The Colonial Williamsburg Approach To Catholicism

I love small town America.  I have a little vacation time and I am sitting on the veranda of a country-style coffee shop in East Aurora New York having my breakfast and looking out into a different world of a lazy hazy summer far from the maddening crowd of my normal place of work.  This is so different than my everyday rush and bother and the confused world of a metropolitan area. There are “traditional” families having a 10:00 am weekday morning breakfast together with teenagers who look like they are actually happy to be with their parents.  I don’t see anyone texting or checking their emails.  In fact, I am getting a bit self-conscious about sitting here with my laptop even though I am alone at my table.  Across the street is the white clapboard Presbyterian Church with its tall New-Englandy tower and Palladian widow.  A large American flag hangs from the tower.  I know the time because the bell in the Episcopal Church up the street just sounded the hour.  Lawns are green and tightly clipped; summer gardens filled with hollyhock and painted daises and pink cleome and hydrangea.  This is a world in which the issues of post-modern U.S.A. seem totally removed.  I am sure there are same-sex married couples somewhere in this town, and probably some of these nice ladies in their garden-hats having their coffee and laughing with one another have a Salvadoran of questionable legal status cleaning their homes, and there probably are a few children of color in the in the public schools, but it is all hidden from sight and duly out of mind.   One might think that Dwight Eisenhower is still President and June and Ward Cleaver live just around the corner.  I grew up in a somewhat idyllic world in which everybody went to Mass—and the ladies wore hats and gloves to do so—and divorce was an unknown quantity.  Yes, there was some domestic violence and even more alcoholism and the man across the street wore his wife’s underwear but it wasn’t talked about, at least in front of the children.  Sunday dinner was a roast and we could play outside until dark without anyone worrying.  I miss that world.  In retrospect it was an artificial world: closet doors were nailed shut and to reach the age of reason meant to buy into the web of ever-bigger lies, but it was all so simple as long as you didn’t rock the boat.   And it is wonderful to retreat into a facsimile of that world if only for a few days of vacation; but that world is gone and gone for good.  It was only a frame in social history and despite the efforts of those who wish to see their children and grandchildren safe and secure in their own particular variant of colonial Williamsburg, the toothpaste won’t go back into the tube and we Christians know that our discipleship must face the challenges of today’s world and not hide in some magic wardrobe among the tattered silks and shabby furs of Grandma’s day. 

I think this is the stumbling block for today’s Catholic neo-cons.  The memories of pre-Vatican II Catholicism represent for them a safer, less complex world of back-porch ice-cream and rosary crusades where one didn’t have to look at life’s complexities so squarely in the eye.  We didn’t have to question then, we could just trust the powers-that-be to keep us safe and free.  It all began to come apart when Camelot collapsed and we were left with Viet Nam and Civil Rights.  At first it all seemed so clear and many of us even climbed on the liberal bandwagon.  We wanted to protect our Little Brown Brothers in South-east Asia from the grasp of Khrushchev and Mao.  Who knew that a law that required us to serve lunch at the Woolworth’s Lunch Counter to Miss Savannah, the Black lady who cleaned Aunt Ethel’s house, would one day require us to bake a wedding cake for a Gay couple?  Oh, J.Edgar tried to warn us.  Yes he did.  Martin Luther King was a communist and the Kennedy brothers were sleeping with Marilyn Monroe—but did we listen?  No.  And our whole world began to unravel.  There were the Beatles and the Beatles led to Pot and Pot to Coke—and I don’t mean Cola—and then all hell broke loose at Woodstock.  And those protestors against Viet Nam began to question our government and the next thing you know we had Eugene McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy led to Walter Mondale and Mondale to Clinton and the next thing you know we got ourselves a Kenyan in the White House.  And all the walls have come tumbling down.  Why I have a doctor who is half-German and half-Korean!  And my niece married an African American (but he can passé blanc and fortunately their child looks like us.)  And my uncle divorced my aunt after 35 years of marriage and is living with a woman whose brother is a priest and he goes over to their house for dinner and on vacation with them!  And two lesbians just bought the house across the street and have come over to ask if they can take a clipping from the fig tree in our yard.  If I give them a clipping, will my pastor deny me Holy Communion?   I just love being in East Aurora—it is the next best thing to the Tridentine Mass for forgetting that it is 2015 and following Jesus isn’t as simple as it used to be. 

At the end of the day—or the vacation—Colonial Williamsburg Christianity is not Christian Discipleship.  If God wished us to live in 1950’s America he would have had us born a generation or two earlier.  We are placed in our specific time and place to make the Kingdom of God a reality in that specific moment and location in history.  While the Christian is not called to embrace the peculiarities of culture, we are called to evangelize in the everyday world in which live.  To do this we need to live in the world around us and not to try to take refuge in our memories of an easier, better day. 

I think the single most memorable—and “shaping”—book I read during the entire course of my education was Creative Fidelity by the French Existentialist, Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973).  Marcel’s thesis, at least as I remember it and as it has shaped me, is that faithfulness (fidelity) requires change.  As the world around us changes, so too must we change if we are to keep our values fixed on the unchanging. To fail to change is to be the servant who takes his silver coin and buries it for fear of the returning Master’s wrath.  Let me explain it this way.   I am on the people-mover that carries pilgrims past the tilma containing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that hangs over the altar in the shrine of the same name in Mexico City.  If I am to keep my eye on the image of Our Lady I have to constantly shift my position as I stand on the people-mover as the carrier moves me along otherwise my eyes will see only the blank wall as I move beyond the space directly below the image.   This is what John Henry Newman meant when he said: “To live is to change and to have changed often is to have lived well.”  I am enjoying my time up here in small-town Americana; it’s letting me off my tilt-a-whirl world with all its complexities and challenges, but going to Mass yesterday and hearing the priest remind me about the challenges Jesus faced surrounded by people whose hunger was not just spiritual reminds me that I need to go back into the realities of life and meet people where they are at and not where I think they should be.

The Virgin Mary And the Inculturation of our Catholic Faith

I hope I get this posted today, December 12, although I am starting a bit late.  It is just an observation the priest made at Mass this morning about the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. According to the story, the Mother of God (call me old fashioned but I still prefer the designation given at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon) appeared on December 9 1531 to an Aztec convert to Catholicism, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin,  as he passed by the Hill of Tepeyac on the outskirts of Mexico City and spoke to him in the native Nahuatl language.  Juan Diego reported the incident to the Archbishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga (A Spaniard, of course) who asked for some sign of authenticity.  Archbishop de Zumárraga was a wise and compassionate prelate who had no desire to embarrass the campesino but who also had to guarantee the orthodoxy of any cult that might arise from the alleged vision.  This was especially troublesome as Mary supposedly appeared not as a Caucasian but as a Native American and was dressed in Aztec clothing with her sash tied over her pregnant belly in the manner Aztec women dressed during pregnancy.  The Bishop had his suspicions because the “apparition” Juan Diego claimed to see resembled the Aztec Goddess of Fertility, Tonantzin (a name which means “Our Revered Mother).  There had been a temple to Tonantzin on the very site where the apparition occurred until several years before when the Spanish conquerors of Mexico had destroyed the Temple in an effort to wipe out the native Aztec religion.  The Bishop needed some sign that this apparition of an Aztec Madonna was authentic and not an attempt to revive the cult of Tonantzin.  Within the next three days there was a healing miracle but the Virgin went even further, telling Juan Diego to gather some roses that were blooming there.  The Roses were of a variety found only in Spain and not in the new world.  They had not been seen growing there before.  Moreover they were blooming in December despite the cold.  The Virgin arranged the flowers in Juan Diego’s tilma (native cloak made of cactus fibers) and told the Aztec to bring the cloak to the bishop.  When Juan Diego opened the cloak in the bishop’s presence, the image of the Virgin was imprinted on the cloak.  Even from the beginning the Church was divided on the question of the vision’s authenticity and modern historians have questioned the existence of Juan Diego.  The sources are scarce and none are contemporary to the events.  But that is not my point.  The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is extremely popular not only in Mexico but throughout the Americas.  There are some—including myself—who would like to see our national patronage changed from the Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception to the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  It makes far more sense precisely because she is American.  But what is really curious is to consider how the krazies would react to the vision if it where to happen today.  Mary as a Native American?  That raises the whole issue of inculturation and ending the hegemon of European culture and European style Catholicism for the Americas.  Mary appearing to a person in the political and socio-economic underclass?  That has repercussions for today as well.  Some people scream bloody murder when they see Christ or his Mother portrayed as Africans or as Orientals.  What about Mary—or Jesus—dressed in contemporary American clothing?  How would that go over for a statue in our church or a stained glass window?   The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe has always been a popular cult, not associated with the Traditional Latin Mass but with the music and dance of popular Mexican culture.  In fact, while the Spaniards had come to Mexico in 1519 by 1531 there were very few convert but within five years of the vision, almost the entire population had embraced Catholicism, albeit it in highly indigenous expression.  The tilma of Juan Diego is one of the great evangelizers in the history of the Church. 

Aztec Godess/Catholic Virgin: Either or Both Have Been Good News For the Poor

The Image of Our Lady of
Guadalupe

The story is that in December 1531, only twelve years after the conquest of Mexico by the
Spaniards, an indigenous Aztec peasant passing by the ruined temple of the goddess Tonantzin on the hill of Tepeyac near what is today Mexico City met a young woman who told him she wanted a church built on the spot of their encounter.  The peasant, named Juan Diego in Spanish, relayed this request to the bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, who told him that he needed proof of the lady’s high station to make such a request. Returning to the site,  Juan Diego was told by the woman to gather roses that were growing there—roses blooming in December—and bring them to the bishop.  Juan Diego cut the roses, folded them in his poncho, and returned to the bishop.  At the bishop’s residence, he opened his poncho and the roses fell to the ground revealing an image of the lady imprinted onto the poncho. 

     It is a lovely story, but problematic.  There is no mention of the account in the extensive records kept Archbishop  Zumárraga .  The earliest mention of the image is in regard to a sermon preached by Zumárraga’s successor,  Alonso de Montúfar, a Dominican who relayed the story.  Archbishop Montúfar preached his sermon in the Church at Tepeyac where the image was venerated by the local Aztec people.  The Archbishop encouraged this devotion.  The Franciscans who had custody of the shrine insisted that the painting had been done by an Indian named Marcos and discouraged veneration of the image as superstitious.  The Archbishop removed the shrine from the custody of the Franciscans. 

     The image itself is exceptional in several ways but not in any that might require a supernatural origin.  The material the image is on is most likely a fabric woven from the agave plant.  This fiber, called ixtle appears course as if it were a mixture of linen and hemp but in fact is almost silken to the touch.  The material has been treated in places with a primer to better hold the pigments. The pigments themselves seem chemically to be typical of sixteenth-century pigments but, despite the fact there is some flaking, are of an exceptional vibrant color and luminosity.  In other words, while they appear within the range of what could be manufactured in the sixteenth century chemically, the quality is extraordinary.   There are some signs of brush strokes but not significantly so.  There is no underpainting or sketching, the image—if painted—done in freehand.   It does seem, however, that through the subsequent centuries there are layers of paint that have been added—and some removed—however there is not any varnish finish to preserve or lock in the pigments.  All this only makes it more complex.  It technically would be within the scope of human manufacture but the quality makes it inexplicable for an amateur artist working under the minimal conditions of immediate post-conquest Spanish America. 

      Juan Diego is no less a mystery.  There is some difficulty in establish his existence in a historically reliable way.  Until 1995 the oldest documentary mention of him was mid seventeenth century, almost a hundred and thirty years after the alleged vision. However,  in 1996 with Pope John Paul anxious to beatify him, a parchment (actually deerskin) was produced illustrating the vision and scenes form his life. This previously unknown parchment was dated 1548 and bears the signatures of two well known Spanish priest Antonio Valeriano and Bernardino de Sahagun, active in Mexico at that time.  The authenticity of this document has as of yet neither been proved nor disproved but its being previously unknown for almost five centuries places the burden of proof on those who argue for its authenticity.   Probably more important than its factuality is the issue of what the image and story represent.

      The story that the Virgin Mary—patroness of the Conquerors—would appear to a peasant from the conquered peoples, appear as one of them, and appear pregnant is a story of tremendous hope for a vanquished people.  On the other hand there is something dubious in the story as well.  Locating the site of the vision amid the ruins of a temple to the Mother Goddess of the Aztec people, building a Church on the spot and installing the icon of the Aztec Virgin for the veneration of the indigenous people smacks of religious syncretism.  Of Course Christianity has long built Christian cult on the foundations of pre-Christian mythology.  But this explains the debate between Archbishop Montúfar who saw the evangelizing potential in the icon and was not adverse to building a Christian cult on an Aztec foundation and the Franciscans arguing for strict orthodoxy.  Over the centuries this image and the legends that have surrounded it have given the hope it symbolizes to millions and millions of the poorest and most oppressed victims of colonialism.  Whatever the “facts” the Virgin of Guadalupe has embodied the Good News for the poor, the liberation for the captives, that her Son came to proclaim.