HENRY E. McCULLOCH writes:

The Catholic World Report offers a pre-trip report on Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Mexico. Pope Benedict is en-route as I write, and should land in the State of Guanajuato this afternoon. He will spend the whole of his brief visit in that state – at Guanajuato, the capital, and the industrial city of Leon – before heading home via Cuba.

As CWR reports, Catholic faith in Mexico has been dwindling at the same time as, thanks to the 2000 defeat of the long-entrenched Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI – think about that name for a second; if it’s not a hint at the existential weirdness of Mexico, nothing is), the Roman Catholic Church enjoys greater freedom in Mexico than it has for a century or more. CWR is eager to credit this new official Mexican tolerance of the Church to Pope John Paul II’s visits to Mexico, which drew large and enthusiastic crowds. That, I fear, may be of a piece with the neo-Catholic desire to ascribe more to Pope John Paul than he in fact achieved, valiant man though he was.

The Pope’s visiting Guanajuato is of particular interest to me. Between school and college, I lived and worked in Mexico, assisting British mining engineers and geologists sampling disused Spanish silver mines to see if they might be brought back to paying production. As I knew nothing about silver, mining or geology, I earned my keep translating for the engineers who spoke no Spanish and the Mexican workers who spoke no English. So I wasn’t entirely useless. I worked in Guanajuato, living alone at age 18 up at a place called La Luz, about 20 kilometres above the city of Guanajuato, whither I would ride the local bus on Friday afternoons with the mamacitas and their chickens to spend my weekends in the metropolis. Guanajuato is a small and quite beautiful colonial city; it has a very active cultural life, featuring annual celebrations of Cervantes and Don Quijote. But today I wouldn’t dream of sending an 18 year old there alone.

The man who knocked out the PRI in 2000, Vicente Fox Quesada, was Governor of Guanajuato before he was elected president.

Guanajuato is the geographic heart of Mexico, and a large hilltop statue of Our Lord, El Cubilete, a few kilometres away and plainly visible from where I lived, is reputed to be exactly at Mexico’s geographic centre. (“Exact” is, however, a relative concept among Mexicans. One may gauge this from Mexican compliance with American immigration and DUI laws.) Guanajuato is also thought to be perhaps the most strongly Catholic state remaining in Mexico, and presumably may be relied upon to give the Pope a friendly welcome.

The article is pretty honest about contemporary Mexico, although more optimistic than I allow myself to be. There are heart-lifting details about how some Mexican prelates do not shy from taking the fight against Mexico’s new, and very permissive, laws permitting abortions and homosexual “marriage” directly to the leftist politicians responsible for those laws. In earlier decades, any Mexican bishop or priest who challenged the government so openly would be risking exile at best, torture and death at the worst – and may yet again, should either of the parties of the left regain control of the country.

Neoconservative Republicans – think GW and Jeb Bush, and John McCain – love to pitch the benefits to America of the never-ending demographic invasion by Mexican (and Central American) mestizos and Indians, actively abetted by the Mexican and other Latin American governments. One of their favorite selling points is the supposed social conservatism and frugality of Latin Americans, which presumably is rooted in their traditional Catholic faith. Remember GW Bush’s priceless apercu: “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande river (sic).” Curious how little evidence one sees of that moral bedrock once Mexicans and their cousins transplant themselves to America…

Matthew Cullinan Hoffman drops a few hints about why the real American future will not match the neocons’ rosy fantasies of multicultural social conservatism in their post-American United States, along with a tantalising hint – one I was surprised to see – about what might really explain the collapse of Catholic faith in Latin America – Mexico very much included:

In Mexico, Pope Benedict will find a Catholic Church that enjoys an unprecedented freedom from government interference, but whose doctrines are ever-less heeded by an increasingly secularized society. Mass attendance and priestly vocations continue to be low, as they were when John Paul II last visited in 2002. Non-Catholic sects are on the rise, and Catholicism is declining, as it has in much of Latin America since Vatican II. (emphases added.)

Ah, those seeds of Vatican II just keeping bearing fruit, and showering their blessings upon us! We’re constantly told that the Spirit was working at Vatican II. May I be forgiven for wondering, as Pope Paul VI evidently did in the ruinous aftermath, just which spirit was at work?

                               — Comments —

Vincent C. writes:

To Henry McCulloch’s description of the Church’s decline in Latin America, allow me to add this.

I personally witnessed this phenomenon in my first overseas posting to Colombia, where both Baptists and Mormons had already made significant headway in converting numbers of Catholics, but it was while I served at the US Embassy in Guatemala City (1974-78) that I became increasingly aware of the consequential changes in the religious affiliation of those former Catholics to Protestantism, especially the Evangelical or Pentecostal varieties.

A major source of that awareness was our household maid, Teresa, who had become a zealous advocate of her Pentecostal religious group, and with whom I spoke on many occasions about her conversion. I recall very clearly that on her days off, Teresa would spend most of her free time at her church involved in helping the pastor “spread the word” amongst friends, friends of friends, and their relatives. Her story is worth noting.

Teresa was not shy about discussing her conversion; in fact, I suspected that she was looking at her employer as another soul to be saved. In her particular case, she told me that because of her family situation in which both her husband and son were alcoholics, she had gone to her priest, a Maryknoll if memory serves, who had basically brushed her off, saying that things would work out if she prayed. She did, with little evidence of its effectiveness, but what struck her was the priest’s lack of interest in getting her alcoholic family members to stop drinking. At the suggestion of one of her friends, she visited a Pentecostal minister who immediately came to their house and insisted that they do, and went about the task of re-visiting the house to make sure that the two family members had gone “cold turkey” in abstaining. Teresa insisted that the Catholic priest’s approach to her problem had not been satisfactory because it had not been willing to demand something from these two men. When I left Guatemala, both these former alcoholics were now tried and true members of this Pentecostal congregation.

It was no surprise, then, when a bishop in the Vatican revealed in a conversation more than a decade later that from one-quarter to one-third of the Catholic followers in Latin America had joined Protestant religious groups, especially those of Pentecostal/Evangelical affiliations. What happened in Colombia and Guatemala has also taken place in Mexico, where Mormon proselytizing has gained a major foothold in that country. Mexico now boasts as having one of the largest Mormon temples outside the U.S. (N.B.: there are more Mormons outside of the US, than there are inside this country.)

While I cannot vouchsafe that the Maryknoll priest’s unwillingness to deal forcefully and directly with Teresa’s family problems was the only cause of her conversion, it was apparent to me then, as it is now, that one of the unexpected and even unintended consequences of Vatican II was the birth of this sense that priests must be aware of not offending their parishioners by demanding too much of them. (The case of Fr. Guarnizo is just another case in point.) And little by little those demands become fewer: meatless Fridays, kneeling to receive the Eucharist, etc.

Perhaps those in the Vatican’s dicastri (departments) involved in trying to staunch the hemorrhaging of former believers should pay attention to the Italian proverb (naturally) that says it best: Whoever forsakes the old way for the new, knows what he is losing, but not what he will find.

Laura writes:

 Fascinating.

[i]t was apparent to me then, as it is now, that one of the unexpected and even unintended consequences of Vatican II was the birth of this sense that priests must be aware of not offending their parishioners by demanding too much of them.

How true that is. Gone are the days when priests would harshly reprimand individuals for their immoral behavior.

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