Stephen P. Judd, M.M.
Building up the body of Christ in Latin America: The U.S. Catholic Missionary Movement on the eve of the Synod for the Americas

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Setting The Stage For The Synod

The call made by Pope John Paul II nearly five years ago in Santo Domingo for a Synod of Bishops from throughout the Americas has moved closer to reality sooner than most observers expected. At the time, Church leaders from both South and North America voiced their surprise upon hearing this announcement. Many wondered whether a Synod would interrupt a long process of Church renewal underway in Latin America since the founding of CELAM in 1955 and that gained notoriety and momentum at Medellin in 1969, Puebla in 1979 and Santo Domingo in 1992. Others thought such a gathering might present enormous difficulties in allowing for a more desirable grassroots participation and consultation among the local Churches prior to a Synod.

Whatever objections or obstacles there were and are, Christian communities from across the Americas gradually have come to see the wisdom for a convocation of this kind. On the eve of the Third Millennium it is viewed as an opportune occasion to reflect on a shared history of solidarity and collaboration as well as an often stormy relationship marked by conflict and suspicion. No sector within the North American church should welcome this development more than the U.S. missionary movement - past, present and future. And from the perspective of this movement I seek to address the context and challenges of what some are calling the Synod for the Americas.

Now more than ever, in the face of a more interdependent global economy and communications revolution the challenge of building and strengthening the connections between peoples of the North and South becomes all the more urgent. Paradoxically, we discover that, in general, those connections are not all that strong at the present time despite heroic efforts and great sacrifices in the past. An occasion like this, then, would seem to set the stage for a more honest assessment of where we stand in relation to each other. On all sides lies a deep realisation that the relationship cannot be taken for granted nor the opportunity for greater understanding squandered.

One response from the United States that has awakened a degree of interest is the process initiated by the Latin American Secretariat of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. One facet of that process involved a massive survey of U.S. Catholic Dioceses, religious communities, universities and other institutions to measure the depth of involvement with Latin America over the span of the past 35 years. This era corresponded to the peak of the modern missionary movement from North America to Latin America that coincided with the great influx of missionaries that arrived in the 1960's. That era has also been one marked by periodic tensions because of the frequent shifts in U.S. foreign policy.

The waning of the missionary movement in sheer numbers alone is cause to step back and look at recent developments in the world and the Church. A first fruit of the survey is a well documented account and interpretation of the data received, which surpassed expectations for its high percentage of respondents found in the book by Sister Mary McGlone, CSJ, entitled Sharing Faith Across the Hemisphere (Orbis). One can only hope that now Church leaders will be able to successfully engage the general Catholic populace in the U.S. in a preparation for the Synod, though time is of the essence with a Working Document (Instrumentum Laboris) still not generally available.

Christ Crucified Today In Latin America

Above and beyond the quantifiable statistics and variables that point to a mutual transformation of people in both hemispheres, however, there is still much room to raise concerns that would challenge U.S. Catholics to pay more attention to developments in Latin America and in the Latin American Church that can give shape to a better climate of mutual understanding. In order to build a healthy relationship between our peoples and a "discipleship of equals" we need to examine attitudes about the new historical moment in which we now live.

Vast changes brought about by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to new global alliances, alignments and world orders. What was perceived by some observers as the triumph of capitalism contributed to an uncritical embrace of neo­liberal economic models by most Latin American Governments. If U.S. involvement and interest in Latin America was no longer guided by the interventionist policies of the Reagan years, aggressive trade policies and the lure of new markets epitomised by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began to characterise the unequal relationship between North and South America on a less than level playing field. For Latin Americans mired in the throes of debt repayment, the consequences of the economic downturn of the "lost decade" of the 1980's and years of civil war and political violence, NAFTA types of economic arrangements seemed the only route to go toward economic and social development. Moreover, they seemed to be one of the only alternatives to shore up the fragile democratic governments that had emerged after years of dictatorship.

Because of a social location of insertion, by design or otherwise, into the world of the poor, missionaries were among some of the first to witness the contradictions in the new globalisation schemes that were set in motion. Early in the 1990's the consequences of the model with structural adjustment policies and privatisation of State-owned enterprises began to take its toll on the poorest of the poor. Maryknollers meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1992 addressed a letter to the Latin American Bishop delegates at the Santo Domingo Conference to raise this concern over a deterioration in the quality of life of millions of Latin Americans. That concern was more recently echoed in a widely acclaimed letter of the Latin American Jesuit Provincials. No longer do we speak of the oppressed but of growing numbers of "excluded and disposable" peoples among Latin America's poor that include the homeless and most vulnerable, the orphaned and working children who occupy the streets of Latin America's megacities in scandalous poverty. Only with the Chiapas rebellion of early 1994 did many notice the contradictions of economic globalisation, NAFTA and a concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the poor.

Unfortunately, for a majority of the U.S. public, attention focused more on the phenomenon of immigration and fears raised about it than to the effects of NAFTA on the poor of Mexico. Had the Bishops of California not taken such a strong stand against Proposition 187 in the 1996 elections, no one else would have voiced concerns about social justice issues related to immigration and immigration policy. That view was echoed in a document published jointly by the leadership of the three Maryknoll groups entitled We All Live In a Global Context (1996).

Raising Up The Body Of Christ

From 1968 onwards the Churches of the North looked to Latin America as one of the new sources for hope and renewal. The Medellin Conference of that year and the theological movement around liberation theology represented a new way to express Christian witness in a world where the gap between rich and poor was more and more evident. Many commentators in the Post­Berlin Wall period have cynically dismissed liberation theology as an obsolete "Marxist inspired" theology no longer applicable to address the problems of the present moment as if liberation theology was co­terminus with Eastern European Socialist States. Yet with the intensification of poverty in Latin America theologians and committed Christians alike have not ceased to ask that fundamental question of "what is going on here?"

Missionaries in the field, liberation theologians and the directors of CELAM (The Conference of Latin American Bishops) alike out of an abiding commitment to the poor continue to point up the glaring injustices of unbridled capitalism and frame them in a faith reflection built around new images of a crucified people. The Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino in El Salvador speaking of the principle of mercy envisions the task as "one of taking Jesus down from the Cross". But today there is a different voice giving expression to the broken body of Christ in myriad forms. Latin American people like the young Peruvian indigenous artist Anthoni Huillca give expression to this notion in a graphic painting of the Way of the Cross that depicts Christ crucified today as a young person forced by economic conditions to pan gold in Peru's jungle areas. Not only do they suffer exploitation and forced labour, but the young Quechua Indians in the painting grieve over the destruction of the jungle's fragile eco­system by uncontrolled mining interests.

If Maryknollers can state in their new mission vision that "in our interdependent yet fragmented and disconnected world, we seek to build up the Body of Christ through presence and active witness in places where it is most broken", it is because we have known people like Anthoni Huillca and a Mexican Zapotecan woman, Sofia Robles from Oaxaca. Sofia brought the plight of indigenous peoples from the perspective of indigenous women to the U.N. sponsored Women's Conference in Beijing as well as to a group of missionaries last year when she likened the protest that is being heard all over Mexico to a sign of the Resurrection. The thousands of Guatemalan refugees returning to their homeland after years of exile in Mexico speak in terms of having undergone an apprenticeship in a school of confronting harsh new realities with renewed hope in their ability to resist and rebuild their identity.

All of these people point us in the direction of a "protest against oppression but it is a protest with a proposal", una protesta con propuesta along the lines spelled out by the Nicaraguan Jesuit economist Xavier Gorostiaga. They also challenge missionaries, few as we may be on the eve of the Third Millennium, to rethink the ways we situate ourselves in mission, to strategise and maximise a presence that can make a difference both in the places we are sent as well as in our own country of origin. Whatever strategies that are devised, however, must be born of a compassionate love for the people and places to which we are sent. A key starting point and underlying principle remains the building up of the Body of Christ where it is most broken. As Sobrino challenges all of us, to bring that body down and hold it up for all to see.

Challenges To Building Up The Body Of Christ

The "globalisation from below" that Gorostiaga speaks about in his much quoted essay, "Latin America in the New World Order", (1992) requires the use of some of the same levers of power especially the access to technology that the powerful employ in implementing a global economy, but with a big difference. The difference comes about from the perspective that one takes in building up networks of poor people, women's groups, indigenous communities and movements and an awareness of ecology in function of strengthening civil society. But, in order to accomplish this North Americans must retrieve a precious legacy in our own country's history, namely the tradition of creating and promoting intermediate associations and voluntary groups. In Latin American societies built on the corporate model this tradition and perspective may seem foreign, but in the face of the widespread breakdown and crisis of institutional life, it can contribute to the fashioning of a new more participatory style that the architects of a new civil society increasingly call for. Traditional organisational models no longer suffice to meet the demands of highly mobile peoples and movements.

One of the best and most challenging features of the new missiology expressed so richly in Pope John Paul II's 1990 Encyclical, Redemptoris Missio derives from what he calls the new social phenomena that give rise to new missionary situations (cf. nn. 33­37). This is both an invitation to live out in new ways one of the hallmarks of this 35 year history or what Gustavo Gutierrez calls, "the physical and spiritual nearness to the poor". Witness in mission at these cross-roads and new marketplaces will place one squarely across what are the "religious and ethnic fault lines" of the global landscape where both new cultures and conflicts emerge side by side. More often than not, actions of conflict resolution and reconciliation will be of primary importance in these situations. To respond to such a changed social reality missionaries, especially priests and those involved in pastoral ministries of a parochial nature, will have to rethink and reimage the geographical parish as the chief locus of Church life.

All during the decade of the 1980's, especially in terms of the U.S. intervention and complicity in Central America, missionaries played a critical role in actions of solidarity that raised awareness of the shortcomings of this U.S. presence. That a wholesale and destructive intervention in Nicaragua was prevented was due, in no small part, to the multi-leveled efforts of missionaries acting to stem the official policies of the Reagan administration. A most effective and singularly exemplary and courageous action came about from the Sanctuary Movement in aiding people fleeing oppression in El Salvador and Guatemala. CIA involvement in Guatemala, likewise, was exposed by the relentless lobbying efforts of missionaries working through networks of human rights organisations in our nation's capital.

Today the need for this kind of action is no less necessary, but is likely not to arouse such widespread attention. An exceptional case is that of the campaign to close the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Though not as visibly prophetic but no less urgent, lobbying efforts to change economic and financial policies and programmes, call for the engagement of missionaries who know first hand how such policies impact the poor in concrete visible ways.

An area that is bound up with controversy and potential conflict is in addressing an increasingly pluralistic religious world in Latin America where Protestantism has enjoyed a spectacular growth. Missionaries from a religiously pluralistic culture and society like ours can play a critical role in witnessing to a more dialogical relationship. Latin Americans of whatever persuasion still have not come to terms with what will most certainly be a culture and society less possessed of a Catholic cultural substratum that was underscored at Santo Domingo in 1992. The challenge to enable dialogue to take place around common human problems and the witness of life in the midst of death dealing structures is another way we build up the Body of Christ that encompasses all Christians, Catholic, Pentecostal and Evangelical.

Finally, the challenge to the witness of North American missionaries on the eve of the Synod is to participate more fully in the process of animating a mission commitment from Latin America to other continents. For some years the Latin American Church in a way unbeknownst to most North Americans has been busily engaged in a process to animate this Church to become more active in its responsibility to mission ad gentes through a series of missionary congresses, called COMLAs (Congreso Misionero Latinoamericano).

The most recent COMLA in 1995 held in the Brazilian city of Bela Horizonte reflected the diversity and creativity of the Latin American Church. Although there is still a small percentage of Latin American missionaries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, North America and Europe, dramatic growth has taken place to build on the earlier renewal in Church life and structures that came out of Latin America with the Base Communities and liberation theology. Participation in the COMLA process is merely one way to raise awareness of Latin America's missionary responsibility.

And that participation can only be enhanced and enriched by the missionaries' commitment to an inculturated local Church, so that Latin America in mission is expressive of a rich culturally diverse mosaic. Missionaries have long laboured among the indigenous peoples of Latin America and among those of Afro­American descent. By promoting the cultural values and religious world views of Latin America's peoples and cultures we strengthen Catholic identity globally. Engagement in the inter-religious dialogue with indigenous theological movements and world views called for at Santo Domingo carries with it implications for a radically different pastoral practice that many Church leaders fear.

Closing The Chasm Between The Americas

The above challenges do not exhaust the number of areas that fall within the scope of a Synod, although they do serve as a barometer for measuring the agenda and potential outcome of a gathering of this scale and high exposure. If the Synod is to become more than a perfunctory event on the way to the Third Millennium and really take root in the lives of the people, we would hope that consideration be given to examining the effects of globalisation on the poor. Secondly, we hope that the place of Latin America in the global community be explored as to its vast potential to influence the future course of history and the common aspiration of greater communion among peoples.

Missionaries like ourselves no longer play the major, high profile role we once did in the life of the local Churches of Latin America. Other protagonists have rightfully moved up to take their place. Yet, we carry within us a living memory and a present witness to how God's grace works in and through people in their brokeness to disclose new sources of hope. Now more than ever we are called to be that bridge and vital link that keeps peoples connected over the chasm that separated Lazarus and Dives (Lk 16:16­31).

We can only hope that our witness has served and will serve in some way to counteract what that most prophetic of all voices of our North American Church, Thomas Merton, once wrote in an all too little known essay:

If the Synod and Church succeed in closing just a small bit of this chasm that widens and expands at each historic juncture, it will have heralded a new era in hemispheric relations and ushered in a most promising new day for building up the Body of Christ. It is an opportunity not to be missed and will provide one of history's rare second chances to enable a more authentic encounter with the living Jesus Christ.