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1. Maryknoll and the New Deal for Latin America
- University of Notre Dame Press
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CHAPTER 1 Maryknoll and the New Deal for Latin America When Superior General Walsh assigned the first Maryknoll priests to Latin America in 1942, the decision appeared purely pragmatic since World War II rendered most of the world inaccessible. But Latin America also had characteristics that made it an appealing mission field. Despite being overwhelmingly Catholic, the region suffered a striking shortage of clergy, especially in remote rural and impoverished urban areas. In Catholic eyes, people were susceptible to the dangers of Protestantism and, in the cold war context, communism. Moreover, U.S. interest in Latin America, always strong, increased during the war when the region became a primary source of resources for the Allies. Over the next three decades, Maryknoll sent more missionaries to Latin America than to any other mission field.1 Latin America defined Maryknoll. But more than numbers explained the relationship. The confluence of the North American missionaries’ religious and national interests and the reciprocal nature of the relationship with a Catholic region contributed to a profound engagement that transformed Maryknoll , Catholicism in Latin America, and Catholicism in the United States. 19 The first point of transformation was the missionaries themselves. When they established their missions in Latin America, Maryknollers were nationalistic, anticommunist, doctrinaire Catholics.They measured faith by counting sacraments. They believed that their responsibility was to “save” the Latin American church by establishing the Romanized practice of Catholicism and developing a national clergy. Maryknollers identified their church and their nation as the “answer” to Latin America’s “problems.” “Like the Marines,” proclaimed one article in Maryknoll’s publicity magazine, the Field Afar, “the Catholic Church, when it finds a weak spot, rolls up its sleeves and goes to work. Because of a serious lack of parishes and clergy, traditionally Catholic Latin America finds itself in the paradoxical position of lacking a rich sacramental and liturgical life.” “The solution,” the article concluded, “lies in the powerful and generous cooperation of the United States; more particularly, the solution lies with Maryknoll.”2 Within twenty-five years Maryknollers became outspoken critics of U.S. policy and promoters of an intercultural Catholicism that recognized , respected, and sought to emulate local practices of faith. Maryknoll began to look to Latin America to transform the Catholic Church in the United States. It would seem that mission to the poor in Latin America had transformed Maryknoll. The reality was more complex. The experience of mission and the opportunity it gave Maryknollers to enter into dialogue with Latin American clergy and laity profoundly influenced the missionaries.Yet their experience was shaped by the ideas they carried with them to Latin America as individuals and as a mission institution. Maryknoll developed from the struggle of Irish, German , Italian, Polish, and Bohemian Catholic immigrants to “make America” by building the church in the United States and by gaining political and economic enfranchisement.3 American Catholics’ ideals of faith and nation were inextricably linked, and this relationship motivated Maryknoll’s foundation and determined the nature of its mission .The men and women who became missionaries in the 1940s and 1950s, when Maryknoll grew fastest, came from ethnic communities in the northeastern United States.4 Their grandparents and parents had struggled to organize unions and to survive the Great Depression. The community memory of immigration, labor, and survival created a 20 The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943–1989 [44.221.46.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:44 GMT) keen awareness of poverty and a belief that charity was a moral obligation for those who could afford to give.5 Maryknoll called on Catholic youth whose ancestors had “made America” to give something back by sharing the spiritual and material benefits they enjoyed with others less fortunate. Nowhere was this sense of obligation more evident than in Latin America, where a Catholic population experienced the immediate in- fluence of U.S. policies. Nowhere were U.S. Catholics called upon more directly to accept responsibility for their church and their nation . Understanding the nature of the reciprocal relationship between the Maryknoll mission in Latin America and Catholic communities in the United States requires that Maryknoll be viewed in the context of the ideals and programs missionaries brought from home. Before the Second Vatican Council, liberation theology, and the 1968 Medell ín Conference of Latin American Bishops appeal for a preferential option for the poor, Maryknoll had chosen to serve the poor. This chapter seeks to place Maryknoll’s foundation and...