Catholic Liberation in Mexico
I attended a fabulous Catholic liberation workshop that Joanne Bray (the International Liberation Reference Person for Catholics) led in Mexico City, Mexico.
It was the first RC Catholic liberation workshop in Mexico, and a wide range of Catholics—from people raised in conservative Catholic families to people raised in Communist or atheist families—were represented.
We got to work on divisions among Mexicans and have each other despite those divisions. We saw how being Mexican is intrinsically connected to Catholicism. It was also the first Catholic workshop I had been to, in my many years in RC, in which we got to work on messages about “the devil.”
As a Catholic female born and raised in Mexico and living in the United States, it was a gift to be part of this workshop. I noticed how much contradiction [to distress] it took for me to finally have a full-blown session [a session without restraint] on my goodness and refusing to feel bad about myself. It took [required] being in the country where I was born and raised, and days of discharge and perspective before and during the workshop.
Since returning to the United States, I’ve kept thinking about how any liberation work I do needs to be from a perspective that includes being female, Indigenous, Mexican, and Catholic. To leave out any of my identities leaves the internalized oppression in place and the externalized oppression unchallenged.
Another highlight was Joanne’s reminder that going invisible and silent is colluding with the attempted genocide of our people. This note, brief as it is, is an attempt to stand up against the invisibility, and the oppression.
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Catholics
(Present Time 190, January 2018)