Many people will know that Karl Marx called religion the ‘opium of the people’. Far fewer, I would guess, will recall that he added that it was ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world’. It was this that the South American bishops began to look at and act upon during the late 1960s. Earlier in the decade, the Ecumenical Council of Vatican II had been a qualified success particularly with regard to the role of the Church in the modern world. In 1967 Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Populorum Progressio had also examined the need to help the poor in what came to be called the ‘Third World’. But it was all done from a European perspective.
The second Conference of Latin American Bishops, summoned by their coordinating Council, known by its Spanish acronym CELAM, met in Medellín, Colombia in 1968 and resolved on a brave and radical initiative – a preferential option for the poor. The Latin American Church would break from its identification with the state and its other-worldly view of salvation symbolised by the eighteenth-century Baroque and identify with the people at the most elementary level.
Helder Camara was a charismatic and influential figure in the debates of CELAM. He had been appointed Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco in NE Brazil, in 1964 at almost the same time as a right-wing military junta under General Humberto Castelo Branco seized power.
Although silenced by the regime for his outspoken views, he soon became an international celebrity for his writing and championship of those in need. This present book is edited by Francis McDonagh, who has spent the last twenty years following development and religious issues in Latin America, including three years living in Recife as a correspondent for The Tablet. His deft editorship offers a good selection of the (mainly English) writings of Dom Helder Camara and an insight into his mind, his spirituality and his commitment. The selections from his many books highlight Dom Helder’s distinctive blend of prayerfulness and social vision. They point toward the renewal of the church, the transformation of the social order, and the healing of a wounded planet.
Dom Helder’s writing uncovers a genuine and very moving compassion for the poor, the needy and the marginalised both in the favelas and the sertao – the backlands of rural Brazil. He combines this with a deep faith in God’s presence in creation. Interspersed with poetry, the text remind one of the vision of St Francis of Assisi. A faith that loves the Earth. His writing reveals that the many problems about Christian faith as a religion were submerged in genuinely serious problems about society.
However, the ‘option for the poor’ was a reasonable political choice but not as novel as some advocates of liberation theology seemed to think. In reality it was very naive about the use of biblical texts. The flaw in an interpretation of the scriptures from a left-wing stance is that it is equally possible to interpret the Bible from a right-wing stance as well. Moreover, nothing in the modern history of the Church inclines people to trust the judgement of priests in politics. Politics does not solve religious questions; at some stage or other what emerges from political dialectic is the demand for an end to discussion. Liberation theology was a kind of politicisation of orthodoxy, an attempt to make orthodoxy more palatable by gently secularising it. But it all made the defeat of liberation theologians and activists possible during the years of Pope John Paul II. Men like Helder Camara and his one-time protégé, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paulo, were gradually marginalised by the Roman Curia and then replaced by right-wing establishment men on their retirement.
The book is not just the testimony of a kind, caring and highly single-minded pastor. It is also the tip of an iceberg revealing a sad and unhappy chapter of the Catholic Church in South America. The Theology of Liberation, inspired by the writings of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, was set to be a binding force throughout the continent. Unfortunately it was regarded as Marxist, anti-establishment and dangerous.
Reading Dom Helder’s account, many people will wonder why. Dom Helder was always puzzled that he was labelled with an attachment to Communism. ‘Christianism is much more revolutionary,’ he said.
UK distributor: Alban Books, 14 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3BL. Tel: 0131 226 2217. sales@albanbooks.com Michael Morton is the Catholic parish priest of St Winefride’s Church in Sandbach, Cheshire and a SOF trustee.
Review of Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings, edited by Francis McDonagh (Orbis Books, New York 2009). 189 pages. £10.99. ISBN: 978-1-5705-823-2.