The missionary and the Capitalist System

Today (October 15, 2011) was “occupy” day, and while “Occupy Nanaimo” was certainly a lot tamer than “Occupy Wall Street”, it was an opportunity for the 99% to get out and voice their disgust with the current economical structure not only of the country but the entire world.  Slowly people are beginning to waken up to a reality where a new “serfdom” is becoming the reality – working people are working more for less and the reward of a pension sufficient to take care of one’s old age is becoming unattainable for the majority.

As I listened to the speeches from a great diversity of people, I walked about to read the protest signs of the participants.  Each poster highlighted one aspect of the corruption of our current system – but collectively they were like a essay of the popular masses shouting out for radical reform.

I spoke briefly to one young man – no more than 20 or so years old – who carried a flag with the letters “I.W.W.” – I guessed “International Workers of the World”.  I was close – the “Industrial Workers of the World”, an organization also known as the “Wobblies”. This organization was founded in 1905 in the USA and espoused a radical platform that put it at odds even with the traditional labour movements. The cry of the Wobblies was “an injury to one is an injury to all” and their aim was to unite the working class in a struggle against the employing class.  It was interesting to see this young man in Nanaimo representing this century old theme with enthusiasm.  Of course what would be a good protester without a few leaflets – and thus he gave me a small handout.  On it was a diagram titled “Pyramid of the Capitalist System”.

Pyramid of the Capitalist System

While it is perhaps a bit simplistic, I was struck by the basic truths of what it portrayed. This young man in Nanaimo  – perhaps he understood the relevance of the diagram – I don’t know? – but the challenge in understanding the system in which we live was no where near my thinking at his young age. This came some years later after I arrived in Peru. In my early 20′s I was on the clerical treadmill in the seminary system, taking courses that only put me to sleep. Academically those years were a waste.

In 1969 I had an “out of seminary” experience with an international student group called C.I.A.S.P., through which I participated in a summer cultural experience in the mountains of Hidalgo, Mexico. (In a former post I have written about this experience.) This experience was pivotal to future choices in my life and the development of my thinking in matters both religious and secular.

I went to Peru as a missionary in 1972, as part of the response of 1st world Catholic churches to the call by Pope John XXIII to send missionaries to Latin America.  I was a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a missionary order, which sent its first missionaries to Peru in 1959.  I knew two Oblate priests from my home parish in Edmonton who had been chosen to go to Peru – Joe Cashen and Clarence Lavigne.  I kept contact with Clarence over the following years and the dream of joining them in Peru was very much a part of my desire to join the Oblate congregation.

As an Oblate seminarian, being trained as a future “missionary” at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa, my studies were totally in the area of traditional systematic theology. The university had a faculty of “missiology” (mission sciences) attended by missionaries from many countries, but neither I nor any other oblate I knew even took one course from this branch of formation. It was assumed that by belonging to a missionary order, we  became missionaries by osmosis or some other automatic process without thinking about it.

I was given the opportunity in 1972 to go to Peru even though I had not finished my theology program in Ottawa.  There was an opening for a “teacher” in Chincha Alta, and I was rapidly burning my bridges in Ottawa reading books like Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” which was not on the approved reading list for the seminary.  In March of 1972 I arrived in Peru, to discover that the teaching position in Chincha Alta was no longer available but instead I would be sent to be a pastoral assistant in Km 13 of Comas – a parish of 80,000 or more persons (most being officially Roman Catholic by tradition) which would be left with only one priest.  On Christmas Day that year I was ordained as a “deacon” by Bishop Luis Bambaren – the bishop of the Pueblos Jovenes – the bishop dedicated to the poor who had himself been jailed for his support of popular movements and organizations.

Thus began my re-formation – with the realization that most of what I had received in my formal theology program was either obsolete or insipid.  I had the opportunity to meet with other missionaries from North America, Europe and Australia – all working among the poor but working in very different ways and sometimes not working for the same goals.  Among the almost 50 priests in the northern cone (deanery) of Lima, only one priest was Peruvian – he belonged to a German missionary group and had been appointed as the dean of the area. In the language used – missionaries were working out of different “options” with very distinct purposes.

I learned that the reason Pope John XXIII, the great pope who had called for the second Vatican Council which opened the catholic church to real possibilities of reform (which was quickly squelched by the official mechanisms of the Vatican) had called for this missionary activity not out of concern for the “evangelization” of the faithful, but rather to help prevent the social unrest that could result in radical change as had occurred in Cuba. The missionary wave was in fact designed as a “counter-revolutionary movement” to support the status quo and the traditional oligarchy in maintaining control and power over the continent.  The church correctly assumed that social unrest resulting in political and economic change would also spill over to the religious sector. The church was a dominant and dominating force in the life of the poor throughout Latin America. It has been documented that in the first 20 years of this missionary wave , the majority of missionaries and their great financial support went not to the poorer areas but in fact to those areas already established as the privileged and the well off. Among those who did work among the poor – there were significant ideological differences which directed the type of pastoral work they would undertake.

There was indeed a shortage of priests, especially in the areas where the poor were living – something in itself that needed to be examined. After nearly 500 years since the “conquest” of the continent by the Spanish and the Portugese by the twin powers of the military and the church, the people still viewed the church as a “foreign” entity. There was a national clergy but they could not numerically attend to the needs of all the people,  and the preference of the clergy was of course to work with those who had the money to support them. The local clergy did not receive salaries and were expected to make a living from the sale of sacraments and sacred ceremonies.

In the “pueblos jovenes” or squatter villages that sprung up in the mid-1950′s and afterwards, there were virtually no national clergy to serve the people or to service the people’s religious needs.  There was great agitation among the people who suffered from military and police repression when they invaded dry desert state land and started to build houses in areas outside of Lima and other major cities.  The agitation was fomenting organization, and this organization of the people from the grass roots up was causing alarm among the oligarchies and the military.

The famous Rockefeller report of 1969, prepared for the new Nixon administration, laid the

General Juan Velasco

foundation for a new approach to control of the Americas by the USA.  There was a reorientation of “aid” programs to foster American interests in the region and a recognition of a need to “accept the existence of military governments without subjecting them to moral judgments.”  Surprisingly the report suggested that two sectors which had been useful arms of the oligarchies – the military and the church – could represent threats to traditional control and power.  In Peru this turned out to be prophetically true – a somewhat “left-wing” military coup under the command of General Juan Velasco seized power from the corrupt government of Fernando  Belaúnde which was involved in a typical sellout of the countries petroleum resources to a foreign company.  Velasco ruled for 7 years before he was replaced by a coup within a coup of his own military.  In the end, the left-wing itches at the early stages of the military revolution turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric without the support of the wide military machine.

Cardinal Juan Landázuri Ricketts, ofm

At the same time, within the Catholic Church there was a movement towards a popular expression of the faith.  A Latin American gathering of the region’s bishops in Medellín Colombia (1968) resulted in a progressive document for reform – moving beyond the initiatives of Vatican II.  The majority of bishops of course did not realize the implications of their progressive talk, but some like the Cardinal of Lima, Juan Landázuri Ricketts, understood the implications of the progressive thinking that was expressed in Medellín.  One of his theological experts was the diocesan priest Gustavo Gutierrez, who wrote much of the work of the beloved Cardinal from Lima, a deeply spiritual man from an aristocratic family of  Arequipa.  When the Cardinal spoke at Medellín about the Church moving to closeness with the poor, he later remarked to Gustavo that the implication was that he now had to go back to Lima and sell his princely palace and move to a poorer area.  In fact he did sell his “palace” in a neighbourhood of the very rich, and he built a more modest but large residence in an upper middle class neighbourhood of Santa Catalina where many of the military generals had established their homes with their new found wealth as ministers of government as well as military generals.

Dom Helder Camara

In contrast to the Cardinal of Lima who wanted to move closer to the poor but couldn’t, in Brazil one bishop went all the way. Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara, the bishop of Olinda-Recife in NE Brazil, sold his episcopal palace and moved into an adobe home situated in a poor neighborhood. There was great opposition to this physical gesture, because it represented a major evolution in his thinking and subsequently in his pastoral action. He was called a “red bishop” and there were attempts made on his life. His home had to be surrounded by a second protective wall, as agents of the military government had riddled the home with bullets. Dom Helder is famously quoted as saying “”When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a communist”.

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino was at the time a diocesan priest in Lima, and is widely regarded as ¨the father of the theology of Liberation¨.  Gustavo had studied and obtained a doctoral degree in Lyon, France.  He taught theology and sociology at the Catholic University of Peru, while at the same time he was pastor in a very poor parish in Lima – which was his choice. For Gustavo, theology was a process rather than an end product. Gustavo would sit with community groups and listen to their expressions of faith, as well as their miseries and hopes.  In other countries, a similar theology developed according to the reality of each region – some expressing more hope while others such as Brazil had to deal with the suffering of the poor during a time of exile when a repressive military ruled with an iron fist. Other currents of a theology of liberation would develop with a particular focus on the needs of different communities – a black TL, a feminist TL, an Asian TL, and so on. Common to all is the openness to develop theology in the socio-political reality of its exponents rather than confining its reflection to abstract theological presuppositions from long past centuries.

At some point after being ordained a priest, while working in Km 11 Comas, in the parish of Nuestra Señora de la Paz, I was invited to attend a weekly reflection group of clergy known as ONIS.  This came about through the intervention of Fr. Denis Hebert, a missionary from Edmonton who at that time was an associate of Scarboro Foreign Missions, who worked in Km 22 of the cono norte.  Oblate missionaries were considered to be less open to the “linea pastoral” of ONIS – its way of analysis and common reflection. I was fortunate in that the two Oblates with whom I worked were also open to the pastoral direction of ONIS. I worked in the northern deanery of the diocese, but at times we would meet with other priests of ONIS from different areas of Lima or in days of reflection and analysis. Gustavo Gutiérrez was central to these gatherings, not as a leader or organizer but as a rather humble sage and mentor upon whom others relied to be challenged and pushed.

There I met not only foreign missionaries such as myself, but a group of Peruvian priests who were not typical of the majority.  They had embraced an “option for the poor” with serious consequences to their social well-being. One priest was Alejandro Cussiánovich, who was a Salesian priest born in Peru. Alejandro dared to write a book (titled “Desde los Pobres de la Tierra” – “From the poor of the earth..”) for men and women religious suggesting that the vows of religious orders – poverty, chastity and obedience – needed to be reinterpreted from a fundamental option for the poor (the real poor).  He founded a night school for house servants – perhaps the most oppressed class of workers in Peru, young girls recruited for domestic servitude as early as 5 years old and used and abused without any protection or care by the state or church. As a result of his work he was expelled from the Salesian order which sought to protect its interests as clergy for the oppressors.

I had participated in a number of courses and seminars looking at “la realidad nacional” (the complex reality including social and economic analysis) – a continual study of the daily reality at the local level and the national level.  We were challenged not only to look at the events – but to examine our “insertion” in the mechanisms of governance and domination.

In working with ONIS I was first challenged to ask why I had come to Peru as a missionary – without any missionary formation or training, and without any preparation in international development or politics.  I had not even heard of the Rockefeller report, nor did I have any comprehension that the purpose of the missionary thrust was not to support the people but rather to interfere in the grass roots mobilization and organization that was happening among the poor.

Missionaries came with a lot of financial support – from church communities back home but also with access to government funding through national embassies for development projects in the poorer areas.  These development projects were of course great things in themselves, but they were designed from a first world perspective seeking to support first world interests in the Americas.

In the parish of Km 11 where I worked, the parish had two schools which were funded and staffed by Canadian missionaries. Both were industrial schools – for boys and girls – and established a reputation for producing graduates who were readily employed by international factories or companies. The students from the parish schools had been taught to avoid “unions” – to rely on their own strengths and to work as obedient servants always grateful for a good job.  In the parish there were more than 30 other schools – for which the parish offered no support. The option by the foreign missionaries in the parish was to provide two schools which serviced a tiny minority of students, which in turn served a number of interests – government, industry and church. These two parish schools were without a doubt superb schools, heavily financed continually with foreign donations, and for the small number of graduates a gateway to success.  The question perhaps is why did the missionary effort not focus on the well-being of all schools, offering some financial support if available to all schools. Of course, there would not have been the interest of donor groups, especially embassies or corporations, to provide equal opportunities for all children of the poorer areas. A constant supply of a limited number of trained and compliant workers was all that was desired by foreign interests and the new industrial class of Peru.

So the question posed through my ONIS experience was – who are you working for?

I thought I knew that answer when I went to Peru, but then I came to understand that in my naïvité I was part of a large mechanism that was not necessarily working for the poor.  In our analysis we came to an understanding of reality very much like that depicted in the ¨pyramid of the capitalist system¨. The Spanish conquerors travelled with their clergy, for the control of the soul of the oppressed was as important as control of his body.  This was equally true in the conquest of Canada and the suppression of the first nations with the role played by missionaries up to and including our tragic history with the residential school system.  The clergy, many European representing different religious orders including the Oblates, were clearly and happily working for the state in the suppression of native culture and the dominance of the culture of the European invaders.  This in no way disparages the “good intentions” of European missionaries, who were agents of their culture which included the religious powers and structures of their time.

At the same time it is necessary to highlight that since the beginning of the conquest, there have been church persons who broke out of the system that brought them to the Americas and who stood with the poor in their clamour for justice. Such were the Jesuits of the

Jesuit ruins of LA SANTÍSIMA TRINIDAD DE PARANÁ, PARAGUAY

“reductions” of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. This unique form of religious colonization survived for 150 years and sought to protect the Guarani native population in specific areas from the slave traders and forced hard labour. This system continued until the Jesuits were suppressed by the Vatican because of European concerns that the Jesuits were not supporting the traditional interests of the European monarchs.

Gustavo Gutierrez has often highlighted the story of the 16th century Fray Barolomé de las Casas, the first resident bishop of Chiapas, who was

Fray Barolomé de las Casas, o.p.

appointed as “protector of the Indians”. He took his job too seriously and wrote about the atrocities committed by the “encomienda” system and the brutal subjugation of the native peoples by the colonial forces. In the beginning he was a useful agent of the colonial system, but as he became aware of the oppression of the Indian population, he gave up his own privileges and his own slaves. As he called for justice for the native populations, he was found to no longer be useful to the aims of the “conquest” and he was exiled to Spain where he could no longer influence the church in the Americas.

In the pyramid of the capitalist system the clergy are crudely portrayed with the caption ¨We fool you¨ suggesting that the role of the church was to provide diversion, an alternate version of reality (with a focus on the reality after this worldly life because this lifetime belonged not to the poor but to the wealthy and the privileged – among whom were the clergy. The classic criticism from the left was that religion provided an “opium” for the people, dulling their senses and distracting their energies.  More important, I was to learn, was the ideological function of the church that was traditional in the old conquest and the new reality in Latin America by the “conquest” of the multinational corporations.

I learned that as missionaries we had a fundamental choice – crudely put to us was the choice to be “useful” to the system that brought us to Peru as missionaries or to choose to be “less useful” to the system while striving to become more useful to accompany the poor in

Ernesto Cardenal

their struggle for liberation.  Ernesto Cardenal sought to understand the gospels from his retreat on the Island of Solentiname in Nicaragua – listening to the poor campesino and allowing him or her to interpret the ancient scriptures from their experiences and hopes. While he came from a privileged background, this support for the poor and allowing them to formulate theological dialogue did not sit well either with the dictatorship of Somoza or the catholic establishment.  Ernesto and his brother Fernando, a Jesuit, later became ministers in the revolutionary Sandinista government after the overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Somoza. Both suffered rejection and isolation by the local church establishment under direct instructions from Pope John Paul II, who opposed the direction of church people who operated out of a “fundamental option for the poor”.  Ernesto became consciously ¨less useful¨to the privileged classes for whom the church had always been such a faithful ally. To his own class – from whence he came – he was a dangerous traitor and a tool of the enemy.

Gustavo Gutiérrez himself suffered attempts by the Vatican bureaucracy to discredit him and to limit his influence. In 1984 a group of Peruvian bishops were summoned to Rome specifically to mount a campaign against Peru´s eminent theologian, but this effort failed. Only when Pope John Paul II appointed an Opus Dei operative as Cardinal of Lima did the situation become too difficult for Gustavo to continue working in Lima.  He continues his work as a Dominican friar – returning to a tradition that had provided him with much inspiration and support.

So the “pyramid of the capitalist system” that was presented to me by this young advocate of the I.W.W. was not all that strange nor offensive. Perhaps it is more true than he realizes himself.  It presents a caricature of the different layers that have traditionally supported a system of oppression and domination.  Of course this was not taught to us in the seminary, for the ideological content of our instruction was not explicit and often by simple neglect.

There were always some who never fit the mould that they were squeezed into through the

Fr. René Fumoleau omi

training process.  I think of Oblate priests like Fr. Rene Fumoleau who spent his life working and serving the Dene of the far Canadian north.  He did so with a genuine love of the people which was expressed in his ministry and his work as photographer and author.  What made him different, or what inspired him to work from this “option for the poor” before the phrase was formalized at Medellín is something that will come in his authobiography. Perhaps there was something in the  gospels which inspired him in a different way, but which remained illusive or vague for the majority of clergy trained in a system to be “useful” to Caesar rather than “useful” to the poor.

And there is Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan Oblate priest, who worked on developing an Asian theology of liberation and helped to organize the union movement among the tea pickers of Ceylon. For his support of the poor he was briefly excommunicated by the pope in 1997, but international support for Tissa caused the Vatican to back down and restore Tissa as a priest in good standing but definitely not loved by church authorities or the privledged classes of Sri Lanka. In the constant rethinking of our theologies Tissa is working towards developing a “planetary theology” – dealing with some of the most vital concerns in the new century. (http://tissabalasuriya.wordpress.com/)

Fr. Tissa Balisuriya omi

The young are absent from the church of today. Probably for many reasons, but in part because they have come to understand that the role of clergy is “to fool” the church goer with simplistic platitudes and unrealistic promises for fidelity and to distract the believer with ridiculous rituals and rules. Obviously the situation is far more complex. This could possibly have been very different for me had I taken a few sociology of religion courses before my seminary formation. But I do not regret the path of my learning, even if I were a bit slow in the process.  I am grateful to this young man, an enthusiast of the I.W.W. – the Wobblies – who reminded me of my slow journey to understanding what I was supposed to be doing in Latin America and my gratitude to those who helped to make me less useful.

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