Chapter 1 Conflict and ecclesiology: Obedience, institutionality and people of God in the Movement of Priests for the Third World

Conflict and privilege

In the atmosphere following the CELAM meeting in Medellín in 1968, many Christians across Latin America attempted to rethink the Church’s role in society. The Church, it was argued, must recognise its own political function and actively participate in the liberation of the people. In his theological notes at the end of the 1960s, Carlos Mugica, a high-profile figure in the MSTM, affirmed that the Church must be at the heart of the ‘fundamental political process of liberation’ (Mugica n.d.). However, Mugica contended that this presupposed a particular form of Church: ‘We talk of intervention from the Church, but which Church? Without doubt, the People of God’ (Mugica n.d.). Exploring the different roles within the Church (bishops, priests, laity), he recognised that his own political commitment to the people as a pastor would inevitably result in confrontation with traditional and hierarchical Catholic sectors (Mugica n.d.). But the notes also point towards explorations of the meanings of the Church as people of God, which had featured prominently in the Second Vatican Council (1962–5). In Argentina, this term unsurprisingly became entwined with political meanings, since el pueblo (the people) was one of the principal themes of Peronist discourse (Bonnin 2012). People of God could therefore elicit notions of popular struggle and identity, and, in turn, of popular Christianity.

Implicit in these ideas was a challenge to what he perceived as the traditional parameters of the Church. In this view, the priest’s commitment was to the people of God and to a project of liberation from social injustice. Yet institutional Church structures presented an obstacle: ‘The priests want to be supported more decidedly in their temporal-political undertaking by the official Church; in general, they are suspected, violently criticised and even slandered. This divides them even more from the visible Church’ (Mugica n.d.). Mugica here indicated that legitimate intervention in temporal matters had to be driven by the Church as ‘People of God’ instigated by the people, rather than as ‘institution’ initiated by authorities. Despite these notes consisting of occasionally vague ideas and suggestive questions, they provide an insight into his perception of the Church. Above all, they demonstrate Mugica’s understanding that the Church as people of God represented a challenge to both the dominant faction of the ecclesial hierarchy and traditionalist Catholicism. This was a sentiment shared more widely among Catholic left circles, and which had evolved and adapted in interaction with the political and religious cleavages in Argentina.

Disputes within the Argentine Catholic Church reached unprecedented levels of drama in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When General Juan Carlos Onganía took power in 1966, ushering a new cycle of oppressive military rule, the emergence of a movement of revolutionary Christians was accelerated in response. Onganía was keen to use Catholicism to undergird his regime, for example by consecrating the nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1969. The MSTM, still only a little over one year old, was quick to protest this move to manipulate Christian symbolism to legitimise an authoritarian dictatorship (La Prensa 1969). However, the Church itself was widely seen as being a force of legitimisation for Onganía’s dictatorship, not least due to the fact that Mons. Antonio Caggiano, then president of the Argentine episcopal conference (Conferencia Episcopal Argentina, CEA), regularly appeared in public alongside the general. Cristianismo y Revolución, an influential magazine and a formative experience for a range of key liberationist Christians, guerrilla leaders and activists, was created to a large extent as a response to the Onganía regime and perceived it as accelerating revolutionary change by heightening social tensions.⁵ The magazine’s editor, Juan García Elorrio, used his platform to denounce the institutional complicity between Church and military leaderships: ‘the military government errs when it believes that certain presences, support, influences and people are “the whole Church” or simply “the Church”. They believed that the verticality of the military commanders equated directly to the verticality of the Hierarchy’ (García Elorrio 1966b).

These editorials were not merely a critique of the armed forces’ perception of the Church but also a strident reproach of the Church hierarchy itself, perceived to be clinging onto traditional practices at a time of conciliar renewal and social unrest. Faced with an episcopal leadership perceived to be ambivalent at best over implementing Vatican II reforms, García Elorrio rebuked the bishops for focusing on ‘the vague generalities of routine and pointing out guidelines for a Christianity that responds neither to the requirements of man nor to the demands of history’ (García Elorrio 1966a). He affirmed that the episcopate must shed itself of ‘institutional ties with the State’ and cease to be a ‘Church complicit with the dictatorship’ (García Elorrio 1966a). The accusation against the episcopate was not merely one of political complicity; Cristianismo y Revolución charged Church leaders with belonging to the ruling class and ‘privileged sectors’, tying them more organically to reactionary forces: ‘A change of system would make them lose that situation of privilege. If they themselves come to condemn the use of force that the dispossessed sectors undertake to modify the situation, it is difficult not to suspect that more than the Christian ideal what they defend is the power of the Church, its privilege’ (Mascialino 1968, 15). In contrast, with the emergence of the MSTM, García Elorrio endowed the Third World Priests and sympathetic laity with an authenticity the episcopate lacked, the true embodiment of the people of God through its politicised nature:

There is a New Church that [the dictatorship] does not know and cannot call upon on the television as an ally of the state of emergency, as an accomplice in the torture, murder, exploitation and poverty of our brothers. From that Church, true Church of the People, true march of the People of God towards liberation, these words are a sign and a testimony: ‘The structures of the new order to which many men aspire must form a socialist society’ (García Elorrio 1969, 25).

This statement came after the cordobazo, an uprising led by militant trade unionists and students in the industrial city of Córdoba in May 1969, in response to which the MSTM affirmed their support for socialism and the abolition of private property.

The dovetailing of political and religious contestation occurred at various local levels, which pointed towards a wider phenomenon of polarisation within the Church. Disputes between priests and their bishops marked many dioceses across the country, especially those headed by traditionalist prelates. It is worth highlighting a couple of these disputes, as they came to assume emblematic cleavages within the Church. In Mendoza, twenty-seven Catholic priests who had previously been at odds with the pro-military auxiliary bishop, José Miguel Medina, over stances on the Second Vatican Council threatened to resign when the latter was promoted to bishop of Jujuy in 1966 and his replacement was imposed without consultation. Archbishop Alfonso María Buteler demanded obedience, publicly accepted their resignations and left the priests marginalised from institutional functions (Concatti 2009, 75–85).

The city of Rosario experienced one of the most dramatic internal Church conflicts. Archbishop Guillermo Bolatti had a tense relationship with the young priests involved in Young Catholic Workers (Juventud Obrera Cristiana, JOC) in his diocese from the 1960s, developing a reputation for opposing pastoral reform and continuing the authoritarian style of his predecessor, Antonio Caggiano.⁶ When forty priests sent him a private letter in early 1969 suggesting reforms, he responded by claiming the priests had rebelled against episcopal obedience. Bolatti also suspended Néstor García, who had become involved in local union and student movements, suppressed payments for sacramental duties and included dialogue with the congregation during Sunday Mass. When parishioners rebelled, boycotting the prelate’s own mass, Bolatti suspended further priests for supporting the indignant faithful, provoking the resignation of some thirty further pastors (Clarín 1969). This provoked a firm protest among priests across the country, who noted that the developments presented the image of a ‘Church as an institution in which dialogue seems impossible’ (‘Documento No. 48’ 1970, 380). However, in July 1969, the dispute entered a new stage when lay Catholics had occupied the church of one of the rebel priests to prevent a replacement being imposed. In the wake of wider social mobilisations, including the student and trade union uprisings in Córdoba and Rosario in May 1969, armed police officers were called on to remove the parish occupiers, ending in five protesters being shot and wounded and twenty more arrested. Intra-ecclesial conflicts in the second half of the 1960s often originated in disagreements over pastoral reform in the atmosphere of Vatican II. However, they frequently became centred on the issue of apostolic obedience and wider participation in Church practices, and quickly became entangled with political authoritarianism and state repression. Traditionalist bishops, generally dominant in the Argentine Church, were hostile to participatory ecclesial practices that could be engendered by the notion of the people of God and sought to preserve a more hierarchical institutional structure.

Verticality and horizontality

The conflicts of the late 1960s and early 1970s moved many Christians not only to challenge individual conservative bishops but also the episcopal hierarchy as such, signalling the extent to which this was a generalised institutional rift. In Argentina, this must be contextualised with reference to the dramatic conflicts between priests and bishops that tore through Argentine Catholicism. In this atmosphere, many involved in grassroots Catholic mobilisations began to question the very notion of obedience as demanded by traditionalist bishops. Thus, priests from Tucumán, in a letter in March 1969 to then coadjutor archbishop of Buenos Aires Juan Carlos Aramburu, noted CELAM’s observation at Medellín of a ‘tension between the new demands of the mission and a certain way of exercising authority’ (CELAM 1968). Aramburu had previously criticised some of his priests for becoming overtly political (mostly MSTM members), and the tucumanos wanted to express their solidarity with their fellow pastors. However, they were quick to point out that they did not reject the bishop’s authority: ‘the fact that priests or groups of Christians make their voices heard publicly before concrete situations they perceive as anti-Christian does not affect the adequate subordination to the bishop that creates the unity of the people of God’ (Enlace 1969a). This cautious appeal should therefore be interpreted as an attempt to prevent a souring of relations and to fashion space in which to manoeuvre.

Nevertheless, the breakdown in relations between the hierarchy and politicised priests and laity over the following months, epitomised by events in Rosario, generated an increasingly anti-authoritarian sentiment. Lucio Gera, a priest and respected theologian in the MSTM, depicted the Christian faith as a critique of power:

The faith denounces the false abundance of power, of the possession of power, of man only in authority and not in obedience […] This should be the obedience in the Church: a way of living that denounces the false pretension of abundance that expects the possession of power. This should also be the testimony of authority, of power in the Church. Authority, that which is wielded in the Church, must give witness to the fact that power is not the end, taking it as ‘service’. (Gera 1969)

Hernán Benítez was forthright in his denunciation of the Church authorities for fostering a climate of bitterness among priests. He excoriated the hierarchy for:

having worried more for the good of the institution […] [Priests] enter the seminary brought by a vocation for serving their brothers, men. But, once ordained, they find themselves obliged to spend their lives in service, not to men, but to an institution that does not serve or scarcely serves men. They feel, logically, disappointed, deceived and even cheated. (Enlace 1969c)

Imagining he were a bishop, an idea that he confessed descended into the realms of ‘absurd fantasies’, Benítez suggested an orientation that was suggestive of a liberationist model of intra-ecclesial relations: first, that he ‘would try to see in each priest a man rather than a functionary’; and, second, that he would attempt ‘to share with all the priests of my diocese the responsibility for it’ (Enlace 1969c). This response evoked two of the principal objections that were being aimed at the Church: on the one hand, its institutional nature, which reduced those beneath the bishop into mere subservient administrators; on the other hand, its inflexible verticality, which imposed indisputable authority and obedience on priests and laity.

Benítez’s words were indicative not only of a re-evaluation of how bishops should behave, but also a re-imagining of how the Church could function and was structured. Susana Bianchi notes that the Catholic Church was organised in a vast centralised hierarchy, descending from the papacy, through the bishops and down to the parishes, which constitute the basic units (Bianchi 2002, 143). Such an analysis interrogates the spatialisation of the Church: how relationships between officials and adherents in the ecclesial institution are imagined and understood in their spatial dimensions. This is not to deny the existence of hierarchical practices, but simply to note that the lexicon of verticality is above all a metaphor connected to how people experience the Church. As James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta argue, albeit in relation to states rather than churches, spatialisation is constructed through quotidian experiences of regulation and bureaucratic practices.⁷ Of course, bishops do not literally exist above priests, monks, nuns and the laity, but experiences of how the Church functioned produced an imagined understanding of ecclesial structures as rigidly scalar and hierarchical. Thus, the authoritarian practices of bishops such as Guillermo Bolatti reinforced vertical understandings of the Church.

The traditionalist conception of the Church, which saw the hierarchical institution as the perfect society, conformed to this verticality, thus reinforcing many bishops’ handling of their priests. At the heart of the dispute was the notion of apostolic obedience, which in Catholic ecclesiology forms an essential part of communion between members of the Church, and was outlined in one of the Second Vatican Council’s documents, Presbyterorum Ordinis (Paul VI 1965). The document affirmed that bishops should ‘regard priests as their brothers and friends’ and ‘consult them and engage in dialogue with them in those matters which concern the necessities of pastoral work and welfare of the diocese’ (Paul VI 1965). On the other hand, priests were expected to recognise ‘the fullness of the priesthood which the bishops enjoy’ and ‘respect in them the authority of Christ, the Supreme Shepherd. They must therefore stand by their bishops in sincere charity and obedience’ (Paul VI 1965). In the context of intra-ecclesial conflicts, bishops could appeal to this formulation of apostolic obedience, emphasising reverence to Christ’s authority in the episcopate.

Liberationist Christians, on the other hand, adopted the notion of the Church as people of God in a context in which the term people had profound political connotations that contrasted with the notion of the oligarchy. When conflicts with the bishops escalated, the priests and laity involved did not necessarily experience an alienation from Church structures in general (as they often remained active in parishes and base communities). In a meeting of MSTM regional organisers during the movement’s Second National Encounter, priests emphasised that they should take ‘all possible measures to avoid being excluded from the structural Church’ (MSTM 1994d, 74). Moreover, they insisted that any division or opposition should not be ‘between Movement and Hierarchy but between one part of the Hierarchy […] which is part of the people and another that is in fact against the people’ (MSTM 1994d, 74). Nevertheless, the distancing from the hierarchical elements reinforced their identity as the Church of the people, in contradistinction to, as one editorial in the MSTM’s bulletin put it, a Church institution characterised by an ‘oligarchic’ constitution of power (Enlace 1969b). This text argued that an outdated traditionalism understood authority to emanate from God through those in positions of power, but that a new conception of authority had emerged: ‘Authority comes from God directly, but not immediately. Between God and the hierarchical structure there is a Medium: the People, the Community’ (Enlace 1969b). As such, ‘the true and fundamental “institution” of Christ would not be a “hierarchy” but a Community based in love: the People of God’ (Enlace 1969b). Power and authority had thus been inverted in their spatial dimensions. This was not an outright rejection of episcopal authority but an affirmation that the authority of God passed through the people rather than the bishops. Although authority retained its vertical aspect with relation to God, the immediate medium was the people, while the episcopate was expected to reflect ‘the new consciousness’ and ‘convert itself into authentic servants of man’ (Enlace 1969b). This clearly encountered a tension with the notion of apostolic obedience to which the bishops appealed, that placed liberationist priests in an unclear position with respect to hierarchical structures. Thus, the tension between verticality and horizontality was closely interlinked with an ambiguity over identification with the ecclesial institution, an ambiguity in which many priests, members of religious orders and Catholic laity all became involved.

Containment and transgression

In October 1970, a group of lay militants in Buenos Aires called for the formation of a ‘Lay Movement of the Third World’, in parallel to the Movement of Priests for the Third World (‘Para un movimiento de laicos del tercer mundo’ 1970). This was a direct response to the robust censure that the CEA published, in which the Church hierarchy demonstrated itself to identify ‘with the capitalist regime’ by rejecting the socialisation of the means of production (‘Para un movimiento de laicos del tercer mundo’ 1970).⁸ In this strong denunciation of the hierarchy, the group called for all Argentine Christians sympathetic to the cause to prepare for a ‘National Assembly of the Third World Church’ (‘Para un movimiento de laicos del tercer mundo’ 1970). The wording of this last statement is perhaps slightly ambiguous: was this a call for the formation of a new Church? Were they calling for a schism? No evidence supports the notion that this was indeed a rallying cry for a breakaway Church. Nevertheless, this document demonstrates the heightened tensions between a sector of Christians in Argentina and the official Church structure.

The identification of a tension between containment and transgression is a concept borrowed from Charles Tilly and Sydney Tarrow’s social movement analysis. They argue that social movements are in a process of tension between contained and transgressive contention: ‘Contained contention takes place within a regime, using its established institutional routines, while transgressive contention challenges these routines and those it protects’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2015, 62). In their analysis, social movements often occupy an ambiguous political space that can hover between conforming to the legitimate practices or channels of a state and defying those channels, seeking to construct new structures. While Tilly and Tarrow use this to refer to social movement contention within the political and legal system, this frame can also help to explain liberationist Christian contention in Argentina in this period. Priests and lay Catholics were increasingly defying the established routines of the Catholic institution, challenging the authority of the bishop and denouncing the financial and political practices that tied the Church to the ruling elites. These internal tensions occurred throughout all sectors of the Catholic Church, with many politicised priests, nuns, monks and even a bishop (Jerónimo Podestá) abandoning their institutional functions. It should come as little surprise that those alienated from ecclesial structures in bitter disputes with episcopal authorities were often those most prepared to condemn the institution. For example, Raúl Marturet, excommunicated by archbishop of Corrientes Francisco Vicentín, made plain his feelings about the election of Adolfo Tortolo to replace Caggiano as president of the CEA: ‘The election of monsignor Tortolo means that the church in Argentina begins its suicide […]. This ultra-right, which found its way onto the managerial posts of all the commissions and of the presidency through a very intelligent and shrewd man, as is monsignor Tortolo, is proof of the hierarchical orientation of the Argentine church’ (Marturet cited in Cristianismo y Revolución 1970, 19).⁹ Many lay militants underwent a similar distancing from the Church, as the phenomenon of generalised social protest among students and workers entered into ecclesial spheres.

Politicised Christians, who understood their faith as demanding a commitment to the poor rather than to an institution bound up in spheres of power, often expressed their uneasy relation with the traditional Church. In the short-lived magazine Tierra Nueva, which assumed the humanist language redolent of the new left and hoped to offer a critical voice within Catholicism at a time of modernisation, the young priest Alejandro Mayol wondered whether the Church had become a ‘corset for the New Man’ (Mayol 1966, 9). Mayol questioned whether the Church, with its ‘feudal structure’ and ‘monolithic concept of obedience’, was for ‘the modern believer […] another alienation, alongside many others that imprison the human being today’ (Mayol 1966, 9). Indeed, the Church appeared to many people as ‘governed by the dead, by the past’ (Mayol 1966, 10). And one of the key poles of conflict was ‘the problem of frontiers’: ‘the believer before was only comfortable conversing with another believer. It is typical of a ghetto. Today we witness a new phenomenon. In a great number of cases there is much more profound dialogue with non-believers than with Christians’ (Mayol 1966, 10). This view of the institutional Church as restricting would reappear frequently among those in or close to the MSTM, especially as the disputes with members of the hierarchy multiplied.

The fractious relationship with the Church institution was a long-running issue for the MSTM, but tended in official proclamations to reassert affiliation with the institution, albeit insisting on the need for reform and popular empowerment within ecclesial structures. For example, the group’s Third National Encounter affirmed ‘an unbreakable will of belonging to the Catholic Church’, but demanded that the ecclesial hierarchy implement what was elaborated in Medellín and in San Miguel (MSTM 1994a, 100).¹⁰ The following year, a public rebuke by the CEA, now led by Mons. Tortolo, criticised the movement’s stated commitment to the socialisation of the means of production and reminded them of their obligations of communion with the hierarchy, demanding submission and deference: ‘Let us ask for this grace. For us to know the truth well and to say it with clarity and charity; and for you to understand it, accept it and undertake it’ (CEA 1970). The MSTM felt compelled to respond at length, defending their political positions as well as affirming, among other things, the necessity of the ecclesial institution, but insisted that it must be ‘at the service of faith’ (MSTM 1994c, 121). They emphasised that the notion of the Church as people of God did not imply the exclusion of hierarchical structures (MSTM 1994c, 160).

Nevertheless, the MSTM affirmed in 1972 that they understood their priestly commitment not as service to the bishop or the institution but ‘as service to the people of God’ (MSTM 1972, 201). Consequential here was the notion that the commitment to the pueblo – the oppressed and marginalised – could be framed increasingly in conflict with the traditional form of the Church.¹¹ For some, such a dilemma would bring them to a critical tension, even a breaking point, with the Church. One MSTM member, Rubén Dri, reflecting on his trajectory in the movement and his eventual resignation from his ministry in 1974, was clear about his sense of incompatibility of institutional ecclesial structures:

I felt within the Church. But the thing is, for me the Church is not an institution. I believe in the ekklesia, really, that is the assembly Church. I feel inside the Church to the extent that I work collectively, to the extent that I meet up with my companions. That we believe in determinate fundamental values for which we fight […] I maintain those fundamental values, that fundamental faith, but I do not at all believe in the ecclesial institution. I am outside.¹²

This may have been among the more radical of the liberationist positions, especially among the Catholic clergy, but it was logically and analytically coherent and certainly not a unique outlook.

The rejection of the Church institution can be seen within the context of a conceptual distinction of the people of God from the hierarchical ecclesial structures. There is some parallel here with the separation of planes and the ecclesiology of New Christendom that emphasises the Church as the corpus mysticum, the mystical body of Christ: in this, the juridical Church is separated from the mystical Church.¹³ As such, according to William Cavanaugh, liberal elements in the Church ‘used the mystical body emphasis on the invisible church to distance themselves from institutional, especially Vatican, control’ (Cavanaugh 1998, 210). This distinction was a development that built upon the theology which had propagated the notion of the Church as people of God in the conciliar constitution Lumen Gentium (Paul VI 1964). For the liberationist Christians, however, the separation is between the Church as a people, functioning as a social movement, and the Church as a politico-juridical institution tied up in the oppressive social structures of capitalist society. This notion of the Church was seen by many as a rediscovery of an authentic Christianity. Writing in 1969 in the MSTM’s bulletin, Enlace, Jerónimo Podestá affirmed that the Church understood as people of God, ‘as a community of believers’, enabled a distinction between two aspects of the Church’s temporal activity: ‘the active presence of the Christians – laity or priests – in temporal or political issues’ and the ‘explicit or implicit pronouncement of the Hierarchy, in other words, the Official Church’ (Podestá 1969).

According to Podestá, the ‘primordial Church’ of the community of believers found itself in struggle with an institutional model characterised by rigid authoritarianism and associated with the wider interest of the prevailing social order:

There are those who want to accentuate [the hierarchical function] to such a degree that the Church would give a monolithic Image, of absolute verticality. These confuse the Church, People of God, with the Church Institution, not seeing anything but this last aspect […] Generally those who encourage the Church as Institution stabilising and defending a supposed ‘Order’ with whose interests it is identified. (Podestá 1969)

These were not merely theological discussions articulated in intellectual forums but serious critiques of the Church’s implication in political power that made sense to radical political sectors. Indeed, the Peronist Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, FAP), closely linked to Peronismo de Base, a grassroots militant movement that rejected the Peronist and trade union bureaucracies and emphasised autonomous working class organising, made a similar point, albeit in a more denunciatory key. In an open letter to the MSTM, one of the FAP’s affiliated ‘detachments’ rebuked the Church institution for seeing its function as one of ‘organising, talking and dispensing a grace that only it possesses through rites emptied of human reality’ (FAP 1970, 18). Although, the letter continued, the institution ‘throughout its history has been committed – as a structure – to anti-Christian, anti-human regimes’, a more authentic Christian message could be mobilised ‘against and rejecting the Church institution’:

It is here that we find the distinction, which theoretically seems inadmissible, in real life: Church-institution and Church people of God […] There are then two Churches. One with all the word, apostolicity and authority, structure and rite. And on the other hand, a Church-people of God full of life, of service, of love, without old rites or signs, that begins to create its own rites and signs born in struggle. (FAP 1970, 18–19)

Here, the people of God or the ‘assembly Church’ appeared to be akin to a social or popular movement whose vitality emerges fundamentally from the struggle of the poor and oppressed, focused on grassroots praxis and in rejection of what were perceived as the institutional confines of a Church tied up with political power. In social movement terms, we might refer to Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, who claimed that movements are at their most radical in the cause of the poor and oppressed when they preserve their ‘disruptive capacities’, nurture popular rebellion and refuse to institutionalise (Piven and Cloward 1979, 23–7).

Although the MSTM as such never rejected the institutional Church, sharp criticisms of the ecclesial hierarchy, from the priests as well as lay Christians, alongside dramatic intra-ecclesial conflicts were met with accusations of a schismatic orientation. Attacks even came from figures considered broadly sympathetic to the priests and who therefore might have undermined the MSTM’s legitimacy among its own supporters, such was the case of Vicente Zazpe, the archbishop of Santa Fe. The document produced in 1971 from the MSTM’s fourth annual ‘National Encounter’, named the ‘Carlos Paz Document’, had levelled forthright allegations against the episcopate: in the face of the military’s encroachment on fundamental human rights, the hierarchy was notable for its ‘obsequious silence’ and was ‘domesticated and servile before the powerful’ (MSTM 1994b, 185). Zazpe replied to the MSTM’s criticisms by attacking what he described as their ‘schismatic ferment’ and a ‘spirit that was not ecclesial’, rebuking the priests for neglecting communion with the episcopate (El Litoral 1971). The archbishop’s timing could hardly have been worse for the MSTM. It came at a time when four priests in Rosario were detained, another in Resistencia had been abducted by the military and the movement was in the midst of a bitter polemic with Mons. Tortolo, who had downplayed an apostolic blessing from Paul VI by falsely claiming that they had requested it explicitly (Palacios Videla 1971). This came a year after the Tortolo-led CEA’s open castigation of the MSTM, discussed earlier. The communion with the hierarchical leadership demanded of the MSTM therefore appeared bound up with a rigid apostolic obedience and a political position in opposition to their revolutionary commitment.

In response to Zazpe, the priests insisted on their loyalty to the Church and noted that ‘we have never talked about two Churches; in every case we have referred to diverse positions within the only Church’ (quoted in La Opinión 1971b). In the midst of feverish media coverage of the fallout, Mugica insisted that the movement was a consequence of, not in tension with, the Church’s teachings and rejected the notion of a lack of communion with bishops, pointing to regular meetings between his fellow priests in Buenos Aires and the archbishop, Juan Carlos Aramburu (La Opinión 1971c). Nevertheless, the incident contributed to a growing alienation from the hierarchy. For example, hundreds of lay activists in Buenos Aires held a protest and released a document that affirmed that ‘the People of God is incarcerated, and their shepherds do not defend them’ (La Opinión 1971a). Zazpe’s attack fed into a sense that the hierarchy had abandoned their own priests when they needed them most, just as state repression against the MSTM was increasing. Moreover, it demonstrated how the two tensions identified here (vertical/horizontal and containment/transgression) were intimately related.

As the MSTM came under sustained attack by the military authorities and ecclesial hierarchy, media coverage of the movement, often little more than conjecture and speculation, wondered whether the priests would break away from the Church. One of the more serious journalists, Tomás Eloy Martínez, writing for La Opinión, sparked a minor scandal following the Fifth National Encounter in August 1972 when he claimed that the MSTM had held a secret meeting, attended by married priests, at which they resolved to reject the ecclesial rule of celibacy (Eloy Martínez 1972). A response quickly came from the MSTM, denying that they had even debated celibacy (La Opinión 1972). In spite of this clarification, the story generated media speculation, such as in the conservative magazine Esquiú, over whether the movement would ‘remain within the Church or definitively break from it’ (Esquiú 1972). Although this question was articulated in rather sensationalist terms, it was not totally immaterial. There was no prospect of the entire movement breaking away from the ecclesial institution; however, what was undoubtedly true was that intra-ecclesial conflicts and the political and theological chasm that existed between different sectors of the clergy meant that many Catholics were increasingly channelling their activities outside of the official institutional structures. In fact, a fundamental challenge existed over the nature of the ecclesial structure and its functioning. The presence of married priests, and priestly celibacy more broadly, was indeed both a source of controversy and symptomatic in this regard, embodying a defiance of institutional rules. This was merely the most acute example of the fact that radicalised Catholic sectors increasingly challenged ecclesial authorities who were perceived to be in league with the rich and powerful and sought to maintain the authority of the institution in society while neglecting the true demands of Christian faith.

Fragmentation

The fact that radical and politicised ecclesiological perspectives drew the ire of even certain sympathetic progressive bishops in Argentina placed significant pressure on the MSTM, especially during a period of heightening political turmoil in the 1970s. After the cordobazo in 1969, and other social uprisings, during which workers and students battled a hostile dictatorship, the political scene increasingly became marked by what Sebastián Carassai identifies as a move from social violence to political violence: insurgent guerrilla groups increasingly came into conflict with the state, while armed far-right groups also mobilised (Carassai 2014, 51–101). The political opening in 1973 – in which Peronist candidate Hector Cámpora, friendly with the insurgent left, swept to power – ironically ended in a dilemma for the MSTM. Peronism was now back in power but was unable to contain its own battles. The Peronist left and the revolutionary tendency pointed towards the political and union bureaucracy, seeing it as a solidification of verticalist structures in the Peronist movement and the primary obstacle to Peronism becoming a truly revolutionary force. Cámpora soon resigned to make way for the triumphant return of Juan Perón; but the Ezeiza Massacre, a bloodbath of the left carried out by far-right Peronists during the welcome rally for the arriving leader, augured an intensification of political polarisation.

Although there appeared to be a general tendency among the MSTM to challenge the hierarchical and institutional nature of the Church and advance a grassroots notion of the Church as people of God, in a changing political environment these challenges appeared to become internalised. In the lead up to the Fifth National Encounter in August 1972, clear differences began to emerge. Miguel Ramondetti, the MSTM’s general secretary from its beginnings, circulated a letter that summarised the points of difference over five issues: interpretation of the national political reality; understanding of priestly commitment; the form and level of priestly commitment in politics; understanding of the relationship between faith and politics; and understanding of the Church itself (MSTM National Secretary 1994, 245). The priest’s movement over the course of 1973 became torn by two apparently intractable disagreements. On the one hand, the question of Peronism became an even more contentious issue than it was before once the Peronist-led coalition took power. The MSTM had initially mobilised in 1968 on the basis of a prophetic denunciation of capitalism and a rather imprecise notion of the need for revolutionary change in the structures of society. Originally inspired by the Message of Third World Bishops, the political model of the MSTM had loosely been some form of socialism: ‘true socialism is a full Christian life that involves a just sharing of goods, and fundamental equality’ (16 Bishops of the Third World 1967, 144). However, as the priests sought to develop their analysis and commitment, Peronism, the dominant movement among the trade unions and popular classes more broadly, quickly became the immutable point of discussion. Rolando Concatti, a leading MSTM figure in Mendoza, had shaped the terms of debate to some degree, as his assertion that prophetism must lead to more concrete political options was adopted as a core theme in the priests’ annual meeting of 1970 (Concatti 1970, 17). Two years later, Concatti and the Mendoza MSTM published an influential pamphlet outlining their ‘option for Peronism’ – not as a political party, but as the expression of a social force and an oppressed people (Concatti 1972).

With the Peronist party – and Juan Perón himself from September 1973 – in power, however, the distinction between Peronism as an oppressed social force and as an institutional power was less immediate; or, at least, what this meant in practice became less obvious. Figures such as Ramondetti, who maintained a more insistent support for socialism, were clear about their reluctance to support Perón. Even various Third World Priests who identified personally as Peronists believed a formal identification of the movement with Peronism was an error and that such political allegiances should be personal decisions.¹⁴ Indeed, if it is likely that most MSTM members were Peronist, there remained significant differences between them.

This reflected the deep divisions within Peronism more broadly, a movement that managed to encompass a dizzying array of competing articulations from the far right to the revolutionary left, but also had to do with political verticalism in a similar way to which priests challenged the hierarchical nature of the institutional Church. Buenos Aires MSTM members affirmed loyalty to Perón: the leader, it was asserted, was the highest expression of the Argentine people, so it was necessary to ally themselves with him. From this perspective, the MSTM should be concerned with ensuring that the Church was ‘inserted in the People’, and it was consequently incumbent on them ‘to participate in the People and with the People in the National Justicialista Movement’ (MSTM Buenos Aires 1973b, 6 and 16). Using Justicialista here was a clear allusion to official Peronist party structures, rather than merely the wider identity of Peronism as a social force. In a letter sent to La Opinión from Buenos Aires member-priests Alberto Carbone, Jorge Goñi and Rodolfo Ricciardelli just before the election of Perón in September, the priests claimed that ‘In Argentina, the work for liberation is hegemonised by Peronism and its leader. Our Movement verifies that fact and as priests we want to illuminate it with the Gospel’ (La Opinión 1973). The MSTM’s role, in this vision, was to ensure the participation of the institutional Church in the official structures of the dominant popular-national movement.

Against this, other MSTM members and branches reaffirmed a more class-based position, often aligned with the Peronist left or the more grassroots current Peronismo de Base. Some of these priests, as Concatti had previously advocated, affirmed Peronism to be the identity of an oppressed social force but sought to avoid containment within limits defined by Peronist institutional spaces: ‘Revolutionary Peronism is not the only path to Socialism, but it is the beginning of Socialism in Argentina, because it is the national movement of the people and of the workers’; the option for Peronism was necessary only insofar as ‘in Peronism, the working class has its highest level of organisation and combativeness’ (MSTM Mendoza 1973a). However, both the MSTM in Mendoza and Concatti were also embedded in a more plural scene that included a lively ecumenical network that included an important Protestant presence (Concatti 2009). Striking a note comparable to that of Concatti, Rubén Dri articulated a commitment to political praxis from below: the method of the bureaucracy ‘goes from top to bottom, imposing a verticalism that intensifies in moments of danger’ while that of the grassroots ‘goes from bottom to top. Democracy is not a mere theoretical postulate to be applied once one has taken power, but a demand that must be put into practice in the path to taking power’ (Dri 1974b, 22). Rather than relying on verticalist political structures, the working classes and the Peronist people, Dri asserted, had to create their own tools and organisational forms, independent of those interests (Dri 1974a, 20–22).

The second intractable disagreement was more directly related to the institutional Church: the problem of celibacy. A number of priests who had been marginalised by the ecclesial hierarchy from their ministries had by 1973 married. This was particularly the case with certain branches in the interior of the country, such as Mendoza and Rosario, where dozens of priests had resigned or been removed from institutional roles in light of conflicts with the conservative bishops in those dioceses. Jerónimo Podestá, former bishop of Avellaneda – as mentioned earlier in this chapter – suggested that this issue was a practical one. However, in elaborating on the disagreement, he pointed towards a deeper tension: priests in the Buenos Aires chapter of the MSTM hoped for the priests to inspire a commitment to the poor among the episcopate, seeing the married priests as an obstacle; meanwhile, many priests in the interior opposed separating classes of priests in canonical terms. In fact, some priests have claimed that, more than ideological or political disputes, disagreements over the question of celibacy initiated the MSTM’s fragmentation.¹⁵

In preparation for a regional coordinators’ meeting in May 1973, the Mendoza MSTM elaborated a scathing denunciation of Canon Law on celibacy (MSTM Mendoza 1973b, 1–8). While recognising ‘the values and validity of celibacy’ for many clergymen, they questioned ‘its coercive and imperative character’, rejecting its imposition as an ‘objective rule of domination and marginalisation’ and the most effective way of excluding ‘the “rebels” who challenge juridico-Roman totalitarianism’ (MSTM Mendoza 1973b, 6). The MSTM, as a result, ‘has no other coherent path than that of including our married companions and taking the risk with them and for them’ (MSTM Mendoza 1973b, 8). In other words, liberation Christianity as represented by the MSTM transgressed the traditional institutional confines of the Church.

Alberto Carbone recounted how he travelled to Mendoza to explain the position of the Buenos Aires MSTM. The disagreements were so immediate that he found himself taking the 1,000 km bus journey back half an hour after he had arrived.¹⁶ Just as the Buenos Aires chapter affiliated more explicitly with the official Peronist hierarchy, the group also conformed to a more conventional institutionalism over celibacy. Since the Church’s Canon legislation rejected the compatibility of the priestly ministry for those who abandon celibacy, ‘such people cannot integrate formally to the Movement’ (Büntig 1994, 312). Carbone ascribed the core difference that divided the MSTM as between those who followed a ‘European socialist ideology’ and those who adhered ‘to a popular Peronism’ among ‘a majority Catholic people’.¹⁷ This perspective closely followed the analysis of Rafael Tello, a key figure alongside Lucio Gera in a so-called popular pastoral position associated with the Episcopal Commission of Pastoral Ministry (Comisión Episcopal de Pastoral, COEPAL), which formed the basis of the so-called theology of the people.¹⁸ In September 1973, Tello claimed that two blocs had emerged in the MSTM: on the one hand was ‘enlightened progressivism’, guided by secularising tendencies and foreign Marxism whose logical end point was ‘rupture with the institutional Church’; on the other, a ‘national and popular’ faction recognised the revolutionary potential and popular essence of the Church (Tello 1994, 324). At stake, for Tello, was the very integrity of the Church, since these elements wanted a rupture with the institution. The Buenos Aires MSTM articulated this analysis publicly, with Carbone telling the liberal daily La Opinión that ‘some do not want to be in “that Institution” [the Church] as it is now’, and a forthright collective statement: ‘We understand that […] the rupture of established discipline in [celibacy] produces a rupture with the Church’ (quoted in Ruza 1973; MSTM Buenos Aires 1973a, 1).

It may be noted here that the theology of the people pioneered by Rafael Tello and Lucio Gera continued to occupy a relatively significant role in the institutional Church in Argentina, Latin America and, eventually, the Church globally. For instance, Gera had an important role in the drafting of Iglesia y comunidad nacional, the Argentine episcopate’s attempt in 1981 to appeal to national reconciliation and a potential democratic opening five years into the last dictatorship and following the most intense period of state terrorism (Bonnin 2012). At the continental level, the theology of the people was also influential in the 1979 CELAM conference at Puebla, which reflected the perspective of that tendency by focusing on the evangelisation of culture (de Schrijver 1998). And in more recent years, much has been made of the fact that the theology of the people informed the development of Pope Francis’ pastoral thought, with echoes of the tendency marking his papal encyclicals and found in his continuing relationship with some of Argentina’s present-day curas villeros (Scannone 2016). None of this has been entirely free from contestation within wider liberation theology. Indeed, Iglesia y comunidad nacional’s discourse on reconciliation was criticised by the left and parts of liberationist Christianity; many key liberation theologians were excluded from the Puebla conference, in a manoeuvre that attempted to impose institutional discipline from the Vatican; and contemporary curas villeros may be seen as divided between two different groupings that somewhat correspond to the MSTM factions that emerged in the 1970s (Bradbury 2023, 228–9). This also raises the question of whether the theology of the people does in fact lie within the liberation theology tradition or, as Claudio Iván Remeseira has recently claimed, should be understood as distinct given its development in opposition to key liberationist positions (Remeseira 2022). In any case, although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore later developments fully, the continuing impact shows how the theology of the people was evidently able to consolidate its presence as a major and accepted institutional current.

Conclusion

Over the course of the dictatorship that began with General Juan Carlos Onganía, and continued with Generals Roberto Levingston and Alejandro Lanusse, the MSTM was thrust into political and ecclesial conflicts. These conflicts became central to the construction of the broader movement’s identity. Through important publications, such as Cristianismo y Revolución, many within the broader movement attempted to construct a popular identity rooted in an interpretation of the notion of the people of God and the people as a historical and political subject. This was constituted in opposition to a political regime, an international system and an ecclesial hierarchy that was deemed to represent an anti-popular alliance that upheld the privileges of the elite and maintained the oppressive conditions of the many. The intra-ecclesial conflicts that were a central fact of the MSTM’s existence reinforced this mentality. However, the insurgent identity of the movement encountered a basic problem, related to its relationship with the Church institution. Tensions had arisen, which existed in the liberationist movement more broadly but were especially acute in the MSTM, in two dimensions: whether to remain within the institution or find a path outside of it; and a dispute over verticality and horizontality, that is, the organisational forms that should be developed.

Assessing the fracturing within the MSTM – over obedience to Canon Law on celibacy and between Peronists and revolutionary Peronists – we see how contending conceptualisations and spatialisations of the Church underpinned these divisions. These ruptures emerged in the movement in the context of the growing crises of the 1966–73 military dictatorship. The MSTM thus had to navigate a panorama in which the immediate enemy had suddenly fallen and had to contend with the dilemma of how to relate to a Peronist government. However, this contingent political conjuncture was compounded by the contradictory existence and tensions of the MSTM within the Catholic Church. The Buenos Aires group drew from the nascent theology of the people, rooted in a more traditional nationalist mythology, avowing the inherent Catholicity of the Argentinian people, and associated more closely with hierarchical Church structures. Tello and Gera’s popular pastoral line did not demand formal adherence to a political project, and the theology of the people was more heterogeneous than is often allowed (Zanca 2022). However, an affinity emerged between the Buenos Aires MSTM most significantly influenced by Tello and a more orthodox Peronism: the people, to which they promised their loyalty, were both Catholic and Peronist. Thus, the Buenos Aires branch came to represent a position of fidelity to the Church and Perón, submitting to the verticality of the ecclesial institution and that of the Justicialista movement.

On the other hand, various other MSTM members challenged such verticalism. This resistance to political institutionalisation was mounted not only by socialists with a more Marxist-Leninist bent but also by revolutionary Peronists. Although individual positions were diverse, a common tendency was the rejection of top-down institutional structures as marginalising those struggling for radical social transformation. Politically, this tended to manifest as a position foregrounding class struggle and autonomous grassroots organisation, as reflected in the support or participation in Peronismo de Base; ecclesiologically, we can point to Rubén Dri’s (1987) formulation of a Church ‘born from the people’. The Church, for Dri, was the assemblies of ordinary people reflecting on their oppressive conditions and political praxis, not the hierarchical institutional arrangement that saw power concentrated in the episcopate.

Studies on liberation theology have previously identified a crossroads in the 1970s and 1980s that presented a choice between democracy and revolution. Nevertheless, the analysis above presents a different dilemma in the case of Argentina, which is also reflected elsewhere, for instance in the writings of Leonardo Boff (1985). This is the paradox of an apparently popular, participatory or grassroots identity existing within an institutional and hierarchical Church. In Argentina, parallel or related issues also characterised the identification with Peronism and the relationship with its institutional organs. How could the Church as people of God, radically participatory and popular, be reconciled with rigid verticalism and institutionalism? This chapter suggests that this issue underpinned the bitter fragmentation of the MSTM, just as it confronts social movements more broadly when they relate to social and political institutions. For some, preserving institutional space in the Church and attempting to engender popular values therein became the priority, especially when the return of Peronism in power appeared to offer certain opportunities. For others, institutional channels, of the Church but also within Peronism, had come to appear too oppressive and entangled in an unjust social order.

Notes

1. 1. For studies of liberationist Christianity during state terror, see especially Catoggio (2016) and Morello (2015). This chapter builds on research published in my recent book (Bradbury 2023), which analyses the different trajectories of liberation Christianity during the period of state terror.

2. 2. The other two challenges were ‘People’, as the social bloc and historical subject of the oppressed, and the tension between reform and revolution.

3. 3. The best work on the MSTM remains José Pablo Martín’s study (1992), based on hundreds of interviews and textual analysis. However, many other valuable works have been published, including Burdick (1995), Magne (2004) and Touris (2021).

4. 4. For more on theology of the people, see Cuda (2016), Politi (1992) and Scannone (1982).

5. 5. For more on the journal, see Campos (2016) and Morello (2003).

6. 6. Author interview with Oscar Lupori, 9 May 2015.

7. 7. For a discussion of verticality and spatialisation, see for example Ferguson and Gupta (2004).

8. 8. For the hierarchy’s document, see CEA (1970). Episcopal declarations are available here: https://episcopado.org/documentos (accessed 19 December 2023).

9. 9. Marturet had defied Vicentín’s orders when he performed a public prayer for a student activist killed by police in Corrientes during the May 1969 unrest. The priest became concerned by increased police presence at his own church and by death threats after his homilies, asking the judiciary to investigate. Suspecting Vicentín’s collusion with the police, he requested the archbishop appear before the investigating judge to testify. When Vicentín refused, the judge ordered his arrest, and the archbishop responded to the humiliation by issuing Marturet’s excommunication (which was quickly confirmed by the Holy See).

10. 10. The San Miguel document was something of an anomaly among Argentine episcopal statements, as it reflected the influence of the minority progressive bishops, offering self-criticism of the Church’s historic relationship to elites, renouncing a pursuit for power and foregrounding the need for a Church of the poor. See Bradbury (2023, 86).

11. 11. This theme was explored for instance by Conrado Eggers Lan in 1972 in a chapter entitled ‘Pueblo, Iglesia y pueblo de Dios’ (2014, 181–97).

12. 12. Author interview with Rubén Dri, 19 February 2015.

13. 13. For a critical perspective on this, see Cavanaugh (1998, 151–252).

14. 14. For example, see Juan Ferrante’s and César Raúl Sánchez’s testimonies in Diana (2013, 140 and 207).

15. 15. For example, see Juan Ángel Dieuzeide’s testimony in Diana (2013, 117).

16. 16. Alberto Carbone’s testimony in Diana (2013, 117).

17. 17. Carbone’s testimony in Diana (2013, 117).

18. 18. Set up in 1965, COEPAL was tasked with elaborating a national pastoral plan, but was dissolved in 1973.

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