Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil

Rating:
Summary: A Little Hit, A Little Miss
Review: In "Claiming the Virgin", Robin Nagle takes a critical look at Liberation Theology, a leftist brand of Catholic theology that swept through Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. The book provides background on the movement and seeks to illustrate the conflicts it caused by giving a blow-by-blow account of a dispute in the Morro neighborhood of Recife, a poor city on Brazil's northeastern coast. However, the best sections are the introductory chapters (1 and 2), the conclusion (6), and the endnotes, where readers will find useful history, insightful analysis, and well-written prose. On the other hand, the book's centerpiece, the chapters (3-5) about the Morro neighborhood, are uninteresting.

Liberation Theology wasn't quite born in Recife, but some of its best-known proponents were there. It thrived there because of the region's impoverished feudalistic society, rooted in centuries of sugar culture and patron-client "colonelism". Liberationism's roots are in the "Catholic Action Groups" of the 1940s that were precursors to "Ecclesial Base Communities" (CEBs): the tens of thousands of bible study groups with overt political agendas organized throughout Brazil's vast northeast by leftist clerics. This approach to community organization was endorsed by Vatican II in 1965. Liberationist leaders and their allies in Recife, including Bishop Dom Helder Camera, pedagogue Paulo Freire, Peasant League leader Francisco Juliao, and Governor Miguel Arraes were exiled in the 1960s after a military dictatorship seized power in Brazil. It was this charged political environment, not unlike those in much of Latin America, that allowed the movement to thrive.

Liberation Theology was not simply politics hijacking religion, as some critics charge. Its adherents were truly people of god for whom "activism and politics were not inimical to church teaching but rather a way of expressing one's faith. Jesus himself sought to overthrow a corrupt government, they pointed out, thus signaling God's approval of similar work." But ultimately the movement faded, and Nagle's insight is that this was a function of the movement itself, that Liberationists "wanted to move quickly to address poverty, using the Church as a vehicle. They sought to modernize the Church too fast and link it to political causes." Thus, she holds, it failed after the dictatorships and political crises that sustained it were resolved, principally because it never put down deep roots in the Catholic communities nor did it embrace the reasons why miserable people took solace in the Church. Its messages were often more reflective of its educated leaders than the peasants; and it failed to appreciate the weight of Catholic tradition on the congregation. In short, it addressed people's worldly needs but not their spiritual needs. In 1984, the Vatican formally condemned liberation theology.

For all of its weaknesses, the movement was not an utter failure. Times and circumstances changed, but Liberationism was instrumental in energizing thousands of activists in Brazil. People who became involved in politics and took control over pieces of their own lives. They were key to the founding of the Workers' Party, to the peaceful end of the military regime, and to the election of Lula da Silva in 2002 as Brazil's first working-class President. Liberationism, and the network of CEBs, have exerted a powerful influence on modern Brazil.

All of these interesting insights can be found without reading the central chapters on the struggles in the Morro neighborhood between conservative Bishop Dom Jose Cardoso and Liberationist priest Reginaldo Veloso. For the record, Dom Jose fired Reginaldo in 1990, using police to face down unhappy residents and install his own parish priest. This tale was probably gripping to someone who lived there, but to an outsider it comes across as mere small town gossip. It doesn't really live up to the author's thesis that it is a window on the larger debate. Sections of Nagle's book are a fascinating success. This is not the final word on Liberationism, but it's a useful introduction.