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#36 Ten Years of Change in the Church: Puebla and the Future

By Alexander Wilde

This essay draws upon discussions and papers in a Workshop on Religion and Politics in Latin America held at the Wilson Center, May 22-23, 1978, organized jointly with Daniel Levine of the University of Michigan and chaired by the author.

Summary

The meeting of the Latin American bishops at Puebla faithfully reflected both the state and the direction of the Church. The final document showed a rather surprising commitment to consolidate many changes underway since the Medellín conference, some 10 years earlier, notably reiterating the Church's"option" for the poor and its support for "base communities." These rapid changes have been the product of three forces in particular: new theological directions, what came to be the Theology of Liberation; organizational change within the Church, at the local, national, and international levels; and the specific regional context of military authoritarian regimes. That context has propelled the Church into sharp conflicts with political authority, conflicts that during the past 10 years have created substantial consensus within the Church around socially-progressive "pastoral" activism. Its unity and influence in the future will be determined to a significant degree by how much military regimes move toward more open, democratic politics. The Church's own actions now tend to push them in that direction in a variety of ways, but the institution may be divided by political issues if redemocratization does occur. The base communities are the key to the Church's strategy of evangelization and "liberation," and the way they evolve will greatly affect the Church's whole future direction.

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