PACHAMAMA AND FRATELLI TUTTI

 Singing from the same song sheet

October Surprises

For the last two years, October 4^th, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, has been the source of controversies surrounding the saint’s namesake, Pope Francis.

In 2019, it was on this date that Pope Francis was present at a tree-planting ceremony involving the so-called Pachamama statues in the Vatican gardens. Although it was dubbed by the Vatican as a consecration of the Synod for the Amazon to St. Francis of Assisi, some Catholics, accused the Pope of promoting a pagan ceremony and pagan statues in the Vatican.  This year, it is on the eve of this same date that the Pope is signing a new encyclical entitled FratelliTutti, in Assisi itself.  Although its subject matter is fraternity and social friendship, this time round the accusation is that the chosen title of this document is exclusive and sexist, since its title on the surface translates to “All Brothers” and therefore excludes women.

I would like to suggest a different frame of reference that allows us to see both actions in a different light.  I propose that when these actions are seen through lens of benignity rather than suspicion, through the lens of universality rather than uniformity, the charges of idolatry and misogyny cannot be sustained.

Benignity: a hermeneutic of trust

In the section on the eighth commandment regarding the use of speech, the Catechism enjoins the Catholic to use the principle of benignity.  According to this principle, “To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way."  The Catechism goes on to ask that “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. . ..” (CCC 2478).  Surely such benignity, required of our dealings which each other, is a fortiori required where the Holy Father is involved.

And so, before rushing to the conclusion that there is something rotten in the state of the Vatican, one should first attempt to seek out any benign interpretations.  Particularly for the Pachamama saga, such benignity is needed given that most of us have limited knowledge about the Amazon, its peoples, its culture and rituals, including even the Catholic ones.  It is such openness that allowed people to view Pope John Paul II presiding over similar proceedings, without much ado.

Moreover, it is more likely that a pope who preaches regularly against idolatry would not then go ahead to promote it!  Similarly, a Pope who has spoken about and also made significant overt efforts to bring about a greater role for women in the Church could not willingly and knowingly promote the patriarchy in his use of the title Fratelli Tutti. 

One possible explanation would then be that the Holy Father did not do these things knowingly and willingly.  For the Pachamama event, one could say that he did not know initially know what was going to take place and was duped by his staff.  Some have suggested that the Holy Father's initial reaction to the garden ceremony was probably one of discomfort; that is probably why he decided only to pray the Our Father and not give any remarks.  But this explanation is undermined by the fact that when the Pope did later apologize, it was not for the presence of the Pachamama figurines and but for their theft.  Clearly then for the Pope Francis, there was nothing particularly unorthodox about the tree-planting ceremony or about the statues.  And as for the offending title of the encyclical, despite opposition to it (particularly from the English-speaking world), he is pushing forward full steam ahead and leaving it as it is.  Therefore, another explanation has to be found.

Many more capable writers than I have provided explanations that address directly the charges of idolatry, even showing references to Pachamama by Pope John Paul II.  Similar explanations have been made for the Fratelli Tutti saga.  For my part, I find a viable explanation in the Holy Father’s cultural background and attitude to the universality of the Church for his seeming nonchalant and even stubborn refusal to see these actions as anything but kosher, halal or simply Catholic.

Universality: a unity in diversity

When we profess in the Creed to believe in “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church” the first and third words, one and Catholic are seemingly contradictory.  Whereas “one” speaks of unity, “Catholic” speaks of universality.  But this is only an apparent contradiction, for Catholic unity is not a uniformity but a universality, a unity that simultaneously consists of diversity.

Legitimate diversity: “We are one in the Spirit”

Unfortunately, today the word “diversity” is sometimes seen as a bad word, thanks to its abuse by some.  But since the abuse of a thing does not take away its use, the Holy Father continues to sustain the legitimacy of diversity in the Catholic Church.  It is not a case of promoting relativism here or subjecting the gospel to culture.

As the Holy Father explained in his 2013 Pentecost homily: “Only the Spirit can awaken diversity, plurality and multiplicity, while at the same time building unity.”  He went on to describe two extremes: the first one is “when we are the ones who try to create diversity and close ourselves up in what makes us different and other, we bring division”; this is not the legitimate diversity he is seeking.  The other extreme is “When we are the ones who want to build unity in accordance with our human plans, we end up creating uniformity, standardization”; this too is not the legitimate unity he is seeking. “But if instead we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit, richness, variety and diversity never become a source of conflict, because he impels us to experience variety within the communion of the Church. Journeying together in the Church, under the guidance of her pastors who possess a special charism and ministry, is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus, the principles and the demands of the gospel are always objective and apply to all situations and circumstances.  Thus, idolatry and sexism are always wrong, the primacy of God and the equality of sexes is always a good thing.  But the practice and the concrete cases of idolatry and sexism, or their opposite values, are often going to take different forms depending on the circumstances and cultures.

Overcoming Cultural Dissonance: “et . . . et,” not “aut . . . aut”

Pope Francis is uniquely suited to understand this Catholic unity in diversity given his background.  Of European Italian heritage, he is also fully Latin American in culture, without any debilitating dissonance in him.  For he is perfectly at home in those two worlds, perhaps even more so as his travels around the globe have shown.  He does not see Catholicity as being incarnated only in one culture, and certainly not just in the older Euro-centric culture.  But like the Lord instructed his disciples, the gospel has been taken to the ends of the earth and incarnated there as well.

For the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit that my cosmopolitan background has gradually formed me to be quite comfortable with diversity, albeit with some challenges.   I must admit that I was a little uncomfortable to see the tree planting ritual in the Vatican; it was strange, different, something that I don’t usually see.  This discomfort reminded me of my experiences in my home country of Uganda when I travelled away from home and saw other tribes, other Catholics, doing things differently and wondering why they didn’t do things as we did at home.

Coming to the USA to study as a young seminarian in the 1990s would bring its share of culture shocks, even within the Church.  I was surprised to see the rather short one-hour Mass, women wearing trousers at Mass, a paid and professional parish staff.  Years later, studying in Italy for four years would also bring some cultural challenges, such as seeing the effigies of saints in glass coffins under altars, the frightening artwork and beasts, some of the paraphernalia at the various shrines dedicated to the Blessed Mother. And yet all these were bona fide Catholic rites and images from the old Catholic world.  A quarter of a century later, I still feel a bit of disagio when attending prayer services involving the flag ceremony such as on Veterans Day, since I come from a culture that has a different relationship with its national symbols and the military.

What these various experiences of cultural unease have taught me is that just because I do not understand fully what is going on, just because I see things from my particular cultural lens, does not give me a reason to jump to conclusions of Voodoo.  I believe I am able to do this because, like the Holy Father, I appreciate the possibility of legitimate cultural diversity.

Pachamama: A case of inculturation?

The Amazonian Culture: A Civilization

Besides their novelty, the Amazonian ceremony and figurines also suffered from the specific deficit of provenance, because they come from a non-European civilization.  Certain definitions of civilization, which focus on urbanisation, have tended to denigrate cultures that did not develop around cities.  This has led some to even deny that they are civilizations at all.  As a result, many Native American, Latin American, African, Oceanic and even the far more ancient Asian cultures have been denied the characteristic of civilisation.  This mindset therefore sees such cultures as getting on the path to civilization only if they follow the trajectory of Western world.  Their only contribution is that these cultures have sociological and anthropological value as sources for a kind of cultural archaeology, of what the Western society was like in the past.

Unfortunately, this paternalist attitude towards other cultures also obtains in the Church.  Although many of the contemporary Catholic practices and customs are the products of contributions from various cultures over our 2000-year history, some think that the canon of cultural inculturation is closed.  Perhaps the only contributions allowed from the newer cultures are exotic presentations put on every now and then such as African dances, Asian dragon dances, colourful vestments etc, but nothing fundamental to what it means to be a Catholic.  Such “allowed” activities have only the same entertainment value that dinner at an ethnic restaurant provides, but they don’t become part of the normal fare for the universal Church, and sometimes not even for that part of the Church.  Contributions to the Catholic Church are seen as being one-way, from the Euro-centric world and Church, to the primitive peoples.  And yet the Church's modus operandi throughout our history has been to take what is good from cultures and adopt and adapt it to the gospel.

Interestingly, even some of those who attempted to defend the Pachamama rituals failed miserably because they did so from their particular Euro-centric frame of reference.  They suggested that those figurines were Amazonian versions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the so-called “Our Lady of the Amazon.”  But the official Vatican responses rejected this explanation outrightly, instead referring to the images as representations of life.  What these more-Francis than Pope Francis types were doing was failing to see that non-Western cultures have their own ways of doing things, of being Catholic, that do not necessarily need to ape the Western ones.

Legitimate Inculturation: New Wine in New Wineskins

Not every figurine of a woman at a Catholic ceremony has to be that of the Blessed Mother, even though she has been depicted in various cultures.  In what is a universal Catholic Church, there can exist rituals that are sui iuris, that are not merely a copy of something Western.  Here I can think of the Mexican rituals of quinceañera and Día de los Muertos or the Ugandan Last funeral rites rituals.  Naturally, like many other devotions and para-liturgical activities, these kinds of rituals don’t tend to become part of the universal Church, instead becoming a part of the local Church's liturgical and prayer life.  That is why it is possible

that a culture that has not yet abandoned its ties to the natural world might have Catholic “nature” rituals and devotions, which more industrialized cultures do not.  Perhaps such an event is something the new world can teach the old, because new world has a greater respect for the sacred than the old, and at its best has a better integration of the sacred and the profane world.

The Pachamama ceremony is a good example of where an ordinary (profane or non-sacred) activity like planting crops, caring for nature is also simultaneously imbued with sacred significance, since the success of these activities does not rely on man's intervention (e.g. artificial irrigation) but on factors beyond man’s control, and therefore can be attributed to divine providence.  That is why I can see how a ritual involving a veneration of the Earth could be Christianized, since what it celebrates is not inconsistent with the Church’s approach to the stewardship of the earth and divine lordship over it.  On the other hand, if the meaning of this ritual were to instead imply that the earth is herself a sacred deity to be worshipped and appeased rather than a creation of the all-good, all-powerful God, then we would rightly cry foul!  However, no evidence has been proffered that this is the case.  It was perhaps such a message that Pope Saint John Paul II taught when he spoke to the peasants of Bolivia in 1988 about their agricultural work. He said "This is the work of God, who knows that we need the food that the earth produces, that varied and expressive reality that your ancestors called the 'Pachamama' and that reflects the work of divine Providence by offering us His gifts for the good of man."

My own experience in Uganda gives some foundation in this regard.  The Catholic missionaries in Uganda adapted the previously non-Christian practices regarding agriculture, particularly harvesting rituals, and re-directed the native appreciation of the transcendent towards Jesus Christ; thus even today, the Church has rituals regarding the first harvest of crops.  Is that not what St. Paul himself did when he spoke to the Athenians at the Aeropagus (Acts 17:22-34)?

Fratelli Tutti: Lost in Translation

The more recent Fratelli Tutti kerfuffle perhaps also arises from a particular cultural perspective used to see it.  For most of the complaints about the title come from the Anglophone world, where the older practice of using the masculine gender for the generic has all but disappeared.

One of my vivid memories from my Italian language classes in the Italian region of Umbria was the lesson on the inclusive masculine grammatical gender.  Our characteristically animated and young Italian teacher, Signorina Margherita, explained that if you entered a room and there were ninety-nine women and one man, you should say “Signori” (the masculine “gentlemen”).  Many of us coming from the English-speaking couldn’t believe her until her equally very Italian colleague, Signorina Barbara, confirmed that masculine nouns like Uomini and Signori and corresponding pronouns could also apply to groups that contained both sexes.  (Interestingly, the formal “You” uses the feminine pronoun Lei for either sex).

But this feature is not just unique to Italian; it is found in Romance languages and other languages as well.  The most recent Spanish translation of the Roman Missal for the USA translates the Latin Fratres as Hermanos (which, while it literally translates to “Brothers,” also includes both men and women).  Similarly, the Swahili Missal also says Ndugu and the Luganda Missal says Aboluganda, both “masculine” words intending to include both men and women.  Ironically the latest Italian translation of the Roman Missal has adopted the Anglophone usage and translated Fratres as Fratelli e sorrelle (“brothers and sisters).

Nevertheless, I submit that Pope Francis, choosing to maintain the Italian phrase Fratelli Tutti, to quote St. Francis of Assisi (Ammonizioni, 6), intends to respect not just the grammatical but also the cultural norms of the Italian language, particularly at the time of its authorship.  It is incumbent upon us who read him, or even those who translate his work into other languages, to adjust our cultural lenses accordingly.  On his part, perhaps being equally sensitive to the diversity that exists in the world, has asked that in translating the encyclical, those two words, Fratelli Tutti, be left untranslated, just like he did for another St. Francis phrase Laudato Sì.

I regularly have to exercise cultural transitions between celebrating Mass in English, my primary language, and the others languages of Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, (and various Ugandan languages.)  Particularly because English is a Germanic language, albeit with a heavy dose of Latin and French influence, I cannot apply its rules to the Romance languages.  Even within these languages, which are practically sister-languages (not brother-languages) to each other, and daughter languages (not son-languages) to Latin, I have to respect their unique features.

For example, when it comes to pronunciation, I cannot always apply the rules of Latin to Italian since the latter does not have “J” but uses “G,” such as in the words Gesù instead of Iesus.  I also have to be careful when pronouncing “c” as Italian and Spanish do so differently like in the word sacrificio, and do so differently for “gn” as in the words degnamente and dignamente in Italian and Spanish respectively.  My forays into Portuguese, in which I am least competent, throw some curveballs my way, where Jesus is pronounced differently than its Spanish counterpart Jesù, but dignamente is identical to the Italian.

Similarly, I have to be more attentive to the so-called false friends words which look like each other and therefore can lure one into complacency, but are quite different in meaning.  For example, guardare means “to guard” in Italian, but guardar means “to watch” in Spanish; sembrare means “to resemble” in Italian, but sembrar means “to sow” in Spanish; pronto means “ready” in Italian but means “soon” in Spanish.  Similarly, the Portuguese and Spanish words embaraçada and embarazada respectively can be a cause for embarrassment, since the former means “embarrassed” while the latter means “pregnant;” similar confusion can be caused by the nearly identical Portuguese and Spanish words, esquisita and exquisita, with the former meaning ”weird” and the latter meaning “exquisite”; when you are invited for cena in Spain, it is for supper, but in Portuguese cena is a scene.

In conclusion, if such cultural navigation is needed for words in languages that belong to the same Romance and Latin group, how much more openness to diversity is needed for culturally and historically-contextualized phrases like Fratelli Tutti? 

This grammar lesson aside, those who actually read the document will be pleasantly surprised that any fears about excluding women are unfounded, since the document starting from the very first document speaks to and of brothers and sisters, men and women and women's rights.  

One gospel in a diversity of tongues

I am not unmindful of the genuine disquiet that such actions by the Holy Father or by other Catholics might engender in some people.  What I have tried to offer is a different way of looking at them, particularly through the lens of benignity and Catholicity.

Benignity is not only an injunction of the eighth commandment of the Decalogue, but it is also a filial duty towards one’s natural Papà, and our spiritual Papa.  It is a duty grounded in charity towards one another, but especially towards finding the truth under the guidance of the successor of the one who the Lord appointed head of the Church and commanded: “feed my lambs, . . .  tend my sheep, . . . feed my sheep” (Jn. 21:15-17). He also told him, “strengthen your brethren” (Lk, 22:32).

As for Catholicity, it is true that few people get the opportunity to acquire its lens by sheer force of exposure to diversity.  And yet diversity is in the very DNA of the Catholic Church and so is openness to it.  Starting on Pentecost day, the people listening to the first Pope, Peter wondered how they could hear the gospel each “in his own native language” despite the fact that they were “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:7-11).  From that day until today, wherever it has been planted, the Church has continued to live out this diversity. 

That is why I am ready to believe that the garden-planting ceremony and the Pachamama artefacts used therein in October 2019 were not a case of idolatry, but a case of Amazonian Catholics being Catholic in their own way.  That is why I am ready to believe that the Pope’s use of the phrase Fratelli Tutti in October 2020 is not an exclusion of women, but simply a Franciscan way of addressing his brothers and sisters about “a love that transcends the barriers of geography and distance. . ..” (Fratelli Tutti, #1).