The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice (review)

A U.S. administration comes into office with an ideology-driven agenda headed by a genial president with no overseas experience who leaves the details to his staff and declares a region of the world a threat to U.S. security: the template for the present in many ways comes from the Reagan administration's Central America policy in the 1980s. The obvious difference is that although that administration sent billions to support its allies, and sent small numbers of American advisors, U.S. troops did not go into combat. A major deterrent to deeper involvement was the fact that for a decade many Americans resisted and opposed those efforts, prominent among them those motivated by their faith. The United States Catholic Church institutionally took public stands against Reagan administration policy.

This was a new development, as Edward Brett documents in this book. The "Catholic press" here means a collection of magazines headed by the weeklies America, Commonweal, National Catholic Reporter, and Our Sunday Visitor, as well as a number of monthly publications. Systematically reviewing articles in these publications on Central America, Brett finds a story line. In the 1950s the Catholic press, uncritical of Cold War ideology or McCarthyism, raised few questions about the 1954 CIA overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government; by the 1980s most of the Catholic press opposed U.S. policy in Central America.

Until Vatican II, the Catholic press generally viewed the world through the prism of anti-communism. Two chapters on Guatemala both before and after the CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected, moderately leftist Arbenz government illustrate that the Catholic Church, as evidenced in its publications, judged events from a Cold War perspective. It is interesting, for example, to be reminded how the Catholic press uncritically accepted the repression unleashed under President Carlos Castillo Armas after 1954. Brett then surveys the oft-told story of changes in Catholicism associated with Vatican II, in this case emphasizing the participation of Maryknoll missionaries in those changes

Next Brett takes up El Salvador and Nicaragua, in each case considering the period of buildup to the greatest conflict and then how those conflicts played out in the 1980s. One has to admire Brett's thoroughness in surveying thousands of press items. He gives the tenor of an article in a few skillful lines, periodically illustrating with substantial quotes. A major point is that the opposition of the U.S. Catholic bishops and other representative elements of the Catholic community to the Reagan policy of support for the Nicaraguan contras, and for the Salvadoran and Guatemalan murderous governments and military came not from an a priori liberal stance, but from direct contact with U.S. priests, sisters, and lay people with on-the-ground experience and with their fellow bishops in Central America. Catholic periodicals served as a channel for this direct experience.

In the 1950s, there may indeed have been a "Catholic press" speaking with almost one voice. One of the effects of Vatican II was to open the way to pluralism in the Church, and thus by the 1980s, a "conservative" Catholic press sided with the Reagan administration, while a "progressive" Catholic press was critical, and Brett devotes a chapter to each. He carefully notes that even the "progressive" publications criticized specific abuses by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, especially by the mid-1980s. Surveys generally show that American Catholics do not differ notably from the American public at large on many issues, including matters on which the hierarchy insists. That the Catholic intelligentsia, represented in the publications Brett surveys, and the bishops were opposed to U.S. policy is clear, particularly in reaction to iconic events like the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the rape-murder of the four U.S. churchwomen in 1980s. Yet this seems to have represented a response...