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There is still plenty of room in most Latin American countries for conservative and reactionary churchmen. Probably the majority, however, are moderate progressives, interested in reform but fearful of revolution, and far from convinced that socialism is the best way to make progress.
If serious commitment to social reform is the measure—rather than loyalty to socialism—the Santiago radicals are only the tip of the volcano. Far more than U.S. churchmen, Latin Americans have heeded recent papal social pronouncements closely. Shortly after Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio acknowledged Latin America as part of the oppressed Third World, Latin American bishops, meeting at Medellin in 1968, denounced "the institutionalized violence" of economic and social structures in their countries. Heretofore one of the pillars of the old social order, the church, observes former Bolivian President Luis Adolfo Siles-Salinas, is "now becoming a battering ram to topple it."
Christian Love. Some right-wing secular groups have reacted heatedly to this new leftist and Marxian thrust. When Cuernavaca's Don Sergio returned from the Santiago meeting, he was greeted at the airport by a group of angry youths who sloshed him with dark red dye. The Mexico City newspaper El Heraldo called him a "Luther" and pronounced him excommunicated. Don Sergio calmly insisted in a sermon at the national Shrine of Guadalupe that elimination of the divisions that create "class struggle" should be "a work of Christian love." The Marxian aggiornamento has its friendly critics too. Jesuit Sociologist Neil P. Hurley, who has worked in Chile, wonders if the Christians for Socialism might not be inviting a "new church-political alliance that could be as intractable as the alliance with capitalism in the past."
Despite such misgivings the radicals enjoy open sympathy from highly placed liberals in the Vatican. "God created the earth for all the human family," says an important Vatican official, "not just a favored few in any nation or just the favored nations. We want to erode national boundaries and transfer technology on a worldwide basis, as part of the patrimony of humanity. If this is socialism, make the most of it."
In one respect, Vatican liberals are more frankly realistic than the Santiago reformers about the risks of such reform. Most of the Latin American pro-nunciamentos—including the Santiago statements—carefully avoid any mention of violence, as if the "class struggle" could end somehow in a handshake. But one Vatican insider says grimly, "We hope for—but do not expect —transformations without violence."