AGORA XXI: BLOG OF THE COMMUNITY OF SAINT PAUL

REFLECTION

 

CAMILO TORRES, MICHAEL CORLEONE AND THE CHRISTIAN VENEER OF THE WEST

 

Martí Colom

 

More than fifty years ago, Camilo Torres—the Colombian priest who joined the guerrillas in 1966 and then died in combat, considered by many a forerunner of Liberation Theology—wrote that historically “Latin America had been evangelized in extension but not in depth. Many are baptized but there is little Christian conscience to be found there.” [1]

Torres’ analysis is reminiscent of a scene from The Godfather: Part III in which a prominent member of the Church hierarchy, a certain Cardinal Lamberto—with whom Michael Corleone, the saga’s main character, has a long conversation about his murky past—takes a stone from a pond and breaks it, to show that in spite of having been underwater for many years, its interior is perfectly dry. The cardinal concludes, under Corleone’s indecipherable gaze, that the same has happened with the people of Europe: “...they have lived surrounded by Christianity for centuries, but Christ has not penetrated inside them. Christ does not live in them.” Evangelization without depth!

Both Camilo Torres’ opinion about Latin America and that of the fictional Cardinal Lamberto in Coppola’s movie, in this case about Europe, point to the fact that people may have been exposed to the Gospel for a very long time and yet, they may have not embraced the Gospel’s perspectives and criteria, producing indeed “many baptized but little Christian conscience.”

It is hard not to agree, at least in part, with this analysis when still today we see, in traditionally Catholic countries, people coming to our parishes to practice a faith that is primarily external and based on ritual worship. Many exhibit an understanding of the Eucharist that borders on superstition and is individualistic (“me and my God” is what matters). Many remain very unfamiliar with Scripture, even the New Testament, and are too often detached from any commitment toward the needy, and are dependent on an image of God quite distant from the caring and merciful Father that Jesus announced. Rather, many believe in a stern and harsh being, surprisingly obsessed by our sins, whimsical and arbitrary in the way he decides whether to intervene or not in our lives, and installed in his divine omnipotence, far away from our reality. All this in spite of the many and creative efforts that have taken place since the Second Vatican Council in order to foster a more communal, biblical and incarnational experience of the faith—efforts that have undoubtedly been quite successful: it is simply chilling to imagine where we would be today without Vatican II! 

It is common to hear people who study the current state of the Church in traditionally Catholic countries of Europe and America talk about the “de-Christianization” of these societies. What we would like to indicate in light of the preceding paragraphs is that this term seems to be misleading, or at least imprecise. Indeed, when we talk about “de-Christianization,” we seem to imply that we come from a neatly Christian age, the essence of which today has been lost. Then it would appear that we think that the social, economic and political structure of our grandparents’ societies reflected faithfully the values of the Gospel, and that only recently we have moved away from them. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say simply that in traditionally Christian countries the religious practice of the faith and formal membership in the Church have declined, which is an undeniable fact, supported by all kinds of statistics. However, to infer that these societies have become “un-Christian” is to go too far: in fact, according to what we have suggested earlier, they were never Christian, in the sense that they were never guided—much less governed—by basic Gospel values such as the search for the common good above particular interests, mercy, forgiveness, service, love of the enemy, preferential care to the most vulnerable, respect to the other’s freedom or radical rejection of injustice, as much as they could have a Christian veneer that today may be disappearing.

Where are we going with this reflection? Surely the question is not to conclude by saying something like “since we do not come from as good a context as we may have thought, the current irrelevance of the Gospel should not worry us too much.” This would be a fruitless and accommodative argument, which would not shed any light into the urgent task of living out our faith, today. What seems important is not to fall into the mistake of looking for the solution to the challenges of our time in a distorted vision of an ideal past in which we will not find the adequate medicine to heal the problems of our age, precisely because it was not that ideal.

The former milieu of “Christendom” that existed in many Western countries had its own blessings and curses, and our main concern should not be to ramble on about the successes and failures of ages past. What is inescapable is the challenge to find out how are we going to announce the Gospel today. And yesterday’s ultimate lesson is not that we must go back. The lesson is that, today as in the past, if our evangelization wants to bear fruits of charity and wishes to help in the process of making the world a better place, it must be deep rather than extended; it must try to touch hearts and consciences rather than looking for privileges for the Church; it must be directed to the individuals rather than to crowds.

Karl Rahner stated in the years after the Council that 21^st Century Christians will “either be mystic or nothing at all.”[2] He was underscoring that in the context of the weakening and eventual disappearance of “Christendom,” the commitment of every baptized person would be decisive. With no intention of correcting the great German theologian, for indeed we fully agree with his sentiment, we would simply dare to add that in fact his statement is as true regarding the 21^st century as it would be applied to the 13^th, the 16^th or any other time in history: always, indeed, the cornerstone of an authentic Christian perspective on things has been the depth of our commitment, which comes as a result of real experience, and the existence of what Camilo Torres called “Christian conscience.” In other words, the witness of stones really soaked and penetrated by the Gospel in the midst of the great pond that is our society.

To understand that it is very possible to live surrounded by Christianity without opening ourselves up to Jesus’ transforming call is, first and foremost, an invitation to examine each day the quality of our personal commitment and the depth of our sincere openness to the Spirit’s guidance. Today, just as yesterday and tomorrow, the quality of the Christian community will not be measured by the number of temples or stadiums that we may be able to fill up, but rather by the authenticity, the human maturity and the Christian charity present in the lives of those who (whether they may fill up churches or not) will call themselves Jesus’ disciples.

 

^[1] Encrucijadas de la Iglesia en América Latina, April 19, 1965.

^[2] The paternity of the sentence is also attributed to the French novelist André Malraux and to the Spanish priest and theologian Raimon Panikkar, for both had expressed very similar thoughts.