by Mary Martinez

About half the Roman Catholics the world live in the countries to the south of the United States. If the treasure of spontaneous devotion and piety still left in the Church could be measured, Latin America might be credited with three-fourths of it. If the effort to turn Catholics into Marxists were gauged, probably nowhere would it prove to be more intense. Hitherto on the sidelines of world events, Latin Americans are becoming the protagonists of a major struggle for the survival of the Faith.

Will they come through? After covering the bishops meetings in Mexico, I think there is a good chance. But on one condition: that Tradition can survive, at least in the consciousness of the people, until they can be nourished again by the Mass and the sacraments "of all time". The more they allow themselves to be drawn into the "reformed" religion, the more they are drawn insidiously into Marxism. In a sense it is a race between the governing Church, the carefully selected and appointed third of the Latin American bishops who took part in the CELAM conference, their progressive theologians and priests on the one hand and a few—very few—courageous priests, a few knowing and not so courageous prelates, together with the people's great collective memory of Tradition, on the other.

Meanwhile, to even up the battle lines there is the big holding operation, the establishment in country after country of authoritarian governments. Given the intensity of Church-sponsored provocation, this reaction was to be expected. There is a certain toughness in Latin America, a heritage from the Spanish and, in many cases, from Indian peoples, that is one of the reasons for hope. While Chile has neither as important a Spanish nor Indian inheritance as most of the countries to its north, the provocation was greater. The government of Socialist Salvador Allende (1970-1973) was, in effect, a Marxist regime and the people of Chile rose up against it. Several years later, fed up with the slander the world press was hurling at his government, General Pinochet asked in referendum if Chilenos wanted him to go on and 75% said they did. Not trained to run governments, the military men in Chile have long since given over all but two or three high posts to lawyers, diplomats, teachers and economists. Meanwhile they keep their powder dry.

With all the haranguing by ousted Latin American factions lobbying at Puebla there was surprisingly little noise from Chile. Santiago's Cardinal Silva, who recommended peaceful coexistence with socialism during the Allende days, has been treading softly since the referendum. His present stand was summed up in this remarkable statement to the conference: "I am not for Marxism and I am not for capitalism. But neither am I a tercerista (a third-way man).'"

Falling just short of the Cardinal's impossible troika, the 187 bishops of CELAM approved a 232-page final document which was at least as ambiguous as any decree issued at Vatican II. Marxism was condemned and capitalism was condemned. That is, "atheistic" Marxism and "materialistic" capitalism. The two adjectives gave everybody a wide margin, after which the main Marxist technique for penetrating Latin American society was given full support. "The basic ecclesial communities with their struggle for justice are already bearing fruit and preparing for a new society, more just and more fraternal."

At the same time the document condemned the governments which have countered the communist menace effectively and in so doing resorted to Leftist jargon in every sentence. "National security" governments prevent the development of justice by reverting to "torture and other violence in order to control the poor." Thus, in solidarity with the ousted professional politicians, the Left-wing intellectuals, the powerless trade union bosses—all of them enraged at their forced margination—Catholic Church leaders officially declare war on the men who have come forward in extremis to protect Christian society.

Less than one third of the Latin American bishops took part in the Puebla meetings, but under the episcopal conference set-up it is very difficult for any bishop to deviate from the line decided upon by this conference. Clearly the majority of the prelates of CELAM returned to their dioceses with renewed commitment to make trouble. The margin in which their activism is able to move differs from country to country but it is evident that no country except Cuba is going to escape. All the others run on a capitalistic economy and nearly all have authoritarian governments.

"Capitalism," says the final document, "serves the international financial imperialists." The statement is typical of the broad, simplistic hammer blows of Red propaganda. Typically inconsistent and "intrinsically perverse," the bishops' decision to join the hue-and-cry against "multinationals." They want an international "one world" but they denounce all internationalism which is not communist.

Outside of Puebla there are two major industrial complexes, Hylsa, a steel mill founded a hundred years ago which has never been anything but Mexican; and Volkswagen, which gives good jobs to some 10,000 local people, turns out 500 cars a day in seven models, every last part of which is made in Mexico and exports 40,000 cars a year to Europe. As I tried vainly to persuade Liberal Establishment fellow journalists at CELAM, capital moves around these days and not all the moves are made for the express purpose of causing Latin Americans to starve. Olivetti bought Underwood, the Vatican bought Watergate. Arabs, they say, are buying up Chicago. A Mexican financial group just started a polyethylene plant in Israel and a California friend reported semi-annually to the owners of the motel she manages, Mr. and Mrs. Tai of Taiwan.

The starvation story is more Red fiction. In Mexico, at least, such a thing is unheard of. With language no problem I made it my business to inquire everywhere I went from people in all walks of life. That everyone has everything he wants to eat is another matter and there are certainly backwoods districts where the diet is poor. Whether such a diet does as much harm as over-rich eating I am not in a position to say. Mexicans look healthy and, in comparison with the harassed inhabitants of Italy, wonderfully happy. That two-thirds of them go to bed hungry, as the followers of Msgr. Helder Camara insist, is patently false. But the propagandists will not let it alone. Films shot by Italian TV men of Mexican street scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. Where, asked their politicized director, were the hungry masses, the suffering, the oppressed? Rabbi Leon Kliniki, an observer at CELAM, admitted things were not as good in Argentina as when I lived there. A workman can no longer afford two big beef steaks a day, only one. The hunger myth, that of abusive multinationals and the torturing military are precious weapons to the Left. The fact that the bishops take them up is proof of their complicity. The object is two-fold: to alienate Catholics from their governments and to cause worldwide condemnation of those governments. The second objective has already been achieved, thanks to the worldwide liberal press network. The first objective will take more doing. Chile has had Marxism and so, in the 1920s and '30s, did Mexico. The experience itself is a protection. The Leftist directive to "conciencitize" (a CELAM directive approved by Pope John Paul) that is, the process of making people aware that they are being repressed, marginated, exploited, goes over better abroad than it does at home where evidence is clearly lacking. If the bishops insist and particularly if insistence is made on the parish level it is probably that more and more Catholics, already disenchanted by the reforms, will slip away.

Brazil, the largest Latin American country, stands apart from the rest. Borrowing the tag the British once gave the politically vulnerable Mediterranean countries, one might say this giant is the "soft underbelly" of Latin America. Soft and vulnerable in the struggle for the Faith, it could well be the land of promise to "occupied" Rome. The tough Spanish heritage is lacking in Brazil. But for some upper-Amazon tribes, so is the Indian, the non-white element being descended from African slaves. In Brazil the usual Latin American Catholic population figure of 96% drops back to 85% but the real figure is probably much lower. An amazing statistic for which I credit the Washington Post: in 1970 there were 17,000 Protestant ministers in the country against a total of 13,000 Catholic priests. As everywhere, the number of priests have since declined but the ministers keep arriving. The Assembly of God Church boasts around a million members. It seems that the fourth of the population which is black and some of the fourth mixed race have never entirely relinquished links with animism and voodoo worship and thus take kindly to Pentecostalism. Several of the top government leaders, including the President, ex-General Geisel, are Protestant.

As Archbishop Lefebvre has pointed out so clearly, ecumenism, which is the protestantizing of Catholics, is the leitmotiv of all the reforms. Brazil is the obvious pilot country for Latin American ecumenism and the obvious pilot is Aloisio Lorscheider, one of the youngest Cardinals, a German-Brazilian Franciscan who, at 52, was virtually top man at the 1977 World Episcopal Synod and who, as President of CELAM, is top man among the nearly 600 bishops of Latin American. Little wonder he was called a "pope-maker" at the last two conclaves. In his position it could not have been difficult to swing the electors among them in favor of the comparatively unknown Cardinals Luciani or Wojtyla. That the Vatican has weighted the hierarchy of Latin America in Brazil's favor is evident. Brazil has one bishop for every 40,000 Catholics but Mexico has two cardinals, one over 80 years of age. Brazil has seven, all under 80.

On my last day in Puebla I joined the breakfast table of a group of Liberal Establishment reporters. My question to a pants-suited nun who had gotten inside the conference section as translator: "Have you found there are any reactionaires among the bishops?" And her answer: "Well, I saw one of them, I don't know who he was, fumbling a rosary." Laughter broke out all around the table. "A rosary! You must be kidding!"

Could the shocking bishop have been Jose Cardinal Salazar of Guadalajara? In April of last year, as President of the Mexican Episcopal Conference, he delivered a 23-point run-down on Marxist penetration into the Church in Latin America that would have done credit to the late Fr. Joaquin Saenz, excommunicated for his plain speaking by the other Mexican Cardinal, the aging Miranda Gomez of Mexico City. Unlike Fr. Saenz, of course, Cardinal Salazar upheld Pope Paul VI just as the anti-communist crowds in Mexico paid homage to Pope John Paul. Actually, what the people saluted was not Karol Wojtyla, of whom they had never heard three months before, and who, in any case, had not had time to accomplish anything as Pope. Their joy and enthusiasm was for the Papacy, for this affirmation of the universal Church, for Rome.

Unlike Brazil, Mexico is going to be a hard country to convert to a world religion. It was wise for the Pope to appear in Mexico and it would have been very unwise of the Vatican not to have pressured against Archbishop Lefebvre's appearing. Because Mexico is one of the few countries left in the world where the majority of people think religion is of great importance. It could well become the crucial battleground.