Ivan Illich and Leo Mahon: Folk Religion and Catechesis in Latin America Todd Hartch

Ivan Illich and Leo Mahon: Folk Religion and Catechesis in Latin America Todd Hartch riest and social critic Ivan Illich played a major role in liberals who cannot make their point at home,” and “traveling Pdiscouraging Roman Catholic missions from the United escapists.” These missionaries had to accept that they were States to Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, as detailed in “useless and even harmful” because they were purveying not a previous issue of this journal.1 To make a long story short, true Christianity but a modern perversion of the religion. Illich during the early 1960s Illich first used his position as the direc- was vehement in his denunciation of the missionary initiative, tor of a training center for missionaries to persuade would-be risking his very priesthood, because he saw this form of mis- missionaries to go back to the United States; in 1967 he wrote a sions as a caricature of Christ’s call to bring the Gospel to all denunciation of American missionary activity called “The Seamy nations. The Peace Corps, American cultural imperialism, the Side of Charity,” which spread his ideas to almost every Catholic spread of American business models—these all were evils in his missionary in Latin America and also to the wider Catholic public mind. Much worse, however, was the corruption of the body of in the United States. Christ into “the Lord’s supermarket, with catechisms, liturgy, This article contrasts Illich with Chicago priest Leo Mahon, and other means of grace heavily in stock.”4 who led a mission project in Panama sponsored by the Arch- At the same time, Illich did not view popular Latin American diocese of Chicago. Between 1962 and 1980 Mahon and a team Catholicism as deficient. Whereas many Catholic social scientists of priests, nuns, and laypeople tried to establish an experi- and missionary intellectuals saw the Catholic practice of most mental parish that not only would reach the residents of the Latin Americans as clearly substandard, Illich had no such San Miguelito neighborhood outside of Panama City but also qualms, primarily because of his experiences in Puerto Rico. “For would serve as a model for other mission projects and for the anybody who has ever breathed the atmosphere of the Island,” rest of the Catholic Church in Latin America. For a time this he said of Puerto Rico, “there is no doubt that theirs is a Catholic experiment proved wildly successful, but eventually it, like folk-culture.” He went on to describe the ways in which people many North American missionary projects of the time, ended who had little contact with the institutional church nevertheless in almost complete defeat. “regularly ask their parents’ blessing before leaving the house,” “devotedly invoke the names of Our Lord or the Virgin,” “plaster Illich: Folk Religion vs. Consumer Catholicism their homes with holy pictures,” and “sign themselves with the Cross before leaving home.” Because most Puerto Ricans lived So what was all the fuss about in the first place? Why was “dispersed over the steep hills of the interior,” they could not Catholic priest Ivan Illich so upset about U.S. Catholic missions attend Mass regularly, baptize their children, or marry in the to Latin America? The story begins on August 17, 1961, when church. “‘Bad habits’ like these,” he believed, “are not a sign of lack Monsignor Agostino Casaroli, speaking on behalf of Pope John of Catholic spirit, but rather the effects of a peculiar ecclesiastical XXIII, challenged the Catholic Church in the United States to history.”5 In short, to Illich it would have been a blasphemy to send 10 percent of its priests, nuns, and religious brothers to replace Latin American folk Catholicism—a valid, even glorious, Latin America, and American Catholics responded with a surge expression of Catholic faith—with the impersonal, consumerist of interest and hundreds of new missionaries.2 Illich, who had version purveyed by American missionaries. served as vice-rector of a Catholic university in Puerto Rico Illich’s denunciation caused quite a commotion, as he and had been commissioned by Fordham University to run a intended. He prevailed upon the editors of the Jesuit journal training center for future missionaries in Cuernavaca, Mexico, America to publish “The Seamy Side of Charity” right before eventually came to believe that the influx of missionaries was the commencement of the 1967 meeting of the Catholic Inter- part of a “multifaceted plan to keep Latin America within the American Cooperation Program, an annual conference designed ideologies of the West” and to turn the Latin American church to encourage American interest in Latin America and the Latin into “a satellite to North American cultural phenomena and American church. Illich and others then passed out copies of policy,” as he wrote in “The Seamy Side of Charity.”3 Because the article to all three thousand people in attendance. Catholic of their cultural baggage, missionaries from the United States missionary activity quickly entered an era of confusion and had transformed the church in Latin America into “the Lord’s doubt. Missionaries themselves suffered crises of confidence, supermarket”; even the best missionaries were doing no more while their supporters and advocates at home faced growing than “maintaining a clerical and irrelevant church.” He had questions and criticisms about almost every aspect of missionary little but scorn for the vast majority of American missionar- activity.6 In combination with the general distrust of authority ies, calling them “a colonial power’s lackey chaplains,” “U.S. in the Vietnam era, revelations about the role of the CIA’s use of missionaries, and the general malaise of the 1970s, Illich’s Todd Hartch teaches Latin American history at Eastern article contributed to a tapering off of U.S. Catholic missionary Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky. He has activity in Latin America. written Missionaries of the State: The Summer Institute of Linguistics, State Formation, and The Mahon Plan Indigenous Mexico, 1935–1985 (Univ. of Alabama Press, 2006) and currently is writing a book on Ivan But not all missionaries agreed with Illich that American mis- Illich and another on the rebirth of Latin American sionaries were a destructive force. One of those who disagreed Christianity. —[email protected] with Illich’s basic premise (although not with some of his October 2012 185 criticisms) was a priest from the Archdiocese of Chicago named not, as was usual, work in parochial schools or other Catholic Leo Mahon. In 1962 Mahon proposed to his archbishop, Albert institutions but instead would develop “mass-scale catechetical Cardinal Meyer, that Latin America was experiencing a crisis methods.”12 This departure from traditional missionary practice in which the church “may die or, at best, shrink to enclaves in highlights how serious Mahon believed the religious crisis of a largely pagan continent” because of its shortage of priests, Latin America was. The lack of priests and the constantly grow- its population growth, and its rapid urbanization. According ing megacities of Latin America were to him the perfect recipe to Mahon, Chicago could help Latin America by setting up an for the church to lose the lower classes completely. For example, experimental parish in a poor neighborhood of a major Latin he agreed with theologian Juan Luis Segundo that most of Latin American city. This experimental parish would develop “ideas, America was in a “pre-Christian stage.”13 On another occasion methods, and procedures” that would serve as models for the he stated to his bishop, “Panama is a Catholic country in name rest of Latin America. Because of the shortage of priests in Latin only,” because, among other factors, only about 5 percent of the America, an influx of too many priests from the north would population attended Mass. The logical response was to make an actually be counterproductive since it would not be reproduc- all-out effort to spread the faith: “Much of Panama would like to ible in other parts of the region. Consequently, the experimental be Christian but will first have to be instructed and converted, in parish would have to focus on “the training and direction of the usage of the day, evangelized.”14 Institution building, school laymen in functions formerly performed by priests—especially administration, and similar approaches were simply inefficient catechesis.”7 Meyer accepted Mahon’s proposal, and in 1963 ways of responding to a spiritual emergency. Mahon and two other Chicago priests began their experimental parish in San Miguelito, a shantytown on the outskirts of Panama San Miguelito in Practice City, Panama, with no paved roads, sewers, or electrical service. It then was home to 40,000 people and grew to several times that Leo Mahon and two other Chicago priests arrived in San Miguelito size by the time they left in 1980. in 1963 and immediately began taking stock of their surroundings. For a time, Mahon and Illich were quite close. In fact, in 1961 Their first observation was that Catholicism in their neighborhood Illich said, “I believe that Mahon’s catechetical approach is one of was the province of women and children and that very few men the most valuable things the United States will ultimately have seemed to feel comfortable at Mass. They also learned that Pana- exported to Latin America.” In 1962 Illich’s journal CIF Reports manian priests had supported themselves through “stole fees,” praised the lessons in Mahon’s catechism, The Family of God, as

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