The Christian Churches of Latin America in the Face Of

CHAPTER TEN

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF LATIN AMERICA IN THE FACE OF NATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND THE STRUGGLE BY CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS FOR A NEW POLITICAL ORDER IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

10.1. The Catholic Church in the Era of Political Emancipation

The impact of the French Revolution was first felt in Saint-Domingue, the huge slave colony, where a large rebellion with high participation of priests occurred in 1791.1 Cachetan, the parish priest of Petite-Anse, deemed the revolt legitimate and holy. Father Philémon offered church asylum to the insurgents. Other priests sought to mediate between rebels and planters, thus making themselves liable to punishment by the authorities. On the other hand, when defending the cause of the planters before the insurgents, the latter threatened to take revenge on them. In the great war of independence that raged from 1791 to 1804 it became impossible to main- tain a vacillating position. Rome condemned wholesale the French Revolution and any overthrow of the social system.2 When Brother Grégoire (bishop of Blois from 1791 to 1801)3 sent twelve priests to Toussaint l’Ouverture (governor of autono- mous Haiti in 1801), who, like he, believed that the declaration of human rights also applied to slaves, Rome declared them heretics.4

1 For a review of the state of research on the revolution in Saint-Domingue see the essays in in JBLA 28 (1991). For the Andean region see Saint Geours, “La Iglesia en la inde- pendencia” (1999). 2 Hurbon, Evangelização do Caribe (1995), 152. 3 Henri Grégoire (1750–1831) fought for the abolition of privileges, the granting of citi- zenship rights to Jews and freed colored persons, and the liberation of black slaves. Although he spoke out vigorously against anti-religious “vandalism” in France, Pope Pius VII forced him to resign from his bishop’s post in 1801 for defending Gallican liberties. 4 See Hurbon, The Church (1992), 370. It is difficult to reconcile this with the declaration issued by the Propaganda Fide congregation on March 6, 1684 in response to Lourenço da Silva de Mendoça’s reflections against the slave trade and hereditary slavery in the Americas (see KThQ VI, 258 f.). It deserves to be mentioned at least in passing that it was a tragedy that in the nineteenth century, Indians, as opposed to Afro-Haitians, were not granted the opportunity of setting up an indigenous state of their own somewhere; there were, of course, a number of ephemeral attempts, e.g., the “kingdom” of the Quiché Indians of Guatemala or the “kingdom” of Mosquitia, dependent upon England, on the Atlantic coast 272 chapter ten

In 1808, when the Spanish colonial system found itself in a definite state of crisis, the loyalty of the predominantly creole clergy to the Crown was no longer as assured as during the revolts of 1780. Creole clergymen were becoming increasingly resentful of the monopoly held by peninsular Spaniards on positions in the upper hierarchy of the church. “Many cleri- cal privileges, particularly the special ecclesiastical jurisdiction that pro- tected them from civil courts, were threatened. The Crown’s seizure of church property (consolidation decree of December 26, 1804), endowments, and capellanías went one step further. Poorly paid parish priests were dependent upon income from these endowments. Indeed, this was the only source of an income for an entire army of clergymen without ben- efices through royal patronage (it is estimated that 80% of the secular clergy in New Spain towards the end of the eighteenth century were in this situation) as well as for a large number of members of religious orders. The lower clergy would later play a leading role in some independence movements, particularly in the rebellions of Hidalgo and Morelos in Mexico (1810–15).”5 By the end of the eighteenth century, French influence had already made itself felt upon large portions of educated creole society, including the secular and the regular clergy. After the blood orgy of the French Revolution, however, it was no longer possible to openly take sides with France. A man like Francisco de Miranda6 abandoned the Spanish officer

of Nicaragua, in the nineteenth century, or the República de Tule of the Kuná in Panama in 1925. If nothing else, categorical rejection on the part of the United States prevented their success, for foreign minister John M. Clayton declared already on May 7, 1850 that any rec- ognition of Indian sovereignty on the American continent would threaten the existential foundations of the states located there – a view Latin American governments shared; see Kahle, Counani (1995), 166 f. 5 Barnadas, The Catholic Church, 539. In 1812, Miguel Hidalgo was defamed as a follower of Luther by the bishop-elect of Michoacán, Manuel Abad y Queipo. Furthermore, the bishop compared the uprising with the German Peasants’ War of 1525; on this, see Peer Schmidt, Transformación Política e Identidad del Clero Mexicano en la Época de las Revoluciones Atlánticas (1789–1821) (2001), 366 ff. – Carta pastoral del ilustrísimo obispo electo gobernador del obispado de Michoacán. 1812. In: Hernández y Dávalos, Colección de Documentos, vol. IV, 439–485. See also Ferrer Muñoz, “Guerra Civil en Nueva España (1810–1815)” (1991). Hidalgo and Morelos were convicted by the Inquisition and executed by firing squad along with 123 priests who had supported the uprising; see Prien, La Historia del Cristianismo en América Latina, 378. It was not until March 25, 2000 that these two heroes of the war of independence were acknowledged positively in the pastoral letter of the Mexican bishops' conference under the title “From the encounter with Christ to soli- darity with everyone” within the framework of an historical admission of guilt; see Kruip, “Mexiko” (2009), 102 f. 6 See Zeuske, Francisco de Miranda (1995).