This book is an impassioned and, in that measure, not always very judicious or balanced effort. John Kirk argues that the Catholic church has always been political: “Indeed, the idea of an apolitical church, devoted solely to spiritual matters, is absurd and ahistorical. From biblical times hence, the role of religion has revolved around making choices—many of which are of a strictly political nature” (p. 212). Kirk pursues this idea through Nicaraguan history. He stresses the Sandinista period and aligns himself squarely with the “popular church” and the Revolution as opposed to the “clique of bishops who ran the church in Nicaragua” (p. 171).
Despite occasional efforts at balance, the author attributes political positions for the most part to the institutional church and its leaders, “a socially useful approach” to their opponents (p. 32). Miguel D’Escoto leads an “impassioned pilgrimage” (p. 187); Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo engages in an “old-fashioned barnstorming campaign” that is “as much (if not more) a political campaign than a religious pilgrimage” (pp. 185, 194); and so on. Almost every statement by the hierarchy carries an editorial comment by Kirk lamenting the clerics’ lack of vision and admonishing them not to offer simplistic solutions for complex problems.
Most of the text is devoted to the Sandinista Revolution and its aftermath. Chapter 1 runs from the conquest to the Somoza regime. Conquest to independence is covered in four pages; independence itself in three; the nineteenth century to 1910 in five; and in six more pages the author gets to 1936, when Anastasio Somoza formally assumed power. The next two chapters discuss the church under the Somoza regime, stressing, respectively, church-state accommodation and the growing division and opposition leading to the Revolution. Chapters 4 to 6 follow the tangled and bitter events under FSLN rule, emphasizing the simultaneous conflicts between church and state and in the church itself, the latter between the so-called iglesia popular and the hierarchy led by then-Archbishop Obando y Bravo. Chapter 6 provides an interesting account of the detente reached between the church and the Sandinistas in the late 1980s. A concluding chapter, titled “Prophetic Stance or Political Accommodation,” presents the author’s views on the alternatives the church faces.
That politics and religion are necessarily intertwined is unexceptional. The author’s explanation of this general relationship and its particular manifestations in Nicaragua, however, is problematic. Kirk asserts that church leaders are driven primarily by motives of institutional self-defense. These make them (at least in the modern period) natural allies of the bourgeoisie. He rejects expressed concerns about unity, authority, and ideology as secondary, when not simply deliberate, masks. But if survival alone were the issue, why not ally with the FSLN, which, according to Kirk’s account, was eager for detente and cooperation? Kirk criticizes the bishops for a 1986 Congreso Eucarístico Nacional that “ignored the political reality of Nicaragua,” but a few lines later cites the church’s effort to keep proceedings “as apolitical as possible” as a noteworthy sign of coming detente with the regime (p. 204). Is apolitical good or bad? Kirk seems unhappy that detente in the late 1980s emerged more out of pragmatism than a genuine desire for dialogue (p. 208). But what else could be expected, given the history of the matter? Despite Kirk’s recognition that the “popular church” has always been a minority, he paints the bishops as a small and isolated clique, shored up by aid from CELAM and other international agencies (p. 112). But who was really “popular” in this case, the minority supporting the regime, or the bishops? Pope John Paul II is not and never was a “refugee from an authoritarian Marxist government” (p. 214). He is (and has long been) quite consistent: socially concerned, politically engaged, and ecclesiastically conservative.
This book is disappointing. The historical account adds little to the existing literature, and the analysis is too partial and partisan to be convincing. The author has missed a chance to provide perspective on the events. The evolution of politics and religion in Nicaragua, as in Central America and Latin America generally, arguably has moved beyond the polarization Kirk paints so clearly. Scholarship needs to move beyond it as well.
