Why Juan Diego is an American Saint

TCR News ^ | August 2, 2002 | Oswald Sobrino

[NYer]

As we Americans watch the exuberant joy of Mexicans at the canonization of Juan Diego, we sense that something is missing in our own affluent culture that the comparatively impoverished Mexicans hold onto tightly. The Mexican experience is of national identity fused with Catholicism. The first Mexican revolutionary against colonial Spanish control was a priest, Padre Hidalgo. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is present everywhere in Mexico. For many Mexicans, Guadalupe is Mexico. There is a similar phenomenon in other Catholic countries: the popularity of Padre, now Saint, Pio of Pietrelcina in Italy comes to mind. Other Catholic countries also experience a fusion of national identity with Catholicism: the Pope's own Poland at the mercy of her neighbors, Ireland in its struggles with the English, Spain in its repulsion of Moslem invaders, and France with Joan of Arc. For Mexicans, Juan Diego represents the birth of their nation at the moment that the native Indian culture became fused with the Spanish Catholic culture. Latin American intellectuals speak of the birth of a new race, a "cosmic race," created out of Indian and Spanish. Unlike the current paragons of political correctness, many Latin Americans do not view Columbus' discovery of America as a tragedy but rather as the point at which a new race and culture were created. For this reason, the traditional Hispanic name, even today, for Columbus Day is the politically incorrect "Dia de la Raza" or "Day of the Race."

Unlike Mexico and the other countries mentioned, the United States is not considered a Catholic country. There is no universal image of a saint that is fused with American national identity. In this spiritual sense, we are the ones who are poor compared to our neighbors to the south. In a reversal of roles that resonates with the Gospels, we as affluent Americans are the needy ones seeking a gift from our economically poorer neighbors. We receive that gift under the Patroness of the Americas, north and south, Our Lady of Guadalupe, so designated by Pius XII in 1945 (Our Sunday Visitor's 2002 Catholic Almanac, p.139). We receive that gift not only because of our geographic proximity to Mexico but also through the Mexican-Americans in our midst. As recently noted by the New York Times (July 30, 2002), the growth of the Latino population in the United States is accelerating in parts of the country not traditionally associated with Hispanics, such as North Carolina or Georgia. And I suspect that Mexican-Americans form the greater part of that growth. As a result, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is likely to crop up more and more in shops, homes, and taxicabs throughout the United States.

So for American Catholics the Virgin of Guadalupe is also our Mother, and Juan Diego is also our saint. Just as Europeans streamed in the Middle Ages to visit the shrine of St. James in Spain, so today Catholics from the United States travel to visit the shrine of Guadalupe in Spanish-speaking Mexico. Just as the medieval pilgrimages to Spain affirmed a common European identity, the devotion of Western Hemisphere Catholics to Guadalupe affirms our identity as Catholics living together in the Americas. In this broader sense of the label American, Juan Diego is an American saint for all Americans, whether living in the United States or Canada or Latin America. John Paul II himself has vigorously promoted this continental unity of the Americas by speaking of "America in the singular" as a way of fostering the unity of Catholics in the Western Hemisphere (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in America, p. 5, Jan. 22, 1999). Fittingly, the Pope ends his apostolic exhortation concerning the Church in America with the invocation: "Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, pray for us!" In this light, the canonization of Juan Diego is an event that further fosters the Pope's vision of the Church in America and that gives us a saint close not only to Mexico but also to us.

[NYer]

There is no universal image of a saint that is fused with American national identity.

How true! There is a statue of the BVM that someone is trying to have recognized as Our Lady of the US or something to that effect. They brought it up to Toronto. I saw a phot of it yesterday and, IMHO, find it a tad gaudy.

[NYer]

Any thoughts?

[Mr. Thorne]

I can't speak to a patron of the US, but I will echo the writer's point, that Mexico is an infused culture.

As I said in a related post, I recently vacationed in Mexico. While there, it was my pleasure to attend a delightful production at a 'nature park'.

The production was a mix of old (mayan) and new (christian); show quite plainly rejoiced in, and reenacted, the fall of the pagan idol, and the rise of the cross.

Picture THAT happening in the US. Outside of a church production, I mean.

[Salvation]

BTTT on December 9, 2003!

[Salvation]

BTTT on 12-09-04!

[Salvation]

[Zionist Conspirator]

As we Americans watch the exuberant joy of Mexicans at the canonization of Juan Diego, we sense that something is missing in our own affluent culture that the comparatively impoverished Mexicans hold onto tightly. The Mexican experience is of national identity fused with Catholicism. The first Mexican revolutionary against colonial Spanish control was a priest, Padre Hidalgo. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is present everywhere in Mexico. For many Mexicans, Guadalupe is Mexico. There is a similar phenomenon in other Catholic countries: the popularity of Padre, now Saint, Pio of Pietrelcina in Italy comes to mind. Other Catholic countries also experience a fusion of national identity with Catholicism: the Pope's own Poland at the mercy of her neighbors, Ireland in its struggles with the English, Spain in its repulsion of Moslem invaders, and France with Joan of Arc. For Mexicans, Juan Diego represents the birth of their nation at the moment that the native Indian culture became fused with the Spanish Catholic culture. Latin American intellectuals speak of the birth of a new race, a "cosmic race," created out of Indian and Spanish.

--snip--

Unlike Mexico and the other countries mentioned, the United States is not considered a Catholic country. There is no universal image of a saint that is fused with American national identity. In this spiritual sense, we are the ones who are poor compared to our neighbors to the south. In a reversal of roles that resonates with the Gospels, we as affluent Americans are the needy ones seeking a gift from our economically poorer neighbors.

Okay, this thread is over four months old, but it was hyperlinked to a newer one. I'm going to comment here because as a one-time convert to Roman Catholicism I can identify with what the writer is saying.

I came to the Catholic Church on my own (it certainly doesn't missionize, and most certainly not among people like me!) as a product of the most un-Catholic culture in the world, that of the poor rural Southeastern Bible Belt.

During my six years in the Catholic Church I often felt like an orphan because there was nothing culturally familiar to hold on to. Catholic publications often extolled the "beautiful Cathollic tradtions" of the Irish, Poles, French, Austrians, Bavarians, Ukrainians, Spanish, Mexicans, Cajuns, southwestern Indians, etc., but I was none of those. And what struck me as particularly harsh and hypocritical was that this utter lack of any sympathy occurred at the same time the Church was loudly boasting of its cultural sensitivity. Yet those same publications which celebrated the "baptism" of pagan symbols and rituals (totem poles, etc.) insisted on attacking Biblical literalism and teaching higher criticism and demythologization. Why was it so hard to baptize the Bible? It was my "totem pole," but the "inclusive and sensitive" Catholic Church tore it to shreds and attacked those who implicitly believed its words even as it praised the Catholic loyalty of simple-minded Belgian peasants. Why was a simple-minded Belgian peasant so much dearer to G-d (at least as implied by the Catholic Church) than a simple-minded rural Southeastern redneck?

The story of Juan Diego only hammers home for me the Catholic Church's maddening hypocrisy. The Church seems to be made up of millions and millions of unsophisticated masses who are descended from people converted in the ancient past, yet it is led by over-educated, ultra-sophisticated intellectual @$$holes. What is the connection between Father Raymond Brown and Juan Diego? Between Hans Urs von Balthazar or Karl Rahner and the illiterate peasants of Brittany or the Indians of Bolivia? What is it? What am I missing here?

And why is it that the most intellectual, naturalistic, sophisticated Catholics in the world can bow their heads in utter humility at the post-Biblical miracles and appearances of the virgin but then turn right around and irreverently tear the Bible to shreds??? If Biblical miracles must be reinterpreted in light of modern science, then why don't post-Biblical miracles have to submit to the same skeptical revisionism?

I hope you will excuse me for pointing out that the Catholic Church seems to have a real problem with the Bible, since it approves post-Bibical rituals but bans practice of the Law of Moses and accepts post-Biblical miracles while rejecting the claims of the Bible.

I know of one Catholic web site which actually admits that the use of the Bible by the Protestant reformers created an anti-Biblical mindset that is directly responsible for the ready acceptance of evolutionism in the Catholic Church. After all, if one is combatting people who insist on "soul compentency" and sola scriptura I can see how one can very easily feel that one must insist nothing in the Bible can mean what it says on the surface.

And needless to say, almost the entire spectrum of the Catholic Church, from extrme Left to extreme Right is (to put it mildly) extremely unsympathetic to the Zionism of traditional American Fundamentalism, based as it is on Biblical sentimentalism. But to then turn around and replace Israel with Ireland??? Once again, it seems Biblical things are problematic while post-Biblical things (in this instance, countries) are not.

Articles like this one on Juan Diego also make me wonder about the place of the "palaeocons" who exalt the Catholic Church as the ultimate expression of "European culture" while blaming "chr*stophobia" directly on the influx of non-Europeans, such as the Mexicans who revere Juan Diego. How does one understand the alleged militant Catholicism of Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in light of this? But that is another issue.

At any rate I personally found the Catholic Church (and yes, Kolokotronis, I know you're Orthodox) to be extremely cold and unsympathetic to either my culture or my concerns.

[Salvation]

Collect:
Lord God, through blessed Juan Diego you made known the love of Our Lady of Guadalupe toward your people. Grant by his intercession that we who follow the counsel of Mary, our Mother, may strive continually to do your will. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

December 09, 2004

Optional Memorial of St. Juan Diego (USA)

Today the Church in the United States celebrates the optional memorial of St. Juan Diego, an Indian convert, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared as he was going to Mass in Tlatlelolco, Mexico. Our Lady asked him to tell the Bishop that she desired a shrine to be built on the spot to manifest her love for all mankind. She left a marvelous portrait of herself on the mantle of Juan Diego as a sign for the Bishop. This miraculous image has proved to be ageless, and is kept in the shrine built in her honor, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas.

St. Juan Diego
Little is known about the life of Juan Diego before his conversion, but tradition and archaelogical and iconographical sources, along with the most important and oldest indigenous document on the event of Guadalupe, "El Nican Mopohua" (written in Náhuatl with Latin characters, 1556, by the Indigenous writer Antonio Valeriano), give some information on the life of the saint and the apparitions.

Juan Diego was born in 1474 with the name "Cuauhtlatoatzin" ("the talking eagle") in Cuautlitlán, today part of Mexico City, Mexico. He was a gifted member of the Chichimeca people, one of the more culturally advanced groups living in the Anáhuac Valley.

When he was 50 years old he was baptized by a Franciscan priest, Fr. Peter da Gand, one of the first Franciscan missionaries. On December 9, 1531, when Juan Diego was on his way to morning Mass, the Blessed Mother appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill, the outskirts of what is now Mexico City. She asked him to go to the Bishop and to request in her name that a shrine be built at Tepeyac, where she promised to pour out her grace upon those who invoked her. The Bishop, who did not believe Juan Diego, and asked for a sign to prove that the apparition was true. On December 12, Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac. Here, the Blessed Mother told him to climb the hill and to pick the flowers that he would find in bloom. He obeyed, and although it was winter time, he found roses blooming. He gathered the flowers and took them to Our Lady who carefully placed them in his mantle and told him to take them to the Bishop as "proof". When he opened his mantle, the flowers fell on the ground and there remained impressed, in place of the flowers, an image of the Blessed Mother, the apparition at Tepeyac.

With the Bishop's permission, Juan Diego lived the rest of his life as a hermit in a small hut near the chapel where the miraculous image was placed for veneration. Here he cared for the church and the first pilgrims who came to pray to the Mother of Jesus.

Much deeper than the exterior grace of having been chosen as Our Lady's messenger, Juan Diego received the grace of interior enlightenment and from that moment, he began a life dedicated to prayer and the practice of virtue and boundless love of God and neighbour. He died in 1548 and was buried in the first chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was beatified on May 6, 1990 by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Guadalupe, Mexico City.

The miraculous image, which is preserved in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, shows a woman with native features and dress. She is supported by an angel whose wings are reminiscent of one of the major gods of the traditional religion of that area. The moon is beneath her feet and her blue mantle is covered with gold stars. The black girdle about her waist signifies that she is pregnant. Thus, the image graphically depicts the fact that Christ is to be "born" again among the peoples of the New World, and is a message as relevant to the "New World" today as it was during the lifetime of Juan Diego.

Patron: Mexico.

Symbols: Pictured carrying a tilma full of roses.

Things to Do:

• Read Pope John Paul II's homily at the canonization of St. Juan Diego.

• Pray to St. Juan Diego for migrant Mexican workers who come to the USA trying to support their families.

• If you know of a Mexican family who may need your help, surprise them with a food basket or offer them a ride if they don't have a car. If you speak Spanish, see if they need an interpreter for an important appointment.

• Meditate on Our Lady's beautiful words to St. Juan Diego: "Hear and let it penetrate into your heart, my dear little son; let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you. Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance. Also, do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need?"

• Cook some Mexican dishes for dinner and bake a Rose Petal Pound Cake or other rose theme for dessert in honor of St. Juan Diego.

• From the Catholic Culture Library:
  • On The Canonization Of First Native American

  • Mexico Has Seen a Great Light

  • Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

• Recommended Reading: For children: Our Lady of Guadalupe by Tomie dePaola. For adults: The Wonder of Guadalupe by Francis Johnston.

• For music for Juan Diego's and OUr Lady of Guadalupe's feast, see www.savae.org. The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble have two cds of authentic music by Mexican medieval composers. Very beautiful!

• Visit Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas for detailed accounts on the apparition to Juan Diego. You can also send online cards from this site. See also Patron Saints Index.

[Pyro7480]

Rant warning?

[Salvation]

**The Church seems to be made up of millions and millions of unsophisticated masses who are descended from people converted in the ancient past,**

Exactly. Didn't Christ die for all? And was Christ, likewise, a commoner, yet the second person of the Holy Trinity?

You are always welcome at the Catholic Church, I'm sorry you felt like an orphan. Did you join with other neophytes in parish groups?

[sitetest]

"What is the connection between Father Raymond Brown and Juan Diego?"

Baptism?

[Pyro7480]

During my six years in the Catholic Church I often felt like an orphan because there was nothing culturally familiar to hold on to. Catholic publications often extolled the "beautiful Cathollic tradtions" of the Irish, Poles, French, Austrians, Bavarians, Ukrainians, Spanish, Mexicans, Cajuns, southwestern Indians, etc., but I was none of those. And what struck me as particularly harsh and hypocritical was that this utter lack of any sympathy occurred at the same time the Church was loudly boasting of its cultural sensitivity. Yet those same publications which celebrated the "baptism" of pagan symbols and rituals (totem poles, etc.) insisted on attacking Biblical literalism and teaching higher criticism and demythologization. Why was it so hard to baptize the Bible? It was my "totem pole," but the "inclusive and sensitive" Catholic Church tore it to shreds and attacked those who implicitly believed its words even as it praised the Catholic loyalty of simple-minded Belgian peasants. Why was a simple-minded Belgian peasant so much dearer to G-d (at least as implied by the Catholic Church) than a simple-minded rural Southeastern redneck?

I can understand this sentiment. It is characteristic of the post-Vatican II church. It is political-correct in terms of "inculturalization," and submits to left-wing "critical analysis" of the Bible. St. Jerome, one of the most celebrated Biblical scholars in Church history (translated the Vulgate-edition of the Bible) said "ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."

The Church seems to be made up of millions and millions of unsophisticated masses who are descended from people converted in the ancient past, yet it is led by over-educated, ultra-sophisticated intellectual @$$holes. What is the connection between Father Raymond Brown and Juan Diego? Between Hans Urs von Balthazar or Karl Rahner and the illiterate peasants of Brittany or the Indians of Bolivia? What is it? What am I missing here?

The connection between the true faithful and the true clerics of the Church is a common faith. The Church never claimed to be democratic, though some are trying devilishly hard to make it so.

And why is it that the most intellectual, naturalistic, sophisticated Catholics in the world can bow their heads in utter humility at the post-Biblical miracles and appearances of the virgin but then turn right around and irreverently tear the Bible to shreds??? If Biblical miracles must be reinterpreted in light of modern science, then why don't post-Biblical miracles have to submit to the same skeptical revisionism?

See above.

Articles like this one on Juan Diego also make me wonder about the place of the "palaeocons" who exalt the Catholic Church as the ultimate expression of "European culture" while blaming "chr*stophobia" directly on the influx of non-Europeans, such as the Mexicans who revere Juan Diego. How does one understand the alleged militant Catholicism of Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in light of this? But that is another issue.

I know what you mean. The paleocons seem to forgot that the Church may have taken root in Europe, but it isn't exclusively in Europe. They are scared of "losing American culture," which in reality, is based on Protestantism and Masonry, not Catholicism.

At any rate I personally found the Catholic Church (and yes, Kolokotronis, I know you're Orthodox) to be extremely cold and unsympathetic to either my culture or my concerns.

I'm sorry you feel this way. The Catholic Church is undergoing a period of chaos at the moment. But we must have faith that "the gates of Hell will not prevail against it."

[Zionist Conspirator]

**The Church seems to be made up of millions and millions of unsophisticated masses who are descended from people converted in the ancient past,**

Exactly. Didn't Christ die for all? And was Christ, likewise, a commoner, yet the second person of the Holy Trinity?

I will never cease to be amazed at how misunderstood plain words can be.

You seem to be suffering under the delusion that I was complaining about the simple people. I was complaining about the Catholic Church's leaders, who seem to lack the most basic simplicity of belief, yet who rule over illiterate peasants as if they were all one big happy family. And I know you will tell me that's exactly what they are, so I must interject here my bitterness that a poor redneck who didn't have the benefit of Irish or Polish culture and whose "madonna" was the Bible couldn't be accepted by those sophisticated leaders with the same magnamimity with which they accept their own peasants.

Okay now, don't tell me. You didn't understand that either, right?

You are always welcome at the Catholic Church, I'm sorry you felt like an orphan. Did you join with other neophytes in parish groups?

How would you feel if you converted to a religion that didn't even exist in your county (which meant I drove a great deal every week to go to church even though my own county had sixty-something churches), then attended a "respectable" higher critical university and when you turned to "your" church for help were told you didn't belong? Especially on november 1 when you had to immediately precede to mass after being told this?

Rednecks were never meant to be Catholics. At least I know this now. I only hope my own miserable experience can save someone else from the torment that I experienced.

[Pyro7480]

Rednecks were never meant to be Catholics. At least I know this now. I only hope my own miserable experience can save someone else from the torment that I experienced.

I guess the rednecks in Louisiana don't count, since they are many Catholics there.

[Zionist Conspirator]

"What is the connection between Father Raymond Brown and Juan Diego?"

Baptism?

Ha ha ha. Very funny. I'm rolling on the floor right now.

You've just underlined the cruelty of the rejection of any cultural sensitivity for a poor redneck by a church that can otherwise encompass both G-d and the Devil.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Rednecks were never meant to be Catholics. At least I know this now. I only hope my own miserable experience can save someone else from the torment that I experienced.

I guess the rednecks in Louisiana don't count, since they are many Catholics there.

You don't seem to understand me. Louisianans are family (like Ukrainians and Zunis and Filipinos and Poles and Paraguayans). I was not.

If you're family, you're in. If you're not and you're having trouble adapting, it's too %$#@ bad, but we have "REAL" Catholics to worry about and not silly Fundies like you.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Articles like this one on Juan Diego also make me wonder about the place of the "palaeocons" who exalt the Catholic Church as the ultimate expression of "European culture" while blaming "chr*stophobia" directly on the influx of non-Europeans, such as the Mexicans who revere Juan Diego. How does one understand the alleged militant Catholicism of Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in light of this? But that is another issue.

I know what you mean. The paleocons seem to forgot that the Church may have taken root in Europe, but it isn't exclusively in Europe. They are scared of "losing American culture," which in reality, is based on Protestantism and Masonry, not Catholicism.

"Palaeocons" don't believe in abstract truth to begin with. For them religion is merely an aspect of "civilization" or "culture," and these are the slowly evolved organic creations of various peoples in which they express their national essence. Critique of this evolved culture, even in the name of the Bible, is just another "corrosive rationalist critique" to them.

To these people Chr*st is Europe and "chr*stophobia" is simply anti-Europeanism. The Pope is also regarded as sort of the honorary "head of the Aryans" by even non-Catholic or heretical Catholic "palaeos."

Palaeoconservatism is simply the white European sector of the otherwise Leftist cult of indigenousness: "Dese are de ways of our pipples."

[sitetest]

Dear Zionist Conspirator,

Sorry, I was neither trying to be especially funny nor to give offense.

To me, it just seemed the most obvious answer.

You pointed out the substantial differences between the two persons, and asked what connects them. To me, common baptism into the Catholic Church would be a fundamental connection between any two persons. In my own view, that connection is more significant than any of the differences you pointed out.


sitetest

[Kolokotronis]

" (and yes, Kolokotronis, I know you're Orthodox)"

Then why, pray tell, did you feel compelled to extend your rant to me? I have zero sympathy for anti-Roman Catholicism.

"During my six years in the Catholic Church I often felt like an orphan because there was nothing culturally familiar to hold on to"

You didn't hang around long enough to understand that while the various Catholic ethnicities you mention seem to and do predominate in the Church, nevertheless, "In Christ there is no East nor West, no Greek nor Jew." For a convert to be a Roman Catholic, like to become Orthodox, requires a transformation of one's very being, a change of the "nous". It isn't simply changing denominations and it is, I am told, a very hard thing to accomplish. I've been told time and again that "You cradle Orthodox had it easy. You were born this way." I suspect that's true. Changing your being, not simply your mind or the way you cross yourself, changing the way you look at the world so that you attain a Catholic or Orthodox mindset, or world view (which is most certainly not an American protestant world view, as Pyro points out)doesn't happen over night.

"Why was a simple-minded Belgian peasant so much dearer to G-d (at least as implied by the Catholic Church) than a simple-minded rural Southeastern redneck?" and then "What is the connection between Father Raymond Brown and Juan Diego? Between Hans Urs von Balthazar or Karl Rahner and the illiterate peasants of Brittany or the Indians of Bolivia? What is it? What am I missing here?"

The Faith...quite simple actually. By the way, the "simple minded" Belgian, or Greek or Breton peasant or an Indian of Bolivia or a tribesman in Ghana or Uganda will probably make it to heaven long before those of us who pretend to know will. The Church has always taught that. It is one reason why the Ladder of Divine Ascent shows a bishop pitching head first into the Pit and the Pope is known as "The servant of the servants of God" and the EP as "His Modesty".

What are you missing? Perhaps humility? You should go back and try again.

[Zionist Conspirator]

You pointed out the substantial differences between the two persons, and asked what connects them. To me, common baptism into the Catholic Church would be a fundamental connection between any two persons. In my own view, that connection is more significant than any of the differences you pointed out.

If the Juan Diegos and Raymond Browns fit so easily together, then what was wrong with me? I didn't pick my ancestors or what culture I was born into.