no longer serve for the construction of a society.

On the side of liberty. This is an interesting way of dismissing Marxism: maybe in the past one had to take its views seriously, but its irrationality is now evident. It is with this appeal to reason that the Church seeks to dialogue with the countries of Latin America–in Cuba as well as in other places where Marxism may still be a temptation for some intellectuals and politicians. In any case, according to Pope Benedict, through its Social Doctrine, the Church can contribute to the necessary creation of new models of society. These different models, corresponding to the reality of the different situations throughout the world, can be tested for their adequacy by their view of liberty, especially religious liberty: “It is obvious that the Church will always be on the side of liberty,” pledged the Pope, “liberty of conscience, religious liberty.” In such a way, all the faithful will contribute to the creation of a truly just society.
In reply to the last question, the Holy Father sought to insert all of this into the broader concept of the new evangelization. What the Church is doing in Latin America is in fact part of the pastoral program initiated by Vatican II in response to the challenges and opportunities posed by the modern world and which has come to be called the New Evangelization. In this broader context, the greatest challenge to the proclamation of the Gospel is the global influence of secularism. Once again, Ratzinger returns to the question about the reality of God.

The way to God. New expressions of the Gospel are needed to respond to the absence of God in the culture of modernity, the difficulty of finding a way to access Him, of seeing Him as a reality that concerns my life. We must seek ways to recover God in light of the “modern rationality as the fundamental orientation of our lives, the fundamental hope of our lives, the foundation of those values that really build a [human] society, and how to take into account the specificity of diverse situations.” Pope Benedict went on to sketch out the various components of the New Evangelization as follows:
First, we must proclaim a God that responds to the demands of reason so that we can observe the rationality of the cosmos, and grasp that there is Something behind it, even though we cannot understand how this Mystery can be close to us, how it can concern me.
Second, this synthesis between a God who is great and majestic and a “small God” who is near to me and orients my life and shows me its value is, according to the Pope, the “nucleus of evangelization.”
Third, we must respond to the particular circumstances of the place being evangelized. In Latin America, it is very important that Christianity not be something of reason alone, but above all a reality of the heart, as in the popular celebrations of the Virgin Mary. “This intuition of the heart must be joined with the rationality of the faith and the depth of a faith that goes beyond reason. We must seek never to lose the heart, but to join heart and reason that they may be in cooperation, for only this way man is complete and can really help and work for a better future.”
During the visits to Mexico and Cuba the Pope had little else to say beyond what he said on the flight to Mexico. He mostly expanded on the points he had made on the flight from Rome, applied to local circumstances and traditions. For us in the United States, the methodology of evangelization displayed by the Holy Father was, in my opinion, the most important aspect of his trip. The Holy Father’s final homily in Havana is a masterful summary of this methodology.
First and above all is the issue of knowing the Mystery behind all that exists called God and to discover how to reach Him. “We are part of that great chorus which praises the Lord without ceasing. We join this concert of thanksgiving, and we offer our joyful and confident voice which seeks to solidify the journey of faith and love and truth.” (Can anything be more typically Ratzinger than this view of human nature and dignity?) This way of life, however, will always invite persecution, but like the three young men about to be executed by the King of Babylon in the Book of Daniel (First Reading of the Mass of the day), we must be confident that God will not abandon us to annihilation and that He is very close to us. God is with us with and in Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God the Father, “the Savior, the One who alone can show us the truth and give us genuine freedom.” Notice the sequence of topics: Praise - persecution - Jesus - truth and freedom. Concerning truth, Pope Benedict proclaimed: “The truth is a desire of the human person” and the search for it “always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom.” Many try to avoid this task, questioning the possibility of ever knowing what truth is. Others deny that there is any truth valid for all (skepticism and relativism). This way of life, said the Pope, makes our heart become cold, alone, isolated from others.

For the entire continent. Then there are those who wrongly interpret what the authentic search for truth is and close themselves up in their own views of truth, often seeking to impose it on others. This behavior is a separation from reason, and “anyone who acts irrationally cannot be a disciple of Jesus. Faith and reason are necessary and complementary in the pursuit of truth.” Moreover, the existence of “a Truth that stands above humanity is an unavoidable condition for attaining freedom” since in it we discover the foundation of a fully human ethics that can bring us all in the world together. After discussing such global ethics in the most human spheres of action, and insisting on the need for religious liberty in order to make this contribution to society, the Holy Father boldly summarized his message: “I wish to proclaim openly that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In Him everyone will find complete freedom.”
The New Evangelization is the invitation to know the truth that sets us free. This message, as the Pope made clear, was intended for the entire continent, USA included.
How will it guide our efforts for a new evangelization? Here, once again, is where our freedom comes in, to accept with Mary the invitation of Jesus, or to ignore it.