Christ and Culture
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - June 1, 2007
Astride the accolades and joy that came from Pope Benedict's recent apostolic pilgrimage to Brazil, there were two sets of controversies.
The first came from some indigenous groups, who assailed the pope's statement that the proclamation of Jesus Christ to native Latin Americans was not an "alienation" from their ancient cultures through the "imposition" of a foreign one, but rather the fulfillment of their "silent longings." Since Jesus Christ is the incarnate God in whose image and likeness all men and women were made, Benedict stated that Christ is not and cannot be "alien to any culture, nor to any person"; on the contrary, he gives people "their ultimate identity." Therefore, the pope continued, any attempt to separate Christ from Latin American by going back to pre-Colombus religions "would not be a step-forward [but] a step back."
Needless to say those words did not please those indigenous Latin Americans who are in fact trying to go back to pre-Colombus religions or demagogues like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who see Christ and the moral authority of the Church he founded as obstacles to their Marxist aspirations. They accused Benedict of ignoring the "fact" that the true evangelists of Latin America were the conquistadors, who imposed the Gospel by the sword rather than proposed it by the tongue. Benedict, however, was not ignoring the brutality of many of the Portuguese or Spanish soldiers, but forcefully implying that what they brought by the sword was not the Gospel but its antithesis, as many of the true missionary evangelists of the period, like Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, contemporaneously pointed out.
That distinction was lost on the critics and on many of the members of the international media, who seem guilty of a double-standard when it comes to the coverage of religion. When they report on episodes of violence by radical Islamists, most of the international media corps rightly distinguish between individual jihadist Muslims and Islam in general. It is possible, they recognize, for someone to claim adhesion to a religion and not act in conformity with its moral principles; when Mohammed was depicted in a Danish cartoon as an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber, for example, many international newspapers condemned it as insensitive, anachronistic and false. Yet they did not apply the same fair standards to the verbal caricatures — painted by a Venezuelan Castro or politically-correct, publicity-seeking indigenous groups — of Christ, Benedict and the first missionaries as freedom-oppressing conquistadors.
The point the Holy Father was making was supremely complimentary to Latin Americans: the continent is overwhelmingly Christian today not because indigenous groups were too weak to resist the forced imposition of an alien creed, but rather because they had beautiful hearts open, ready and responsive to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Latin Americans are Christian ultimately because God had given them minds discerning enough to know that the real revolution that came to their lands five centuries ago was brought by habited men carrying crucifixes, not uniformed men wielding swords.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
