Conference Papers & Current Trends
Discussion of Rational Choice Theory
Round 6: Book review
John Francis Burke
University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas
Upon first glance, Anthony Gill's claim that rational choice theory explains better the institutional Catholic Church's turn to the "preferential option for the poor" over the past four decades in Latin America than any normative metanoia on the Church's part seemed like heresy. But given my own experiences as a volunteer lay leader regarding liturgical, multicultural, and social justice issues in Catholic parishes over the past twenty-five years, I had to admit that an economic rendering of institutional Church actions had credibility in Gill's case, warranted a closer look.
Although historically the Catholic Church in Latin America had sided with the political and economic elites of the region, the Church, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, takes a progressive turn, criticizing authoritarian regimes and the extreme poverty experienced by many Latin Americans. Gill suggests that the conventional wisdom regarding this shift is that the spread of poverty after World War II, the rise in atrocities and repressive acts by governments during the 190s and 1970s, and internal Church reform -specifically Vatican II, the 1968 Medellín conference, and liberation theology -each incite Church leaders to call for social justice.
In actuality, Gill pinpoints that there is no uniform political strategy followed by the Catholic episcopacies in each of the different Latin American countries -some criticize authoritarian regimes while others do not. Instead Gill contends that one has to examine the incentives that lead both to church-state cooperation and opposition. In those instances where the Catholic Church faces stiff competition in recruiting believers among the poor, especially from socialist and evangelical Protestant alternatives, the institutional Church will oppose authoritarian regimes so as not to lose credibility with the poor. In turn, Gill maintains that the onset of democracy in the 1980s and 1990s leads the institutional Church to temper its criticisms of the various governments so as to gain preferences from these governments that will give the Church a competitive advantage over the evangelical Protestant movements.
As much as Gill's statistical examination that divides the region's Catholic episcopacies into those that are anti-authoritarian and those that are pro-authoritarian or neutral lends credence to his claims, the strength of his argument lies in his in-depth comparison of Chile and Argentina. As much as Chile's and Argentina's histories of church-state relations parallel each other from colonial times through the 1920s, starting in the 1930s, Gill notes, there is a marked rise in the influence of both socialist and evangelical movements in Chile, especially among the poor. Consequently the Catholic episcopacy turns to initiatives like Catholic Action and eventually the Christian Democratic party under the leadership of Eduardo Frei to combat both threats to its membership; the Chilean Church ultimately takes a strident stand against the authoritarianism of General Augusto Pinochet. By contrast, in Argentina from the 1930s to the present, the socialist and evangelical Protestant threats never gain a foothold among the poor. Apart from some tensions in the early 1950s between the Church and Perón over the latter's program of justicialismo, a secular version of Catholic social teachings, Gill maintains the Argentine Church through the 1970s legitimizes the ruling governments, including the notorious military regimes. Unlike Chile, there were no institutional incentives that would prompt the Argentine episcopacy to depart from the traditional accommodation between church and state in Latin America.
Gill admits his rational choice approach "could be improved by the adoption of insights from cognitive psychology, cultural perspectives, or complexity theory" (p.201). Nonetheless, there are substantive shortcoming even within his argument. He notes that the support of the Guatemalan episcopacy for the military regimes of the 1970s persisted despite the enormous spread of evangelical Protestant groups, yet attributes the "uniqueness" of this case to "internal Church decision-making" (p.119). On a larger scale, he mentions that the appointment of more conservative bishops across Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s is a factor that also leads to a resumption of institutional Church support from governing elites in the democratic era, but he never examines whether this factor is more crucial that his "competition for believers" thesis. Furthermore, both the 1998 report released by the Guatemalan episcopacy documenting extensive human rights violation, especially by the military (the coordinator of this report, Bishop Juan Gerardi Condera, was assassinated just two days after its release) and the intercession of Cardinal Jorge Medina Estéves (formerly bishop of Rancangua, Chile) on behalf of General Pinochet amid his internment in England illustrate how complex church-state relations are in Latin America.
Apart from these contrary cases, how meaningful is it, in the wake of Vatican II, to restrict an analysis of the political import of Catholicism to just the conduct of the institutional hierarchy? As Joseph Gremillion would say, after Vatican II, existentially there are Roman Catholic Churches, not just the institutional Church. Nor is it just a matter of distinguishing between grassroots Christian base communities and hierarchical episcopacies as Gill does. As Paul Sigmund stresses, there are at least three different Catholic consciousnesses that prevail simultaneously in Latin America -a medieval Thomistic Christendom outlook which dates back to the colonial period, a personalist perspective stemming from Catholic philosophers such as Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon and reflected in the Christian Democratic tradition, and finally the radical temperament of liberation theology. Rational choice theory by definition cannot come to grips with the import of these multiple Catholic identities because by definition it "emphasizes the priority of interests over ideas" (p.201).
A hermeneutical rendering of Catholic identity and its import for politics, thus, challenges the opposition Gill sets up between evangelical Protestants and Catholics. In addition to socialism and evangelical Protestantism, Gill notes that Spiritism--a syncretism of Christian, indigenous, and African spiritual rituals-is another rival to Catholicism among the poor, but its impact in Spanish Latin America, especially in contrast to Brazil and the Caribbean, "remain innocuous" (p.85). However, as Orlando Espín accents, popular religion has been a longstanding combination of African, indigenous, and medieval European Catholic spiritualities among the peoples of Latin America. (From this angle, Gill's reliance on the Chilean and Argentine case studies is problematic, for the legacy of the indigenous heritages of these two countries is minimal in comparison to Mexico or Guatemala.) Rather than rendering the politics of Christianity in Latin America primarily as being between evangelical Protestants and institutional Catholics, we need to study the political significance of the increasing encounter between a holistic, indigenous spirituality which includes many Latino Catholics and a Eurocentric spirituality, whether Protestant or Catholic, which remains rooted in the Reformation-Counter Reformation nexus. Despite these criticisms, Gill's analysis makes a significant contribution to the literature, and I urge him to persist with the church-state studies he projects in his appendix. Especially for scholars and activists of the Christian "peace and justice" orientation, including myself, Gill's work provides a worthwhile "reality check."