Junio 27, 2007
Proceso 1247

The results of Aparecida
Monographic Issue

The context of Aparecida

During the third week of May, the bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean held a meeting in Aparecida, Brazil, during the Fifth Conference of Bishops. At this point, an unofficial conclusive document has already been published, and it reveals the result of the meeting. Proceso has been discussing in several occasions the Fifth Encounter of Bishops, and now we publish an article by Carlos Ayala –the director of the YSUCA- in which he reflects upon this conclusive document. Before looking at the article prepared by Ayala, we will analyze in general terms the Latin American context in which the encounter took place in order to evaluate the way in which the bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean handled themselves in the meeting.

            In this early XXI Century, poverty and inequality remain as a structural problem for the Latin American societies. The report called “Democracy in Latin America” indicates that “In 2003, the region counted with 225 million people (approximately 43.9%) with an income below the poverty line… The Latin American societies coexist in some of the most unequal conditions of the world. In the case of poverty, that inequality is not only noticeable if we compare Latin America with the rest of the world, it is possible to see that inequality as well in the persistence of this problem along the last three decades”. In the case of Mexico and Central America, in 2001, poverty affected 50.8% of the total population in the region. These Latin American nations insert themselves in a global context that intensifies and expands poverty along the planet. In the words of Ignacio Ramonet, Ramón Chao and Jacek Wozniac, “over 600 million human beings –half the inhabitants of the cities that belong to the South- live now in horrid conditions, in houses made out of discarded materiasl (there are 3000 in Calcutta) with no sewage systems, no hygiene, no public assistance… With this accelerated process of globalization, ‘the unsustainable consumption and production scheme’ has turned worse. The unequal living conditions have reached unknown levels since the times of the pharaohs. The fortunes of the world’s three richest individuals are larger than the income of the inhabitants of the poorest 48 countries”.

            In the new century, poverty and inequality have not only become more complex, now it is much more difficult to improve this situation. Democracy is not doing better than the fight against poverty. People are unhappy with the kind of democracy they see. And there is a simple reason for all this: “The expectations grew weaker because the performance of the political representations and the performance of the public institutions are not connected with the expectations of the majority, historically subjected to the conditions of poverty and exclusion. In the new international circumstances the regime and the State reinforce such conditions, and they contradict their own democratic and liberal claims, as well as the promises of the political leaders”. With enough reasons, the first five years of the new century were characterized at a political level by a discussion about the democratic governance. This discussion was one of the legacies of the late nineties, when the sense of democratic governance became a stagnated project in the region where Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador are located.
 
            On the other hand, the increasing disenchantment with democracy can be added to the deterioration of the human coexistence due to the increasing levels of social violence of the region, a problem that becomes more intense with time. The nineties’ legacy was one of the highest levels of violence, and far from decreasing in the first years of 2000, it has remained at unmanageable levels. “By the end of the nineties   -according to M. Buvinic, A. Morrison and M.B. Orlando-, the World’s Health Organization reported in 2002 that at least ten countries in the American continent revealed that they had homicide rates that were higher than the average world rate of 8.9%, and at least four countries had a homicide rate level higher than 20%, out of a total of 19 countries with records to support this information (…). In absolute terms, in Latin America and the Caribbean, between 110,000 and 120,000 people are murdered each year (…). To these facts, we can add other expressions of domestic and social violence against gender, race, age, social status, and the presence of the gangs, which have become an epidemic factor in any society.

            The legacy of more than two decades living under a Neo-liberal system in Latin America is a negative legacy, in terms of exclusion, weak social bonds, and the abuse against the natural resources. The wear-and-tear of the Neo-liberal model has created different political alternatives through which the intention is to confront in a different way (with ambiguity and dangers included) the economic, the political and the cultural development of the Latin American societies. Some of the variables of what can be considered as the Latin American left wing –which goes from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and all the way up to Brazil with Lula de Silva and Michelle Blanchet in Chile- have administrated different countries in the region, opening the doors to other possibilities in the economic, the political and the social management.

            This is the context in which the meeting of the Latin American and the Caribbean bishops took place in Aparecida. It is necessary to reflect upon the way in which they faced the challenges that were over the table during the encounter. It is also necessary to see what is the situation of these regions, according to the bishops’ perspectives, and how is that they understand their religious commitments as well as the commitments of the Christian community in a historic reality characterized by a profound deficit in matters of social justice.

Approaching the “conclusive document” (the unofficial version) of Aparecida

1. Introduction

The unofficial version of the “Conclusive Document” of Aparecida has been revealed. The final document was approved with 134 votes in favor, two against, and one abstention. In other words, there was an almost unanimous consensus in reference to the analysis, the contents and the criteria that will become the fundamental aspects of the evangelic work of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean.
      Some of those who participated in the Fifth Conference sustain that even if an environment of respect predominated in the debates, there were also perspectives, proposals and ideas that were very different from one another. There were at least three different lines of thought: one that intended to keep working with the modernization of the pastoral options of Medellin and Puebla (the option for the poor, for justice, for the CEBES); another one closer to the perspectives of the authorities from the Vatican, in which the interests and the issues that come from Rome (the truths of faith, the teachings of the popes, the fight against the moral relativism, bioethics) are intended to become the predominant feature of this initiative; and the spiritual perspective, which intended to disconnect the experience of faith from the problems an from the social and the political affairs. Which one predominated? Was there an eclectic integration? Were they honest with the reality of the continent and were they coherent with the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth? These questions, among others, might guide the reader through this article.
     

2. The objectives of the Fifth Conference

The DCA sustains that the intention of the first conference is to take care of the faith of the people of God and nourish it, to remind the faithful ones in the continent that, because of the virtue of their baptism, they are called to become disciples and missioners of Jesus Christ (n.10), to profoundly rethink and launch once again with faithfulness and audacity the mission of the Church in the new circumstances of Latin America and the world (n.11), to restart the mission through the Christian spirit, acknowledging that one does not begin to follow Christ because of an ethical decision or because of a great idea, but because we encounter ourselves with an event, with a Person that gives a new horizon to our lives, and, with that, a new decisive orientation. (n12).
      These objectives are closely related with the challenges of the Latin American and the Caribbean Church: the gray pragmatism of the every-day life in the church, in which everything apparently has a normal course, but where in reality faith is getting worn out and becoming selfishness (n.12); the need to revitalize the ways in which we are Catholics, in order that the Christian Faith stays deep into the hearts of the Latin American people (n.13); the need to show the capacity of the Church to promote and educate disciples and missioners willing to respond to their vocation and able to communicate the gift of the encounter with Jesus Christ (n.14).
      In the beginning, we find, in the objectives as well as in the challenges, a certain concern about the ways involved in being a Church and the style through which it projects its mission. A first approach to this matter might seem to reveal that there is a certain feeling of self-centering ourselves in the idea of the Church by emphasizing the custody of the Christian doctrine, the responsibilities inside the Church, and the erosion of the Catholic faith in growing sectors of the Latin American population.
      However, reading the document from a global perspective, it indicates something different when it connects in a substantial manner the Church, its mission, the actions that make us follow Jesus, and the reality of the continent. Through this perspective we find more of an eccentric Church, that is, a Church that is not exaggeratedly self-centered, a Church at the service of the Kingdom of God, a Church that follows God, a God that the Church can continuously turn to. A Kingdom that has to do with the construction of social justice (n. 396), with the solidarity towards the suffering faces (nn. 407, 409), with the commitment to the poor, and with the promotion of the human life and liberation (n.416). That is why the Bishops in their message to the people in Latin America and the Caribbean indicate that “the vocation to become missioners and disciples demands a clear decision to follow God and his Word, a coherent association between faith and life, the incarnation of the values of the Kingdom of God, the insertion into the community, and to be a sign of both contradiction and novelty in a world that promotes consumption and distorts the values that dignify humankind. In a world that closes itself to the God of love, we are a community of love, not from the world, but in the world and for the world (from The Message of the Conference at Aparecida, addressed to the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, May 2007, n. 2).

3. The structure of the Conclusive Document of Aparecida

The DCA is divided in three parts:

1. The lives of our people today, where the most important changes that are happening in our continent and in the world (aspects that question the evangelization process) are examined through a theological and a pastoral perspective.
2. The life of Jesus Christ in the missionary disciples (to judge). Taking as an axis the behavior of Jesus, discusses the most important dimensions that concern the Christians in general in reference to the missionary disciples of Christ.
3. The life of Jesus Christ for our people (to act). It explains the main pastoral actions with a missionary dynamism, from the perspective of the ways to discern reality and the theological foundations.

Each part is divided in chapters.

1. The first part contains : The Missionary Disciples (Chapter 1), and The perspective of the Missionary Disciples about reality (Chapter 2).
2. The second part has four chapters: The joy of being Missionary Disciples and announce the Evangelism of Jesus Christ (Chapter 3), The vocation of the Missionary Disciples towards sanctity (chapter 4), The communion of the Missionary Disciples in the Church (Chapter 5), The formative itinerary of the Missionary Disciples (Chapter 6).
3. The third part also includes four chapters: The mission of the disciples at the service of a full life (Chapter 7), The Kingdom of God and the promotion of the human dignity (Chapter 8), Family, people and life (Chapter 9), Our people and the culture (Chapter 10).

The tie that bonds the DCA is the wish to invigorate the mission of the Church both in and from Latin America and the Caribbean. And in order to achieve that, it is important to make a commitment with the following actions: to be a faithful, a living and a credible Church; to form communities full of life that nourish themselves with faith and promote the missionary action; to value the different religious organizations of the Church; to promote an active participation of women in society and in the Church; to keep with a renovated effort the preferential option for the poor; to accompany the youth in their education process and in their search for their identity; to work with all of the people of good will in the construction of the Kingdom; to strengthen  with audacity the pastoral of the families and the one of life in general; to value and respect the native people and the afro-descendants; to get ahead with the Ecumenical dialogue; to turn the continent into a model of reconciliation, of justice and peace; to take care of the creation, the house for all; to collaborate with the integration of the people in Latin America and the Caribbean (cfr. Message on May 2007).

Other articles featured in this issue of Proceso:

1. A political opportunism that knows no boundaries
2. The challenges of the procurator