Good News from Latin America?

One has to listen attentively to hear good news from Central and South America—together referred to as Latin America. Catering to our almost pathological appetite for the sensational, a steady flow of bad news is obligingly disgorged by the media—drug wars in Colombia, U.S.-sponsored murders in Central America, guerrilla atrocities in Peru, cruelty in El Salvador, torture in Guatemala, corruption of air and politics in Mexico, economic collapse in Argentina, and on it goes.

Bad news from Latin America is not a recent phenomenon. In American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (Oxford University Press, 1992), David Stannard chronicles with doleful clarity the most sweeping genocide in human history, one that implicated “Christians” in the systematic obliteration of an estimated one hundred million indigenous inhabitants of the
Western Hemisphere.

Yet today the church in Latin America boasts an aggregate membership approaching half a billion. Refracted by a bewildering variety of institutional and cultural allegiances, believers— most of whom are baptized Roman Catholic—are in a state of constant, ongoing conversion, sometimes to unbelief. Tensions associated with this frequently controversial phenomenon are elucidated in the lead article by Edward Cleary, O.P. 

Latin American Christians are also swept up in the globe’s tidal waves of human migration, forsaking the familiar in search of a better country, often in Europe. Miguel Palomino, himself an evangelical, explores ways in which the “popular Protestantism” of these European immigrants affects both them and their new social and religious contexts.

Contributing editor John Gorski, M.M., highlights Latin American manifestations of two seminal missiological concerns: (1) the complex interplay of cultural form and theological substance, so that newly born, culturally diverse congregations of believers have “their own face” while still evincing the Christian family resemblance; and (2) the challenge to these newly formed churches of assuming their proper responsibility for mission activity beyond their own parochial frontiers.

The essay by Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., reviews the integral role played by Jesuits throughout the history of Christian presence in Latin America. Rendered persona non grata in 1767 by King Charles III of Spain, the society’s suppression six years later by Pope Clement XIV resulted in a further forty-one-year moratorium
on their labors. Much that is good about the news from Latin America today can be traced to the indomitable Society of Jesus.

Add Andrew Kirk’s missioner- pilgrim reminiscences, the legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch and Archibald Reekie, and the illuminating statistics from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, and readers will discover much in this issue to provoke, stimulate, inform, and transform. Good news from Latin America? You be the judge! 

Contents

Shopping Around: Questions About Latin American Conversions
Edward L. Cleary, O.P.

Latino Immigration in Europe: Challenge and Opportunity for Mission
Miguel A. Palomino

Christology, Inculturation, and Their Missiological Implications: A Latin American Perspective
John F. Gorski, M.M.

The Jesuits in Latin America: Legacy and Current Emphases
Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J.

Latin American Catholicism
Bryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier

My Pilgrimage in Mission
J. Andrew Kirk

The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch: A Life Informed by Mission
Barbara A. Lundsten

The Legacy of Archibald B. Reekie
William H. Brackney

Noteworthy

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