Memo From Mexico, By
Allan Wall
The Virgin Of Guadalupe And The U.S. National Question
Pope John Paul II visited Mexico, for the fifth
time, from July 30th to August 1st,
2002. He received an absolutely spectacular welcome.
The Pope loves Mexico and Mexico loves the Pope. As
he is fond of saying—and he said it on this visit
too—“México—Siempre Fiel” (Mexico, Ever
Faithful). And, after years of
controversy, the pontiff finally canonized the
Indian Juan Diego—making him Saint Juan Diego—in an
impressive ceremony attended by thousands and viewed
by millions.
But appearances can be deceiving. The fact is that the
Mexican Catholic Church is in serious trouble.
Mexico’s “Milenio” magazine describes the
situation thusly:
“Although 85% of the population of our country is
officially Catholic...only 5-8% can be considered
fervent and militant, 25% are practicing Catholics and
more than 60% see the church as an agency of religious
services, useful for christenings, First Communions and
weddings”. (Milenio,
July 29th, 2002)
The Mexican Catholic Church is in crisis. Many
Mexican Indians are abandoning it to become
evangelical Protestants. The church cannot even
recruit enough Mexican men to serve as priests. Its
moral influence is waning. All the problems social
conservatives decry in the U.S. are to be found here as
well: divorce, abortion, family disintegration, juvenile
delinquency (30% of crimes are committed by minors) etc.
As a person who has lived in Mexico for over a
decade, and integrated himself within Mexican society,
let me tell you, those who see Mexico as some kind of
moral Arcadia are misinformed.
As Sergio Sarmiento, the nationally-known columnist
and TV commentator recently put it:
“The popularity of the
Pope in our country is not open to
question...nevertheless, this is occurring at the same
time that the Mexican population is departing from the
strictest provisions of the Catholic Church, especially
those of a moral nature.” (the Siglo July 29th,
2002).
and
“Nobody can deny the
enthusiasm that the figure of the Pope has generated.
But this enthusiasm does not necessarily transform the
behavior of the Mexican people.....” (the Siglo, August 1st, 2002).
Mexico’s archbishop, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, was
asked in an
interview about the decline of Mexican Catholicism.
The cardinal tried to dodge the question, deny the
obvious and blame it on church/state separation. But he
finally had to admit that
“There is still a tendency
to separate faith and life, to reduce religious practice
to the vestry. We are facing a great difficulty in that
sense.”
The Pope might say “Mexico, Siempre Fiel.” But he and
the Vatican are certainly aware of the crisis the church
faces in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. This is
why the Pope is canonizing Juan Diego.
Juan Diego is a key actor in the narrative of the
Virgin of Guadalupe—a Marian apparition said to have
occurred in 1531 to Diego on Tepeyac Hill, now part of
Mexico City, and to have commanded that a church be
built on the site, the present location of the Basilica
of Guadalupe.
For traditional Mexican society, the Virgin of
Guadalupe is a symbol— some would say the symbol—of Mexican identity. Her image is to be found in all
sorts of places—not only churches and bus stations
but also in contexts largely divorced from connection to
the church, like tattoos and gang-oriented
t-shirts. She is regarded as the mother of all Mexicans
and the
Empress of the Americas.
So why did the Vatican wait until 2002 to canonize
Juan Diego? It’s not as though the Vatican doesn’t
canonize Mexicans. There are already some famous Mexican
saints—San Felipe de Jesús, martyred in Nagasaki, Japan in
1597;
Miguel Pro, sentenced to
death by firing squad by the Mexican government and
canonized by the Catholic Church in the same (20th)
century.
The simple fact is that for centuries there has been
doubt about the Virgin of Guadalupe and Juan Diego. And
not just among Protestants and atheists who don’t
believe in Marian apparitions anyway, but in the
Catholic hierarchy itself. Several prominent Mexican
Catholics, whose orthodoxy and patriotism cannot be
impugned, have
investigated the matter and rejected the whole
account.
The ecclesiastical rejection of the Virgin of
Guadalupe continued, in fact, right up until the present
time. Witness the bizarre case of Guillermo Schulenberg.
He was actually the abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe
for a quarter of a century—and he didn’t believe in the
apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe or the
existence of Juan Diego. Schulenberg
campaigned against the canonization of Juan Diego—and was forced to resign as abbot.
It seems obvious that Schulenberg opposed the
canonization on principle, since opposing it worked
against his own vested interests as abbot. Schulenberg
was also the target of rather harsh rhetoric. One
slanderous attacker even used the cleric’s German
surname to link him to the Nazis!
(My own view is that the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe
cult was transported from Spain in the 1500s. After all,
there is a Virgin of Guadalupe in
Spain, which predates that of Mexico by centuries.
Both the Spanish and the Mexican Virgins of Guadalupe
are dark-skinned and the stories are similar—in Spain
the Virgin was said to appear to Spanish cowboy Gil
Cordero, in Mexico to Juan Diego. It seems to me that
the Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe became the Mexican
Virgin of Guadalupe, Gil Cordero being transformed to
Juan Diego. Also, it's relevant to note that
Tepeyac Hill was a center for the pagan worship of
Tonantzin, pre-Hispanic earth mother goddess.)
But Pope Juan Paul II wanted Juan Diego canonized,
and he finally had it done. It’s impossible not to see
papal politics at work here. Now that the Catholic
Church is losing the hearts of Mexicans, the Vatican has
decided it had better officialize the Virgin of
Guadalupe in an attempt to keep Mexican support. But in
the long run it might not help much, because the Virgin of
Guadalupe really has less to do with Catholic doctrine
and practice and more to do with
Mexican identity and
nationalism.
What does the story of the Virgin of Guadelupe mean
for the National Question in the U.S. and for the fate
of the feckless Republican Party, helping to legislate
itself out of existence by supporting mass immigration?
Despite all the GOP pandering, there is no hard
evidence that Mexican immigrants are attracted to the
social conservative wing of the party. The reason for
this is simple. They are not social conservatives.
They are, however, Mexican nationalists. Hence
George W. Bush wraps himself in the symbols of
Mexican patriotism–inevitably weakening the
GOP’s base among American patriots.
And guess what Cardinal Rivera, Mexico’s Archbishop
and possibly the next Pope, said in the same interview
mentioned above? Rivera shares the
Catholic hierarchy’s love of
high immigration from Latin America to the U.S. and
said that:
“In the north the emigrants, Mexicans and those who
pass through Mexico, are bearing the faith to the north
of our continent. Only five years ago the
[Catholic]
church was in the minority in the United States, it is
now the majority.” [VDARE.COM
note: Not really, published estimates state that from 23
to
28 percent of the American population is Catholic.]
There you have it. We’ve been told that immigrants
help the
economy, revitalize
cities, raise the moral tone, etc.
Now Rivera trumps them all. The immigrants are, he
tells us—missionaries.
Amazing—the Mexican Catholic Church can’t even
evangelize itself, and it seeks to evangelize the U.S.A!
Allan Wall, a long-time
American resident of Mexico, married his wife in a
Catholic church, teaches a Bible class (in Spanish) in
an evangelical Protestant church and his wife works in a
Catholic school operated by the Jesuit order.
Allan’s VDARE.COM articles are archived
here; his
FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived
here.
Readers can contact Allan Wall at
allan39@prodigy.net.mx
August 27, 2002
