Author: Ginger Thompson
Publication: The New York Times
Date: July 30, 2002
It has been 23 years since John
Paul II visited Mexico on his first foreign trip as pope, and now he is
to return for what many here quietly consider a final farewell.
He was the first pope to visit Mexico,
one of the largest and most devout Catholic countries in the world. At
that time, strict anticlerical laws by the country's authoritarian government
would not even allow priests to wear their vestments outside the church.
But Pope John Paul paraded through
the streets, drawing millions of people, especially here in the largest
Roman Catholic diocese in Latin America. In his first farewell, the new
pope declared Mexico a country "forever faithful."
For all of the church's strength
in Mexico, though, there is a troublesome, yawning divide between the teachings
of the church and the beliefs of Mexican Catholics. The divide is clear
in surveys showing that Mexicans favor birth control, oppose religious
education and are open to abortion.
It propels the steady growth of
Protestant churches, particularly in rural Indian communities, where people
increasingly press to allow women to serve as religious leaders and to
allow members of the clergy to marry.
It is also embodied in committed
Catholics, like President Vicente Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagún.
Both are divorced, and they were married a year ago in a civil ceremony
without having their first marriages annulled by the church.
Their break with Roman Catholic
norms rankled religious leaders across the country. In the weeks leading
up to Pope John Paul's visit here, newspapers have been filled with speculation
over whether they will be denied a private audience.
"Mexico, like many other countries,
is in the process of a broad secularization," said Roberto Blancarte, a
sociologist at the Colegio de México. "Despite its devotion to the
Catholic Church, there is a growing distance between Vatican doctrine and
Mexican daily life.
"Morality is a private matter. The
conscience of each person is their guide, not the church."
On Tuesday the ailing 82-year-old
pope is to arrive for his fifth trip to Mexico. During a three-day stay,
he is to canonize the church's first indigenous saint, Juan Diego, a 16th-century
Aztec peasant. Juan Diego is considered the keeper of the image of Mexico's
patron and most enduring symbol of national identity, the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Mexico, strategically important
to the Vatican as a bridge linking religious movements in the United States
with those of Latin America, has the second- largest Catholic population
in the world; only Brazil's is larger.
Pope John Paul will find that he
remains a uniquely popular figure for a vast flock. He will also find that
politics toward the church here have warmed so dramatically that the president
- the first opposition head of state in seven decades - carried an image
of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a campaign banner and received a crucifix
at his inauguration.
But as Mexican society grows more
modern and cosmopolitan, the church finds itself embroiled in a battle
for the Mexican conscience. The parish of the Virgen of Guadalupe Tepeyac,
in a working-class neighborhood on the east side of this city, is at the
front lines of the battle.
A dozen seminarians, including Paolo
César Barajas, are its foot soldiers. The parish sits at the top
of a hill, overlooking one of the city's largest Protestant churches.
In an effort modeled after the door-to-door
campaigns of Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic seminarians walk the narrow,
traffic-clogged streets of the parish, visiting the sick and counseling
the troubled. Some residents let the seminarians hold prayer services and
give Communion on their porches or in their garages. Others turn them away.
Mr. Barajas, 23, said there had
been no serious incidents of violence between Catholics and Protestants
like those that have forced tens of thousands of Protestants to flee their
homes in the southern state of Chiapas. The more insidious conflict, he
said, pits him against his own flock.
His parishioners, he said, are Catholic
families led by couples who are not married, who have no interest in sending
their children to Catholic schools and who counsel their children to use
birth control.
"The church is always full on Sunday,"
he said. "Rituals are easy for the people. But they do not turn to the
church when they are making choices in their lives. And if they do turn
to the church, many of them reject what the church demands."
The contradictory religious attitudes
in Mexico can be traced back to political convictions forged more than
150 years ago when Mexico's first Indian president, Benito Juárez,
amended the Constitution to limit the church's involvement in politics
and confiscated most of its property as part of an effort to end domination
by the church and the wealthy elite. Later his actions became founding
principles of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed Mexico
for seven uninterrupted decades, until Mr. Fox took office.
Meanwhile, the widespread defections
to the Protestant churches here caused the pope's thinking about the Americas
to evolve. During his fourth visit to Mexico, in 1999, he urged greater
participation of women and urged the church to incorporate native cultures.
But the Vatican's evolution has
not kept pace with the attitudes in Mexican society. Just after Mr. Fox's
election, for example, legislators from his party in his home state of
Guanajuato passed legislation to make abortion illegal even in cases of
rape. The bill stirred national outrage and protests by civic groups, forcing
the governor to veto it.
Later, lawmakers from the president's
party in the nation's capital were unable to stop the passage of a law
that permits women to have abortions when pregnancy threatens the life
of the mother or when the fetus has serious malformations.
It is not the battles that play
out on the front pages that most worry seminarians like Mr. Barajas. It
is the penetrating questions from the families of his parish.
Last week it was the Vargas family.
David Vargas, 45, an ironsmith, and his wife Leticia, 42, invited the seminarian
for lunch. The lunches offer an opportunity to spread Catholicism in an
intimate setting, Mr. Barajas said. But the Vargas family seemed intent
on giving the church a piece of their mind.
"Why is it that people who are divorced
are prohibited from Communion?" Mrs. Vargas asked. "Divorce does not seem
like a sin to me."
The aspiring priest responded, "Divorce
on its own is not a sin."
But he was interrupted. "Why does
the church consider it wrong to use birth control?" Mrs. Vargas said, turning
toward her 23-year-old daughter, Janet. "Would the church rather we have
children we cannot care for?"
While Mr. Barajas squirmed for an
answer, Mr. Vargas tried to lighten the mood.
"My wife and I don't always agree,"
he reassured the seminarian. "We still believe in the Catholic Church.
We just think it needs to grow up in some areas."
