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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
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LETTERS
OCTOBER 2002

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BISHOPS BEWARE

Editor's note: The following is an open letter from the Catholic Media Coalition to the bishops and priests of Honduras and Guatemala, regarding the Industrial Areas Foundation and Liberationism.

A June 23, 2002 article in the Sacramento Bee covered the visit of Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodríguez Maradiaga to Sacramento, California. The cardinal was reportedly there to learn about a group called the Sacramento Valley Organizing Community and its parent organization, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). The article goes on to say that Cardinal Rodríguez "hopes to start chapters of the organization [the IAF] in Honduras and Guatemala."

We, a coalition of independent Catholic editors writing for grassroots, lay organizations around the United States, have followed the work and spread of the IAF in our country with growing concern. We are writing to share our experiences with you so that you, who have lived with the ramifications of liberationism much longer than we, may make a well-informed decision in this matter.

Liberation theology entered the United States from Latin America partly through the influence of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. During his exile from Brazil for politicizing the poor, Freire came to the United States (late 1960s), where he taught at Harvard University and collaborated with Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Research and Education Center.

Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, was a supporter of the Highlander and in at least one case helped to bail it out of an "economic emergency." He met and spoke with Freire and went on to himself urge the active and deliberate consciousness-raising of people through techniques of popular education. Popular education, as Alinsky and Freire used the term, is a method by which an organizer leads people to a class-based interpretation of their grievances and to acceptance of a politicized set of systemic solutions to address those grievances.

Most disturbing to the Catholic is that Alinsky taught his people's organizations Machiavellian political action -- that "the ends justify the means," that "truth to an organizer is relative and changing," and that "you do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments. (See Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.)

After Alinsky's death, the IAF was continued by organizers whose commitment to liberationism was as strong as the founder's. Through the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) of San Antonio, which has invited spokesmen for Liberation Theology from all over Latin America to teach its classes, the IAF has trained hundreds of its own leaders.

Among the publications that can be purchased at the MACC bookstore in San Antonio, including the works of Gutierrez and Boff, is one dedicated to the Industrial Areas Foundation. The IAF, states the dedication: "identifies groups of sinners as oppressed members of society who are marginalized and dehumanized by thoughtless oppressors."

Another booklet available in the MACC bookstore, "How Can We Use the Gospels as a Basis for Our Action?" contains a "version" of the Magnificat that was written by a group of IAF leaders (from the San Antonio IAF local, Communities Organized for Public Service). This IAF "Magnificat" is offered as an example of how one is "to reflect on the Gospels in order to find the proper response to our own situation" when using a see-judge-act pedagogy of conscientization.

IAF version of Luke 1:46-55: "Our community speaks; We proclaim the love of God and our hearts are filled with joy; because God has been with us in our struggles and the powerful will call us a joyful people for they will recognize our freedom and blessings. He brings justice and peace (Shalom) to the oppressed; our ancestors have known Him as Holy, as we know Him and our people honor Him; He stretches His powerful arms and liberates us from the clutches and snares of the power brokers -- those who rob the afflicted and needy; He brings down bankers, developers, oil barons, and raises our barrios and ghettos; He fills our hungry with good things, and the rich He sends away empty; He keeps His promise to Juan Diego, Eleonor [sic] Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and will be with us forever."

Readers are instructed to rewrite the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Crucifixion in a similar vein, "to make it fit the world you know today."

The technique of popular education (conscientization or values clarification) changes the values of its target and replaces them with the values of the organizer. Mary Beth Rogers, writing in Cold Anger, says: "Cortes [head organizer for IAF, South West region] knew that Mexican parents willingly sacrificed for their children -- and often for their church. By talking about family values, could you motivate and organize people to act politically in their own genuine self-interest?... the new organization had to reach into the heart.... The idea of protecting and enhancing families might make that possible." The religious and family values of Catholics are used to spark a conversation between them and the IAF. The IAF then uses the relationship built from those values to introduce another set of values -- those of the IAF. In St. Timothy's Church in San Antonio, for instance, new "catechisms" were prepared to connect biblical and Mexican historical and cultural themes with the current issues of the IAF local.

These are disturbing matters. One writer from San Antonio, Ed Hinojosa, attributes the incredible attrition in his diocese of Hispanic Catholics to other religions as directly related to the degree the IAF has been promoted there. He writes: "MACC and the San Antonio chancery have created and spread comunidades de base or base communities through which liberation theology is taught, and in every parish where they have created them, there has been either bitter division or no response. Lay people have not accepted the liberationist teachings coming from the chancery. People get disillusioned and leave the Church."

We, writing from diverse areas of the country, representing many ethnic and economic backgrounds, but united in our passionate love of the Church and a common commitment to justice, urge you to explore programs other than the IAF for your people. We have found the IAF to be, at its core, divisive and antithetical to Catholic values.

"Your chief duty is to be teachers of the truth, not of a human, rational truth but of the truth that comes from God. That truth includes the principle of authentic human liberation: 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free' (John 8:32). It is the one and only truth that offers a solid basis for an adequate 'praxis.' Carefully watching over purity of doctrine, basic in building up the Christian community, is therefore the primary and irreplaceable duty of the pastor..." [John Paul II, "Opening Address at the Puebla Conference," delivered in Seminario Palafoxiano, Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1-28-79, sec. 1.]

Further information about the Industrial Areas Foundation can be obtained at www.wandererforum.org/publications. Please contact the Catholic Media Coalition if we can be of any further help.

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