Not many years ago a bibliography on the Catholic left in Latin America would have had few, if any, entries. That this list, which is restricted to articles and books that are likely to be accessible in major United States research libraries, comprises 410 pages tells us something about how important the subject has become. The work of three bibliographers, now or formerly at Brigham Young University, it took two years to compile and should be useful not only to those interested in the Catholic church in Latin America, but to students of Christian Democracy, socialism, ideologies of development, and the relations of church and state.
The collection is preceded by an introduction that is principally a chronology of the development of social thought in the Latin American Catholic church between the first meeting of the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM) in 1955 and the Conference at Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979, at which Pope John Paul II laid down an intermediate position between an apolitical role for the church and total involvement in political and social affairs. The introduction is a bit uncritical, but it covers the main currents in Catholic radicalism in Latin America for the last twenty-five years. Christian Democracy is not discussed in the introduction, but there are entries with that subheading under many of the countries in which the movement is important.
The bibliography is organized under the general topic of Latin America, and then by country, with regional entries for the Caribbean and for Central America. Each country section is in turn subdivided into ten or more subheadings, depending on the country. The only important omissions that I noticed were critical commentaries on the Catholic left, both in this country and in Latin America. In particular, the theology of liberation and the Christians for socialism movement have elicited some important negative responses that should have been included. For what it sets out to do, however, this is a very useful reference work that students of related topics will find helpful, particularly in identifying publications in less well known journals and by regional and religious publishing houses.
