A Pedagogy of Faith: The Theological Vision of Paulo Freire 1472579275, 9781472579270

Citation preview

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A Pedagogy of Faith

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Also available from Bloomsbury Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition, Paulo Freire Paulo Freire, Daniel Schugurensky Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots, edited by Robert Lake and Tricia Kress Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education, Jones Irwin

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A Pedagogy of Faith The Theological Vision of Paulo Freire Irwin Leopando

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK  USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Irwin Leopando, 2017 Irwin Leopando has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-​1-​4725-​7925-​6 ePDF: 978-​1-​4725-​7927-​0 ePub: 978-​1-​4725-​7926-​3 Library of Congress Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India

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For Catherine, who makes all things possible

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Contents Introduction 1

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Paulo Freire’s Life and Educational Praxis The Brazilian Northeast The emergence of Freire’s pedagogy The methodology of Freire’s literacy program Revolutionary ferment (1960–​1964) Freire in Chile: The radical turn 1964–​1969 The “international years”: (1969–​1980) Homecoming and late period

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Freire and the Brazilian Catholic Left Movement Overview The Brazilian church: Pre-​twentieth century Theological background The 1920s–​1950s: Catholicism enters the public square Catholic Action in Brazil New forms of social analysis: The historical turn The progressive clergy Catholic University Youth (JUC) Popular Action (AP) The Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB) Reformist currents from Rome Conclusion

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Freire and Catholic Theologies of the Person Overview Jacques Maritain Emmanuel Mounier Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Freire and theologies of the person Conclusion

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15 19 24 26 29 31 33

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95 96 107 117 122 132

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Contents

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Freire and Liberation Theology Background and overview The modern roots of liberation theology Intersections between Freirean pedagogy and liberation theology Conclusion

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Freire, Neoliberalism, and Integral Pedagogy Introduction Historical and biographical context Freire’s late theology Conclusion

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Final Thoughts Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

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Introduction

The late Brazilian activist and public intellectual Paulo Freire (1921–​1997) has been the most widely known educator in the world since the late 1960s. His pedagogy, which emerged from the crucible of postwar Brazil’s deeply impoverished and harshly stratified Northeastern region, sought to enact an antiauthoritarian and “humanizing” pedagogy that “awakens” adult illiterates to the structural and ideological sources of injustice. He saw education as a deeply transformative practice that ought to cultivate critical and historical consciousness. In other words, it should foster an interventionist and creative stance toward the status quo, with an eye toward building a more equitable, democratic, and humane world. As such, it is a “cultural action” for “liberation” rather than “domestication.” Freire’s major statement Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) has been translated into a dozen languages and has sold over a million copies—​an unprecedented number for a book on educational philosophy. Cornel West has described the publication of this work as “a world-​historical event for counter-​hegemonic theorists and activists in search of new ways of linking social theory to narratives of human freedom.”1 Educational scholar Ronald David Glass notes, “The ideas in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) have been applied on every continent, in projects ranging from grassroots basic literacy programs to national educational policies.”2 Glass encapsulates Freire’s legacy as a pedagogical thinker and practitioner: None other has influenced practice in such a wide array of contexts and cultures, or helped to enable so many of the world’s disempowered turn education toward their own dreams. Lives and institutional spaces are still being transformed by his contributions, the struggles of the oppressed still draw from his insights, and democracies are enriched by the voices of the poor and working class amplified

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A Pedagogy of Faith through Freirean projects. Freire’s ideas have entered educational discourse from the most remote corners of the earth, and not since John Dewey have the thoughts of a philosopher of education impacted such a broad sphere of public life in the U.S.3

Even today, two decades after his death, Freire remains an icon to progressive intellectuals, activists, and educators. A  steady stream of Freirean scholarship continues to be produced, and Paulo Freire Institutes have been established in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Egypt, England, Finland, Germany, Italy, Korea, Malta, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States.4 His work has inspired progressive teachers and activists in a wide range of settings throughout the world, from formal educational institutions to “labor unions, church groups, adult literacy programs, battered women’s shelters, and community organizations.”5 His writings continue to be studied and debated by scholars from various disciplines, including literary studies, composition-​rhetoric, political science, sociology, and teacher education.6 In North America and Western Europe, his work continues to provide the cornerstone for the radical educational movement called “critical pedagogy.”7 Many of Freire’s readers, especially within Western intellectual and radical circles, have seen him predominantly as a revolutionary Marxist. This view is correct insofar as he discovered and strongly embraced elements of Marxist analysis during his exile from Brazil in his forties, but it is inaccurate within the context of his entire life and thought. In fact, he was first and foremost a deeply committed Catholic who declared in his final years: All arguments in favor of the legitimacy for a more people-​oriented society have their deepest roots in my faith. It sustains me, motivates me, challenges me, and it has never allowed me to say, “Stop, settle down; things are as they are because they cannot be any other way.”8

In truth, Freire’s Catholicism long preceded his embrace of Marxist thought. As he professed in an interview: When I was a young man, I went to the people, to the workers, the peasants, motivated, really, by my Christian faith . . . When I arrived with the people—​the misery, the concreteness, you know! But also the beauty of the people, the openness, the ability to love which the people have, the friendship . . . The obstacles of this reality sent me—​to Marx. I started reading and studying . . . Marx was a genius. But when I met Marx, I continued to meet Christ on the corners of the street—​by meeting the people.9

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Freire came of age within a cohort of progressive Catholic lay elites that engaged in various forms of social action (including grassroots literacy education) during the 1950s and early 1960s. His long immersion in this dynamic “Catholic Left” milieu indelibly shaped his political, educational, and theological consciousness. Accordingly, I  contend that Freire’s educational praxis cannot be fully understood without recognizing the rich tapestry of Catholic thought that constituted the wellspring of his worldview, moral vision, and social concern. Yet a significant number of Freire’s Western readers, including some of his most ardent supporters, consistently fail to adequately acknowledge the theological dimension of his work. Many, especially in the academic Left, either downplay or erase it altogether. As composition-​rhetoric scholar Priscilla Perkins wryly notes, many US intellectuals, “far from recognizing Freire’s own critical Catholicism as integral to his lifelong project, [have seen] it in vestigial terms, at best the political equivalent of tonsils, at worst a birthmark that disfigured and obscured his theories.”10 On a similar note, feminist educator Kathleen Weiler points out the tendency of many commentators to “frequently ‘fill in’ for Freire, elaborating and explaining what he ‘really’ means,” thus remaking Freire in their own image.11 Much of the time, this distorted “image” is that of a largely or even wholly secular thinker. To name a few examples, sociologist Stanley Aronowitz omits Catholic theology when enumerating the three main pillars of Freire’s thought;12 educational theorist Donaldo Macedo’s introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed completely ignores the role of Freire’s faith in shaping his thought;13 critical theorist Peter McLaren declares that Freire’s liberatory vision of “[does] not emerge from some transcendental fiat”;14 and educational scholars Jones Irwin,15 Peter Roberts,16 Peter Mayo,17 and Carlos Alberto Torres18 produce impressive intellectual analyses of Freire’s work while only mentioning his faith in passing, if at all. Among the most egregious practitioners of this intellectual and biographical erasure are Marxist educators John Dale and Emergy J. Hyslop-​Margison. In their otherwise laudable Paulo Freire: Teaching for Freedom and Transformation; The Philosophical Influences on the Work of Paulo Freire, they not only downplay the theological dimension of Freire’s thought, but also seem determined to reject his Catholicism—​indeed religion in its entirety—​as a legitimate basis for social action. For instance, they write: “Although we appreciate his attachment to Christ as a symbolic figure for representing values of love and social equality, Freire’s alignment with any religion also reveals a certain historical amnesia about the traditional role of religion in worsening human oppression.”19 In a similar vein, while they grant that Freire’s “biographical circumstances shed light on why he

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found religion a source of psychological comfort,” they criticize him for supposedly failing to “subject religion and its implications to the same critical analysis as many other aspects of ideological influence.”20 They then proceed to depict Christianity as a whole in a way that reveals their assumptions and biases: As any Marxist understands, a “hope” in Christ is primarily a posthumous hope and one that dangerously distracts individuals from provoking political change in their immediate lived circumstances . . . At best we might propose that Freire viewed Christ as a symbolic and philosophical figure, but even then there are contradictions between the apolitical nonresistance and passive love preached by the latter (such as turn the other cheek as Christ advocates to Matthew in the New Testament) and Freire’s call for conscientização, or reflective and transformative political action.21

Their implication is that all religious traditions, particularly Christianity, are necessarily forms of manipulation, authoritarianism, and “false consciousness.” Dale and Hyslop-​Margison conclude by attempting to expunge Freire’s lifelong Catholicism by claiming that “Praxis Marxist analytical techniques” were the genuine “moral foundation” for his educational thought and activism:22 If there is one central tenet of Praxis Marxism clearly reflected in Freire’s work it is this: Marxism is preeminently a body of thought which is uncompromising in its rejection of all forms of human alienation, exploitation, oppression, and injustice, regardless of the type of society—​bourgeois or socialist—​in which these phenomena occur.23

This is a remarkable claim, one that largely deletes the first two-​thirds of Freire’s life, including the nearly two decades of his exile during which he was immersed in several Catholic activist movements throughout the Brazilian Northeast. The fact is that Freire embraced Marxism during his mid-​forties. Before his mid-​ career radicalization, he was skeptical of Brazil’s various Marxist and Communist parties, which he viewed—​with good reason—​as elitist, authoritarian, opportunistic, and manipulative of the poor. Before he went into exile in late 1964, he had already spent his entire adult life as a socially engaged Catholic who wanted to use “Christian methods” to address Brazil’s social ills.24 In other words, it was his faith—​not “Praxis Marxism”—​that originally impelled him to confront poverty, authoritarianism, and injustice. To be clear, I do not mean to reignite the tired debate on the comparative merits of Marxism and Christianity; indeed, Freire and many of his progressive Catholic contemporaries viewed them as complementary systems. Moreover, I have no reason to doubt that “Praxis Marxism” is an estimable

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framework for political analysis and practical action. What I find objectionable are Dale and Hyslop-​Margison’s attempts to rewrite Freire’s life and thought. As I demonstrate throughout this book, Freire’s “attachment to Christ” was hardly the escapist fantasy, intellectual failure, or source of cheap “psychological comfort” that Dale and Hyslop-​Margison imply. Rather, it was a permanent challenge and rigorous summons that often led him into situations of great uncertainty and suffering. Indeed, Freire talked about the cost of his faith: I understand the Gospels, well or badly, to the degree that, well or badly, I live them . . . From this proceeds the risky adventure of learning and teaching the Gospels as one continuous act; and from this comes the almost unbearable fear that assaults us when we hear the call of Christ to practice this message.25

Similarly, he described the difficulties of aligning his actions with his spiritual convictions toward the end of his life: It is not easy to have faith. Above all, it is not easy due to the demands faith places on whoever experiences it. It demands a stand for freedom, which implies respect for the freedom of others, in an ethical sense, in the sense of humility, coherence, and tolerance.26

Likewise, Dale and Hyslop-​Margison are factually mistaken in stating that Freire failed to critically analyze the ideological dimensions of religion. In fact, Freire vehemently denounced those forms of Christian teaching and practice that cultivated passivity and quietism, especially among the poor. Indeed, it would behoove Dale and Hyslop-​Marigison to recognize that such fierce condemnation of oppressive forms of religion by “prophetic” voices from within the same tradition is a recurring strand within Christianity, Judaism, and virtually all other major religions. Similarly, while formal religion has indisputably been used to legitimate oppression and injustice throughout history, it has also energized powerful emancipatory movements, including the abolitionist, Social Gospel, and civil rights movements in the United States alone. In this light, Dale and Hyslop-​Margison’s depiction of a meek and mild Jesus reflects a facile reading of the Gospels that Freire, liberation theologians, and countless other Christians (including figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Doris Day, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) would strongly dispute. Furthermore, Dale and Hyslop-​ Margison’s contention that religious practice is necessarily synonymous with indoctrination, and thus irreconcilable with critical thought, is mistaken. As this book shows, Freire’s call for transformative pedagogy and social action was

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not just compatible with his understanding of Christianity, but largely grounded on it. Moreover, Freire’s Catholicism was nondogmatic and nonsectarian; he rejected religious proselytizing and respected the right of all persons to choose their own spiritual path. Indeed, Freire was reticent about discussing his faith in personal terms. “I do not feel very comfortable speaking about my faith,” he admitted. “At least, I do not feel as comfortable as I do when speaking about my political choice, my utopia, and my pedagogical dreams.”27 He viewed his spirituality as an ongoing process: “I am not yet completely a Catholic, I just keep on trying to be one more completely, day after day.”28 In short, Dale and Hyslop-​Margison exemplify much of the intellectual Left’s tendency to devalue, rationalize, or altogether excise the theological dimension of Freire’s praxis. This propensity, which is especially pronounced among liberal and radical intellectual circles, stems from a number of historical and ideological reasons. One is the persistence of the long-​standing view of Christianity as intrinsically and irredeemably dogmatic, anti-​intellectual, politically and culturally reactionary, and harshly moralistic. This perspective has found recent spokespersons in the so-​called New Atheists like Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. While there is truth in these critiques, they also fail to account for the enormous range of theologies, orientations, and practices within the tradition. As this book demonstrates, the conservative and authoritarian Catholicism of Freire’s youth and young adulthood also gave rise to an unprecedentedly progressive movement of activist clergy, theologians, and laypersons. Another reason for the reflexive dismissal of religious discourses has been the twentieth-​century sundering of spirituality and rational inquiry within the Western academy. Composition-​rhetoric scholar Shari J. Stenberg describes how this “modernity model,”29 which overwhelmingly privileges intellectualism and critical rationality as the only valid modes of knowledge and inquiry, relegated matters of faith to the private sphere.30 One could hardly ask for a clearer instance of such behavior than Dale and Hyslop-​Margison’s assertion that Freire’s adherence to “any religion” automatically casts doubt on his critical judgment.31 A third reason has been the postmodernist aversion to any “totalizing” intellectual frameworks and so-​called grand narratives in recent decades. According to this position, all knowledge systems that make claims toward transhistorical, absolute, or unconditional truth are inevitably chauvinistic and oppressive. (Ironically, this is itself a universalizing claim.) Religious epistemologies, which are certainly among the “grandest” narratives of all, are thus automatically rejected as valid sources of knowledge. Yet I believe that Freire’s enduring attractiveness to nonreligious audiences are rooted

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in his theological imagination. Put differently, the immense strength, clarity, and urgency of his moral vision, coupled with his unyielding sense of hope and possibility, draw their power, authority, and substance from his faith-​based belief that the “ultimate norm for individuals and society lies beyond history.”32 Indeed, it is undeniable that Freire’s thought abounds with transcendental and universalizing concepts, positions, and assumptions. In this light, critics who impose an exclusively secular framework on Freire’s thought are cutting off the very wellspring of his power. In short, they are trying to have it both ways. They eagerly appropriate the by-​products and implications of Freire’s theological imagination while seeking to deny its ontological and metaphysical foundation. Of course, anyone can reject the faith-​based elements that underlie and animate his work, so long as this is accompanied by an honest recognition of what they are losing in doing so. This would be a more intellectually honest way of engaging with Freire’s work than attempting to impose misleading narratives on it. Alternatively, secular progressives who want to continue drawing inspiration from Freire’s work ought to fully and forthrightly acknowledge its theological dimension. The dismissal of faith by the intellectual Left over the past several decades has, led to profoundly negative results. As Cornel West declares, “The severing of ties to churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques by the left intelligentsia is tantamount to political suicide; it turns the pessimism of many self-​defeating and self-​pitying secular progressive intellectuals into a self-​fulfilling prophecy.”33 This self-​inflicted wound has led to critical discourses that have languished from what educational philosopher David Purpel describes as “psychological constriction, spiritual alienation, and ontological sterility.”34 Put differently, while critical discourses have long excelled at debate and argumentation, they have largely failed to provide a positive vision, to nourish hope and possibility, to affirm the ineffable mystery of life and human existence, and to “sing and to build.”35 Critique by itself, while indispensable, is inadequate in nourishing political movements—and indeed the human spirit—in the long run. Deconstruction for its own sake, especially in the realm of teaching and learning, eventually leads to cynicism, paralysis, and even nihilism. Purpel and William McLaurin Jr., speak eloquently toward the fundamental challenge facing progressive Western educators in the early twenty-​first century: We face a spiritual more than an intellectual crisis, ie., a loss of hope, a failure of nerve, a pessimism and despair that sap the will and only inexorably worsen the problem. This is surely not to say that we do not also face intellectual barriers, but only to posit that the ability to overcome them comes from internal energy, hope, and animation . . . In such despairing times what is urgently required is the

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Furthermore, they remind us that questions of hope, vision, and purpose ultimately belong within the “moral and religious family of language,” which constitutes the rightful arena of the “essential dimension of education—​a language of meaning.”37 They view the current crisis in education as not chiefly a problem of “technique, organization, and funding but . . . a reflection of the crisis in meaning.”38 In a similar vein, the secular Left’s rejection of religion has resulted in its forfeiting the crucial discourse of morality and “values” to the so-​called Religious Right, especially since the 1980s. This has been a tragic loss, given the many shared goals between secular and religious progressives like socioeconomic justice, environmental protection, marriage equality, immigrants’ rights, anticonsumerism, and demilitarization. Freire would have been appalled by this estrangement between religious and secular progressives. In his view, the fundamental divide was never between “believers” and “non-​believers.” Rather, it was between “non-​sectarians” and “sectarians,” and, even more fundamentally, between those who fostered universal human flourishing and those who impeded it. He spent decades working with religious and nonreligious collaborators, as well as in church and secular institutions. In this light, he declared: I cannot see how those who so live their faith could negate those who do not live with it, and vice versa. If our utopia is the constant changing of the world and the overcoming of injustice, I cannot refuse the contribution of progressives who have no faith, nor can I be rejected for having it.39

Reforging the intellectual, political, and educational alliance between religious and secular progressives is one of the vital projects of the early twenty-​first century. As this book illustrates within the context of Freire’s life and work, this can be a mutually enriching encounter. For instance, many progressive Latin American Catholics turned to Marxist philosophy from the late 1950s onward to help them “scientifically” analyze the social ills of their time. Conversely, much of Freire’s singular and enduring appeal to secular progressives stems from his powerful sense of hope and moral clarity, which I contend ultimately stem from his Catholic faith. As Diana Coben notes, “Freire’s prophetic optimism is a beacon of inspiration to many adult educators who may be unaware that its source of power is Christian theology.”40 Stenberg similarly suggests, “Those of us who espouse critical pedagogy and embrace Paulo Freire’s vision of praxis and conscientization work out of a tradition, often unknowingly, with deep ties

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to religious faith.”41 As I mentioned above, I contend that Freire’s work has been so popular among secular progressives because it provides a way to draw on the spiritual energies of the biblical tradition without requiring doctrinal affirmations or creedal confessions. Having said this, I want to reiterate that all forms of collaboration and dialogue between religious and secular interlocutors must be grounded in the spirit of transparency and mutual respect.42 Freire’s Catholicism must be honestly and forthrightly acknowledged as the ontological ground of his consciousness. As this book shows, his faith was the consistent thread and moral compass of his life, from his impoverished childhood in Recife and his early educational outreach with fellow Catholic activists, to his mid-​career assimilation of liberation theology and his tenure at the Geneva-​based World Council of Churches, and to his final years as a fervent critic of globalization and neoliberalism in the name of human well-​being. In short, Freire’s biblical spirituality lay at the core of his being. It was not a minor bug or a regrettable lapse in his critical faculties. It cannot be disregarded without distorting his biography and severely diminishing the spirit and substance of his life’s work. While many estimable scholars43 have touched on the theological roots, dimension, and implications of Freire’s praxis since the early 1970s, none have extensively traced their origins or fully situated them within the wide range of historical, sociological, theological, and ecclesiological currents that Freire encountered throughout his life. The paucity of scholarship on this foundational aspect of his work is a regrettable gap in the voluminous Freirean literature, one that this study attempts to address. Accordingly, my overarching goal is to recover and highlight the extensive theological elements of Freire’s educational theory and practice, demonstrating that it is an indispensable element of his lifelong praxis. I want to draw attention to Catholic influence on his philosophical anthropology, which I consider the lynchpin of his pedagogical system. At the same time, I demonstrate how Freire’s theological imagination fed into pivotal aspects of his educational praxis, such as conscientization, dialogue, relationality, and the divinely endowed “vocation” of all persons for social action, cultural creativity, and historical intervention. In addition, I explore the ways in which religious and secular discourses might collaborate and enrich each other, as illustrated throughout Freire’s writings and life experience. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Freire’s biography and the concomitant evolution of his educational method. Chapter 2 explores the currents for modernization and reform within Brazilian Catholicism from the early twentieth century until 1964, situating Freire within this vibrant theological and activist

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milieu. Chapter 3 investigates the influence of three leading French Catholic humanists—​ Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—​on Freire’s developing thought, especially with regard to his views on the nature, purpose, and ultimate ends of the human person. Chapter 4 examines Freire’s ideological and theological radicalization during his exile, underlining his fertile dialogue with liberation theology and the emergence of his mature “prophetic” voice. Chapter 5 examines the final period of Freire’s life, during which he denounced the rise of neoliberal economics and articulated a more holistic educational praxis than many readers have recognized. This book concludes with a reflection on how a nonsectarian spirituality might ground, guide, and sustain a “humanizing” pedagogy in the tradition of Freire’s own vision and practice. A note on gendered language: Androcentric language is prevalent throughout the primary sources discussed throughout this book, including Freire’s earliest—​ and most prominent—​works. Given the strong emphasis on historicity in this study, I have decided to leave these terms in place. It is worth noting that Freire later apologized for his use of exclusionary language, which he attributed to having grown up in an intensely patriarchal culture. (Indeed, the attentive reader will notice the shift in Freire’s writing in his later works, especially as featured in Chapter 5.) He saw his own awakening, which was stimulated by dialogues with Western feminist writers, as an example of the permanent capacity of human beings to grow once they become aware of their own conditioning. “Change is difficult,” he declared, “but it is possible.”44

Notes 1 Cornel West, Preface to Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter, ed. Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard (New York: Routledge, 1993), xiii. 2 Ronald David Glass, “On Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Praxis and the Foundations of Liberation Education,” Educational Researcher 30, no. 2 (2001): 15. 3 Ibid. 4 Daniel Schugurensky, Paulo Freire (London: Continuum, 2011), 186. 5 Kathleen Weiler, “The Myths of Paulo Freire,” Educational Theory 46, no. 3 (1996): 353. 6 Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 147. 7 See especially the work of critical educator Ira Shor, who pioneered the transposition of Freire’s pedagogy into formal US educational settings.

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8 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, trans. Donaldo Macedo and Alexandre Oliveira (New York: Continuum, 1997), 104. 9 Quoted in John L. Elias, Paulo Freire: Pedagogue of Liberation (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1994), 42. 10 Priscilla Perkins, “‘A Radical Conversion of the Mind’: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and the Metanoic Classroom,” College English 63, no. 5 (2001): 590. 11 Weiler, “The Myths of Paulo Freire,” 363. 12 Aronowitz lists only Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, and existentialist-​ phenomenological thought (Stanley Aronowitz, “Paulo Freire’s Radical Democratic Humanism,” in McLaren and Leonard, Paulo Freire, 15). 13 Donald Macedo, Introduction to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary ed. (New York: Continuum, 2000), 11–​26. 14 Peter McLaren, “Postmodernism and the Death of Politics: A Brazilian Reprieve,” in Politics of Liberation: Paths from Freire, ed. Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard (New York: Routledge, 1994), 203. 15 Jones Irwin, Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education: Origins, Developments, Impacts and Legacies (New York: Continuum, 2012). 16 Peter Roberts, Education, Literacy, and Humanization: Exploring the Work of Paulo Freire (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2000). 17 Peter Mayo, Liberating Praxis: Paulo Freire’s Legacy for Radical Education and Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). 18 Carlos Alberto Torres, First Freire: Early Writings in Social Justice Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2014). 19 John Dale and Emery J. Hyslop-​Margison, Paulo Freire: Teaching for Freedom and Transformation: The Philosophical Influences on the Work of Paulo Freire (New York: Springer, 2010), 48. 20 Ibid., 47. 21 Ibid., 48. 22 Ibid., 132. 23 Ibid. 24 Andrew J. Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 17. 25 Paulo Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” Religious Education 79, no. 4 (1984): 548. 26 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 105. 27 Ibid., 104. 28 Paulo Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” in Paulo Freire: The LADOC “Keyhole” Series, Vol. 1, ed. Division for Latin America—​US Catholic Conference (Washington, DC: USCC, 1972), 10. 29 Shari J. Stenberg, “Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies: Renewing the Dialogue,” College English 68, no. 3 (2006): 275.

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12 30 Stenberg writes:

Even as critical thought is the reigning religion in our contemporary universities, an ethos that theoretically encompasses a respect for diverse ideologies, faith-​based perspectives—​particularly Christian—​remain distinct from the privileged category of rationalism. As such, faith is often regarded as a false consciousness through which critical thought should cut, not something it should work alongside. (277)

31 Dale and Hyslop-​Margison, Paulo Freire, 48. 32 Elizabeth Lange, “Fragmented Ethics of Justice: Freire, Liberation Theology and Pedagogies for the Non-​poor,” Convergence 31, nos. 1–​2 (1998): 84. 33 Quoted in David E. Purpel, “Education in a Prophetic Voice,” ENCOUNTER: Education for Meaning and Social Justice 23, no. 3 (2010): 13. 34 Purpel, “Education in a Prophetic Voice,” 9. 35 Greg Epstein, Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe (New York: William Morrow, 2009), 175. 36 David E. Purpel and William M. McLaurin Jr., Reflections on the Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 284. 37 Ibid., 41. 38 Ibid. 39 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 103. 40 Diana Coben, Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire and the Politics of Adult Education (New York: Garland, 1998), 88. 41 Stenberg, “Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies,” 271. 42 According to Humanist rabbi Greg M. Epstein, such pluralism is “energetic engagement” that affirms the unique identity of each particular religious tradition and community, while recognizing that the well-​being of each depends on the health of the whole. Religious pluralism celebrates diversity and welcomes religious voices into the public square, even as it recognizes the challenges of competing claims. (Epstein, Good without God, 156–​7)

43 See Frei Betto, “Lula, Freire, Liberation Theology: Interview with Frei Betto,” in Public Intellectuals, Radical Democracy and Social Movements, ed. Peter Mayo and Carmel Borg (New York: Peter Lang, 2007): 33–​40; Vernon Blackwood, “Historical and Theological Foundations of Paulo Freire’s Educational Praxis,” Trinity Journal 8, no. 2 (1987): 201–​32; Wayne Cavalier, “The Three Voices of Freire: An Exploration of His Thought over Time,” Religious Education 97, no. 3 (2002): 254–​70; Coben, Radical Heroes; Denis E. Collins, Paulo Freire: His Life, Works, and Thought (New York: Paulist Press, 1977); Gillian Cooper, “Freire and Theology,” Studies in the Education of Adults 27, no. 1 (1995): 66–​78; Beth Daniell, “Narratives of Literacy: Connecting Composition

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to Culture,” College Composition and Communication 50, no. 3 (1999): 393–​ 410; John W. Donohue, “Paulo Freire: Philosopher of Adult Education,” America (September 16, 1972): 167–​70; Elias, Paulo Freire; Moacir Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire: His Life and Work, trans. John Milton (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); Irwin, Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education; Peter Jarvis, “Paulo Freire: Educationalist of a Revolutionary Christian Movement,” Convergence 20, no. 2 (1987): 30–​41; Barry Kanpol, “Critical Pedagogy and Liberation Theology: Borders for a Transformative Agenda,” Educational Theory 46, no. 1 (1996): 105–​17; Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics; James D. Kirylo, Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife (New York: Peter Lang, 2011); Robert Lake and Tricia Kress, eds., Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); Lange, “Fragmented Ethics of Justice”; Robert Mackie, “Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire,” in Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, ed. Robert Mackie (New York: Continuum, 1981), 93–​119; Peter Mayo, Echoes from Freire for a Critically Engaged Pedagogy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013); McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution; Thomas Oldenski, Liberation Theology and Critical Pedagogy in Today’s Catholic Schools: Social Justice in Action (New York: Garland, 1997); Vanilda Paiva, “Catholic Populism and Education in Brazil,” International Review of Education 41, nos. 3–​4 (1995): 151–​75; Gonzalo Retamal, Paulo Freire, Christian Ideology, and Adult Education in Latin America (Hull: University of Hull, 1981); Daniel S. Schipani, Conscientization and Creativity: Paulo Freire and Christian Education (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984); Schugurensky, Paulo Freire; Stenberg, “Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies”; and Jim Walker, “The End of Dialogue: Paulo Freire on Politics and Education,” in Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, ed. Robert Mackie (New York: Continuum, 1981). 44 Paulo Freire and Ana Maria Araújo Freire, Daring to Dream: Toward a Pedagogy of the Unfinished, trans. Alexandre K. Oliviera (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2007), 73–​88.

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Paulo Freire’s Life and Educational Praxis

The Brazilian Northeast Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born on September 19, 1921, to a middle-​class family in the port city of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in the Brazilian Northeast.1 A vast, chronically drought-​stricken coastal region, the Northeast covered six hundred thousand square kilometers over seven states. The poor made up half the population, while half the land was concentrated in the hands of the richest 3 percent. Starvation, malnutrition, thirst, disease, and infant mortality were rampant. These conditions were exacerbated by the widespread practice of sugar monoculture, which left little fertile soil for a diversified diet. Recife itself had the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Reflecting the region’s extreme levels of inequality during Freire’s childhood, about half of the city’s 240,000 residents lived in cramped slums, while the upper classes resided in large town houses.2 Paulo was the youngest of four children. His father, Joaquim Themistocles, was a captain in the Pernambuco Military Police. Joaquim was an adherent of Spiritism, a rationalist philosophy that developed in France in the mid-​nineteenth century. This faith was unusual in a country where well over 90 percent of the population was Roman Catholic in the early decades of the twentieth century. As an adult, Paulo would remember his father as an “affectionate, intelligent, and open” man.3 His mother, Edeltrudes Neves, was a seamstress and a homemaker. She was also a devout Catholic. Paulo tenderly described them as a “harmonious couple whose union did not lose them their individuality,” and who “exemplified for us what it means to be understood and to understand, never showing any signs of intolerance.”4 According to Freire,

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their “absolutely open” way of interacting with each other and with their children was unusual for its time: Both of them were people from the last century, and they were absolutely open in the first part of the century . . . The way they educated us was an anticipation from the pedagogical point of view. They were beyond the more rigid patterns of living with kids. I had a very warm and open atmosphere, which helped me.5

One of Paulo’s most formative experiences took place at the age of seven. Having decided to embrace his mother’s Roman Catholicism, he approached his father to announce his decision: “I went up to him and I said, ‘Next Sunday I will go to church to make my first communion.’ He kissed me and said ‘OK. Fantastic.’ And he went with me, without believing, but with absolute respect for my belief.”6 For young Paulo, this was an indelible lesson in religious tolerance and broad-​mindedness. For her part, Edeltrudes instilled in him the need to practice consistency between his faith and his actions.7 Joaqim and Edeltrudes were also among the rare parents of that time and culture who exerted authority gently and without resorting to physical violence. As an adult, Freire would often point to the lasting impact of his home environment on his interpersonal and educational practices. “With my parents, I learned to dialogue . . . I seek this dialogue permanently now with the world, the people, God, my wife, and my children.”8 It would also fuel his vision of a pedagogical alternative to the deeply entrenched authoritarianism of Brazilian culture as a whole.9 These power relations were a holdover of generations of plantation culture. From the Portuguese colonial era (1500–​1822) until the early twentieth century, large rural estates constituted the primary organizing unit of society. Agrarian overlords wielded autocratic power over their subjects and cultivated a culture of complete obedience, dependency, and submission. This pattern of social relations persisted into the twentieth century, with local patrons securing electoral support by distributing paternalistic benefits among their “clients.”10 In the Northeast, the landowning elite had converted the countryside into the country’s primary zone for sugar production. Freire was deeply troubled by these dynamics as an adult, contending that centuries of plantation culture had “bred the habits of domination and dependence”11 among the peasants. According to his analysis, the concentration of near-​absolute power in the hands of the tiny rural elite had imbued the poor with “an almost masochistic desire to submit to that power” and fostered the “dehumanizing” habit of accommodating to the political and economic status quo.12

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Paulo’s family lived in relative comfort throughout the early 1920s. They inhabited a medium-​sized house in the district of Casa Amarela, one of Recife’s more well-​off neighborhoods. He spent much time in the backyard, where the entire family enjoyed ample room to work, play, and learn. Here, Joaqim and Edeltrudes taught him to read and write by drawing on the ground with twigs from the surrounding mango trees.13 He also seemed to have a vibrant spiritual life. His long-​time friend Moacir Gadotti recounted one of Paulo’s most memorable mystical experiences: “He says that, once, when he was still very young, he went to the canals and hills in the rural backwaters near Recife compelled by a ‘certain pleasant and daring intimacy with Christ’ and full of a ‘sweetly Christian vision.’ ”14 This deeply personal relationship with Christ was so strong that he briefly considered becoming a Catholic priest.15 These halcyon days did not last. The family’s standard of living plummeted during the Great Depression, which devastated Recife’s economy. Freire would point to these years as a watershed in his life. After a series of severe financial reversals, including his father’s loss of his job, the family was forced to leave their beloved house for a more modest one in the city of Jaboatão, which lay ten miles to the southwest. At the age of ten, Paulo experienced severe hunger for the first time. At school, his stomach pangs were so acute that he could not concentrate on his studies: Many times, with no means to resist, I felt defeated by hunger while doing my homework. Sometimes I would fall asleep while doing my homework. Sometimes I would fall asleep leaning on the table where I was studying, as if I had been drugged. I tried to fight this hunger-​induced sleep by opening my eyes really wide and fixing them, with some difficulty, of the science and history texts that were part of my elementary school work. It was as if the words became pieces of food.16

His grades dropped, which some of his teachers attributed to “mild mental retardation.”17 As his family slid down the economic ladder,18 a trajectory exacerbated by his father’s increasingly poor health, Paulo experienced the intimate connection between household income and school performance. These traumatic experiences led him to dedicate his life to the struggle against hunger and poverty in order to spare other children from similar agonies. Significantly, he refused to accept such suffering as an expression of God’s will: Because I  experienced poverty, I  never allowed myself to fall into fatalism . . . I never accepted our precarious situation as an expression of God’s wishes. On the contrary, I began to understand that something really wrong with the world needed to be fixed.19

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This was a strikingly progressive and anti-​fatalistic perspective, especially within the context of the dominant religious culture of this time.20 The teachings and lived example of his parents were almost certainly the main inspiration for Paulo’s developing religious and political sensibilities. Their enduring influence on their four children can be seen in a passage that Paulo wrote many decades in the future: “Far from us [siblings] was the idea that we were being tested by God. On the contrary, early on I found myself convinced of the need to change the world, to repair what seemed wrong to me.”21 Joaqim Freire died of a painful stomach illness in 1934. The loss devastated the family, which subsequently fell deeper into poverty. Paulo was forced to stay out of school for two years due to a combination of low grades and lack of tuition. Fortunately, the family’s economic situation slowly rebounded in the late 1930s, buoyed by the entry of Paulo’s siblings into the workforce. His malnutrition abated, and his grades started to rebound. The family moved back to Recife. On their return, Edeltrudes started walking from school to school begging headmasters to accept her son as a scholarship boy. Her cause was finally embraced by Aluizio Pessoa de Araújo, the progressive head of a local private school. (Araujo’s daughter Ana Maria would become Freire’s second wife.) Freire was hired as a part-​time instructor of Portuguese at the age of twenty, beginning a seven-​year stretch as a high school teacher (1941–​1947). He also began to study the philosophy and psychology of language at the University of Pernambuco. His intellectual energies having been ignited, he devoured works on education, psychology, and philosophy, reading in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French.22 His interests coalesced around the subject matter that would constitute his life’s work—​the philosophy of education. The early 1940s was a turning point in Freire’s intellectual and spiritual life. As he entered his twenties, he discovered the new theologies of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, two of the leading French Catholic lay philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. Maritain and Mounier rejected the “fortress mentality” that the Roman Catholic Church had built against modernity and secularization in the world since the late nineteenth century. They were on the forefront of a Catholic revival movement that called on the Church to engage more fully and constructively with the secular world. They were also critical of European “bourgeois civilization,” which they viewed as individualistic, complacent, and spiritually bankrupt. Maritain and Mounier provided Freire with the theological foundations for a new way of understanding and living out his faith.23 As demonstrated in Chapters 2 and 3, their thought would profoundly shape Freire’s educational philosophy and activism in the coming years.

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Brazil entered an era of sweeping societal changes in the 1940s. The economy was entering the early phase of industrialization, which led to a decline in the long-​standing political dominance of sugar planters, coffee growers, and landowners. This trend accelerated in the second half of the decade, with the industrial sector growing by almost 50 percent between 1945 and 1951. The rapidly expanding governmental bureaucracy was increasingly filled by an emerging class of white-​collar professionals, which fed into a sharp rise in urbanization. Long-​standing traditions and cultural patterns were severely disrupted, especially in the countryside. After decades of relative stasis, Brazilian society was pervaded with a sense of upheaval and uncertainty. This atmosphere would greatly intensify over the next two decades, culminating in the reactionary military coup of 1964. In 1944, Freire married Elza Maria Costa de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher from Recife. Elza would be an invaluable source of emotional and intellectual support until her death in 1986. They would have five children: Maria Madalena, Maria Cristina, Maria de Fatima, Joaquim, and Lutgardes. As young newlyweds, Paulo and Elza became active in the local branch of Brazilian Catholic Action (ACB), a Church-​supervised lay group that was increasingly popular among socially conscious middle-​class university students and young urban professionals. Paulo and Elza spent much time in discussion and prayer with other middle-​class couples in ACB. They struggled to come to terms with the contradictions between their relative social privilege and the crushing poverty they witnessed all around. Freire’s participation in ACB would bear fruit in various forms of activism toward establishing a more humane, equitable, harmonious, and democratic society. As he acknowledged many years later: “When I first went to meet with workers and peasants in Recife’s slums, to teach them and to learn from them, I have to confess that I did that pushed by my Christian faith.”24

The emergence of Freire’s pedagogy The year 1946 was a watershed for Freire. After a short-​lived attempt to practice law,25 he made the fateful decision—​with Elza’s strong encouragement—​to live out his long-​intuited social concern in the sphere of adult education. He became involved with literacy training programs for peasants and urban workers. Freire’s choice was motivated at least in part by the Congress’ recent approval of a new constitution that excluded illiterates from voting. Given the new laws,

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an educational project that spread basic literacy had potentially enormous political implications. In 1947, Freire was invited to become the director of the Department of Education and Culture of Pernambuco’s Social Service Ministry (SESI). This was a recently created social welfare organization established and funded by the Confederation of Industry, an alliance of factory owners. SESI was intended to be a social welfare agency that addressed increasing unrest among workers regarding the spiraling cost of living and the lack of educational opportunities. Industrialists were also anxious to defuse the rise of leftist activism.26 Accordingly, much of SESI’s program was geared toward promoting harmonious relationships between owners and workers. It “employed social workers and educators, offered advice on personal and domestic problems, and provided adult literacy classes in which the cultivation of respectability and regular work habits, hygiene, and self-​help were stressed.”27 Freire would work at SESI for ten years. He later described these experiences as “the most important political-​pedagogical practice of [his] life.”28 SESI gave him a platform to interact extensively with laborers, peasants, and fishermen throughout the Northeast. Freire found these travels enriching, eye-​opening, and occasionally distressing. For instance, his school visits led him to note the ubiquitous practice of deeply authoritarian, anti-​dialogic, and physically violent methods. He frequently spotted spanking paddles on teachers’ desks. “I never forgot the carving on one paddle that said, ‘Calms the heart,’ ” he recounted.29 He spoke to numerous parents who declared, “What makes a man serious, straight, and conscientious is punishment and severe discipline.”30 Freire abhorred the “Brazilian authoritarian tradition” that had given rise to this “pedagogy of hitting.”31 In his view, this internalized system of “extreme authority,” which cut across all social classes, reflected a form of consciousness “which ‘housed’ oppression” instead of the “free and creative consciousness indispensable to [an] authentically democratic regime.”32 In this cultural environment, landowners held tremendous power over their tenants.33 Freire also noted the degree to which the formal educational system was skewed in favor of students from well-​to-​do families, especially those from the city.34 Most poor families could afford to send only one child to school, and this only for a single year. These disadvantaged students were far more susceptible to absenteeism and weak academic performance than their wealthier counterparts. Their chronic absences occurred because of the harvest season, chronic illness, needing to care for sick or elderly family members, and so forth. Such obstacles, coupled with widespread deficiencies in reading and writing skills, resulted

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in high rates of failure.35 Entrance rates to secondary schools were powerfully tilted in favor of middle-​and upper-​class children, which resulted in a powerful engine of selection that perpetuated the societal status quo.36 Those poor students who were fortunate enough to attend secondary school were far more likely to attend vocational or technical schools. In addition, virtually all students—​even those from wealthy backgrounds—​were subjected to an educational system that was “severely formal, dominated by rote-​learning of theoretical knowledge.”37 What mattered most was “the type of school attended and the piece of paper obtained at the end.”38 In short, secondary schooling functioned as the gateway to ­middle-​and upper-​class status. Freire found this system deplorable for preserving socioeconomic inequality and inculcating uncritical respect for the established order.39 Moreover, he viewed conventional pedagogical methods as hopelessly abstract and thus “disconnected” from everyday life. They were “centered on words emptied of the reality they are meant to represent, lacking in concrete activity, [and] could never develop a critical consciousness.”40 In response, Freire began to develop an alternative form of education during his time at SESI. He began encouraging workers to identify important social problems and to learn about the electoral process.41 He also tried to involve students and parents in SESI’s kindergartens and schools, where he invited them to discuss their direct experiences of social barriers to learning, such as malnutrition and child labor. In his administrative capacity, he attempted to reform management practices within his division by making them more open, decentralized, flexible, and collegial.42 These efforts at reform triggered an internal backlash—​including soon-​to-​be familiar charges of “communism”—​and eventually led to Freire’s resignation in 1957. Freire’s long tenure at SESI was a fertile laboratory for his educational reflection. In this venue, he enjoyed the relative autonomy to experiment with nontraditional methods of working with workers and peasants. He introduced innovations like study groups, group discussions, debates, and “action groups.” Most importantly, he accumulated a rich array of experiences that enriched his developing theory and practice, and that often led him to question his own pedagogical practices. A particularly humbling and transformative experience occurred after he had lectured a group of workers about childhood developmental concepts from the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. “I said many beautiful things,” he recalled, “but made no impact. This was because I used my frame of reference, not theirs.”43 After Freire had finished his remarks, a worker approached him and said, “You talk from a background of food, comfort and rest. The reality is that we have one room, no food, and have to make love in

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front of the children.”44 Having been deeply affected by such critiques, Freire started interrogating his beliefs about how to choose the subject matter for teaching and discussion. In time, he became convinced that the traditional dichotomy between teacher and student foreclosed the possibility of genuine dialogue, shared inquiry, and mutual growth. This insight was the seed for many of his most enduring contributions to educational philosophy. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which he wrote a decade after his time at SESI, he described conventional pedagogy as the “banking method” because it turns students into hollow “containers” or “receptacles” that require being “filled” by the teacher’s preconstructed and officially sanctioned knowledge. Education was thus reduced to “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.”45 He described such pedagogy as “necrophilic” because it rewards the uncritical memorization of “dead” (i.e., received) truths.46 It is intrinsically alienating because it is grounded on the teacher’s “overwhelming control” of the students. Moreover, students are conditioned to adapt themselves to the status quo because their ability to ask critical questions has been atrophied.47 Ultimately, it denies learners “their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more human” by failing to recognize that men and women are “historic beings” who are capable of repairing social ills and creating new forms of culture.48 As an alternative to “banking” pedagogy, Freire increasingly envisioned a new approach that would foster the “the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry [that] human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”49 This alternative method posited that the “normal role of human beings” is to “intervene in reality in order to change it.”50 Furthermore, Freire called on teachers to cease their authoritarian “monologue” and surrender their cultural and social privilege. Rejecting the hierarchy between teacher and student, Freire imagined a loving and “dialogic” community of mutual exploration and transformation. He also insisted that learners must take a leading role in designing their own curriculum—​a practice that would prepare them to participate in the nation’s civic life. He declared that “the Brazilian people could learn social and political responsibility only by experiencing that responsibility.”51 Freire’s ideas were strikingly audacious in the context of a society that was characterized by “elitism, authoritarianism, discrimination, paternalism, and exploitation.”52 In Daniel Schugurensky’s memorable words, Freire’s confidence that illiterate peasants can be the protagonists of their own educational journey and political destiny constituted a “Copernican revolution” in Latin American adult education.53 Freire chose to focus on his academic studies after his resignation from SESI in 1957. He went on to earn his doctorate at the University of Pernambuco in 1959

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with a dissertation that was largely drawn from his fieldwork at SESI. (It would later form the basis for his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom.) He was promptly invited to become a professor in the university’s College of Liberal Arts, with a specialization in the philosophy and history of education. He soon began full-​time work at the university, which he viewed as a promising base for further activism.54 By the late 1950s, Freire’s reputation as an educational activist and thinker had spread throughout the Northeast. It caught the ear of Miguel Arraes, the dynamic young leftist mayor of Recife, who asked him to become the inaugural coordinator of adult education within the newly created Movement for Popular Culture (MCP).55 The MCP was a national coalition of organizations that aimed to stimulate the development of an “authentic” and nonauthoritarian Brazilian culture among the “popular classes” through adult literacy courses, plays, films, leaflets, minicourses, sports events, and other cultural activities. It set up ad hoc schools for the people in rooms that belonged to sports clubs, neighborhood institutions, and religious organizations. Importantly, the MCP’s most active volunteers were Catholic university students from middle-​class backgrounds who had become increasingly involved in social action.56 Freire eagerly accepted the MCP’s invitation to develop adult education programs for slum dwellers in Recife, undertaking this new project during his free time from his duties at the University of Pernambuco. Freire later pointed to his work at the MCP as signaling the maturation of his early educational theory and method.57 He launched his first “culture circles,” which were discussion groups on contemporary societal issues. Freire described this novel educational arrangement: “Instead of a teacher, we had a coordinator; instead of lectures, dialogue; instead of pupils, group participants; instead of alienating syllabi, compact programs that were ‘broken down’ . . . into learning units.”58 The topics for discussion were ostensibly “offered” by the learners themselves.59 After six months of such work, Freire began to consider developing an adult education program geared specifically toward literacy.60 He was also increasingly uncomfortable with the increasing presence of members of Brazil’s communist parties within the MCP. He viewed these groups as opportunistic, vanguardist, and demagogic.61 As a result, he transferred the main thrust of his educational campaign to the University of Pernambuco. In 1961, under the auspices of the university’s newly established Cultural Extension Service (SEC)62, Freire started to experiment with literacy instruction. He formed study groups of twenty-​five to thirty adult learners. Each of these groups was led by coordinators who had

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been intensively trained in Freire’s new method. (Yet again, many of these literacy workers were recent college graduates who were affiliated with the Catholic student movement.) These new literacy circles convened for one hour every weeknight for six to eight weeks, usually meeting in the same classrooms used by the learners’ children in the daytime. Freire aimed to help peasants and laborers to realize their intrinsic political agency through dialogic teaching methods. This program offered two ways for the learners to gain political power. First, it helped them acquire basic reading and writing skills, which meant eligibility to vote. Second, the learners would begin to see themselves as historical and political Subjects in their own right, thereby providing a vital corrective to the pervasive authoritarianism of Brazilian culture: Since our cultural history had not provided us even with habits of political and social solidarity appropriate to our democratic form of government, we had to appeal to education as a cultural action by means of which the Brazilian people could learn, in place of the old passivity, new attitudes and habits of participation and intervention.63

Freire believed that by participating in these literacy circles, the learners would gradually acquire democratic behaviors and habits of mind.64

The methodology of Freire’s literacy program Freire believed that literacy education would enable the poor to recognize their intrinsic power to take control of the material conditions of their lives:  “Acquiring literacy does not involve memorizing sentences, words, or syllables . . . but rather an attitude of creation and re-​creation, a self-​ transformation producing a stance of intervention in one’s context.”65 In his view, a “literate” person has developed a critical and active stance toward the world. True literacy “does not involve memorizing sentences, words, or syllables—​lifeless objects unconnected to an existential universe—​but rather an attitude of creation and re-​creation, a self-​transformation producing a stance of intervention in one’s context.”66 In contrast, “illiteracy” is the lack of desire or ability analyze (or “read”) the world in a critical, structural, and historically oriented way. Freire used the word “conscientization” (conscientização) to describe the process of emerging from cultural silence, passivity, and fatalism. When teachers and learners “unveil” the “essence” of a mutually chosen object of study, they grow together toward a “critical consciousness”

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that is characterized by a “structural perception”67 coupled with the drive to insert oneself “into reality.”68 Freire’s epistemology was grounded on a three-​part model of consciousness: “magical” or “semi-​intransitive” consciousness, “naïve transitive” consciousness, and “critical” consciousness. A person with “magical” consciousness “apprehends facts and attributes them to a superior power . . . to which he must therefore submit.”69 This person tends to be superstitious, deterministic, “irrational,” and trapped at the surface level of perception, which leads to obedient adaptation to the status quo.70 “Magical” consciousness, according to Freire, is especially prevalent within in rural culture.71 In its religious form, it leads “believers” to attribute suffering, poverty, disease, and injustice to “God’s will,” which means nothing can be done to change it. The middle level of Freire’s model of consciousness is “naïve transitive.” At this stage, one recognizes the possibility of altering one’s environment but lacks apprehension of underlying political and economic structures. As a result, social action tends to be isolated, episodic, and focused on short-​term or surface change. For instance, one makes charitable donations instead of directly confronting the root causes of poverty. Finally, “critical consciousness” enables one to apprehend “things and facts as they exist empirically, in their causal and circumstantial correlations.”72 Someone who has grown into critical consciousness—​or has “reached conscientization”—​has developed a new understanding of historical cause and effect. Moreover, “he or she will refuse to become stagnant but will move and mobilize to change the world . . . He or she knows very well that victory over misery and hunger is a political struggle for the deep transformation of society’s structures.”73 A conscientized person is aware that social reality is created by human choice and is neither inevitable nor immutable. Moreover, arriving at conscientization requires concrete political action. Theoretical insight without practice is empty “verbalism,” while activism that lacks guiding theory is rudderless and ultimately ineffective at effecting long-​term change. Freire’s conscientizing method began with carefully chosen “generative words” from the everyday speech of the community. The literacy coordinators selected these terms to be easily legible and culturally legitimate to the learners. Accordingly, these words varied from site to site. Rural settings might yield words like “earth,” “hoe,” “crab,” and “mangrove,” while urban locations could generate terms like “slum,” “bicycle,” and “brick.” Having chosen a set of generative words, the literacy coordinators went on to break down the syllabic structure of each word. For example, the word favela (slum) was broken down into three syllables (fa, ve, and la), each of which yielded their own “phonemic families”

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(fa-​fe-​fi-​fo-​fu, va-​ve-​vi-​vo-​vu, la-​le-​li-​lo-​lu). These syllables were then reassembled in various combinations, leading to a rapidly expanding vocabulary.74 Next, the generative words were discussed with regard to their meanings in terms of the everyday lives of the learners. For instance, favela could be discussed in terms of shortcomings in housing, food, clothing, health, and education. Similarly, riqueza (wealth) could lead to analysis of “the confrontation between wealth and poverty.”75 As the skills of the participants improved, they became capable of more sophisticated activities, such as writing, reading local newspapers, and, crucially, expressing their opinions on Brazil’s national problems.76

Revolutionary ferment (1960–​1964) The late 1950s and early 1960s were exceptionally turbulent years for the nation. Hyperinflation set in, reaching 40 percent by 1960, 52 percent in 1962, 75 percent in 1963, and nearly 100 percent in early 1964. National debt climbed to almost four trillion dollars, employment rates and real wages decreased, and the cost of living rose precipitously. The population had risen from 41 million to 71 million over the last twenty years, with the percentage of Brazilians living in cities growing from 31 percent to 46 percent. While the economy had posted several years of impressive growth under the centrist presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–​1961), these gains failed to translate into tangible improvements in the material conditions of the poor. Labor unions and other leftist organizations began to register unprecedented levels of membership. Rural workers began demanding land redistribution and higher wages for seasonal labor, marking the first time the landowning class was challenged on its home ground. A gigantic strike took place in Freire’s native Pernambuco in late 1963, drawing participation from 200,000 sugar workers. Violent clashes between rural squatters and landowners erupted throughout the countryside. The unrest that roiled the countryside sent a shock wave through the political elites, and alarmed rural overlords increased their stockpiles of weapons.77 Universities became fertile ground for activism, with thousands of students joining a wide range of social outreach and activist efforts like Freire’s literacy program. Over the past decade, many leading intellectuals and politicians had come to view the development of Brazil’s “backwards” economy and infrastructure as the paramount public issue. Policy debates coalesced around two competing schools of thought: market liberalization and nationalistic developmentalism. The first group pushed for balanced budgets, tight monetary control over the money

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supply, elimination of price controls, and minimal tariffs on foreign investment.78 The nationalist developmentalists held a more ambivalent view about the role of foreign economic entities, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States, and petrochemical corporations. They adhered to a new mode of economic analysis called “dependency theory,” which attempted to identify the structural reasons for Brazil’s chronic poverty and underdevelopment despite its abundance of natural resources. According to this emerging school of thought, wealthy (or “core”) nations secured their high standard of living by draining poor (or “peripheral”) nations of their resources, using them as a source of cheap labor, and turning them into importers of finished products. Poor nations like Brazil were thus trapped in a permanently subordinated and exploited position within the international economy. According to dependency theory, “open door” trade arrangements channeled wealth and resources into the hands of foreigners. Dependency theory, with its anti-​imperialist and anticapitalist thrust, resonated with the political Left in Brazil. It became a primary analytical lens within Latin American intellectual circles for decades to come.79 Freire, like most of his peers in the political Left, accepted the broad outlines of dependency theory. He was especially drawn to its central conceptual pair of “core” and “peripheral” nations, which paralleled his own analysis of the patron-​ client relationship that was endemic within Brazilian society. In this vein, he insisted that societies deprived of the ability to shape their own historical destiny and cultural identity have been robbed of their dignity and integrity.80 Freire envisioned a Brazil whose “voice” was no longer “merely an echo of the voice of the metropolis.”81 Moreover, he was wary of the corrosive effects of capitalism on social cohesion, cultural integrity, and human well-​being. In all these beliefs, Freire exemplified the shared philosophy of a cohort of progressive, predominantly middle-​class activists called the “Catholic Left.” The members of this movement were profoundly influenced by leading French thinkers, most notably Jacques Maritain and Emanuel Mounier, who called for the establishment of a just and humane “society of persons.” By the early 1960s, Freire’s literacy circles were proliferating rapidly throughout the Northeast. In the most dramatic triumph of Freire’s early career, his literacy team claimed to have successfully “alphabetized” 300 sugarcane workers from the city of Angicos in 45 days. (Notably, the city experienced its first labor strike shortly after the conclusion of Freire’s program, leading to the literacy course being denounced by local landowners as a “communist plague.”82) Reports of the Angicos “miracle” caught the attention of Brazil’s Left-​wing president João Goulart, who saw an opportunity to secure electoral support for

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his administration from millions of newly enfranchised peasants and workers. President Goulart asked Freire to disseminate his program throughout the country as the head of a newly established National Literacy Plan. For the first time in Brazilian history, the scourge of illiteracy occupied the forefront of public policy.83 By 1963, four distinct literacy campaigns were unfolding throughout the country: (1) the University of Recife’s Department of Cultural Extension, which was centered primarily in the Northeast, (2) the Popular Culture Movement, which had spread throughout the country, (3) the Church-​sponsored Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB), and (4) the National Literacy Plan. Freire was charged with facilitating cooperation between these initiatives. Between June 1963 and April 1964, he established training programs for tens of thousands of literacy coordinators in many state capitals. This vast undertaking aimed to establish twenty thousand circles throughout the country. Thus, Freire had ascended rapidly from rural obscurity to become the country’s most prominent educator. It is worth noting that despite his strong identification with the Goulart administration, he professed that his literacy campaign was politically neutral because of its lack of formal affiliation with any political party. In this vein, Freire asked the governor of Rio, Grande do Norte, to refrain from visiting culture circles in his state to avoid “political exploitation.”84 He also dismissed leftist criticism for accepting USAID (United States Agency for International Development) funds for his program.85 He defended his decision by stating, “Where the money is coming from does not matter if I can work independently for the political dream to which I am committed. I am certain that if the [U.S. government] intends to corrupt us, it will soon give up due to the impossibility of succeeding.”86 By early 1964, political tensions had risen to the highest levels in modern history. Many progressives were euphoric, fully believing that a “Brazilian Revolution” was imminent.87 On the other hand, the political and economic elites experienced it as a period of existential peril. Faced with the potential collapse of the status quo, the military acted with crushing force. On April 1, 1964, it overthrew President Goulart in a bloody coup that was supported by landowners, business interests, much of the growing middle class, and conservative members of the Church hierarchy.88 The restive Northeastern region experienced the greatest “pacification,” as the military government cracked and suppressed dozens of labor, peasant, and student leaders.89 The National Literacy Plan was immediately canceled. The headquarters of the SEC at the University of Pernambuco was invaded, its teaching equipment was destroyed, and all teaching materials were confiscated. Freire was arrested within a few weeks. At his

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military trial, he was accused of being an “international subversive,” a practitioner of a “Bolshevizing” pedagogical method “similar to that of Stalin, Hitler, Peron, and Mussolini.”90 The tribunal charged Freire and his literacy coordinators with conspiring to create “five million electoral robots for the populist parties, including the communists.”91 Freire strongly disavowed any revolutionary agenda, repeatedly stressing the Catholic roots of his educational philosophy.92 His protestations were ignored, and he was imprisoned for “seditious activities” on June 16. He spent the next three months in a small cell with other “subversives.” Over this time, he was frequently pulled out and subjected to over eighty hours of interrogation.93 Freire was finally released in September, partially through the intervention of sympathetic Catholic bishops. Yet although he was ostensibly a free man, he was intermittently rounded up and subjected to further military interrogation. Facing the prospect of ongoing harassment and possible re-​imprisonment, he chose to go into exile. He left for Bolivia in September 1964, followed shortly by his family.

Freire in Chile: The radical turn 1964–​1969 Three weeks after Freire’s arrival in Bolivia, President Víctor Paz Estenssoro was himself overthrown by a military coup. Freire and his family moved to Chile. He would live there for five years as an educational advisor to the Christian Democratic government of President Eduardo Frei. He worked at the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agricultural Development, where he oversaw the training of literacy workers and agrarian technicians in support of the government’s rural reform campaign. Freire also taught classes at the Catholic University and consulted with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organzation (UNESCO) on adult education. Freire’s years in Chile were enormously influential to his ideological development. The nation provided a “dynamic and ebullient social and intellectual climate that challenged some of his ideas and helped him to become familiar with new bodies of literature, to examine and reformulate his educational theories, and to link those theories with concrete practices.”94 Chile was itself undergoing a period of social unrest and political polarization, thus providing fertile ground for reflecting on his experiences in Brazil. Educational scholar John Holst points out three pivotal legacies of Freire’s Chilean sojourn.95 First, it was the location for Freire’s most extended and substantial pedagogical campaign during his exile. Second, Freire wrote two of his most important and widely read works—​“Education

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as the Practice of Freedom” (later published as part of Education for Critical Consciousness) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed—​during this time. Finally, he evolved from a predominantly liberal-​reformist stance to a Marxist-​revolutionary orientation. Essential to his ideological radicalization were the deep friendships he formed with young Chilean activists and intellectuals, many of whom were growing disillusioned with President Frei’s embrace of “orthodox” economic models of trade and development.96 These allies introduced Freire to Marxist philosophy, which he had largely steered away from until then. Under this new influence, he began to criticize his own earlier social analysis having lacked a sufficient apprehension of the connection between politics, social class, ideology, and education. He now asserted that all educational activity is inescapably political and thus partisan. “An educator,” he now declared, “is a politician also.”97 Where he had been wary of involvement with the Brazilian communist groups prior to the 1964 coup, he now began to assimilate significant elements of Marxist thought, particularly class dialectics and the necessity for revolutionary action. Freire’s radicalization is writ large in the stark differences in tone and substance between “Education as the Practice of Freedom” and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The former work, which was drawn from Freire’s 1959 dissertation and Brazilian fieldwork, was predominantly liberal, “evolutionist” (i.e., reformist), and nationalistic in orientation. It was preoccupied with cultivating an “authentic” and antiauthoritarian Brazilian culture, overcoming the nation’s economic and technological underdevelopment, rejecting its “dependence” on neocolonialist foreign economic powers, and educating the poor to inoculate them against the cultural upheaval and alienation that resulted from the postwar economic boom. Furthermore, “Education as the Practice of Freedom” depicted societal conflicts in chiefly psychological terms (as opposed to class dialectics), frequently drawing on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “master-​slave” theory when discussing the subservience of peasants to landowners. The words “Marx” or “Marxism” are almost completely absent, and its rhetoric is generally cool, measured, and conventionally academic. In contrast, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is far more polemical and radicalized. Its conceptual frameworks are Manichean (“banking” vs “dialogic,” “oppressor” vs. “oppressed”), and the prose is full of vivid metaphors, fiery statements, and moral fervor. As John Elias notes, Freire had begun to assume “the pose and language of a prophet,” with his language becoming “sermonic and exhortatory.” Moreover, Freire now projected “an air of certainty in his condemnations that reminds one of his biblical forerunners.”98 Elias’s linkage of Freire’s new rhetorical mode with biblical language is apt; as discussed in Chapter 4, Freire reflected the rising tide of radical Christianity

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throughout Latin America. In this vein, he proclaimed in a subsequent work: “I feel passionately, corporately, physically, with all my being, that my stance is a Christian one because it is 100 percent revolutionary and human and liberating, and hence committed and utopian.”99 Thus, Pedagogy of the Oppressed displays the full flowering of Freire’s “prophetic” mode. This electrifying, morally uncompromising, and deeply personal voice would capture the imagination of readers for decades to come. Indeed, the publication of the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1970 lifted Freire to international prominence, particularly among progressive educators, activists, and scholars in the West. Reflecting his rapidly growing stature as an educational figure, he was invited by Harvard University and the Massachusetts-​based Center for the Study of Development and Social Change to teach a graduate seminar on pedagogy and international development. Facing a Chilean political environment that was becoming increasingly polarized and unstable, Freire resigned his government post in 1969 and traveled to the “First World” for the first time.

The “international years”: (1969–​1980) Freire and his family arrived in the United States in late 1969. To his surprise, he saw that injustice and oppression were not confined to poor nations. As a result, he increasingly took up issues of domination within the context of Western societies. He encountered feminist thought for the first time, and he began to incorporate its critique of patriarchal structures and discourses into his thinking. At Harvard, Freire wrote and published two of his most important essays in educational philosophy: “The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom” and “Cultural Action and Conscientization.” In these works, he provided the most extended and substantive discussion of the theory of consciousness underlying his pedagogy. He spent a year in Massachusetts, during which he grew his soon-​to-​be-​ iconic beard to shield his face from the New England winter. Freire then moved to Switzerland with his family on accepting the invitation of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an international ecumenical organization of Protestant churches, to become its general educational secretary. The WCC represented over half a billion Protestants, making it the second largest institutional body of Christians after the Roman Catholic Church. By the late 1960s, the liberal-​ leaning WCC had been directing much of its energies toward promoting equitable and humane international development. Freire’s impact on the WCC’s

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educational ethos was immediately apparent. In 1970, the Office of Education released a mission statement that was redolent with Freirean language: Everything we do and say should contribute towards that education which frees [human beings] from being domesticated into lives of repression or mere routine and which liberates them into living creatively and abundantly in societies whose structures support education for freedom.100

In a similar vein, the Office of Education urged local churches to analyze social structures through a theological lens and to challenge political, educational, and institutional policies that “domesticate” instead of “liberate” human beings.101 The WCC reaffirmed this formulation in 1975 when it described its educational mission as the “development of critical consciousness” that is “directly related to God’s work in the world.”102 The WCC provided Freire the most high-​profile platform of his professional life. He collaborated with several governments to establish or develop their adult education and literacy programs in nations that included Fiji, Peru, India, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Grenada, and Nicaragua. Freire also experienced the most controversial episode of his career during this period. This occurred in the West African nation of Guinea-​Bissau, which had recently won a decade-​long struggle for independence from Portuguese rule. In 1974, the revolutionary government’s education minister, Mario Cabral, invited Freire to help plan an adult literacy campaign. A later study of the results revealed that virtually none of the 26,000 adults who participated in the program had attained even minimal ability to read and write.103 Moreover, the campaign was plagued by high dropout rates and low motivation among teachers and students. Frere was also criticized for supporting instructional methods that contradicted his own educational philosophy, including the use of government-​issued primers.104 But the most controversial aspect of the Guinea-​Bissau program was its use of Portuguese as the instructional language, which drew charges of neocolonialism. Freire later wrote his own account of the program (Pedagogy in Process: Letters to Guinea-​Bissau) in which he claimed that he had strongly advocated for using the native language but was overruled by the local authorities. The controversies stemming from the Guinea-​Bissau project notwithstanding, Freire had become the WCC’s most widely recognized figure by the mid-​ 1970s.105 He continued to yearn for his homeland.106 At times, he was tempted to surrender to despair and pessimism.107 The nadir of his exile occurred when his beloved mother Edeltrudes died in 1978. They had not seen each other in fourteen years. Grappling with his grief and facing the possibility of spending

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the rest of his life as a global nomad, Freire found purpose and solace in activism: “The small contribution I was able to make to various countries . . . gave meaning to my exile.”108

Homecoming and late period By the late 1970s, the Brazilian military government was under pressure from a troubled economy and a resurgent opposition. Seeking to defuse tensions, it passed an Amnesty Law in 1979 that paved the way for the return of thousands of political dissidents. Paulo and Elza traveled briefly to Brazil in August to test the waters. Satisfied by what they saw, Freire formally resigned from the WCC. He and Elza moved back to Brazil permanently in June 1980, settling down in São Paulo because it afforded greater prospects for academic employment than Recife.109 Freire was 58 at his return. Having been away for a decade and a half, he wanted to “relearn” Brazil’s culture, politics, economic conditions, and even its language. He spent the first few months traveling throughout the country, meeting old friends, and getting reacquainted with his homeland. Soon after returning to São Paulo, he plunged into Brazil’s political and intellectual life. He was an active participant in in the newly established Worker’s Party (PT), which he had recently cofounded with fellow activists, workers, and intellectuals. The party’s head was Luíz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, the charismatic metalworker and future president. The PT was the first genuinely grassroots nationwide political party in the country’s history. Freire was thrilled at its prospects: “I [had] waited more than forty years for the Worker’s Party to be created,” he declared.110 He led the PT’s adult education program over the next six years. In this capacity, Freire insisted on antiauthoritarian and problem-​posing pedagogies. He also insisted that PT’s educational efforts must help the “popular classes” to become political actors on their own behalf.111 In addition to his PT activities, Freire became involved with antihunger campaigns, feminist movements, and religious grassroots groups. He eagerly returned to classroom teaching, accepting professorships at the Catholic University of São Paulo and the State University of Campinas. Freire continued to travel overseas to give lectures, lead seminars, and participate in symposiums. He received many honors for his educational work, including the Outstanding Christian Educators Award in 1985 and the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1986. At the UNESCO ceremony, he was praised by Director Amadou-​Mahtar M’Bow for his “unflagging determination

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and devotion to provide literacy training and education for the neediest population groups—​thereby enabling them to take an active part in the struggle against poverty.”112 Freire’s main scholarly outputs throughout the 1980s were his “conversation books,” which were produced in collaboration with a number of mostly likeminded Latin American and North American collaborators. In these books, which were structured as informal dialogues, Freire and his chosen interlocutor explored a wide range of educational, philosophical, political, and biographical issues. The most important of these dialogues was A Pedagogy for Liberation, which he co-​wrote with US critical educator Ira Shor. In this book, Freire explored the possibilities of enacting conscientizing pedagogy in formal school settings—​an issue he had largely overlooked in his previous works. He relished the spaciousness and informality of these books, which played to his affinity for storytelling. As a result, these works rank among his warmest and most accessible works. Amid his thriving professional life, Freire suffered a devastating personal loss when Elza succumbed to cardiac failure on October 24, 1986. The death of his wife of 42 years plunged Freire into a severe depression that lasted for nearly a year. He spent most of this time at home. “She died,” he recounted, “and I almost died.”113 It took nearly a year before he was ready to resume his teaching, scholarship, and activism. He later described the moment he decided to choose new life: “One day, even though engulfed in my pain, I decided to live again. Life presented itself to me as a duty, as a right, and also as a pleasure.”114 In 1988, he married his long-​time friend Ana Maria “Nita” Araújo. According to Freire, Nita reminded him of something he “intellectually knew but somehow . . . could emotionally no longer remember: to always view and accept history as possibility.”115 The 1980s witnessed Brazil’s transition back to civilian rule. The emboldened political left organized large demonstrations in which they called for more rapid democratization coupled with aggressive government action to address economic inequality. A new democratic constitution was promulgated in 1988. It finally secured the right to vote for illiterates, thus enshrining one of Freire’s most cherished aspirations. Nationwide elections were held in 1988. Freire’s PT won a number of substantial victories at the municipal level, including the mayoralty of São Paulo. The PT’s winning candidate was Luiza Erundina de Sousa, a teacher and social worker. She was also a longtime friend of Freire’s and had taken part in his Northeastern literacy campaigns. Mayor-​elect Erundina invited Freire to serve as the city’s secretary of education and to lead efforts to reform,

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modernize, and democratize the colossal public school system. This was not a request to be taken lightly; she was asking Freire, who was 68 years old and had no experience in municipal administration, to assume administrative responsibility for nearly 700 schools. The system’s infrastructure was badly decayed, with two-​thirds of the buildings requiring serious repairs. Most teachers were poorly trained and deeply accustomed to authoritarian pedagogies, and all were severely underpaid. Almost all of the 800,000 students hailed from poor families and were severely underprepared for schoolwork. Nevertheless, Freire accepted the call. He later explained: “It is one thing to write down concepts in books, but it is another to embody those concepts in praxis.”116 He wanted to learn if he could exercise authority in a democratic, collegial, and “humble” fashion—​to align his values with his behavior, as his mother Edeltrudes had taught him so many years before. Freire’s tenure at the Municipal Secretariat of Education lasted for two and a half years (1989–​1991).117 He achieved some significant accomplishments in this role, including increasing the number of children enrolled in the public schools by 15 percent, decreasing the dropout and failure rates, building over seventy new schools, and making significant repairs and upgrades throughout the system (including the installation of 60,000 new desks).118 However, his efforts to introduce nonauthoritarian teaching attitudes and methods met with resistance from many teachers, administrators, and parents. Many of the secretariat’s career bureaucrats were hostile toward Freire’s efforts at decentralizing the administrative system. They were also skeptical about his insistence on inviting poor parents to participate in deliberations about issues of concern for the schools.119 Freire was deeply frustrated with these entrenched attitudes. Furthermore, he was exasperated at the relentless politicking, his health was increasingly fragile, and he yearned to spend more time in scholarly pursuits. He stepped down from the position in mid-​1991. In his farewell speech, he stated: Even though I  no longer am your Secretary, I  will continue at your side in a different form . . . You can continue to count on me in the construction of an educational policy for a school with a new “face,” more joyful, fraternal, and democratic.120

He reported feeling satisfied with the democratic way he conducted himself throughout his tenure.121 His time as secretary of education constituted the most intense and sustained engagement with the formal school stem of his career. He reflected on these experiences in Pedagogy of the City and Teachers as Cultural

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Workers. In these works, he explored the relational and affective dimensions of pedagogy with greater depth than almost any work since Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire was 70 years old at the time of his resignation. While his mind remained sharp, his body was deteriorating. He had been a heavy smoker for decades, and while he had recently quit, the damage had been done. Despite his declining health, Freire continued to travel throughout the world, teach university classes, consult with local and international grassroots organizations, attend conferences and symposiums, and receive various awards and honorary degrees. He enjoyed a final burst of intellectual activity between 1991 and 1997, during which he wrote more books than at any other time of his life.122 He published a series of meditative and richly anecdotal works, including Letters to Cristina, Pedagogy of Hope, Pedagogy of the Heart, and Pedagogy of Freedom.123 In these deeply personal and elegiac texts, he disclosed the biographical roots of his educational theory more transparently than in any of his previous works. He continued to explore new systems of thought, including postmodernism and ecology, and he remained deeply engaged with contemporary political developments. A major theme of his final years was his fervent opposition to the government’s embrace of aggressive economic liberalization policies. Freire passionately denounced capitalist globalization for its “intrinsic evil” and indifference “to the pain of the exploited majorities.”124 At the same time, he harshly criticized Brazil’s “messianic” Marxists, whom he saw as arrogant, dogmatic, and paternalistic.125 Rejecting the claim that Soviet-​style communism was the only viable form of socialism, he maintained that the failures of Stalinism lay in its authoritarianism rather than any intrinsic flaw in the “socialist experiment.”126 He maintained hope in the face of great political adversity: Forging the unity between democracy and socialism is the challenge that inspires us, clearly, at the end of the century and at the beginning of the millennium. It is a challenge and not certain destiny . . . The future is a problem, a possibility, and not inexorable.127

Freire took ill after a trip to the United States in 1997. He died on the morning of May 2 after a brief hospital stay. At his state funeral, his coffin was draped with the banner of the PT and the Brazilian flag. The 300 mourners sang one of his favorite activist songs: Come let us go, who hope for the unknown, Who know what must be done and don’t wait for it to happen.128

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Notes 1 There is no full-​length biography of Freire in English. Several works have substantial biographical sections: see Collins, Paulo Freire; Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire; Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics; Kirylo, Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife; and Schugurensky, Paulo Freire. While Freire did not write an autobiography, his late works are generously sprinkled with anecdotes. See especially Pedagogy of Hope and Letters to Cristina. Moreover, his second wife, Ana Maria Araújo (Nita) Freire, has written a memoir called Chronicles of Love: My Life with Paulo Freire, trans. Alexandre K. Oliviera (New York: Peter Lang, 2001). 2 Jorge Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious: The Life and Writings of Paulo Freire,” Vitae Scholasticae 5, nos. 1–​2 (1986): 5. 3 Paulo Freire and Donaldo P. Macedo, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work, trans. Donaldo Macedo (New York: Routledge, 1996), 28. 4 Ibid. 5 Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), 242–​3. 6 Quoted in Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 7. 7 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 245. 8 Quoted in Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 5–​6. 9 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 89. 10 The exemplary paternalistic leader of Freire’s youth was Getúlio Vargas, the towering political figure of Brazilian public life in the first half of the twentieth century. Vargas, who served as president of the republic from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954, was a supremely deft and skillful tactician. For instance, he granted the expanding Brazilian middle class with employment opportunities within the civil service, turned a blind eye to the issue of land reform in order to placate powerful coffee growers and landowners, and enriched the military leadership to secure its all-​important backing. At the same time, he improved the living conditions of the poor through social security benefits, minimum wage laws, and other welfare programs (Clift Barnard, “Imperialism, Underdevelopment and Education,” in Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, ed. Robert Mackie [New York: Continuum, 1981], 23). 11 Paulo Freire and Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (New York: Continuum, 1992), 20. 12 Ibid. 13 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 28–​9. 14 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 64.

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15 According to his second wife, Ana Maria Araújo (Nita) Freire, he gave up the priesthood he learned about the vow of celibacy (Ana Maria Araújo Freire, Chronicles of Love, 23). 16 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 15. 17 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 9. 18 Throughout these difficult years, Paulo noticed his parents’ persistent efforts to maintain the status markers of their middle-​class background. His father insisted on wearing a necktie every day, and they refused to sell their beloved German piano for food money. Paulo was unable to earn money because he felt ashamed to work at the grocery store or perform manual labor (Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 19). Yet while he was just as malnourished as his poorer friends, Freire sensed that they deferred to him due to his seemingly higher status. He later reflected that this dissonance between his family’s outward image of prosperity and their private hardship constituted his earliest understanding of class stratification (Ira Shor and Paulo Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education [South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1987], 29). 19 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 14. 20 The conservatism and fatalism of “mainstream” Brazilian Catholicism during this period is explored in Chapter 2. 21 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, trans. Donaldo Macedo and Alexandre Oliveira (New York: Continuum, 1997), 104. 22 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 16. 23 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 16. 24 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 245. 25 Freire had completed a law degree by 1945 and started working as an attorney in small claims. However, he grew rapidly disillusioned with the profession after observing its predatory nature. His first and only case involved defending a young dentist whose practice had failed and whose creditors had taken everything. Freire could not bring himself to collect his legal fee from his newly destitute client. He left his law office that day, never to return. 26 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 15. 27 Ibid. 28 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 81. 29 Ibid., 93. 30 Ibid., 92. 31 Ibid., 57. 32 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 22. 33 A statement made by a mid-​twentieth century landowner from the Northeastern state of Paraíba gives a sense of this near-​total authority:

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The obligation of my tenants is to work for me three days a week without pay. In the time of cane cutting, six months in Summer [sic], they must work up to six days . . . If they get sick I give them medicine, if they die I take care of the burial . . . The tenants obey me. I make all the decisions. They cannot make improvements on the property. (Quoted in Thomas Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974], 86–​7)

34 Barnard, “Imperialism, Underdevelopment and Education,” 35. 35 Freire preferred the term “push-​outs,” arguing that many so-​called dropouts were actually “expelled because of class-​based assumptions about knowledge and behavior” (Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 160). 36 Barnard, “Imperialism, Underdevelopment and Education,” 35. 37 Ibid., 36. 38 Ibid., 37. 39 Ibid., 38. 40 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 33. 41 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 16–​17. 42 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 18. 43 Quoted in Mackie, “Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire,” 3. 44 Ibid. 45 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary ed., trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2000), 72. 46 He borrowed this term from the German existentialist psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. 47 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77. 48 Ibid., 83–​4. 49 Ibid., 72. 50 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 4. 51 Ibid., 36. 52 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 18–​19. 53 Ibid., 56. 54 Blackwood, “Historical and Theological Foundations,” 204. 55 Freire and Arraes would follow parallel biographical paths over the succeeding decades. Both were arrested and jailed for “subversion” by the military junta, both went into exile, and both returned to Brazil to resume high-​profile careers in the early 1980s. 56 Emanuel De Kadt, Catholic Radicals in Brazil (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 104. 57 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 37–​8. 58 Ibid., 38. 59 Interestingly, certain politically charged issues kept surfacing in various culture circles. According to Freire, these recurring topics included “nationalism, profit

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60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

A Pedagogy of Faith remittances abroad, the political evolution of Brazil, development, illiteracy, the vote for illiterates, [and] democracy” (Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 38). The sophistication and consistency of these topics suggest that Freire’s literacy coordinators were more directive than he had acknowledged. See Chapter 2 for an exploration of the tensions between theory and practice among the educational activists of the Catholic Left movement. Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 38. Paiva, “Catholic Populism and Education in Brazil,” 159. The SEC program was dedicated to promoting “popular” education and cultural activities. The new division’s mission statement affirmed the university’s responsibility to support the unfolding process of societal change (Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 34). This stance was a sharp departure from the Brazilian academy’s traditional aloofness regarding contemporary social and political developments. Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 34. Ibid., 13–​15. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 42–​3. He approvingly cited Noam Chomsky’s dichotomy between linguistic “surface structure” and “deep structure,” arguing that it is only when one sees the “deep structure” of the object of study does one genuinely understand reality (Paulo Freire, “The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom,” Harvard Educational Review 68, no. 4 [1998]: 487). Freire, “The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom,” 493. Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 39. Ibid., 39. From the start, this position has generated charges of elitism, paternalism, and cultural invasion. In Freire’s defense, educational scholar Peter Roberts argues that Freire viewed adult illiterates with “magical consciousness” not as “lower beings” but as “operating at a different level of consciousness to that which he regarded as necessary for their liberation from conditions of oppression.” Roberts adds that Freire’s intent in identifying “magical consciousness” is to point out that “these forms of thought are shaped by, and serve the interests of, oppressor classes” (Peter Roberts, “Rethinking Conscientisation,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 30, no. 2 [1996]: 186). Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 39. Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 183. This technique is well-​suited to the Northeastern Brazilian language but is impossible to replicate in English. Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 76.

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76 Barbara Bee, “The Politics of Literacy,” in Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, ed. Robert Mackie (New York: Continuum, 1981), 45. 77 Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930–​1964: An Experiment in Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 254. 78 Ibid., 88. 79 This being said, nationalist developmentalism thought was not a monolithic ideology. It was divided between two factions: a “radical” wing that viewed all foreign investment as intrinsically imperialistic, and a “centrist” wing that believed the infusion of foreign capital could play a positive role in developing Brazil’s economy so long as it was subject to stringent government regulation (Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 89). This latter group, to which Freire likely belonged, called for a balance between economic liberalization and aggressive public spending on infrastructure and social welfare measures. 80 Peter Jarvis, “Paulo Freire: Educationalist of a Revolutionary Christian Movement,” Convergence 20, no. 2 (1987): 36–​7. 81 Paulo Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” Harvard Educational Review 68, no. 4 (1998): 504. 82 Torres, First Freire, 99. 83 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 28. 84 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 139. 85 US geopolitical interest in the Brazilian Northeast had risen dramatically in the early 1960s, especially in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution (1959). The Kennedy administration saw Freire’s adult literacy program, with its roots in Catholic humanism, as a powerful tool in the ideological struggle against Brazil’s communist groups. Accordingly, it offered financial support through the USAID (Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 30). 86 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 139. 87 Many years later, Freire recounted that the left felt “almost a certainty that [they] would move forward to power” (Shor and Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 32). 88 It was later revealed that President Lyndon Johnson had tacitly supported the military action. 89 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 59. 90 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 35. 91 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 56. 92 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 57. 93 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 46. 94 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 25. 95 John Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile, 1964–​1969: Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Its Sociopolitical Economic Context,” Harvard Educational Review 76, no. 2 (2006): 248.

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96 Ibid., 258. 97 Shor and Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 31. 98 John L. Elias, Paulo Freire: Pedagogue of Liberation (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1994), 111–​12. 99 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 10. 100 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 94. 101 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 95–​6. 102 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 104. 103 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 80. 104 This was not the only instance in which Freire retreated from his previous rejection of externally prepared textbooks. He either actively participated in creating primers or endorsed their use in Chile, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Nicaragua. For details, see Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics. 105 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 103. 106 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the City, trans. Donaldo Macedo (New York: Continuum, 1993), 56. 107 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 66–​71. 108 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 23. 109 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 155. 110 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 157. 111 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 157. 112 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 159. 113 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 97. 114 Ibid. 115 Freire, Chronicles of Love, 4. 116 Quoted in Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 37. 117 For a comprehensive and balanced study of Freire’s tenure as São Paulo’s secretary of education, see Maria Del Pilar O’Cadiz, Pia Lindquist Wong, and Carlos Alberto Torres, Education and Democracy: Paulo Freire, Social Movements, and Educational Reform in Sao Paulo (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). 118 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 37. 119 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 161. 120 Quoted in Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 107. 121 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 35. 122 Ibid., 40. 123 Nita Freire, an accomplished scholar in her own right, provided editorial notes and commentary for most of these works. She has also edited and published three posthumous collections of his works: Pedagogy of Indignation, Daring to Dream: Toward a Pedagogy of the Unfinished, and Pedagogy of Solidarity. 124 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 137.

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125 Ibid., 84; Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Robert R. Barr (New York: Continuum, 2004), 96. 126 Freire and Freire, Daring to Dream, 22. 127 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 137. 128 Maheshvarananda Avadhuta, “Educator of the Oppressed: A Conversation with Paulo Freire,” in Neohumanist Educational Futures: Liberating the Pedagogical Intellect, ed. Sohail Inayatullah, Marcus Bussey, and Ivana Milojević (Tapei: Tamkang University Press, 2006), 297.

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Freire and the Brazilian Catholic Left Movement

Overview Paulo Freire’s educational theory and practice evolved within an activist lay Catholic movement that emerged between the end of the Second World War and April 1964. This dynamic cohort was largely composed of urban intellectuals, university students, and young professionals. These idealistic Catholic elites underwent far-​reaching changes with their interpretation of the purpose of faith in the modern world. They grew dissatisfied with “traditional” Catholicism, which they deemed irrelevant in the face of their nation’s pressing ills. They came to believe that theology must be grounded in day-​to-​day history and that faith cannot be confined to personal piety but must be lived out (or “incarnated”) in the public sphere. As historian Thomas Sanders writes, “Catholic involvement in the social order was envisioned as open to the future rather than nostalgic toward the past, emphasizing a historical process directed toward human possibilities and fulfillment into which the Christian conscience inserts itself.”1 As these budding Catholic activists embarked on a journey of intense theological and historical reflection, they experienced a “revolution” in their values and historical consciousness. They increasingly rejected the older generations’ emphasis on “respect for authority, the patriarchal family, prayer and private devotion” in favor of “a whole new set of spiritual values drawn from the Sermon of the Mount, the liberating example of Jesus and the social teaching of the church.”2 They felt compelled to grapple with ostensibly secular problems like poverty and inequality, malnutrition and disease, illiteracy and technological backwardness, the sociocultural damage inflicted by industrialization and “massification,” and the “imperialist exploitation” of Brazil’s people and natural resources by foreign entities. Incorporating modern social scientific tools into their exploration of

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the “Brazilian reality,” they became skeptical of capitalism and “open door” trade policies, which they viewed as destructive to human dignity, social cohesion, and traditional values. They were also concerned by the social costs of the country’s explosive levels of industrialization and urbanization, which they viewed as grave threats to “authentic” cultures and communal ties, especially among the poor.3 Accordingly, they called for “unshackling” the country from international trade and monetary arrangements, strictly regulating (or even banning) foreign investment, nationalizing key sectors of the economy, fostering domestic industrialization, enacting extensive land reform, enfranchising illiterates, cultivating an “authentic,” nonauthoritarian Brazilian culture, and fostering more “humane” and equitable forms of economic and technological development. In pursuing all these causes, they greatly blurred the distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” spheres. By the early 1960s, the Brazilian Catholic Left had become deeply involved in organized efforts to mobilize peasants and urban workers, organize strikes, and establish various educational programs that were geared toward “humanizing” Brazilian society at all levels. They aimed to organize, educate, and galvanize the poor to participate in establishing a more just and democratic “society of persons” in accordance with the vision of contemporary Catholic thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and their Brazilian theological counterparts. Viewing the transformation of popular consciousness as the key to achieving these wide-​reaching changes, they poured tremendous energy into a wide range of educational projects that sought to help the popular classes to “awaken” to their historical condition and affirm their capacity to determine their own individual and communal destiny. Crucially, the Catholic Left activists rejected the traditional patterns of authoritarianism and paternalism with which Brazilian elites, unscrupulous politicians, and exploitative populist leaders had interacted with the poor. Instead, they sought to develop nondirective and radically democratic methods that respected the dignity and agency of the poor rather than manipulating them to pursuing political ends that had been predetermined by the elites. By the eve of the April 1964 coup, groups affiliated with the Catholic movement were competing with Brazil’s two Communist parties as the most potent force in the organized political Left.4 Historian Thomas Bruneau points out: “[The members of the Catholic Left] were regarded by the military and the owners as heretics who used the traditional name and appeal of the church to attempt things fitting an antichrist.”5

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The Catholic Left emerged from the heart of a Brazilian Church in which the hierarchy was also undergoing fierce theological debates about the Church’s mission in the modern world. This internal conflict was a striking change from the past, during which the Church had almost invariably aligned itself with the ruling elites. For generations, the Church’s dominant teachings fostered submission to authority, valorized individual piety over collective social action, and encouraged the poor to patiently endure their earthly sufferings in order to enjoy their heavenly rewards. In short, it was a consistent source of religious legitimization for the prevailing societal order. This long-​standing theological and political consensus began to crack throughout the first half of the twentieth century. By the early 1960s, the Brazilian hierarchy was more divided than it had ever been. One one hand, a small but outspoken faction of progressive bishops and priests was instrumental in nurturing the Catholic Left, especially within the university setting. At the opposite end of the spectrum was a cohort of “traditionalists” who condemned the involvement of Catholic organizations in secular politics and demanded lay submission to the hierarchy. These conservative bishops and priests eventually backed the military coup. (The majority of the hierarchy occupied the middle ground between these factions.) The fragmentation of the Brazilian hierarchy was the result of a wide range of intertwined historical factors. Among the most important of these were (1) the hierarchy’s realization that the Church needed to formulate a response to the structural changes that were radically reshaping postwar Brazilian society, (2) intensifying political and theological pressure from the emerging activist laity, and (3) the influx of “modernizing” theological and ecclesiological winds from Europe. This renovation of Catholic thought began with Pope Leo XIII’s promulgation of the encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”) in 1891. It was elaborated by progressive theologians throughout the first half of the twentieth century and reached its apogee with in the Second Vatican Council (1962–​1965). These reformist currents gained an influential foothold within the Brazilian Church with the progressive National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), which was established at the Vatican’s behest in 1952. These progressive ideas were also channeled into the university milieu by a cohort of highly trained foreign-​born clergy who were assigned to mentor Catholic student groups in major cities throughout the country. Freire’s identity, worldview, and educational praxis were decisively shaped by his immersion within this Catholic Left milieu from the 1940s onward, which marked the decades in which he came of age as a thinker and an activist.

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Educational scholar Vanilda Paiva points out that Freire’s political and intellectual trajectory during this formative period “epitomizes” what occurred within the Brazilian Catholic lay movement.6 Accordingly, this chapter explores major ecclesiological and theological developments within Brazil’s Catholic intellectual circles from the early twentieth century until April 1964. It highlights the ideological tensions within the Church as it struggled to respond to the intensifying secularization and socioeconomic transformation of Brazilian society. Most importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which a determined cohort of Catholic elites drew on the latent resources of their religious heritage in order to break with their Church’s prevailing conservatism and authoritarianism.

The Brazilian church: Pre-​twentieth century Despite being one of the largest branches of the global Roman Catholic Church in terms of membership, the Brazilian Church was a relatively weak institution before the twentieth century. During the colonial period (1500–​ 1815), the Church was deeply underdeveloped. It lacked resources and was chronically understaffed. The clergy were almost totally dependent on the largesse of secular patrons, especially landowners and planters. For instance, plantation chaplains provided their masters with blessings on request. The celebrated Brazilian sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre has written that they “grew big-​bellied and soft in fulfilling the functions of . . . ecclesiastical tutors, priestly uncles and godfathers to the young [elites], and they proceeded to accommodate themselves to the comfortable situation of members of the family or household, becoming allies and adherents of the patriarchal system.”7 In exchange for these theological services, the clergy were provided with land and slaves for their monasteries.8 In short, they received powerful material incentives to collaborate with the autocratic power of their benefactors. Similar power relations continued after independence (1822), with the state exercising almost complete control over the clergy throughout the nineteenth century, and the Church being treated as an ordinary branch of the government bureaucracy. For instance, bishops were nominated through political patronage, received their salaries from secular rulers, and were prohibited from leaving their parishes without consent.9 After generations of subordination to the ruling class, the clergy inevitably came to see its interests as thoroughly enmeshed with those of the elites.

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The establishment of the First Brazilian Republic in 1889 signaled the formal separation of Church and state. Seeking to assert its own identity, the Brazilian Church began to strengthen its historically weak ties with the Vatican. This greater alignment with Rome would become an important factor in the eventual rise of the Catholic Left, as it opened a channel for progressive papal teachings and theologies over the next few decades. The Brazilian hierarchy also embarked on an ambitious effort to build up the institution, since they could no longer rely on the material support of the secular elites. This effort was an enormous success; the number of ecclesiastical divisions (i.e., dioceses and archdioceses) increased from 11 in 1889 to 17 in 1900, 30 in 1920, and 178 in 1964.10 By 1930, the Brazilian Church had begun to resemble “the large bureaucratic organization that most people visualize when reading about the Church.”11 This rapid institutionalization meant that after centuries of minimal civic influence, the Brazilian Church had begun to develop into a potentially significant player in public affairs. At the same time, the “Romanization” of the Brazilian Church meant that it tended to assimilate pastoral and ideological patterns that were far more appropriate to the European context.12 For instance, the Brazilian hierarchy adopted the European Church’s “fortress mentality” against contemporary threats like modernism, socialism, Protestantism, and Masonry, despite the fact that these forces were virtually nonexistent in the overwhelmingly rural Brazilian milieu.13 As such, an inadvertent result of the Brazilian Church’s opening toward Rome was to increase the clergy’s alienation from the “Brazilian reality,” especially with regard to the culture and material conditions of the poor. In short, the early twentieth-​century Brazilian Church found itself in a deeply paradoxical situation. On one hand, it “ruled” over a country that was overwhelmingly Catholic (at least on paper), and it was rapidly building up its institutional identity and organizational strength after centuries of dependency on the elites. On the other hand, it still continued to exert little concrete influence on Brazilian politics, intellectual life, and even its religious consciousness. Bruneau writes: Indications of low influence could be found in the lack of religion in most fields of social action including politics, arts and letters; in the lack of vocations, finances and organizations; and in the lack of Catholics among the intellectual elites. That is, the Church which represented the religion of the great majority of Brazilians had little impact.14

Much of this weakness was a result of the chronic shortage of clergy, a problem that had bedeviled the Brazilian Church since its establishment. Indeed,

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even as late as the mid-​twentieth century, when the Church had grown into a far stronger institution than ever before, the typical parish priest might be responsible for the spiritual welfare of thousands—​or even tens of thousands—​ of people scattered throughout the surrounding countryside. Under such circumstances, it was hardly possible for even the most dedicated and tireless priest to develop any meaningful contact with his flock, most of whom he would only get to see every few weeks. Moreover, pastoral interactions on these limited occasions were largely limited to formal rites like mass, baptism, marriage, or funerals.15 Exacerbating this situation was the fact that most priests lived in cities and often taught in elite Catholic schools. The Brazilian hierarchy was increasingly concerned about these problems throughout the early twentieth century. In response, they would devote much energy to intensified efforts to recruit and mobilize lay elites to advocate for the Church’s goals in the public square. As discussed later, this strategy helped to open the door to the rise of the Catholic Left.

Theological background The dominant theological strands within the early twentieth-​century Brazilian Church were conservative, elitist, and authoritarian.16 For instance, the bishops issued an exemplary pastoral letter in 1915 that instructed priests to inculcate the spirit of obedience and submission to those who govern in civil society, in religion and in the family . . . to lead the faithful to accept their proper situation and the conditions in which they are born and to not hate the modest and difficult life in which Providence has placed them.17

This is not to say that the institutional Church was unconcerned with poverty; indeed, it devoted much of its limited resources toward charitable efforts. Likewise, various orders of nuns existed for the primary purpose of comforting the poor and suffering.18 Nevertheless, this valorization of personal acts of mercy did not translate into support for structural means of addressing social ills. The religious teachings of this time reflected a stark theological dualism between the “sacred” and “secular” spheres. The Church viewed itself as the “perfect society” that was called to stand in opposition to “the world.” Its status as the sole mediator between God and humanity was reflected in the ancient Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”). Within this binary framework, those Christians who participated in civic action exposed themselves to moral contamination from an intrinsically

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fallen and sinful society, thereby jeopardizing their prospects for eternal life. Ordinary existence was considered a trial of faith and a “transitory phase on a way to ‘heaven’ ” rather than holding ultimate significance in itself.19 The main task for Christians was to remain in a “state of grace” and deal with their earthly sufferings through “religious” behaviors like mass attendance, regular prayer and confession, financial support for the Church, and “moral” behavior in their personal lives.20 As the custodian of divine truth, the Church demanded absolute fidelity to its teachings. It was antagonistic toward modern secular society for undermining faith; eroding respect for authority; and fostering selfishness, egotism, greed, lust for power, and sexual license.21 Historian Scott Mainwaring writes: Most priests did not see faith as closely linked to attempts to create a juster world. Even those who felt the Church should seek a social mission generally limited its nature to charity and palliative measures. The Church did not view transformation of the society as part of its mission; on the contrary, most clergy vigorously opposed far-​reaching social change as undermining the traditional Christian order.22

Suffering, especially poverty and illness, was interpreted as “God’s will.” Accordingly, it must be accepted with forbearance—​even gratitude—​since it provides the opportunity to demonstrate one’s faithful endurance and trust in God’s ultimate beneficence. The monarchical status of the institutional Church extended to the clergy, who derived a similarly regal mystique. This attitude of radical separation from the world was “systematically inculcated in the seminary and reinforced . . . by the general habit of wearing the soutane.”23 Most “ordinary” Catholics believed the clergy were endowed with quasi-​magical abilities in their power to provide blessings and celebrate the sacraments. For their part, the clergy saw themselves in similarly exalted terms. For instance, one priest described his vocation this way: “We must teach the faithful, as is our duty, the sublimity and greatness of the Catholic priesthood. We must inculcate, in light of the revelation, the respect due to the priest . . . We must teach discipline and obedience.”24 This elitism permeated every dimension of the clergy’s interactions with the laity. For instance, most priests and bishops had little regard for popular religiosity, which they saw as superstitious and ignorant. Mainwaring points out the supreme paternalism of these beliefs: The common people had nothing to teach; the priest’s mission was to elevate the people’s faith nearer his own. The learning process was as hierarchical as the

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A Pedagogy of Faith Church structures: the priest imparted knowledge to the flock . . . Priests were called to assume the role of fathers who would guide their flock, “redirect people to the path of the good, guide them to Heaven, and save them.”25

The poor had nothing to teach their “superiors,” no capacity to take the initiative or determine their destinies. As one priest proclaimed succinctly, “The salvation of Brazil depends on the clergy.”26 In effect, the Church’s elitist and authoritarian ethos, pastoral practice, and religious teachings perpetuated the sense of fatalism and dependency among the poor.27 Such was the general ethos of institutional Brazilian Catholicism at the time of Freire’s birth in 1921. This overwhelmingly conservative and authoritarian tenor renders Freire’s accounts of his family’s unorthodox religious beliefs and behavior especially noteworthy. As he later asserted, they never viewed their poverty in conventional terms: “Far from us was the idea that we were being tested by God. On the contrary, early on I found myself convinced of the need to change the world, to repair what seemed wrong to me.”28 He claimed that even as a child, he never accepted the dominant religious narrative that his family’s precarious situation was divinely ordained.29 He was especially disdainful of quietist religious teachings: As a child, I knew many priests who went out to peasants saying: “Be patient. This is God’s will. And anyway, it will earn heaven for you.” Yet the truth of the matter is that we have to earn our heaven here and now, we ourselves . . . Salvation is something to achieve, not just to hope for. This latter sort of theology is a very passive one that I cannot stomach.30

Where did such heterodox convictions come from? How did a child, even such an intellectually precocious one, develop the wherewithal to reject the near-​universal religious consensus of the era? The most decisive influence was almost certainly the lived example of Joachim and Edeltrudes, whom he later described as unusually broad-​minded and nonauthoritarian parents.31 While Edeltrudes was a devout churchgoer, she never forced her children to adopt her Catholicism. This was a departure from the religious and parental norms of the time; at the very least, her faith was unconventional and undogmatic enough that she did not seem to fear for the immortal souls of her children. For his part, Joaqim was an adherent of Spiritism, a form of “spiritual science” from France that affirmed the existence of spirits and psychic phenomena. Less than 10 percent of Brazilians were non-​Catholic, and only a small fraction of these were Spiritists. Moreover, most of the Church hierarchy viewed Spiritism as a dangerous popular superstition and sought to stamp it out.32 Joaqim Freire thus

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belonged to a religion that was viewed with hostility by the religious establishment. Nevertheless, he fully respected his wife’s devotion to Catholicism, and he never seems to have tried to persuade his children to embrace Spiritism. Paulo later described his parents’ religious liberalism—​and its lasting imprint on him—​in loving terms: Why do I speak about tolerance? I began to learn the meaning of this religious virtue from him [Joaqim] when I was a child. Why? Because my mother had a Catholic upbringing and he was a spiritualist from France. He had another understanding of Christ. He did not choose to go to church. He had nothing to do with the church, Catholic or Protestant. My mother had a broad vision of the world. Philosophically, he had another compassion, but he respected her totally. It’s very important, because . . . they came from [the] last century in a very male-​dominated culture in which the choices of men had to be imposed on the women . . . He never imposed his beliefs on my mother and on us, but we discussed both of their sides . . . It is not difficult for me to understand that as an educator I should respect the students, because I had been respected by my father and my mother.33

When Paulo opted for his mother’s Catholicism at the age of seven, he did so with intentionality and freedom.34 His father reportedly greeted his choice with “absolute respect” and even attended his first communion.35 This was a pivotal moment in his religious formation. He had become a Catholic of his own initiative and volition rather than succumbing to parental coercion or acting with uncritical conformity to cultural norms. In short, Paulo was fortunate enough to grow up in an unusually tolerant and broad-​minded environment. This liberal spirit would become a hallmark of his religious life. In time, it would shape his educational practice as well. As he professed in one of his final works, “Something else explains my political pedagogical beliefs, something that cannot be underestimated, much less rejected; something that was never understood by authoritarian Christians, who are . . . sectarian, and fundamentalist: my Christian upbringing.”36

The 1920s–​1950s: Catholicism enters the public square By the 1920s, the bishops were anxious to reinvigorate their influence on the country’s increasingly secularized elites, many of whom were drifting away from the Church’s orbit. The clergy were especially apprehensive about the

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threat of Communism, denouncing Communists as “a modern plague” and “modern barbarians.”37 This stance, which reproduced the Vatican’s antipathy toward Communism, was manifested in the Brazilian hierarchy’s critical stance toward class-​based forms of public dissent like strikes and protests.38 Over the next few decades, the hierarchy would pursue an aggressive strategy of recruiting and mobilizing the elite laity to evangelize on behalf of “Catholic values” in the public square. From the 1920s to the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of laypersons, especially among the urban middle class, would participate in various Church-​based organizations.39 The most prominent such group in the 1930s was the Catholic Electoral League (LEC), a political pressure group formed by the bishops that strongly promoted “Catholic issues” like banning divorce and reintroducing compulsory religious education into public schools. Crucially, the LEC also advised the faithful to only vote for candidates who were loyal to the Church and its policies. The LEC was hugely successful in fulfilling its mission; almost all its favored positions were written into the new constitution of 1934. Furthermore, the activities of the LEC and its sibling organizations convinced those lay elites who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s that such a moralistic program was the only legitimate one for Catholic advocacy. Eventually, this would feed into their resistance to the younger generation’s preoccupation with issues of national development, anti-​imperialism, and economic equity.40 Yet despite the conservative agenda and top-​down structure of the LEC and other lay organizations of the interwar period, these initiatives inadvertently opened the door for emergence of the Catholic Left. By “activating” the laity to promote their favored civic policies, the Brazilian bishops had signaled that participating in the secular realm was a legitimate way to express one’s faith. Laypersons were now permitted, even encouraged, to foreground their religious identity when participating in public affairs. In addition, those clergy who supervised these budding lay movements took genuine pride in “recapturing for the Church a segment of the intellectual community and promoting a Catholicism that was trying to speak to the problems of the time.”41 A fateful event in the Church’s turn toward broader social engagement was the establishment of the Centro Dom Vital in 1922. This institute was founded to “stimulate, mobilize and increase the influence of the Church by focusing primarily on the country’s intellectual elite.”42 The Centro rapidly became a gathering place for many of the most gifted Catholic leaders of the twentieth century, including Hélder Câmara (see below), and Freire himself.

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In addition to appealing to lay elites, the Brazilian bishops pursued their goal of “re-​Christianizing” society by seeking to form a mutually beneficial alliance with the national government. The Church’s greatest twentieth-​century patron in this regard was President Getúlio Vargas. Despite his personal indifference toward religion, Vargas saw the Church’s support as vital to legitimizing his increasingly authoritarian rule.43 Most of the hierarchy approved of Vargas’s emphasis on stability, nationalism, and anti-​Communism, which greatly facilitated the strategic alliance between Church and state.44 Vargas delivered on his part of the bargain. He ensured that the hierarchy’s priorities were written into the 1934 constitution,45 which banned divorce, granted Church marriages with equal status as civil ceremonies, and increased legal standing for religious organizations. In addition, religious education became permitted within public schools, and the state began to subsidize Catholic schools, hospitals, and seminaries.46 In exchange for such favored treatment, the hierarchy sought to rally political support for the president. The title of a 1942 statement issued by several leading archbishops, “Discipline and Obedience to the Head of the Government,” reflected the hierarchy’s friendly stance toward the state.47 Another manifestation of the Church’s symbiotic relationship with the ruling establishment was the orientation of its pastoral activities toward the needs and interests of the elites. For instance, sermons, discussion groups, and religious programs were geared toward the concerns of affluent patrons. In seminaries, future priests were inculcated with middle-​class preconceptions, tastes, and values, regardless of their own class backgrounds.48 The Church’s work in formal education was largely carried on at secondary and university levels, which were overwhelmingly populated by students from privileged backgrounds.49 By the 1940s, the Church and the state had become so enmeshed that a prominent priest could declare, “Let us always defend the Catholic Church, and we will be defending Brazil.”50 These were the years of the Brazilian Church’s greatest prestige, political influence, and cultural visibility—​a period that has since been called the nation’s “neo-​Christendom” era. Freire’s youth and early adulthood coincided almost exactly with the Church’s triumphalist period. Given his strong social consciousness, he could hardly have failed to notice the Church’s unabashed alignment with the wealthy and powerful.51 Biographer Denis Collins recounts that “like most adolescents, [Freire] questioned the discrepancy between what he heard preached in church and what life was really like on weekdays.”52 Brazilian anthropologist Thales de Azevedo’s description of mainstream Catholicism during this period gives a sense of the shallowness and complacency of the middle-​class religious milieu: “In general

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terms . . . ‘our Catholicism is a Catholicism of pretty words and exterior acts’ that ‘does not live in the conscience’ of the people but is transmitted from generation to generation, continually losing its influence.”53 In other words, while the Church’s political status was higher than ever and the pews were packed during religious services, most middle-​class worshippers were “practical atheists” whose faith had little impact on their daily lives. Theological ignorance and incuriosity were widespread, even among the educated elites. Catholicism was viewed through individualistic and narrowly “spiritual” terms like private piety and personal (i.e., sexual) morality. The hierarchy also continued to be hostile toward pluralism and secularization. According to Mainwaring, the Church attacked any institution—​including the news media and the school system—​ that promoted secularization or refused to adhere to its guidelines.54 Deeply disillusioned by this religious context, Freire underwent a year-​long spiritual crisis in the early 1940s during which he stopped practicing his faith.55 He was roughly twenty years old at this time. While he rarely talked about this experience, it seems fairly clear that he was struggling to understand the radical message of the Gospels and with making the existential commitment to living out its uncompromising demands in his day-​to-​day life. Many decades later, he said something that may have described his youthful crisis of faith: His [Jesus’s] word is not a sound that simply blows in the air; it is a whole way of learning . . . From this proceeds the risky adventure of learning and teaching the Gospels as one continuous act; and from this comes the almost unbearable fear that assaults us when we hear the call of Christ to practice this message.56

On the verge of young adulthood, he was reaching toward a far more rigorous interpretation of his Catholicism, one that required all-​encompassing commitment and sustained, concrete action. As he later declared: My preoccupation was about the difference in the teaching of the gospels and the magisterium [i.e., the teaching authority and practice] of the church. For me there is just one way to teach the gospels, that is to experience the gospels. I don’t know any other way. Verbalizing the gospels to make speeches about them, for me is not teaching them. To teach the gospels is to live them. It is to incarnate them.57

His yearlong hiatus from the Church was a period of great intellectual exploration as well. It was during this period of search that he first encountered the pioneering French Catholic thinkers who would so profoundly shape his theology and educational philosophy, especially Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. These theologians were calling on the Church to engage fearlessly and

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constructively with the modern world. They were also critical of the spiritual bankruptcy of “bourgeois civilization,” which they blamed for the catastrophe of the Great War. These thinkers provided Freire with a new theological framework for understanding the Christian responsibility to participate in societal concerns.58 Their works were also instrumental in helping him to return to the fold of this Church, this time with a more mature and “modern” understanding of his faith.59 Freire would build on these theological foundations he had assimilated from these thinkers for the rest of his life. Moreover, he was not the only young Brazilian intellectual who was profoundly shaped by Maritain, Mounier, and their contemporaries. As illustrated below, Brazil’s Catholic Left movement as a whole was deeply influenced by their writings. In this regard, Freire exemplified the spiritual yearning of a rising generation of Catholic elites for new ways to interpret and live out their faith. This hunger for an alternative to “traditional” Catholicism would intensify over the next two decades, as Brazil entered a period of explosive socioeconomic change. The ouster of President Vargas via the military coup in 1945 deprived the institutional Church of its greatest political benefactor. While subsequent governments from 1945 to 1964 would continue to cultivate the Church’s support, these relationships were nowhere as favorable or as reliable as they had been.60 Ironically, the Church’s success at using the state’s machinery and resources to advance its goals during the Vargas era had stunted its theological development. By the advent of the post–​Second World War period, it had become apparent that the hierarchy’s vigorous opposition to modernity, secularism, and pluralism had become unsustainable.61 As Brazilian society slowly became more democratic and participatory, the hierarchy experienced greater pressure to soften its authoritarianism and hierarchicalism.62 Given these challenges, the postwar Church felt the need to shift away from its “neo-​Christendom” strategy of relying on the beneficence of the state. As an alternative, the hierarchy chose to intensify their support of lay movements in order to pursue their overarching goal of “re-​Christianizing” Brazilian society.

Catholic action in Brazil From the mid-​1930s onward, the primary vehicle for lay activism was ACB. This organization had its roots in nineteenth-​century Italy, when a lay group calling itself the Italian Catholic Youth Society was organized in Bologna in 1868 to

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promote the temporal interests of the Papal States. The group was enthusiastically recognized by the Vatican, which saw it as a way to reassert its influence in the increasingly anticlerical European cultural landscape. The movement spread into traditionally Catholic countries, including France, Portugal, and Belgium. By the early twentieth century, the umbrella organization for these lay groups had become officially known as Catholic Action. The organization’s greatest benefactor was Pope Pius XI (1922–​1930), who saw the movement as a powerful instrument for re-​catholicizing society while remaining under the strict control of the hierarchy.63 He was especially bullish about the lay organization’s potential to recapture the allegiance of young people, workers, peasants, and university students, especially in the face of the “mortal competition” with ideological alternatives like Marxism, Fascism, Protestantism, anticlericalism, atheism, and liberalism.64 Historian Joseph Holbrook writes: Rather than withdraw into private spirituality, the lay activists in the hierarchically-​directed movement were to prepare the moral foundations for the re-​Christianization of society at the grassroots. Pius XI’s vision for Catholic Action was intended to reestablish the moral hegemony of the Catholic Church rather than make room for social pluralism. The interwar intellectual climate in Europe viewed the “bourgeois” liberalism of western civilization as being in a severe crisis of moral decay.65

The ACB was established in 1938, with the mission of mobilizing lay elites to disseminate Catholic values and social teachings in all spheres of society.66 In its early years, the group’s agenda was largely devoted to religious education, liturgical practice, devotional piety, and sexual ethics. It was also a highly centralized and clergy-​dominated body. Each local branch was tightly managed by the diocesan bishop, who appointed a priest to monitor and supervise the group’s activities.67 Reflecting their stress on lay submission, the bishops called on the membership to exercise “the discipline of prompt and filial obedience to your hierarchical superiors” in a 1946 statement.68 Notably, while the ACB’s membership rolls appeared impressive, this did not necessarily translate into genuine energy, commitment, or depth of involvement.69 According to historian Thomas Sanders, ACB was permeated by a sense of “dissatisfaction . . . with the mediocrity of expectation within an organization embracing large numbers of people”70 throughout its first decade. In this regard, ACB in the mid-​1940s mirrored the high visibility but functionally shallow impact of the “neo-​Christendom” Church as a whole.71 The traditionalist orientation and centralized framework of ACB began to change after the Second World War. With the fall of Vargas and the early

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stirrings of Brazil’s postwar societal transformation, the bishops became convinced of the need to aggressively recruit and mobilize the lay elites to serve as the Church’s spearhead against secularization. Back in Rome, the Vatican was deeply concerned with strengthening the Brazilian Church and renewing its pastoral practices. The Holy See moved to upgrade the hierarchy, expand the number of dioceses, and elevate capable clergy to strategic leadership positions.72 (The progressive Italian bishop Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was at the forefront of the Vatican’s campaign to renovate the Brazilian Church.) Over the next few years, Rome would appoint “an exceptional series of papal nuncios who were open to discussion of Brazilian problems and wanted the Church to be socially relevant.”73 These ambassadors facilitated the creation of a cohort of young and fairly liberal bishops, many of whom would be instrumental in the development of progressive Catholicism in Brazil. Among the most important of these was a tireless and outspoken Northeastern priest named Hélder Câmara, who was appointed the national chaplain of ACB in 1947. Câmara would become the most prominent voice within the leftist wing of the hierarchy over the next several decades.74 Under his leadership, ACB began to shift its organizational structure toward a more autonomous, lay-​ driven model (see below). It also started broadening its pastoral agenda to include contemporary issues like urbanization, industrialization, democratization, illiteracy, and poverty. The evolution of ACB accelerated in the late 1940s, when the cohort of European-​educated clergymen mentioned earlier were appointed as mentors to university student groups. (As seen below, these student groups would form the core of the Catholic Left movement from the mid-​1950s onward.) Paulo and Elza Freire became active members of ACB during these years of renewal and “modernization.” ACB provided the young couple, along with many others from their socioeconomic class, with their first immersion within a proto-​activist Catholic milieu that was permeated by the thought of Jacques Maritain, and that foregrounded socioeconomic issues as areas of vital concern. Reflecting ACB’s prominence within urban middle-​class circles, Freire encountered the professional contacts that led to his position at SESI at the group’s Recife branch.75 Moreover, his subsequent agenda at SESI from 1947 to 1957 was informed by Maritain’s belief that social ills should be addressed through consensus-​building, gradualist, and spiritually grounded measures. As such, Freire sought to promote the “common good” by promoting “harmonizing” policies, such as improving working conditions, increasing profit-​sharing between owners and laborers, and establishing democratic decision-​making structures in local businesses.

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In addition to ACB, several other lay activist organizations paved the way for the emergence of the Catholic Left. These smaller groups were significantly less authoritarian and clergy-​driven. They were also “specialized” in that they recruited their members along lines of age and occupation. (In contrast, the “mainstream” ACB was structured along geographic and parish-​based lines and thus exhibited greater demographic diversity.) This homogeneity, especially in terms of socioeconomic background, was a fertile breeding ground for the development of class consciousness. The organizational template for these “specialized” lay groups had been created in a Brussels suburb in 1912 by a gifted young priest named Joseph Cardijn. Cardijn hailed from a traditionally Catholic working-​class family that felt increasingly alienated from the Church because its teachings seemed profoundly disconnected from the often grim realities of their day-​to-​day lives as industrial workers in the early twentieth century. Ana Maria Bidegain writes: All [Cardijn’s] pedagogy, theology and sociology led to this direction: to look for a synthesis between the youth worker’s daily life and the God project in this life. Cardijn’s objective was to reach the poorest in Belgian society at this time: the working class . . . The aim of Cardijn was to look for the Gospel incarnate, the sacramental life and the prayer in the militant’s life and through his apostolate into the factories and the social struggle.76

Cardijn’s great insight was that the best way to “evangelize” working class communities was through young members of the communities themselves. This was a departure from the usual long-​standing practice of sending in middle-​class outsiders.77 As he declared, “The working class must save the working class. Like must save like.”78 Building on this pastoral breakthrough, Cardijn created the first chapter of Young Christian Workers (JOC) as a new form of Catholic Action. JOC soon gave rise to sibling organizations like Young Independent Catholics, Young Catholic Students, Young Catholic Agriculturists, and Catholic University Youth (JUC).79 These young activists aimed to take the Gospel message into “the most de-​Christianized secular public spaces such as factories and universities.”80 The original chapter of JOC developed several characteristics that became embedded in the ethos of “specialized” Catholic Action groups, including those eventually formed in Brazil. As mentioned above, the homogeneity of JOC’s membership was conducive to the emergence of class consciousness, which is precisely what occurred. In addition, JOC engaged in direct competition with socialist and communist groups for the “hearts and minds” of working-​class

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youths. As a result, it felt constant pressure to move toward the political left to maintain credibility among potential members.81 Indeed, this ideological orientation became such a hallmark of JOC that it triggered criticism from other Catholic quarters for being a quasi-​Communist group.82 JOC also enjoyed much greater freedom from clerical supervision in comparison with the tight grip exerted by the Church hierarchy on Catholic Action.83 Such autonomy provided the members with a safe space to explore secular ideologies, such as Marxism. Again, this is exactly what unfolded within Brazil’s university-​based lay groups in the 1950s and early 1960s. Among the many innovations of Cardijn’s JOC, the most influential and far-​reaching was its “See-​Judge-​Act” method of training its “militants.” Also called “Revision of Life,” this was a holistic approach that was meant to cultivate the member’s spirituality, social consciousness, and leadership abilities. It was based on the novel belief that “concern for the religious formation of young people could not be separated from the reality of their family, work and social situation.”84 Thus, they examined the “working class reality” alongside pursuing their biblical studies. The training was integral in that it combined inner transformation with positive social action. The recruits were taught to link prayer, liturgical practice, religious study, and action in the context of their everyday lives. The “See-​Judge-​Act” training method itself was composed of three steps. First was careful observation of current conditions through the lens of the Catholic faith. The trainee closely examined an existing social problem and asked: “What is happening?” “Why is it happening?” “What are the consequences of this situation?” The next step was to evaluate the situation, using exploratory questions like: “What do I think about this situation?” “What does Scripture say about this?” “What should be happening instead?” JOC members were encouraged to use the theological and social science resources at their disposal. Finally, the trainee pursued practical measures to remedy the problem. After taking action, the cycle would begin anew. In the end, “See-​Judge-​Act” was grounded on the conviction that contextualized social action was a powerful expression of one’s faith. As such, it reflected a great deal of the newness, dynamism, and missionary energy of “specialized” Catholic Action as a whole.85 In time, this method (and its underlying ethos) would shape Freire’s educational philosophy, the Catholic Left’s activism, and the grassroots (or “basic”) ecclesial communities that gave rise to liberation theology.86 JOC and the other “specialized” forms of Catholic lay activism spread from Western Europe to North America and Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s. The rapid transcontinental propagation of these specialized

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groups was powerfully supported by a cohort of progressive and highly educated priests from France, Belgium, and Canada.87 In Brazil, these foreign-​ born missionaries were joined by a number of native clergy, many of whom had been trained and ordained in Western Europe. These priests became powerful catalysts for the emergence of the Catholic Left, particularly in their capacity as mentors to university student groups. Employing the “See-​Judge-​ Act” method, they guided the Brazilian university students to reflect in a disciplined and sophisticated way on contemporary social ills. In addition, they were instrumental in channeling the work of Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin into Brazilian intellectual circles. In all, they vigorously encouraged the budding activists to rethink what it meant to be a Catholic in the modern world. Their intervention was crucial in helping the students to discover tangible ways to bring their Catholic faith to bear on concrete historical conditions.88

New forms of social analysis: The historical turn The early 1950s witnessed a rising tide of activist energy among thousands of university students and urban professionals who were starting to “awaken” to their homeland’s economic, political, and cultural ills. The development of their politico-​historical awareness was fueled by accelerating rates of urbanization, industrialization, and population growth, all of which combined to raise their anxieties about societal and cultural destabilization. In addition, their intellectual discourse was greatly informed by copious scholarship issued by the newly established Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies (ISEB), a Left-​leaning, government-​funded think tank that promoted the use of social science to analyze the country’s ills. The institute quickly became the country’s focal point for inquiry into issues of nationalism, modernization, and development policy. Its work was hugely influential among educated Brazilians. Many members of the ISEB were deeply interested in modern Catholic thought, especially in the form of Christian Personalism.89 Indeed, Freire’s personal library in Recife was stocked with publications by ISEB-​affiliated thinkers.90 Freire later acknowledged that he first encountered the term “conscientization” at an ISEB discussion session: The word was born during a series of roundtable meetings of professors . . . The word was [uttered] by some one of the professors there . . . it came out of our group reflections . . . As soon as I heard it, I realized the profundity of its

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meaning, since I was fully convinced that education as an exercise in freedom, is an act of knowing, a critical approach to reality. It was inevitable, then, that the word became a part of the terminology I used thereafter to express my pedagogical views, and it easily came to be thought of as something I had created.91

Like many of his peers, Freire saw the rise of the ISEB as a watershed moment in Brazilian intellectual life, as its scholars spearheaded efforts to interpret contemporary events in light of Brazil’s own conditions and experiences rather than through European lenses. Moreover, their embrace of historical and sociological investigation was a sharp departure from previous forms of Brazilian scholarship, which had valorized abstract philosophizing.92 This burgeoning empiricist turn was further stimulated by the work of Father Louis-​Joseph Lebret (1897–​1966), a French Dominican social scientist who visited the country in the early 1950s to pursue research into development policy.93 Emphasizing the need for “objective” and “scientific” analysis of the Brazilian context, Lebret argued that the country’s problems could be addressed only through careful study of its particular historical and material conditions. His work served to deepen “the social concern for the economic and political dependence” of poorer countries.94 Lebret’s writings were eagerly received within Catholic circles.95 For his part, Freire was a pioneer in pursuing a more concrete, experiential, and historically oriented educational paradigm. As early as 1947, he was immersing himself in the culture, language, and living situations of the poor in his role as director of the Department of Education and Culture at the Pernambuco branch of the SESI. Many years later, he would frequently refer to these years as “the most important political-​pedagogical practice of [his] life.”96

The progressive clergy The rise of the Catholic Left in the 1950s was supported by a small but dynamic bloc of progressive clergy who served as a “legitimating ally” for the lay activists vis-​a-​vis the wider hierarchy.97 Without the support and protection of these sympathetic clergy, it is highly unlikely that the Catholic Left would have found the time, political space, and intellectual resources to grow into a cohesive entity. Many of these progressive priests and bishops lived and worked in the countryside, where they gained firsthand knowledge of the wretched material conditions endured by the rural poor. In 1950, a priest named Inocencio

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Engelke spoke out in a way that foreshadowed the sentiments of the nascent progressive faction: Do the shacks in which [the peasants] live merit the name homes? Is the food they eat really nourishment? Can the rags they wear be called clothing? Can their unhealthy vegetative existence, without expectations, vision and ideas, be called living?98

While leftist clergy only comprised 10 to 20 percent of the Brazilian hierarchy,99 their outspokenness was instrumental in introducing progressive political positions (such as support for land reform and workers’ rights) into mainstream Church discourse.100 They also promoted greater autonomy and “co-​responsibility” for the laity, gave much greater emphasis to the Church’s mission for social justice, and promoted a world-​affirming theology and rejected the long-​standing bifurcation between material and spiritual well-​being. Turning away from the Church’s reflexive hostility to secularization and the modern world, they affirmed that establishing a more humane temporal order was a worthy Christian goal in its own right. Mainwaring writes: The idea that the Church should Christianize a fundamentally evil world started to erode. One [reformist] priest criticized the “pastoral work of the clerical monopoly, legacy of a distant past in which the culture and entire physiognomy of the society had a sacred character,” and he insisted that the Church “cannot and should not dominate temporal structures and institutions.”101

This statement repudiated the hierarchy’s prevailing “neo-​Christendom” strategy of accommodating itself with the state. As Brazilian society started to change in unprecedented and unpredictable ways, a growing number of bishops began to question the Church’s reflexive opposition to secularity. It was increasingly apparent that the institution’s vehement antimodernism had become a losing position that would result in the Church’s further loss of prestige and influence, especially among the secular elites and intellectuals.102 The progressive clergy came to accept secularization not just as inevitable, but as a potential force for good. They began to profess that Catholics should stop trying to avoid being morally contaminated by “the world” but ought to participate in its transformation into a more humane and equitable place. Increasingly, they affirmed that human well-​being encompasses not just the spiritual realm but involves the physical dimension as well. A 1956 manifesto issued by bishops from the deeply impoverished Northeastern city of Campina Grande reflected this “integral”

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theology: “Nobody should be surprised to see us involved with problems concerning the temporal order. For man, as a union of body and soul, the relationship between material and spiritual questions is constant.”103 In order to bring about urgent societal transformation, the progressive clergy welcomed collaboration with the federal government to enact social programs like rural unionization, public health projects, and educational programs.104 They were also strikingly open to working with non-​Catholic groups, even Protestants and Marxists, to achieve shared goals like societal development and poverty alleviation.105 By the early 1960s, they were articulating unprecedentedly robust critiques of the extreme inequality of Brazilian society. For instance, they condemned the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority, the dehumanizing conditions of urban slums, and the minimal opportunities for education and social mobility for the vast majority of the population.106 Many had grown disenchanted with the “egoism and profit” of capitalism,107 and they started to express pessimism about the capacity of economic growth to improve the lives of the poor in and of itself. They started to call for aggressive agrarian reforms to raise the living standards of peasants, arguing that “land expropriation not only does not contradict the Church’s social doctrine, it is one of the means of realizing the social function of rural property.”108 At the same time, most of the progressive clergy were not revolutionary in the sense of supporting a radical overthrow of existing political structures. They opted for gradualist measures, supported the reformist and modernizing programs of post-​Vargas administrations, and strongly opposed political violence. They continued to affirm the possibility of harmonious relations between landowners and peasants, declaring their trust in the good intentions and generosity of the elites.109 The institutional base for the progressive clergy was the CNBB, which had been established at the behest of Pope Pius XII in 1952.110 The CNBB rapidly developed into the primary reformist voice within the Brazilian Church.111 The CNBB’s first general secretary was the ubiquitous Hélder Câmara, who assumed this leadership position alongside his duties as national chaplain of ACB. The CNBB’s leadership positions were similarly filled with young and well-​educated clergy who envisioned a socially engaged Church that was oriented toward serving the poor.112 The CNBB encouraged the mobilization of Catholic youth groups in major cities, and it spearheaded the establishment of a number of social programs geared toward adult education and community development. The most important of these initiatives was the MEB, which is described later in this chapter. The MEB, alongside Freire’s concurrent literacy programs,

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constituted the most active and wide-​ranging educational campaign in the early 1960s. By the early 1960s, the Church had grown into the largest and most successful agent in rural unionization.113 These initiatives were particularly vigorous in the Northeastern region, where the Church was competing most directly with rival groups like the Brazilian Communist Party.114 The growing influence of the progressive clergy was amplified by their appointment to mentorship roles within Catholic university groups throughout the country. Clergy were often attached to the same student chapter for years, which provided extended opportunities to deepen their theological and political influence.115 In this capacity, they urged the students to “integrate their Catholic values into comprehensive solutions” for the urgent social problems of the day.116 They also counseled the students to view activism as a way to develop and strengthen their faith.117 These progressive advisers became primary channels for “modern” thinkers like Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard, and they shepherded the radicalization and mobilization of student groups like JUC. Under their tutelage, the budding activists enjoyed the intellectual latitude to explore non-​Catholic social and political theories—​and eventually to reach out to other like-​minded student groups in pursuing shared goals.

Catholic University Youth (JUC) JUC, which constituted one of the major vessels for lay activism in the 1950s and early 1960s, was a “specialized” branch of Catholic Action. Freire, who was immersed in the University of Pernambuco during this period (first as a graduate student and then as a professor), came into frequent contact with the local branch of JUC within this intellectually charged setting. Unsurprisingly, JUC members later formed the majority of volunteers for his emerging conscientizing literacy programs. Given the fruitful convergence of Freire’s pedagogical work and JUC’s expanding activism, examining the student organization’s politico-​theological radicalization illuminates the extent to which Freire’s evolving pedagogical praxis emerged within the context of the broader Catholic Left. JUC was established by the Brazilian bishops in the early 1930s. It was intended to constitute a bastion of Catholic identity and values within the university milieu, which was the breeding ground for Brazil’s elites.118 The hierarchy saw Brazil’s universities as a crucial ideological battleground in the intensifying competition against Protestantism, Marxism, Fascism, secularism,

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anti-​ clericalism, and liberalism.119 Reflecting its conservative institutional roots, JUC’s early agenda was focused on sexuality, family life, and religious education, and its activities were geared toward “religious” events like retreats, pilgrimages, and courses on Catholic doctrine. However, the interest of JUC’s membership in these issues had started to wane by the early post–​Second World War years. Such concerns seemed increasingly irrelevant to the rising generation, especially in light of escalating socioeconomic change. Thousands of middle-​class Catholic university students began to dismiss their parents’ “traditional” religiosity as narrow and outdated. Nevertheless, the vast majority of students never seriously countenanced leaving the Church. Rather, they embarked on a period of intense theological reflection on their religious heritage in the context of a rapidly changing culture. According to Thomas Sanders, they “took very seriously the empirical secularity of their society—​that large segments of the population were estranged from the Church, while others, though nominally fulfilling its obligations, were relatively uninfluenced by its teachings.”120 The possibility of a narrowly “Catholic” or “religious” program of societal development appeared no longer feasible—​or even desirable. They now viewed the modernization of Brazil as a secular goal, one that required contemporary social science tools and that called for pragmatic alliances with secular groups who shared broadly similar objectives.121 At the same time, the budding activists still considered themselves faithful Catholics, and their worldview remained thoroughly shaped by their religious background. Accordingly, they reached back into the resources of their tradition to inform their efforts to develop an “incarnational faith” that was equal to the myriad challenges of the modern world. In this vein, JUC’s members enthusiastically took up the “See-​ Judge-​Act” training method from JOC. Guided by their clergy mentors, many of whom had acquired firsthand experience with this method from their own formative years in Western Europe, the student activists learned how to connect prayer, religious study, and theological reflection with social analysis and practical action, all within the context of their daily lives. By the mid-​1950s, thousands of JUC students throughout Brazil were starting to confront issues like illiteracy, poverty, and inhumane working conditions.122 Like Freire, many were devoting their energies to social service and educational activities for the poor. The JUC branch in Freire’s hometown, Recife, was especially active, with students volunteering in the city’s slums by 1958.123 Mirroring Freire’s transformative experiences of “rediscovering the people” at SESI, the students’ first-​ hand exposure to conditions in the city’s favelas fueled their activism. Many of the privileged young activists found these visits to “the people” to be horrifying

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experiences, having grown up with minimal contact with the lived realities of poverty.124 Such affective experiences were crucial to the radicalization of thousands of Catholic elites over the next few years. Given the extensive and fluid interactions within the Catholic activist milieu, the ethos and methodology of JUC and Freire’s literacy program developed along similar lines. Just as Freire’s campaigns were grounded on painstaking attention to the material, linguistic, cultural, and experiential dimensions of the adult learners’ daily lives, the first step of JUC’s “See-​Judge-​Act” praxis was composed of acute observation of social and economic conditions.125 The shared starting point for their activism was meticulous observation of “concrete reality,” not abstract philosophizing. Moreover, Freire and the Catholic student activists emphasized the indispensability of problem-​solving action, performed in the spirit of loving solidarity with the poor and the powerless. Finally, both Freire’s and JUC’s praxes were aimed at transforming the “whole person.” Freire aimed to foster the illiterate learner’s existential and political “awakening” to his or her intrinsic capacity for creativity, culture-​making, and historical agency. At the same time, the Freirean literacy coordinators themselves were transformed—​ and more deeply “humanized”—​through their loving, dialogic encounters with the poor.126 Likewise, JUC’s “See-​Judge-​Act” method was a “daily discipline” and an “integrated way of life” that shaped the trainee’s intellect, character, will, and faith.127 This approach to the formation of Christian activists cultivated a renewed consciousness that led to the emergence of “student militants [who were] radically committed to social transformation.”128 The year 1959 was a watershed for JUC. The overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista in 1959, which sent shock waves throughout the region, electrified the group’s members. The Brazilian elites were transfixed by the events unfolding in Havana, with the leading newspaper in Rio de Janeiro often publishing multiple articles on the same day.129 The Cuban Revolution created a powerful sense of historical opening, especially regarding the possibility of “charting a non-​capitalist course of development and agrarian reform.”130 This atmosphere of revolutionary ferment fed into the mobilization of the Catholic student movement in Brazil and throughout Latin America.131 Later that same year, JUC reached a turning point in its existence by explicitly affirming that political activity was a necessary part of its evangelizing mission.132 The emergence of this unprecedented theological position was encouraged by JUC’s clergy mentors, many of whom were introducing the students to innovative French Catholic theologies. The work of Emmanuel Mounier was especially popular among the students, given its resonance with the JUC’s increasingly radical tenor. Sanders

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sums up the influence of Mounier’s thought on many Brazilian intellectuals and activists: While in time Brazilian Catholics would work out their own philosophy, certain themes of Mounier persisted and intensified as time went by: the view of capitalist institutions as “the principal agents of oppression of the human person”; the promotion of the person as the end of ethical activity; the vision of a personalist, communitarian civilization as a historical possibility; the conviction that present history is a revolutionary process leading ultimately to the ascendance of the proletariat; and lastly, openness to Communism, and a realization that anti-​ Communism is frequently a vehicle used to defend conservative interests.133

A 1960 JUC manifesto built on this critique by articulating the strongest denunciation of capitalism yet issued by a Catholic group in Brazil. In this document, the students called on the nation to break free from capitalist structures and international monetary arrangements. They also denounced the alienated nature of social relations within capitalist societies. Using language drawn explicitly from Mounier’s work, they set forth a vision of a transformed Brazilian economy that was an “economy of persons and for persons, using means which are appropriate to persons.”134 In this new society, labor would be given primacy over capital, and private property would be replaced by an economic system of “personalization” that gives “due regard to the higher requirements of the common good.”135 The students also called for workers to become comanagers of their industries, and they demanded that the poor should receive a fair share of the fruits of their work.136 Another galvanizing event for the Catholic student movement was the arrival of a fiery French Dominican friar and sociologist named Thomas Cardonnel. Cardonnel thundered against the “hypocrisy” of the institutional Church in sustaining the injustices of the status quo.137 He also challenged the hierarchy’s reflexive anti-​Communism: “I think that the first and most urgent problem is the fight against misery . . . To contest the legitimacy of this fight for men . . . and in the name of a Communist danger, seems to be the worst of impostures.”138 Furthermore, Cardonnel issued a blistering condemnation of the heretofore sacrosanct concept of class harmony: We can never insist enough on the need to denounce natural harmony, class collaboration. God is not so dishonest, so false as a certain kind of social peace, consisting in the acquiescence of all in an unnatural injustice. Violence is not only a fact of revolution. It also characterizes the maintenance of a false order.139

Such remarks went far beyond what the vast majority of the hierarchy (including most of the progressives) were willing to countenance. Cardonnel was harshly

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censured and sent out of the country by his own Dominican order. Nevertheless, his statements electrified the youth movement. Much like Mounier, he helped to solidify the student activists’ awareness of the concept of structural and economic violence. For many, Cardonnel was an exemplar of how to apply their faith to modern social ills.140 In addition, his work fed into the increasing conviction of many students that partisan struggle was the only feasible way to reshape Brazilian society. Describing the impact of the notorious “Cardonnel Incident,” one student stated: “[He] inaugurates in Brazil a new stage in Christian social-​ philosophical thought: this stage in which the Christian encounters history and adheres to its factuality through incarnation itself.”141 By 1961, significant numbers of Catholic activists had started to shift their theory of political change from political “evolutionism” to revolutionary socialism. Although JUC and its related student groups had been formed by the hierarchy nearly three decades earlier with the intent of “re-​Christianizing” the university milieu, many of its members had become persuaded that transforming the wretched living conditions of the poor was far more urgent than the need for religious instruction. Having gained first-​hand experiences of serving the poor, the activists now believed that subhuman material circumstances made it impossible to promote Catholic influence or foster catechesis. In other words, “men could not be Christian unless they were [first] wholly human.”142 Put differently, “humanizing” must precede “evangelizing.”143 Only after material improvements had been secured could spiritual education become feasible. Accordingly, many Catholic activists began to work toward the mobilization of a united front of workers and peasants.144 Others explored the possibility of forming previously unthinkable alliances with former rivals like the university branch of the Brazilian Communist Party.145 Increasingly influenced by their interactions with non-​Catholic organizations, many students began to affirm the necessity for “some form of Marxism as a theoretical framework for social and economic analysis and practical political engagement.”146 By the early 1960s, some of the most radicalized Catholic activists were even committing themselves to armed struggle. (It bears repeating that Freire did not belong to the most radical part of the Catholic Left before April 1964. Despite his misgivings about capitalism, he remained generally supportive of the national government’s liberal-​reformist measures.) Given the sharp radicalization of much of JUC by 1961, the relationship between the student group and the hierarchy grew troubled. Although JUC maintained some outspoken supporters among the clergy, these sympathizers were far outnumbered by its critics. Moreover, even the bulk of the progressive

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clergy was becoming distressed at JUC’s assimilation of Marxist dialectics and its burgeoning collaboration with the Brazilian Communist Party. Realizing their loss of control over the student movement, the hierarchy barred Catholic students from making further radical declarations or engaging in “undesirable political activities.”147 The bishops’ spokesperson declared: “Christians cannot consider socialism a solution to socioeconomic and political problems, much less the solution. In discussing the Brazilian revolution, JUC cannot consider a doctrine that espouses violence as valid and acceptable.”148 Yet the student activists had come too far together to let themselves be reined in. They were “proud of what they had founded and committed to hold on to it.”149 Due to this impasse, many of JUC’s most committed members migrated to alternative emerging Catholic-​inflected groups. Chief among these new activist destinations were Popular Action (AP), the Church-​sponsored MEB, and Freire’s adult education program.

Popular Action (AP) AP was launched in June 1962. AP’s membership, mindful of their recent experiences in JUC, rejected any formal ties with the hierarchy from the outset. Nevertheless, “neither the bishops’ [hostile] attitude toward AP nor its lack of a formal connection to the institutional Church [could] obscure its Catholic origin and imprint.”150 Its ranks included JUC’s most dedicated members, and it continued to enjoy the support of outspoken progressive priests. In other words, despite the organization’s efforts to present a non-​denominational public identity, it was widely and accurately regarded as a “para-​Christian organization.”151 AP rapidly emerged as the most radical organization in the country.152 Its members saw their vocation as a “policy of revolutionary preparation.”153 While Freire’s politics during the pre-​coup period were far less revolutionary than those of AP, he later adopted many similar positions during his exile. This radicalization is most visible in his works from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, most notably Pedagogy of the Oppressed and his theological essays from his tenure at the WCC (see Chapter 4). AP’s particular synthesis of Catholicism and Marxism can thus be viewed as a forerunner of Freire’s later thought. Moreover, AP members played leading roles in the Popular Culture Movement, the MEB, and Freire’s literacy programs.154 As such, exploring key elements of AP’s platform illuminates the intellectual, political, and theological cross-​fertilization within the Catholic intellectual and activist milieu that Freire inhabited before the April 1964 coup.

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Although AP possessed only around three thousand members at its peak, its activists ranked among the most energetic cohorts in the country.155 They exercised leadership roles in union work, popular education, and peasant mobilization. They were also key participants in organizing two massive strikes in Pernambuco in 1963 that drew over three hundred thousand farm workers. While the membership of AP was more diverse than that of JUC,156 it was still largely composed of young, highly educated, middle-​class students and recent graduates. In this regard, the demographic constitution of AP was virtually identical to that of Freire’s escalating Northeastern literacy campaign. (Tellingly, AP was less successful in establishing itself in Recife than in other parts of the country. This may have been due to the existence of other forms of leftist activity, including Freire’s program.)157 AP’s ideology was an explosive synthesis of Christian Personalism, Marxism, and religious existentialism. The group released a 1962 “Base Document” that articulated its central philosophical tenets: Our single commitment . . . is with man. With the Brazilian man, above all. He who is born with the shadow of premature death extending itself over his cradle. Who lives with the specter of hunger inhabiting his miserable roof, accompanying inseparably his uncertain steps, the steps of one who journeys through life without hope and without aim. Who grows up brutalized and illiterate, exiled from the benefits of culture, from creative possibilities, from the authentically human ways of real liberty. Who dies an animal and anonymous death, stretched out on the hard floor of his misery.158

In short, AP proclaimed the defense and promotion of human well-​being as its central concern. Full human development could take place only after capitalism was abolished, since this economic system would only lead to relationships of domination and alienation between nations and between persons.159 Dismantling the market economy and establishing a socialist-​humanist society would constitute “a victory for humanity as [the] subject of the socialization process.”160 (Derived from the work of Teilhard de Chardin, “socialization” is the intrinsic human drive to form ever-​larger and more complex groups in order to achieve commonly held goals.)161 The Base Document also reflected the pervasive influence of Mounier’s thought within AP: “It is the movement of recognition, of personalization, and of solidarity which orients History . . . and provides the ultimate standard for historically valid options, and the very measure of the human.”162 AP affirmed the human person as “a free, transcendent being” who is the “norm and end of history.”163 Social structures should be remade to suit

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human needs, not vice versa. Furthermore, the group shared Mounier’s view of capitalism as the primary obstacle to the establishment of a “society of persons,” in which relationships are grounded on cooperation, respect, freedom, and “openness to the other.”164 Above all, AP was deeply optimistic about the human capacity to shape history, which is arguably the fundamental assumption of Freire’s educational praxis. Reflecting AP’s commitment to authenticity and human freedom, its activists opposed any form of social action that curtailed the freedom of choice of the people or imposed any external agenda on them.165 Mirroring Freire’s rejection of manipulative and paternalistic educational practices, AP was hostile toward demagogic leaders and political parties. Like Freire, they mistrusted Brazil’s two main Marxist-​Communist groups because of their perceived paternalism and opportunism. They also dismissed President Goulart as a traditional politician who exploited the poor for his own electoral interests. (In contrast, Freire was willing to serve in President Goulart’s administration as the coordinator of the planned national literacy campaign.) However, AP’s hostility to “manipulative” ways of interacting with the masses did not mean its activists were completely averse to engaging in directive political and educational practices they considered necessary. They believed that the historical consciousness and self-​perception of the Brazilian poor had become so stultified by their brutal living conditions that the purposeful intervention of educator-​activists was required in order to initiate the process of “awakening” to their inalienable self-​worth and political agency.166 Nevertheless, such interventions must be grounded in democratic methods and an attitude of respect. AP dedicated itself to safeguarding “the freedom of the development of people, the possibility of their expression, and the expression of their will.”167 In short, AP attempted to reconcile their ideological commitment to non-​manipulation with the perceived inevitability of political directiveness, with an overarching mission of cultivating a revolutionary consciousness among the poor in anticipation of the coming “Brazilian Revolution.”168 One of the most controversial aspects of AP’s philosophy was its assimilation of Marxist dialectical analysis. This was an enormous departure from mainstream Catholic thought, which professed a harmonious view of society. AP’s members posited a stark dichotomy between the “dominant” and “dominated” poles of Brazilian society. As the Base Document declared, “The dialectic of History presents a hard countenance of strife: it is the multiplication of forms of domination on all planes of human reality.”169 AP activists affirmed the harsh reality of class-​based exploitation, injustice, and conflict. Accordingly, they opted

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to fight alongside the vast majority of Brazilians who were disenfranchised and downtrodden. In the end, AP’s ideological radicalism and energetic activism made it a primary target for the military. The group was brutally suppressed during the April 1964 coup, with many of its activists imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. Indeed, it suffered more punitive treatment at the hands of the junta than did any other leftist organization.

The Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB) From the early 1960s onward, the Catholic Left channeled much of its activist energies into various “consciousness-​raising” cultural and educational projects for the poor. The two most prominent of these campaigns were Freire’s literacy program and the Church-​based MEB. The demographic composition of MEB’s activists was similar to that of the wider Catholic Left with over 80 percent of the members coming from middle-​and upper-​class backgrounds.170 The MEB was established in 1961 through an arrangement between the CNBB and the reformist Quadros administration. Funded primarily by the federal government, it established a number of “radio schools” that broadcasted educational and religious programs. By 1963, twenty-​five transmitters reached 180,000 students in over 7,000 schools.171 The radio schools, which were focused on the Amazon region and the Northeast (the poorest areas of the country), provided literacy instruction to groups of ten to fifteen peasant learners, most of whom were between the ages of fifteen and thirty. The classes would gather in the evening to listen to their lessons.172 Each literacy group was facilitated by a supervisor from the local community. The supervisor was responsible for imparting the lesson instructions to the learners, checking their exercises, encouraging them to write on the blackboard, and leading discussions.173 While literacy training was the primary goal, the MEB also sought to cultivate self-​respect and self-​efficacy among the poor, with its curriculum featuring lessons on subjects like nutrition, sanitation, family and communal relationships, community organizing, and basic democratic principles and practices.174 The MEB’s pedagogy and Freire’s literacy campaign had a great deal of philosophical and methodological overlap, which reflected the vigorous interchanges between the various fronts within the Catholic Left. Indeed, many university students and recent graduates—​almost all of whom were affiliated in some way with JUC or AP—​circulated between the MEB and Freire’s program. Many of

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these seasoned activists found it easy to apply the “See-​Judge-​Act” practices from JUC to other organizations.175 Moreover, MEB workers shared Freire’s core belief that even illiterate peasants have the intrinsic capacity to “awaken” to the structural roots of their problems and develop their own solutions.176 Moreover, both MEB’s educators and Freire’s literacy coordinators insisted on “total respect” for all learners. As such, their pedagogies incorporated an unprecedented amount of dialogue and discussion. At the MEB’s 1962 national conference, the delegates affirmed their mission of stimulating the historical awareness of the poor and helping them to improve their own living conditions.177 Similarly, the MEB’s annual report for that same year included the quintessentially Freirean statement that basic education must “take at its point of departure the needs and longings of the [poor] for liberation.”178 It also declared that education must help the learner “become conscious of what he is, what others are, what all can be.”179 In a similarly Freirean vein, the statement affirmed that history is not static and determined. Rather, it is “man developing himself, to the extent that he continually renews himself and continually transforms the world.”180 In other words, one of the MEB’s driving principles was that education should be geared toward helping the poor to realize their capacity to shape their own historical destiny. A further convergence between MEB’s and Freire’s programs was a shared orientation toward pedagogy as an “integral” phenomenon that engaged with learners as “total human beings.”181 This novel approach toward education reflected the emergence of a new definition of “evangelization,” one in which followers of Jesus Christ are called to address the vital needs of the body as well as the soul.182 In this light, the MEB’s campaign dealt with subjects such as hygiene, the cultivation of self-​respect, family and communal relationships, basic democratic principles and practices, and community organizing.183 Yet despite these extensive intersections between the MEB’s and Freire’s programs, there were significant departures as well. Chief among these was the divergence in how each program determined its curriculum. The MEB’s educational materials were prepared by a centralized staff of teachers, while Freire’s campaign drew much of its substance from intensive research into the cultural, linguistic, and material universe of the local community. For instance, one of the MEB’s most controversial educational tools was a textbook named To Live Means to Struggle, which was published in January 1964. Put together by MEB representatives from throughout the country, the primer consisted of thirty lessons illustrated with photographic depictions of familiar scenes from rural life. In this regard, To Live Means to Struggle was similar to Freire’s project in its intent to stimulate reflection and discussion about matters of

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genuine interest and concern to the adult learners. However, MEB’s general use of centrally-produced, preprepared teaching materials was a major departure from Freire’s localized and situated method. Moreover, while the MEB’s textbook generally declined to prescribe concrete courses of action, it often presented politically loaded descriptions of the living conditions of the poor. One lesson declared: “Some men have more than enough, while many have nothing at all. Some make too much. Many work and their work is exploited by others. A lot of things are wrong in Brazil. A complete change is needed in Brazil.”184 Another lesson asserted: “The people of Brazil are an exploited people. Exploited not only by Brazilians. There are many foreigners exploiting us. How can we free Brazil from this situation?”185 In contrast, Freire’s literacy coordinators were instructed to refrain from initiating discussion with leading questions. Rather, they invited the learners to begin with their own verbal expressions, from which the subsequent discussion would develop. Similarly, Freirean educators proposed explicitly political issues, such as “the confrontation of wealth and poverty,” only insofar as these subject matters fit organically into the “generative themes” that had been drawn from the learners’ day-​to-​ day experiences. Indeed, Freire expressed his distaste for primers because they “set up a certain grouping of graphic signs as a gift and cast the illiterate in the role of the object rather than the Subject of his learning.”186 Thus, the MEB’s method might be described as more declarative and polemical, while Freire’s was more dialogic and problem-​posing. Nevertheless, these differences should not be overstated. While Freire’s culture circles were avowedly non-​manipulative and non-​paternalistic, certain politically charged topics surfaced consistently in the discussions. In Freire’s own account, frequent themes included “nationalism, profit remittances abroad, the political evolution of Brazil, development, illiteracy, the vote for illiterates, democracy.”187 The clearly ideological tenor of these issues, as well as the regularity with which these topics kept on surfacing, suggests that Freire’s literacy coordinators were steering the conversation more aggressively than he acknowledged. This pedagogical tension can be partly attributed to the Catholic elites’ general lack of experience with antiauthoritarian and nondirective pedagogy. In addition, the educational activists were confronted with the painful dilemma of how to reconcile their sincere commitment to nondirectiveness with their overarching goal of mobilizing mass movements at a time of cultural and political upheaval. As rural unions formed with lightning speed between 1961 and early 1964, the Catholic Left found itself facing intense competition from secular groups for the same potential constituencies. These

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rival organizations, most notably the Communist and Marxist parties, had no scruples against using “manipulative” tactics to win popular support. Moreover, the process of conscientizing pedagogy is painstakingly slow and difficult even in the most stable and capacious conditions. Given the perceived enormity of these stakes, many Catholic activists felt acutely pressured to choose between maintaining their “populist purity” and risk losing their already tenuous “grip on a social and political tool [i.e., the rural unions] which they regarded as being of the greatest importance.”188 In other words, they had come up against real-​life circumstances that “had to lead either to the abandonment of some of their principles . . . or of their hope of maintaining an effective grip on the course of events.”189 In the heated political landscape, the Catholic activists’ commitment toward social change ultimately outweighed their devotion toward radical non-​directiveness.190 For its part, the MEB explicitly chose “the direction of the ‘opening of a revolutionary perspective.’ ”191 The substance and methodology of To Live Means to Struggle manifested the MEB’s conflicted perspective in 1963 and early 1964. It reflected the movement’s attempt to reconcile the tension “between the objective of contributing to a very specific social transformation . . . and the populist prescriptions of non-​directiveness.”192 By early 1964, the MEB had become one of the most active and radical groups within the Catholic Left. In multiple public statements, the MEB affirmed its commitment to education as a form of revolutionary preparation and declared its intention to rid itself of any traces of “bourgeoisie mentality.”193 In the Northeast, the MEB had even grown more closely aligned with Communist groups rather than with Church-​supported peasant leagues.194 These positions triggered intense criticism from the hierarchy and the loss of funding from the state. Had the April 1964 coup not taken place, the MEB would likely have followed the same trajectory as JUC vis-​a-​vis the institutional Church. As it was, the MEB largely weathered the April 1964 coup, mostly because the hierarchy lobbied strenuously on the group’s behalf.195 Nevertheless, the MEB’s heyday as a “militant” entity had ended. In order to navigate the newly perilous political environment, the Church forced the group to rescind its most radical positions and dramatically scale down its operations.

Reformist currents from Rome Because of the centralized nature of Roman Catholicism, theological currents emanating from the Vatican inevitably exert a degree of influence on the

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national churches. Mainwaring emphasizes how the Vatican’s positions play a considerable role in determining which interpretations of the Church’s mission become hegemonic, thus shaping pastoral practices throughout the Catholic world.196 This is precisely what unfolded in Brazil throughout the first half of the twentieth century, which witnessed the continuous influx of reformist currents from the Holy See. These “modernizing” ideas and practices were frequently transmitted by highly educated and deeply committed European-​born missionaries, including those who mentored the Brazilian university student movement. Furthermore, a powerful institutional tool at the Vatican’s disposal was the creation of administrative bodies (such as the CNBB) and the concomitant appointment of favored clergy to key leadership positions (especially the arch-​ progressive Hélder Câmara). Such measures enabled the Holy See to directly influence the tenor of the Brazilian Church. The Vatican also nurtured the emergence of the Brazilian Catholic Left through its teaching authority, particularly in the form of encyclicals, which are formal papal “letters” on specific issues of significance and directed toward bishops throughout the world. These authoritative papal statements can have a substantial role in shaping the agenda of the national churches. As Bruneau writes, papal encyclicals “undoubtedly indicate a [papal] preference and can help in creating an atmosphere in favor of general policies.”197 One of the most momentous of these encyclicals was Rerum Novarum, which was promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. This document marked the first time the papacy engaged directly with modern economic structures and practices. It constituted the Vatican’s most explicit response thus far to the exploitation of European factory workers and the radical disruption of traditional ways of life at the hands of rapid industrialization. In addition, Rerum Novarum represented the church’s most vigorous answer to the unfolding de-Christianization of the working classes and the rise of socialism, Communism, and anti-clericalism. In the document, Pope Leo XIII stressed the need to ameliorate “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.”198 While he reaffirmed the right to private property, he also supported the right to unionize and condemned unrestricted capitalism. He insisted that employers were prohibited from offering unjust wages because this negates the social responsibilities that should lie at the heart of all economic activity.199 Rerum Novarum is widely acknowledged as the foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching. Meghan J. Clark describes this body of thought: Rooted in the long-​standing tradition of Christian moral reflection, Catholic social teaching adapted and developed the church’s social doctrine through

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direct and systematic engagement with new social problems through a series of papal encyclicals, conciliar and synodical documents, and episcopal statements . . . Catholic social teaching is the church’s explicit and official grappling with contemporary social problems . . . [It] is in the broad tradition of theologians, intellectuals, activists, social movements, and others responding to the signs of the times.200

Catholic social teaching, with its concern for the material welfare of the poor, helped to nourish the emergence of the Brazilian activist movement. The early fruits of its influence could be discerned in the words of an outspoken priest named Julio Maria, who declared in 1899: As in the rest of the world, there are only two forces in Brazil: the Church and the masses . . . The clergy cannot, nor should they, shut themselves in sanctuaries and contemplate the people from a distance . . . Their mission should be to show the weak, the poor, the proletarians, that they are the preferred people of the Divine Master.201

Padre Maria called on his fellow priests to stop ministering exclusively to the elites and to develop closer pastoral relationships with the indigent, who made up the vast majority of the Church’s flock.202 He also exhorted them to become “social reformers” rather than ministering only to the “aristocracy of the devout.”203 The impact of Rerum Novarum is visible in all these statements. While many of the socioeconomic conditions addressed in Rerum Novarum were not yet relevant to the Brazilian context,204 the fact that a prominent priest had been strongly influenced by the encyclical was a harbinger for the future. Moreover, the positions articulated within Rerum Novarum (and subsequent social encyclicals) became ever more appropriate to the Brazilian landscape as it industrialized and urbanized over succeeding decades. The Vatican’s theological impact on the Catholic Left reached its apex during the epochal papacy of John XXIII (1958–​1963), which coincided almost exactly with the peak years of lay activism in Brazil. John XXIII was widely expected to be a caretaker pontiff when he was elected at the age of 76 after the nearly twenty-​year reign of Pius XII. Instead, the new pontiff initiated the process of transforming the Church toward unprecedented openness to modernity, religious pluralism, ideological diversity, and constructive engagement with non-​ Catholics in the pursuit of shared secular goals. In an early sign of the changes to come, he wrote a pastoral letter to the Latin American bishops shortly after his elevation in which he called for direct engagement with the region’s socioeconomic ills.205 John XXIII promulgated eight encyclicals during his relatively brief

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papacy, two of which were especially influential on Brazil’s Catholic intellectuals and activists: Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963). Above all, these encyclicals strongly affirmed and legitimized the Church’s reorientation toward social concern and concrete action. In Mater et Magistra (“Mother and Teacher”), John XXIII declared that “the most pressing question of our day concerns the relationship between economically advanced commonwealths and those that are in the process of development.”206 He called on richer nations to intervene more forcefully to achieve equitable distribution of resources and to reduce the “class difference arising from disparity of wealth.”207 In this vein, he denounced the false generosity of international aid measures that were intended to foster dependency among poor nations.208 Notably, the pope also proclaimed the Church’s strong concern for the total well-​being of persons209—​a position that was indebted at least in part to the influence of “integral” theologians like Jacques Maritain (see the next chapter). John XXIII denounced all ideologies and systems that “neither encompass man, whole and entire, nor . . . affect his inner being.”210 He affirmed the theological-​ anthropological concept of “socialization,” which was described as “the expression of a natural, well-​nigh irresistible urge in man to combine with his fellows for the attainment of aims and objectives which are beyond the means or the capabilities of single individuals.”211 The pope approvingly noted how this deeply human drive to create collaborative relationships “has given rise to the formation everywhere of both national and international movements, associations and institutions with economic, cultural, social, sporting, recreational, professional, and political ends.”212 This was an especially important statement for Brazil’s Catholic activists, who interpreted it as papal legitimization for their collective social action. Similarly, the dialogic dimension of Freire’s pedagogy reflected his conviction that human development is always a social and relational process. In all, the Catholic Left interpreted Mater et Magistra as powerful legitimation for their activism from the very highest levels of the Vatican. Intentionally or not, John XXIII’s encyclical, which arrived amid rising tensions between the student activists and the Brazilian hierarchy, reinvigorated the Catholic movement at a pivotal moment in its mobilization.213 John XXIII’s final encyclical Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”) had an even greater impact on the Catholic Left. The document was released in early 1963, just two months before the pope succumbed to stomach cancer. Written during an especially volatile stretch of the Cold War, Pacem in Terris constituted the pope’s most urgent call for nuclear disarmament and international harmony. The pope called for all social relationships, from the interpersonal

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to the international, to be grounded on the “common good.” Echoing Mater et Magistra, he urged wealthy nations to “deal justly, fairly, and respectfully” with those that are less wealthy.214 Of particular significance to Brazil’s Catholic activists was the encyclical’s unprecedented ecumenism. While previous encyclicals had been addressed only to Catholics, Mater et Magistra opened with a greeting to “all Men of Good Will.” The pope sanctioned the collaboration of Catholics with “men who may not be Christians but who nevertheless are reasonable men, and men of natural moral integrity” in the shared hope of “achieving objects which are good in themselves, or conducive to good.”215 This unprecedented opening was extended to potential allies who professed views that had been historically anathema to Catholicism, such as Marxists and atheists.216 While Brazilian Catholic university students had been exploring such alliances for years, such actions had often been criticized by traditionalist Catholics. As such, receiving the papal imprimatur for their initiatives was a powerful affirmation of their work. Pacem et Terris also had a galvanizing effect on the CNBB, which responded by releasing an accompanying pastoral declaration that condemned the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an elite minority, and that lamented the lack of fundamental human rights of the overwhelming majority of Brazilians.217 Echoing key passages in Pacem in Terris, the bishops criticized the “heavy burden of a capitalist tradition” that had resulted in the immoral gulf in resources and social opportunities between the wealthy and the poor.218 In addition, the CNBB affirmed the urgency of land reform, called for wide-​ranging changes in education and taxation, and advocated profit-​sharing between employers and workers.219 In short, the CNBB’s 1963 statement was “the most advanced and critical social statement ever issued by the Church in Brazil,” and it placed the Church “clearly on the side of serious socio-​political change.”220 Importantly, Pacem et Terris was probably instrumental in pushing the more conservative CNBB bishops to place their signatures on such a conspicuously progressive pastoral statement.221 Surpassing even the influence of Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris on the Brazilian Church was the Second Vatican Council (1962–​1965). “Vatican II” is widely recognized as the most significant event in Roman Catholicism since the Counter-​Reformation. The impetus for the council can be traced back to 1959, when John XXIII made the surprise announcement that he was convening an ecumenical gathering of the global Church—​the first such assembly in nearly a century—​as the cornerstone of his efforts to “throw open the windows of the Church” to the modern world.222 Held in four annual sessions, Vatican II represented the Church’s most ambitious response to the cultural, political,

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and technological challenges of the twentieth century.223 It also signified the full flowering of the modernizing theologies and pastoral practices that had been circulating and gathering momentum throughout the Catholic world, including in Brazil. Vatican II drew bishops and representatives from all over the world, including a small but outspoken Latin American contingent. Following the pope’s lead, the “Council Fathers” acknowledged that a sweeping “aggiornamento” (“bringing up to date”) was imperative for the Church to retain its ability to evangelize the modern world.224 The Second Vatican Council foregrounded the Church’s social concern, highlighted the special role and contributions of the laity, encouraged more ecumenical dialogue, made the liturgy more accessible and culturally contextualized, and “significantly revised patterns of authority in the Church and the relationship between faith and the world.”225 The council re-​envisioned the Church not as “a hierarchical judicial institution that speaks and acts in a spirit of triumphalism,” but rather as the earthly manifestation of the “people of God.”226 Crucially, it spurred the Church toward directly confronting contemporary socioeconomic problems, with the council Fathers officially rejecting the theological dichotomy between heavenly and earthly existence. Instead, they affirmed God’s concern for human well-​being at all levels, including the material. In Brazil, the newspapers were dominated by speculation about the potentially groundbreaking changes that were afoot in Rome.227 Catholic activists and intellectuals were acutely aware of these developments. Archbishop José Maria Pires described the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Latin America: There were always theologians, pastors, and lay people in the Church who assumed a dialectical position in favor of the oppressed, but it was only with Vatican II that this position became official and the attitudes were systematized . . . What made me opt for the poor was Vatican II.228

Progressive Catholics regarded Vatican II as a decisive ratification of their political “awakening” and their collective option to fight for societal transformation as an expression of their faith. In short, the continuous influx of modernizing currents from Rome took place at the same time as internal Brazilian political and sociological developments were reaching a fever pitch. These factors combined to create an atmosphere of revolutionary ferment from the early 1960s onward. As Bruneau writes, the mobilization of the Catholic Left did not develop in the abstract but rather in a direct and dynamic relationship with the environment; with the Universal Church, particularly as evidenced

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in . . . Mater et Magistra of 1961 and Pacem in Terris of 1963, with the Brazilian government during its period of development and radicalization . . . and in contact with the confusion and effervescence throughout Brazilian society in this period.229

By early 1964, thousands of Catholic elites had long ceased to view their religious heritage as an alienating and authoritarian bulwark against social transformation. They had come to view it as the spiritual bedrock and guiding light of their commitment to join the struggle to create a more just, democratic, and humane society. They found support and encouragement for their sense of mission in Catholic social teaching, the encyclicals of John XXIII, and the Second Vatican Council.

Conclusion The Brazilian Catholic Left might be considered a failed movement if judged solely by the yardstick of conventional political success. From this perspective, they were naive political amateurs who had vastly underestimated the degree of opposition their activism would stir up.230 On a related note, their theologically grounded vision of a new “civilization of persons” remained at the level of general principles rather than a feasible, concrete blueprint to achieve change. Finally, while the activists frequently declared their radical solidarity with the masses, they practiced a highly intellectualized and Europeanized form of Catholicism that was “profoundly different from and often antagonistic to popular religiosity.”231 Such elitism is discernible in Freire’s educational philosophy, which considered the worldview of the rural poor as a form of “magical consciousness” characterized by superstition, fatalism, and irrationality.231 By the same token, many Catholic activists were driven by their sense of political urgency to employ paternalistic methods to “awaken” the poor. As mentioned above, this tendency was especially pronounced in the MEB, although its signs were also present in Freire’s method. Yet these shortcomings should not overshadow the long-​term significance of Brazil’s Catholic Left. The movement demonstrated the ability of a small but highly committed and well-​organized cohort of activist elites to influence the public discourse.233 Indeed, the extreme brutality of the military government’s crackdown reflects the extent to which the Catholic activists had grown into a thorn in the side of the political and economic establishment. Moreover, by sharing their experiences of working with the poor with receptive members of the

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clergy, the student activists contributed toward the ideological transformation of a seemingly intractable and unchangeable institution.234 They “converted” many priests, nuns, and bishops toward new understandings of the Church’s earthly mission and ultimate objectives.235 This bottom-​up transmission of knowledge was a radical departure from the traditionally top-​down nature of the institution, wherein laypersons (even those from elite backgrounds) where seen as having little of value to teach their religious “superiors.”236 One of the Catholic Left’s most consequential theological legacies was elaborating a new interpretation of Christian praxis, one that linked faith with social responsibility, the sacred with the secular, Christianity with humanistic socialism, biblical tradition with contemporary social science, and “eternal truths” with concrete historical conditions. While they did not “reduce” faith to social action, they forcefully affirmed that following Christ demands concrete—​and even radical—​action to create a more just and humane world, one in which all persons are guaranteed basic respect and decent living conditions.237 They viewed the challenge of the Gospels as historical rather than otherworldly, public rather than private, communitarian rather than individualistic, optimistic rather than defensive, and future-​oriented rather than nostalgic. Moreover, while their new interpretation of the Church’s temporal mission was stimulated and nourished by modernizing European theologies, they deliberately set out to adapt these concepts to their own historical and material conditions. In this regard, these lay elites were pioneers in interpreting the Latin American reality to the wider Church.238 As Chapter 4 demonstrates, their work helped set the stage for the rise of the base ecclesial movement, the Medellin conference, and liberation theology (see Chapter 4). Freire came of age as a thinker and activist within this progressive milieu. He was an early adherent of modernizing French Catholic theologies, an active member of ACB and the Centro Dom Vital, and a pioneering practitioner of grassroots activism. He was also deeply immersed in the university environment, first as a graduate student, then as a professor of education. By the late 1950s, he was directly responsible for recruiting hundreds of Catholic university student activists to lead his literacy campaigns. When he was accused of subversive tendencies for his Northeastern educational work, he declared his antipathy toward communism and professed his desire to address Brazil’s social ills through “Christian methods.”239 In short, Freire’s educational praxis did not emerge from an intellectual vacuum. It arose from the heart of his generation’s struggle to redefine what it means to be a Catholic in the modern world. As such, the next chapter explores the theological contributions of three contemporary

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French religious thinkers who profoundly influenced Freire and his activist peers: Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Notes 1 Thomas G. Sanders, “Catholicism and Development: The Catholic Left in Brazil,” in Churches and States: The Religious Institution and Modernization, ed. Kalman H. Silvert (New York: American Universities and Field Staff, 1967), 93. 2 Joseph Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America: Cuba and Brazil, 1920s to 1960s” (Unpublished diss., Florida International University, 2013), 210. 3 Paiva, “Catholic Populism and Education in Brazil,” 158–​9. 4 Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916–​1985 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 62. 5 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 94. 6 Paiva, “Catholic Populism and Education in Brazil,” 161. 7 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 51. 8 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 52. 9 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 23. 10 Ibid., 33. 11 Ibid., 34. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 36. 15 Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987), 13. 16 The Brazilian Church’s elitism was far from unique. The theological legitimization of the sociopolitical status quo has been one of the enduring themes in Christian teaching and practice since Emperor Constantine (306–​337 CE) declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. 17 Quoted in Arthur F. McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Toward an Assessment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 227. 18 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 69. 19 Berryman, Liberation Theology, 94. 20 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 28. 21 Ibid., 28–​9. Reflecting these beliefs, an early twentieth-century Brazilian priest wrote: “Charity, devotion, and generous cooperation are absent in this world. The world is selfcentered; people pay attention to the earth, to their stomachs, to money,

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to comfort, to prestige, to sensuality” (quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 29). 22 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 29. 23 Ana Maria Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology: The Historical Process of the Laity in Latin America in the Twentieth Century” (Working Paper no. 48, Notre Dame, IN: Kellogg Institute, 1985), 2. 24 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 36. 25 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 36. 26 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 35. 27 Historian Philip Berryman contends that the clergy were not necessarily responsible for creating the pervasive sense of political resignation among the rural poor: Priests had indeed often preached resignation to “God’s will” in a way that could reinforce the belief that the present distribution of wealth and power comes from God. Nevertheless, the role of priests and the institutional church should not be exaggerated . . . Peasant society itself tended to internalize a fixed and even fatalistic view of the universe with religious symbols and rationalizations, which was transmitted primarily by parents and grandparents and indeed the whole village culture. Priests only reinforced that view when they intoned, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” (Liberation Theology, 31)

28 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 104. 29 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 14. 30 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 8. 31 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 28. 32 The bishops declared: “Spiritism denies not a few of the truths of our Holy Religion, but all of them” (quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 39). 33 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 244. 34 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 15. 35 Quoted in Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 7. 36 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 86. 37 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 33. 38 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 33. 39 Ibid., 31. 40 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 85. 41 Ibid., 84–​5. 42 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 44. 43 Vargas considered the bishops’ support as important as the military’s, especially since it did not rely on the threat of physical force to enforce its directives (Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 40). 44 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 32.

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45 The preface of the new constitution began, “Putting our confidence in God . . . ” (Bruneau, Political Transformation, 41). 46 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 43. 47 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 32. 48 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 48. 49 In contrast, Catholic schooling was virtually nonexistent at the primary level (Bruneau, Political Transformation, 49). As late as 1968, the Church operated only 2 percent of Brazil’s primary schools, while it ran about one-​third of secondary schools and universities (ibid.). 50 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 32. 51 Freire later mocked the “traditionalist” (i.e., conservative) Church for “freezing to death in the warm bosom of the bourgeoisie” (Paulo Freire, “Education, Liberation, and the Church,” in The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, trans. Donaldo Macedo [Granby: Bergin & Garvey, 1985], 131). See Chapter 4 for a survey of his theological critique of the Church. 52 Collins, Paulo Freire, 5–​6. 53 Quoted in Bruneau, Political Transformation, 50. 54 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 32–​3. 55 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 16; and Collins, Paulo Freire, 5–​6. 56 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 548. 57 Paulo Freire, “Conversation with Paulo Freire,” Religious Education 79, no. 4 (1984): 521. 58 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 16. 59 Ibid.; and Collins, Paulo Freire, 5–​6. 60 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 39. 61 Ibid., 38. 62 Ibid., 40. 63 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 5. 64 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 38. 65 Ibid., 49. 66 Ibid., 208–​9. 67 Ibid., 58. 68 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 62. 69 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 85. 70 Ibid. 71 The enervation of ACB during the “neo-​Christendom” period was largely an unintended result of the hierarchy’s success at exerting political influence through collaboration with the Vargas administration. The Church’s easy access to state resources greatly reduced the hierarchy’s perceived need for lay activism (Bruneau, Political Transformation, 43–​4). Similarly, Vargas was so effective at suppressing

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or marginalizing the Church’s ostensible opponents, especially Communists and atheists, that he left ACB with nothing to mobilize against. 72 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 87. 73 Ibid. 74 Câmara went on to serve as the archbishop of Recife and Olinda during the military dictatorship. He was a fearless critic of the dictatorship and an outspoken proponent of liberation theology who described himself as a “humanist socialist.” His famously declared: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” Câmara and Freire were longtime friends and mutual admirers. 75 Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 17. 76 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 6–​7. 77 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 39. 78 Quoted in Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 39. 79 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 100. 80 Ibid., 66. 81 Ibid., 44–​5. 82 Ibid., 45. 83 JOC enjoyed this privilege because of the close friendship that had developed between Cardijn and Pius XI. The pope enthusiastically supported JOC from the start, “ignoring the objections of those who accused it of introducing the class struggle into the Church and of ‘rending the body of Christ’ ” (Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 7). 84 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 7. 85 Ibid. 86 As Bidegain points out, “The Revision of Life experience was the base of the theological pastoral renovation which prepared the way for Vatican II and all the transformation in the Latin American Church” (Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 18). 87 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 69. 88 Ibid., 227. 89 Paiva, “Catholic Populism and Education in Brazil,” 161. 90 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 17. 91 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 3. 92 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 89. 93 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 103n. 88. 94 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 13. 95 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 89. 96 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 81. 97 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 77.

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98 Quoted in Bruneau, Political Transformation, 75. 99 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 245. 100 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 77. 101 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 49. 102 Ibid., 38. 103 Quoted in Bruneau, Political Transformation, 75. 104 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 74. 105 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 83. 106 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 50. 107 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 57. 108 Ibid., 56. 109 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 57–​8. 110 The Vatican was simultaneously responding to Brazil’s postwar social upheaval and attempting to upgrade the generally “dismal” condition of the Brazilian clergy (Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 86–​7). 111 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 48. 112 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 87–​8. 113 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 85, 89. 114 Ibid., 92. 115 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 111. 116 Ibid., 102. 117 Ibid., 103. 118 Holbrook highlights several key cultural and historical factors that made the mid-​ century Brazilian university milieu such fertile soil for the Catholic Left. First, Latin American university students had historically enjoyed an elevated social status because they were drawn overwhelmingly from the privileged classes and were widely expected to become political, economic, and cultural leaders (Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 28). Perceived to be the future intellectual and professional elite, their public activities and utterances exercised a disproportionate degree of prestige and social influence (ibid., 91). Similarly, university students received great deal of attention from the Catholic hierarchy, which considered them the “front line of ideological contestation between traditional religious authority and encroaching secular modernism” (ibid., 66). As the future leaders of Brazil, they were viewed as essential targets for evangelization and recruitment into lay Catholic groups. Bidegain adds that the Latin American university in the 1950s and early 1960s was viewed as “the repository of . . . truth, the place providing the opportunity for investigative work and for the direction of solutions to problems” (Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 14). 119 The university environment itself was a contributing factor in the politicization of JUC. Through their encounters with secular students, JUC members found

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themselves becoming influenced by those very student peers they had been deployed to evangelize. They felt pressured by their secular counterparts to contribute to the search for answers to Brazilian problems in order to maintain intellectual and political credibility (Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 168). They were also repeatedly exposed to non-​Catholic philosophies like class dialectics, dependency theory, and humanistic socialism (ibid., 209). In time, many students “began to make common cause with the secular and radical student groups, much to the chagrin of the Catholic bishops” (ibid.). 120 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 82. 121 Ibid., 82–​3. 122 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 167. 123 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 62. 124 Richard Shaull, “The Church and Revolutionary Change: Contrasting Perspectives,” in The Church and Social Change in Latin America, ed. Henry A. Landsberger (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 144. 125 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 108. 126 These spiritually charged concepts of transformation within Freirean pedagogy are explored at length in the next two chapters. 127 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 86. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., 175. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 62. 133 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 88. 134 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 67. 135 Ibid. 136 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 67. 137 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 91. 138 Quoted in Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 91–​2. 139 Quoted in Emanuel De Kadt, “JUC and AP: The Rise of Catholic Radicalism in Brazil,” in Landsberger, Church and Social Change in Latin America, 201. 140 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 91. 141 Quoted in Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 92. 142 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 96. 143 Ibid., 96–​7. 144 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 94–​5. 145 Ibid., 94. 146 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 210.

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147 De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 205. 148 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 62. 149 De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 207. 150 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 64. 151 De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 209. 152 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 96. 153 Quoted in Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 97. 154 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 99. 155 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 65. 156 AP drew a fair number of non-​Catholics. It also seems to have attracted adherents from outside the small orbit of elite universities that had constituted JUC’s home base (De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 208). 157 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 82. 158 Quoted in Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 96. 159 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 91. 160 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 64. 161 See Chapter 3 for details. 162 Quoted in De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 211. 163 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 96. 164 De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 213. 165 Ibid., 214. 166 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 97. 167 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 65. 168 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 65. 169 Quoted in De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 211. 170 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 140. 171 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 80. 172 They also met to celebrate Sunday Mass with the local bishop via radio. 173 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 127. 174 Ibid., 151–​2. 175 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 109. 176 Mainwaring notes that while the MEB grew out of an authoritarian and paternalistic Church, it was remarkably open to the possibility that poor persons had much to teach the elites (Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 68). 177 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 153. 178 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 156. 179 Ibid., 155. 180 Ibid. 181 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 149.

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182 Marcello de Carvalho Azevedo, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil: The Challenge of a New Way of Being Church, trans. John Drury (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987), 26. 183 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 151–​2. 184 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 159. 185 Ibid. 186 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 43. 187 Ibid., 38. 188 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 268. 189 Ibid., 113. 190 Ibid., 219. 191 Ibid., 267. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid., 155. 194 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 67–​8. 195 Ibid., 68. 196 Ibid., 44. 197 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 118. 198 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum [Encyclical on the Conditions of Labor], sec. 3, http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​leo-​xiii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​l-​xiii_​enc_​ 15051891_​rerum-​novarum.html 199 Pope Leo XIII declared: “There underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-​behaved wage-​ earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, sec. 44). 200 Meghan J. Clark, The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), 3–​4. 201 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 37. 202 De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 193. 203 Quoted in De Kadt, “JUC and AP,” 193. 204 For instance, Padre Maria’s insistence on ministering to the proletariat was curious, given its virtual nonexistence in Brazil at the time. 205 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 118. 206 Quoted in Emilio Antonio Núñez, Liberation Theology, trans. Paul E. Sywulka (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1985), 91. 207 Ibid. 208 Freire incorporated this section of Mater et Magistra in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (140n. 14). Similarly, he argued in Education as the Practice of Freedom that

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assistance from wealthy nations “should be given without self-​interest, with the sole intention of making it possible for nations to develop themselves economically and socially” (Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness [New York: Continuum, 2005], 17–​18). Furthermore, Freire applied this concept to interpersonal relationships: The important thing is to help men (and nations) help themselves, to place them in consciously critical confrontation with their problems, to make them the agents of their own recuperation. In contrast, assistencialism robs men of a fundamental human necessity—​responsibility . . . Whether the assistance is of foreign or national origin, this method cannot lead a country to a democratic destination. (Education for Critical Consciousness, 12–​13)

209 Núñez, Liberation Theology, 91. 210 Quoted in Núñez, Liberation Theology, 91. 211 John XXIII, Mater et Magistra [Encyclical on Christianity and Social Progress], sec. 60, http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​john-​xxiii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​j-​ xxiii_​enc_​15051961_​mater.html 212 Ibid. 213 Mackie, “Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire,” 98. 214 Núñez, Liberation Theology, 92. 215 John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, sec. 157. 216 Núñez, Liberation Theology, 93. 217 Mackie, “Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire,” 99. 218 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 84. 219 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 84. 220 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 118. 221 Ibid. 222 The news of the pope’s convocation of the Council occurred in tandem with the unfolding Cuban Revolution. This convergence fed into the palpable revolutionary atmosphere that enveloped Brazilian society in the first half of the 1960s. 223 Núñez, Liberation Theology, 83. 224 Ibid., 84. 225 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 43–​4. 226 Núñez, Liberation Theology, 84. 227 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 176–​7. 228 Quoted in Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 44. 229 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 72–​3. 230 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 98. 231 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 74. 232 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 39.

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233 In this regard, the activists’ elite background greatly amplified the movement’s public profile. 234 Bruneau, Political Transformation, 98. 235 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 15. 236 At the same time, such dramatic changes within the Church could not have occurred without the support of a critical mass of priests and bishops, especially given the hierarchical nature of the institution (Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 15). The process of transformation was dialectical and mutually reinforcing. 237 Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 72. 238 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 22. 239 Quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 17.

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Overview Paulo Freire’s radical pedagogy emerged within an activist Catholic environment that was awash with new conceptions of the Church’s historical mission, coupled with a serious and sustained theological inquiry into what it means to be “fully human.” From his seminal years as a literacy educator in Northeastern Brazil, Freire insisted that all social, economic, political, and educational arrangements must promote the well-​being, growth, and absolute dignity of every person. For instance, he argued in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that an act is oppressive “only when it prevents people from becoming more fully human.”1 Several decades later, he reaffirmed this commitment in one of his final books: “I cannot think about the issue of liberation, and all it implies, without thinking about human nature”.2 Freire’s lifelong concern with “humanization” was deeply influenced by Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this regard, Freire was representative of the Catholic Left as a whole. As recounted in the previous chapter, this was a movement of Brazilian intellectual and economic elites that emerged as Brazil entered a period of socioeconomic ferment between the Second World War and the April 1964 coup. These lay activists began to reinterpret their religious heritage in light of present-​day conditions. Their theological reflections were nurtured by a cohort of progressive, highly trained clergy who had been appointed to mentor Catholic university groups by the CNBB. These chaplains were instrumental in the dissemination of contemporary theologies throughout the university setting. Reflecting the prevalence of “modernizing” theologies within this vibrant intellectual environment, the newsletters of JUC were permeated by discussions of leading French Catholic

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thinkers.3 Mounier’s philosophy was especially popular with the budding activists; according to historian Joseph Holbrook, his Christian Personalist writings had become virtually “required reading” among Catholic university students.4 Mounier was also a powerful intellectual influence on the MCP, within which Freire was the preeminent educational thinker and activist. Likewise, Maritain’s work was ardently promoted by Alceu Amoroso Lima, a widely admired journalist, cultural critic, and activist who was appointed by the hierarchy to serve as the national chairman of ACB from 1935 to 1945. Also known by his pen name Tristão de Ataíde, he also led the Centro Dom Vital. The Centro was a small but enormously influential Catholic institute that was popular among intellectual elites, including Freire and his friend Hélder Câmara.5 In this capacity, Lima invited Maritain to give a series of lectures on his “modernist” conception of the Church’s role in history.6 For his part, Teilhard’s innovative ideas regarding human evolution circulated widely throughout the Catholic movement in the early 1960s.7 Indeed, he was cited by many activists as one of their primary intellectual inspirations.8 Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard were decisive influences on Brazil’s progressive Catholic elites during the period in which Freire grew to maturity as an educator, activist, and thinker. As such, it is important to explore their impact on Freire’s developing educational praxis. As Freire acknowledged toward the end of his life, “When I first went to meet with workers and peasants in Recife’s slums, to teach them and to learn from them, I have to confess that I did that pushed by my Christian faith.”9 This chapter explores the degree to which Freire’s Catholicism provided the intellectual foundation for his educational philosophy and activism, most importantly his view of the ultimate nature and purpose of the human person.

Jacques Maritain Jacques Maritain (1882–​1973) was one of the twentieth century’s towering public intellectuals. The author of several dozen books on subjects including moral philosophy, political theory, philosophy of law, epistemology, ecclesiology, aesthetics, and education, he was a longtime friend and mentor of Pope Paul VI.10 He was one of the dominant figures in shaping the Catholic Church’s social and political philosophy, especially in his advocacy for liberal pluralism, greater social concern, and a more welcoming stance toward the modern world.11

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Maritain was born to a middle-​class family in Paris in 1882. He was an atheist until his twenties, during which he embraced Catholicism after despairing over the perceived meaninglessness and spiritual sterility of French intellectual life. He discovered the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas shortly after his conversion, and he grew into one of the twentieth century’s leading exponents for the revival of Thomist thought. During the interwar period, he was a revered mentor to many of the leading French Catholic thinkers in Paris. Joseph Amato writes, “Like no other thinker in France in the 1920s, Maritain expressed a Catholic lay understanding of the modern world.”12 Maritain “opened the door of his house, his times, and his publications to almost all young and promising Catholics, and in particular those who were concerned with the role of faith and the Church in the contemporary age.”13 As such, Maritain was the guiding light for the French Catholic intellectual movement of the early twentieth century. (His most gifted protégé was Emmanuel Mounier.) Maritain was lecturing in the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. He elected to stay in the country and contributed toward the war effort by cultivating American public support for his homeland. During his sojourn, he grew to greatly admire the United States for its pluralism and its liberal democracy, which he considered the closest temporal approximation of the “inspiration of the gospel.”14 He returned to France after the war and served as his country’s ambassador to the Vatican until 1948. After the death of his beloved wife and intellectual partner Raïssa in 1960, he spent the remaining years of his life in a spiritual community in Toulouse. Maritain’s enormous body of thought defies simple categorization. For instance, he was a deeply traditional believer who was convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other philosophies and systems. At the same time, he was a tireless advocate for ecumenical dialogue and pragmatic alliances in the pursuit of broadly shared humanist goals. Maritain’s self-​appointed mission was to be an “apostle” to educated and skeptical Western audiences. In this regard, he spearheaded the Church’s attempts to grapple with the modern world.15 In accordance with Thomist philosophy, which synthesized Christianity with classical Greek thought, Maritain affirmed that human reason in and of itself—​as opposed to faith or divine revelation—​is sufficient for apprehending the essential truths about humanity, nature, morality, and God. Maritain saw Thomism was the “crowning philosophy of man and nature” and “the most perfect philosophical expression of the unit that exists between faith and reason.”16 It provided him with an all-​encompassing framework for serving both God and humanity.17 Having made Thomism into the foundation of his philosophy, Maritain spent his career attempting to cultivate moral and philosophical bridges between

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Christians and non-​ Christians. These “communities of analogy” would be grounded on reason and commonly held values rather than shared creeds or doctrines.18 Among the most important results of these efforts were his extensive contributions to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was formally adopted in 1948.

Maritain and Catholic anthropology The starting point of Maritain’s social and political thought was his affirmation that human beings are the singular bearers of the image and likeness of God in their moral, intellectual, and spiritual nature. This theological claim about the ultimate essence, value, and dignity of persons is shared by all three Abrahamic religions. Known as the imago Dei in Christianity, the primary biblical sources for this claim are found in the book of Genesis. The most vivid and widely known of these passages reads as follows: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.19

The next chapter in Genesis presents an alternate version of the creation myth that culminates in the following passage: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living thing.”20 Both accounts claim that human beings are uniquely endowed with God’s divine breath. Biblical scholar David J. A. Clines elucidates one of the most radical implications of this passage: Man is the one godlike creature in all the created order. His nature is not understood if he is viewed merely as the most highly developed of the animals, with whom he shares the earth, nor is it perceived if he is seen as an infinitesimal being dwarfed by the enormous magnitude of the universe.21

Crucially, since all human beings share a spark of the divine, they are fundamentally equal and must treat each other accordingly. Maritain spoke from this theological perspective when he declared: “A person possesses absolute dignity because he is in direct relationship with the realm of being, truth, goodness, and beauty, and with God, and it is only with these that he can arrive at his complete fulfillment.”22 The spiritual dimension of human life is primary because it

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originates from and participates within a higher reality.23 As a result, it transcends and supersedes all temporal political ideologies, economic structures, and cultural norms. Human persons, as the unique reflection of God’s image within the created order, must be treated as ends in themselves; they can never be reduced to commodities, objects, or tools in the service of any temporal systems.24 This exalted view of the human person led Maritain to reject the prevailing sociopolitical systems of his era: capitalist individualism, Leninist collectivism, and totalitarian fascism. These frameworks, he believed, were all fatally flawed because they were grounded on essentially materialistic views of human existence. As such, they overlook or even negate the spiritual level. Maritain promoted the Catholic understanding of the person as far more than a “mere parcel of matter” or an “individual element in nature.”25 Rather, there is in him a richer and nobler existence; he has spiritual superexistence through knowledge and though love. He is thus in some fashion a whole, not merely a part; he is a universe unto himself, a microcosm in which the whole great universe can be encompassed through knowledge . . . All this means . . . that in the flesh and bones of man there lives a soul which is a spirit and which has a greater value than the whole physical universe. However dependent it may be on the slightest accidents of matter, the human person exists by virtue of the existence of its soul, which dominates time and death. It is the spirit which is the root of personality.26

Moreover, Maritain affirmed the inalienable human capacities for free will and moral intelligence. Each person, he asserted, is “but a nocturnal sketch of himself.”27 God endows all human beings with the potential to grow into ever-​greater moral and spiritual stature; they are beings in motion and perpetual development.28 Only human beings have been given the capacity for self-​consciousness, moral freedom, and an innate apprehension of truth and beauty—​all of which reflect and flow out of the divine image. Only persons have been given the power to create newness, push against existing boundaries and patterns, and reshape the world. In line with Catholic tradition, Maritain posited a radical ontological discontinuity between human beings and the animal world. Nonhuman creatures are limited to instinctual, reactive, and habitual behaviors. While they are capable of motion, perception, and reaction, they lack the human capacity for interiority, moral awareness, and novel action.29 Thus, human beings are free to choose evil over good, destruction over healing, egotism over generosity. Furthermore, Catholic tradition affirms that God’s gift of authentic freedom is

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an act of supreme love, since it offers all persons the possibility of transcending their conditioning, choosing the good, and starting anew. Gaudium et Spes, which is one of the four major pastoral documents produced by the Second Vatican Council, proclaims: Authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man. For God has willed that man remain “under the control of his own decisions,” so that he can seek his Creator spontaneously, and come freely to utter and blissful perfection through loyalty to Him. Hence man’s dignity demands that he act according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure.30

In short, Catholic thought affirms that God does not coerce goodness; doing so would be a form of divine tyranny. Instead, it is only through freely chosen acts that human beings can grow toward their intrinsic stature as imago Dei. As Maritain professed, “Man is an individual who holds himself in hand by his intelligence and his will.”31 This sentiment is echoed in Gaudium et Spes, which proclaims that “man judges rightly that by his intellect he surpasses the material universe, for he shares in the light of the divine mind.”32

Relationality and community Two of the fundamental tenets of Catholic anthropology are that (1) human existence is relational to its core, and (2) the primary, constitutive relationship is between the person and the Creator. As Gaudium et Spes asserts: “The root reason for human dignity lies in man’s call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God.”33 God’s invitation for human persons to form an intimate relationship with God’s self is one of the most consistent tropes in the Bible, as demonstrated in the stories of Adam and Abraham, Moses and the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and Paul. Carolyn Clark points out: The Christian tradition is rooted in scripture, and in those scriptures relationship is a central concept. I would even argue that it is the central concept. From the biblical point of view, relationship is essential to life. Both Old and New Testaments make the assumption that being is unity and that its source is in God. To be alive is to be connected to God, and loss of that unity, imaged in the scriptures as separation, is death . . . Relationship . . . is essential to being.34

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Furthermore, Catholic teaching affirms that the encounter with the Creator is the very ground of personhood. God’s special regard enables and sustains human self-​awareness and identity. According to James P. Carroll, “Consciousness leads to self-​consciousness leads to self-​transcendence . . . ‘I know’ leads to ‘I know that I know’ leads to ‘I know that I am known.’ Here is what we mean by the image of God in which humans are created.”35 Indeed, the etymology of the English word “person” is related to the Latin per-​sonare, which means “sounding through.” Thus, the human “person” is a vehicle or medium of communication and presence from an absolute Other. Maritain spoke from the heart of this theological tradition when he asserted that every human being draws “absolute dignity” and “complete fulfillment” from his or her relationship with God.36 As a corollary, the communion between a person and the Creator is what makes human beings capable of knowing and entering into dialogue with each other. It is through openness to other persons that human beings attain their full nobility and moral stature. As Gaudium et Spes affirms, “By his innermost nature man is a social being, and unless he relates himself to others he can neither live nor develop his potential.”37 In a similar vein, the Catechism states: The human person needs to live in society. Society is not for him an extraneous addition but a requirement of his nature. Through the exchange with others, mutual service and dialogue with his brethren, man develops his potential; he thus responds to his vocation.38

Consequently, a person who is isolated from social bonds is incapable of being fully human. This divine imperative to participate in relationships is symbolized by the creation of Eve to be Adam’s companion after God judged that “it is not good for the man to be alone.”39 These theological claims about the relational and interdependent nature of the person are opposed to the post-​Enlightenment exaltation of personal autonomy, self-​sufficiency, and individual freedom.40 Meghan J. Clark explains, “The radical claim of Catholic social thought is that my humanity is bound up in yours. We are one, such that when your human rights are violated, my dignity is violated as well.”41 In other words, Catholic teaching insists that mutuality, reciprocity, and the promotion of the flourishing of others are inescapable obligations that flow from the sacred gift of being created imago Dei.42 In concrete practice, living up to these responsibilities demands the acknowledgment and promotion of human rights. This project was one of Maritain’s overriding concerns, as he urgently called on Christians and non-​Christians to arrive at a baseline level of agreement with regard to universal human rights.

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The new civilization and the common good Maritain’s political thought emerged in the wake of the Great War, which he interpreted as the catastrophic culmination of a centuries-​long drift away from God that started in the Renaissance. Civilization itself, he believed, had arrived at a moment of total crisis. A nonviolent spiritual and temporal “revolution” was needed to establish a more democratic and humane society on the ruins of the old. This renewed order would affirm the dignity and well-​being of the person as the absolute measure for all political, economic, and social arrangements. In this new civilization, “the sacral and religious would infuse and enlighten the material, the political and the social.”43 In his widely read Integral Humanism (1936), Maritain described this revitalized and resacralized social order as grounded on the “common good,” a concept he derived from Thomist philosophy. Taking up this idea, Gaudium et Spes defined the “common good” as “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.”44 A society that upholds the common good as its organizing principle seeks to promote the material and spiritual welfare of the social order, even as it attempts to provide each person –​especially the most vulnerable—​with the material and spiritual conditions needed to grow into his or her full potential. Thus, pursuing the common good requires the active promotion of peace, order, justice, and equitable distribution of resources, all of which are necessary for individual and communal flourishing. For Maritain, this deeply Catholic concept provided a positive alternative to what he considered the moral, political, and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world. Western civilization must “replace the individualism of the bourgeois era not by totalitarianism or the sheer collectivism of the beehive but by a personalistic and communal civilization, grounded on human rights and satisfying the social aspirations and needs of man.”45 Amato elaborates: Opposed to various expressions of bourgeois social, economic, cultural, and political individualism, [Maritain] postulated Thomas’ notion of the common good as describing a reality higher than the sum of individual ends and interests and pertaining to the material and spiritual welfare of mankind at large. In specific opposition to collectivism, and . . . again drawing on Thomist and Christian thought, he asserted that every individual has a spirit and personal destiny which joins him to an order infinitely higher than any immanent political and social order.46

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Maritain’s notion of the common good was grounded on his Catholic anthropology, which affirmed that all political, legal, and economic arrangements are ultimately superseded by the transcendent nature of human persons as imago Dei. At the same time, no single person or faction can be permitted to accumulate a disproportionate amount of the resources necessary to sustain a minimum standard of well-​being if doing so deprives others of the same opportunity. The dignity and well-​being of each person is inextricably bound with that of society as a whole, and vice versa. In sum, Maritain viewed the ideal society as a “New Christendom” that bears “the imprint of the Christian conception of life.”47 Nevertheless, Maritain did not intend for Christianity to recapture its religious monopoly or become allied to the power of the state. Rather, the new society would be a pluralist and humanist democracy that is “Christian” in its ethos and moral inspiration. It would not seek to impose dogmatic or confessional uniformity. Rather, it would actively promote the conditions, structures, and institutions that ensure universal access to food, shelter, employment, security, education, medical care, culture, and others. Meghan J. Clark puts it this way: “Deep within Catholic ethics is the call to become more fully human, to more fully and faithfully image God in the world, to create more human conditions for persons and communities.”48 Every citizen, regardless of religious background, has the duty to work toward social justice, economic development, and the flourishing of all other citizens.

Historical agency Maritain was a passionate advocate for Christian social and political activism. In accordance with his vision of the common good, he supported peaceful, gradual, and balanced reforms rather than class dialectics, radical disruption, or armed struggle. He insisted that building a “civilization of love” is difficult but not impossible. Crucially, the establishment of this “community of persons” requires the spiritual conversion of every person. In other words, the emergence of an enduringly just, democratic, peaceful, and humane society ultimately hinged on the painstaking inner transformation of hearts, minds, and souls. Maritain was also a pioneer in encouraging the Roman Catholic Church to “recover” the role of the laity. Himself a layperson, he envisioned a vital role for “ordinary” believers in transforming society. Speaking in the 1930s, a period

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during which the Church hierarchy was permeated by monarchical tendencies, he declared: It is not to the [institutional] Church but to Christians as temporal members of this temporal organism that the transformation and regeneration according to the Christian spirit belongs . . . In other words, it does not belong to the clergy to hold the controls of properly temporal and political action.49

Maritain was a leading advocate for Catholic Action, which had recently risen to prominence within the Church. He charged the group’s activists with creating “an essentially Christian state of mind” in the secular sphere.50 He also called on them to assume responsibility for discerning the appropriate forms of social action for their respective historical contexts: It would be to confuse the spiritual and the temporal to imagine that the common doctrine of the Church suffices in itself to resolve the conflicts of temporal history and to provide the concretely determined solutions which men have need of hic et nunc [here and now]. Beneath this doctrinal sky, a social and political philosophy, and practical elaborations, are necessary. And it is the same in the sphere of action.51

Maritain acknowledged that these “practical elaborations” must be developed anew for each time and place. There are no universally applicable policies within the messiness and grit of history. Moreover, he affirmed that courageous engagement with secular society was an essential expression of one’s faith. Christian social action was essential to the entire tradition: “The very idea that man has a historic vocation . . . is of Christian origin and derives from Christian inspiration.”52 Accordingly, he strongly rejected the theological dichotomy between heaven and earth, insisting that Christians must go beyond the enervating “fear of soiling [themselves] by entering the context of history.”53 Christians must plunge deeply into the problems and struggles of their time. They must boldly accept the risks of action, which is the cost of being endowed by God with creative freedom and the concomitant ability to remake the existing order.54 In a full-​throated affirmation of human agency, Maritain repudiated all forms of religious quietism, political fatalism, and historical determinism: Man, without being able to bend history arbitrarily according to his desire or fancy, can cause new currents to surge up in history, currents which will struggle and compound with pre-​existent currents, forces, and conditions so as to bring to final determination the direction of history, which is not fixed in advance by evolution . . . [history] is fixed in advance only to the degree . . . to which man renounces his freedom.55

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On the other hand, Maritain was thoroughly Catholic in balancing his faith in human agency with abiding skepticism toward utopianism.56 He believed that human beings can never achieve “an absolute maximum of . . . [societal] perfection.”57 The disfigurement of human nature by Original Sin makes the temporal attainment of utopia an impossibility. Any political program that refused to acknowledge human fallibility and corruptibility would only lead to further cycles of violence and dehumanization. As an alternative to utopianism, Maritain proposed a “new concrete historical ideal” to describe what human beings can feasibly achieve at any given historical moment: “the Christian must work for a proportionate realization (while awaiting the definitive realization of the Gospel, which is for beyond time).”58 Thus, Christians must paradoxically struggle to establish an earthly approximation of the “Kingdom of God” while acknowledging that final victory lies in God’s hands alone. Maritain was deeply interested in the spiritual and ethical dimension of activism. He insisted that Christians must reject “all ways and means that are not sincere and pure.”59 Indeed, the “civilization of love” can emerge if Christian activists use “those means which are beyond the ability of others to use.”60 Morally desirable historical ends could never be achieved—​or be used to justify—​any methods involving hatred, dishonesty, manipulation, and violence. He warned against the temptation for Christians to set aside their moral convictions when entering the public sphere: “If Christians, who live by Faith in their private lives, lay aside their faith when they approach the things of political and social life, they must be content to be towed like slaves in the wake of history.”61 As followers of Jesus, Christians are not free to “put God and Christ aside when [they] work at the things of the world.”62

Integral education Maritain reflected a great deal upon pedagogy. Unsurprisingly, his educational philosophy was fully rooted in his Catholicism. In this light, he affirmed: Man [is] animal endowed with reason, whose supreme dignity is in the intellect; and man [is] a free individual in personal relation with God, whose supreme righteousness consists in voluntarily obeying the law of God; and man [is] a sinful and wounded creature called to divine life and the freedom of grace, whose supreme perfection consists in love.63

For Maritain, educational activity is profoundly moral and spiritual. Its primary concern is the cultivation of the human capacity to love God and other

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human beings in accordance with their divine nature. “The prime goal of education,” Maritain asserted, “is the conquest of internal and spiritual freedom to be achieved by the individual person, or, in other words, his ‘liberation’64 from ignorance and selfishness through knowledge and wisdom, good will, and love.”65 The highest achievement of education is not cultural transmission, civic preparation, or career preparation. Rather, it is the formation of a “true human person” who can exercise moral intelligence and practice self-​giving love.66 He was especially scornful of schooling that was oriented predominantly toward career preparation, deriding it as “animal training.”67 Such educational practices stunted the learner’s capacity for creativity, critical reflection, intellectual freedom, and inner growth. The “overwhelming cult of specialization,” he contended, “dehumanizes human life.”68 Persons can never be reduced to instruments for political or economic systems.69 Educators are responsible for nurturing each student’s capacity to participate in “the realm of being, truth, goodness, and beauty.”70 Reaffirming his “integral” anthropology, Maritain called on teachers to cultivate a respect for the soul as well as for the body of the child, the sense of his innermost essence and his internal resources, and a sort of sacred and loving attention to his mysterious identity, which is a hidden thing that no techniques can reach. And what matters most in the educational enterprise is a perpetual appeal to intelligence and free will in the young.71

Educators must recognize their sacred responsibility to foster the “human awakening” of their students.72 At the same time, Maritain’s educational philosophy possessed a social and political dimension. First, it provided a much-​needed alternative to the egotism of capitalism and the “beehive” collectivism of communism.73 Second, he held that a nonsectarian pedagogy grounded on Christian principles could be the primary vehicle for establishing a more humane and virtuous society, regardless of the religious or ideological commitments of its members.74 Finally, an “integral” education would help to restore the lost wholeness and depth of Western civilization, thereby ending “the cleavage between religious inspiration and the secular activity of man.”75 In all, Maritain’s educational thought was grounded upon his conviction that education must be animated by moral purpose, delve into the deepest concerns of human existence, and work in accordance with the singular stature and potentiality of the person as the image and likeness of the Creator.

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Emmanuel Mounier Emmanuel Mounier (1905–​1950) was the leading modern exponent of Christian Personalism. Like his mentor Maritain, he was a powerful contributor to the intellectual revitalization of Roman Catholic thought in the twentieth century. His lifelong project was to elaborate a Catholic anthropology and social vision in light of the exigencies of the modern world. He also shared the older man’s conviction in “the primacy of faith, the existence of a true Catholic revival, and the ultimate unities between faith and reason, civilization and the Church.”76 His Personalist philosophy became a major influence on the language and conceptual vocabulary of Vatican II.77 Figures such as Dorothy Day, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Pope John Paul II have cited him as a decisive influence on their thought. Mounier’s form of Personalism has also shaped social and political movements throughout the world, including the Catholic Workers in the United States, Christian Democracy in Western Europe, Solidarity in Poland, and progressive Catholic groups in Latin America. More politically radical than Maritain, “he opened the way to the communitarian socialist perspective.”78 In this regard, he laid the groundwork for the dialogue between Christianity and Marxism that flowered in liberation theology. Mounier was born to a provincial middle-​class family in southeastern France in 1905. His intellectual promise was discernable from his youth, and he escaped the limited prospects of his family background through a series of scholarships. On track for a secure and comfortable academic career, he abruptly left the academy in his mid-twenties to devote himself to elaborating and disseminating his Personalist philosophy. He had been horrified by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression. Convinced that Europe was on its deathbed, he committed himself to creating a blueprint for the reconstruction of civilization, much like Maritain had done after the First World War.79 The vehicle for his intellectual labor was the journal Esprit, which he founded in 1932, and to which he devoted the rest of his life.80 Like Maritain, Mounier viewed Catholicism as the sole remedy for the political disintegration, economic collapse, and spiritual decay of Western civilization. Their political ideologies would diverge over the next two decades, as Maritain became a staunch supporter of the United States while Mounier grew into an outspoken critic of the “twin poles” of the United States and the Soviet Union.81 Similarly, while Maritain devoted his postwar efforts toward developing international legal and philosophical norms vis-​à-​vis human rights, Mounier

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increasingly aligned himself with the resurgence of socialist humanism in France in the late 1940s. According to Amato: What Mounier had come to strive after in the post-​War period was a world of freedom, equality, and justice—​a world in which the political and economic benefits of the two greatest nineteenth century revolutions, the French and the Industrial, would be shared by all men.82

In this vein, Mounier sought—​largely unsuccessfully—​to open lines of dialogue with leading intellectuals of the Communist Party in the final years of his life. He died of a second heart attack, which was likely triggered by overwork, in 1950 at the age of 44.

Personalist anthropology Mounier’s life’s work was grounded on his Catholic faith in the exalted nature, absolute worth, and sacred vocation of every human being. The person, he proclaimed, is “a summit from which all the highways of the world begin.”83 Rejecting all forms of dehumanization, he asserted that “no other person . . . no collective whole, no organism can utilize the person as an end.”84 For Mounier, the divinely endowed freedom and dignity of the person must constitute the starting point for all philosophies, socioeconomic structures, and political activities. Eileen Cantin encapsulates the lynchpin of Mounier’s thought: Personalism’s central affirmation is the existence of free and creative persons. The person stands at the summit of being, and all being is subject to a process of personalization. Hence, the metaphysics of the person will provide the ultimate criteria for all praxis.85

As with Maritain, the foundation of Mounier’s philosophical anthropology was the concept of imago Dei. “Man was in his very nature made according to the image of God,” Mounier declared, and “he is called to perfect that image by an ever increasing participation in the supreme liberty of the children of God.”86 This moral freedom was vital. Even “God himself . . . respects the liberty of the person, even while vivifying it from within.”87 Like Maritain, Mounier posited an ontological discontinuity between persons and other creatures. Even the most advanced nonhumans lack the distinctively human capacities for inwardness, self-​surrender, freedom, and the Godlike ability to infuse true novelty into the universe. Cantin writes:

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Because the person has the power to create, i.e., to promote absolute beginnings . . . he transcends nature, for nature is precisely what is repetitious and not new. And because he transcends nature, the person is indefinable and eludes all verbal and conceptual formulations.88

According to Mounier, this conscious exercise of this power to transform the raw materials of nature lies at the heart of what it means to be fully human. The “vital link of all humanist action,” he insisted, is “the mastery which man exercises over matter as over himself.”89 The “proper task” for human beings is to “create a humanized nature.”90 Through this act, “Man does not only humanize nature . . . he renders it divine through his own participation in divinity.”91 Human beings thereby become co-​participants with the Creator in the ongoing unification of the material world with the Divine Presence.92 Mounier rejected the age-old theological dualism between body and spirit. He identified the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ as absolute affirmations of the essential goodness of matter and its ultimate unity with spirit: “Body and matter . . . have been inwardly incorporated into the living growth of the Kingdom of God.”93 The gradual manifestation of God’s reign within history—​to the degree this is possible—​is only achievable through the vigorous participation of Christians in “the world of the body.”94 Mounier viewed the long-​standing alienation between body and spirit as a blight upon Christian tradition, one which persisted into the (ostensibly) secular twentieth century. “The modern world has divided man,” he wrote, “each segment withering separately. We [Personalists] want to recompose him, re-​unite him both body and spirit, meditation and operation, thought and action.”95 According to Amato, Mounier’s emphatic insistence that human experience cannot be reduced to any of its parts “expresses [his] deeper profession of the lordship of God, and the consequent blasphemy he saw in any attempt . . . to separate man from his Creator.”96 For Mounier, the ultimate meaning of human existence comes from God alone.97 In this key regard, Mounier’s Personalism parallels Maritain’s “integral humanism.” Affirming the “total man,” Mounier and Maritain rejected all political, economic, philosophical, and theological systems that negated the spiritual dimension of human existence—​bourgeois capitalism and totalitarian collectivism being chief among these frameworks. Furthermore, Mounier emphasized the relational nature of the person. Authentic bonds are necessary for growing into one’s full personhood, and to live solely for one’s self is antithetical to becoming fully human. This conviction fed into Mounier’s abhorrence of bourgeois individualism, which he

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considered the epitome of selfishness in the modern world. He declared, “It is the kernel of liberty to feel the need to give oneself to something greater than oneself, to assume something other than oneself, to collaborate.”98 Put into religious terms, Mounier believed that “man’s end is not to know and be himself, but it is to see and be with God.”99 It is only through responding to God’s call that it becomes possible to transcend egotism and grow into one’s human potential.

The Personalist civilization Mounier’s political theory emerged against the backdrop of historical crisis. He asserted: We are witnessing the cave-​in of a whole area of civilization, one, namely, that was born towards the end of the middle ages, was consolidated and at the same time threatened by the industrial age, is capitalistic in structure, liberal in its ideology, bourgeois in its ethics.100

As previously mentioned, the precipitating catastrophe for Mounier’s philosophy was the Wall Street crash of 1929. Consequently, he spent much of his career inveighing against modern capitalism. This economic system was an “enemy of the person” because it sacrifices human freedom and well-​being at the altar of profit.101 Mounier was dismayed at the preponderance of market logic over all reaches of human life. This ethos had “tainted the whole organism of the person and of society so thoroughly that all forms of disorder, even the spiritual, have in them a component or even a dominant element that is economic.”102 He described industrial capitalism and the modern factory system as “based on contempt, conscious or implicit, of the laborer,” since it “tries completely to ignore the person and to organize itself for a single quantitative and impersonal goal: profit.”103 These socioeconomic arrangements are a social disease that reduce persons to “men-​objects” rather than “men of humanity.”104 The insatiable drive for profit, especially when based on financial speculation, is morally abhorrent because it “recognizes no human criterion” and is “indifferent equally to economic well-​being as such and to the good of the person it contacts.”105 For Mounier, capitalism is concerned only with “the bourgeois values of comfort, social consideration and display.”106 Mounier’s vision of a “new human order” to replace the corrupted status quo flowed out of his Catholic anthropology. “We shall apply the term personalist to any doctrine or any civilization that affirms the primacy of the human person

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over material necessities and over the whole complex of implements man needs for the development of his person.”107 This aspect of his social philosophy was informed and enriched by modern Catholic social teaching. Building on Pope Leo XIII’s seminal encyclical Rerum Novarum, he affirmed the preeminence of labor and human well-​being over capital and profit. Going beyond the encyclical, he criticized mainstream Christianity for having become “dangerously allied to capitalist and bourgeois Liberalism.”108 He attributed the decline of Christian influence on the modern world to its failure to live up to its historical and spiritual mission to uplift the poor and the powerless. As a result, “The gulf between the Christian universe and the youthful energies of the new [postwar] world grows larger and larger.”109 Mounier insisted that Christianity could “liberate its energies,” recapture “its power of initiative,” and rediscover “its way into modern realities and living hearts” by refusing to withdraw into individualistic spirituality and privatized contemplation.110 People of faith must engage fearlessly with the secular world and fight for their vision of a renewed civilization.111 Otherwise, they can expect to “once more find themselves in the catacombs, brought there not only by human malice, but by their own abdications and their own stupidities.”112 In line with his denunciations of capitalism and bourgeois individualism, Mounier was intrigued by humanist elements of Marxist thought. He approved of Marx’s deep concern for the plight of factory workers, and he appreciated the German philosopher’s emphasis on concrete political action in the service of equality and justice. Mounier even declared that that Marxism had surpassed Catholicism in responding to the needs and hopes of the poor.113 At the same time, Mounier never fully embraced classical Marxism due to its sanctioning of political violence, its historical determinism, and its anthropological materialism. Like Maritain, he criticized Marxist thought for its “negation of the spiritual as an autonomous, primary, and creative reality.”114 Marxism, for all its virtues, falls short because it “gives no place, either in its farther vision or in its organization of the world, to the person as the ultimate form of spiritual existence and to his proper values, freedom and love.”115 This disregard for the transcendent and transhistorical dimension of human existence was a fatal flaw, one that it shared with capitalism. Mounier was also deeply skeptical of the totalitarian state, which subjugated “free men and free institutions to a monolithic and centralized power which would leave no area of human activity outside its control.”116 Such political structures were forms of “spiritual imperialism” that intruded into every aspect of human life.117

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Mounier proposed a socialist and democratic “society of persons” as the alternative to the dehumanizing tyrannies of capitalism, communism, and fascism. In this community, each person would at all times be able to achieve his fruitful vocation in the totality and in which the communion of all the totality would be the living outcome of the efforts of each one. Each one would have a place of his own in the whole which no one else could fill, but which could harmonize well with the whole. Love would be the primary tie and not any constraint or any economic or “vital” interest or any extrinsic apparatus. Each person would there find, in the common values transcending each one’s own limitations of place and time, the tie that binds all members in the whole.118

The Personalist society would promote and safeguard the conditions that “enable every individual to live as a person, that is, to exercise a maximum of initiative, responsibility, and spiritual life.”119 Its political and economic structures would be grounded on the acknowledgment that “no other person, and still more no collective whole, no organism, can legitimately utilize the person as a means to an end.”120 The Personalist economy would regulate profit “according to service rendered by production, production according to consumption, and consumption finally according to an ethics of human needs viewed in relation to the total perspective of the person.”121 Labor, redefined as creative and spiritually fulfilling work, would be given permanent primacy over capital.122 Mounier envisioned a “twofold revolution” on the material and spiritual dimensions that would bring about the new civilization of persons.123 He emphasized the necessity for radical transformation at both levels to achieve genuine and lasting societal change. Regarding the spiritual dimension, he asserted: On the plane of individual ethics, we believe that a certain kind of poverty is the ideal economic rule of personal life. But by poverty in this sense we do not mean an indiscreet asceticism or a shameful miserliness. We refer rather to a contempt for the material attachments that enslave, a desire for simplicity, a state of adaptability and freedom.124

Only by transcending individualism, selfishness, and bourgeois decadence could human beings become liberated from their alienation from themselves, from others, from the natural world, and from their Creator. Like Maritain, Mounier envisioned the emergence of a “New Man” in which egotism, hatred, and selfishness are replaced by self-​sacrificial love and radical solidarity. He dismissed any mode of social action that reduced human life to the political and the material,

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instead affirming the primacy of “a reality . . . which surpasses us, penetrates us, engages us entirely by drawing us beyond ourselves.”125 Personalist activists would constitute a spiritual vanguard that embodied a new mode of being and inspired the rest of society toward spiritual conversion. The end result would be a resacralized temporal order in which religious faith was restored to its rightful place at the heart of human civilization. At the same time, Mounier professed the urgent need for political and economic transformation: There is no spiritual gesture which is not founded on a [bodily] movement and which is not expressed by a movement . . . There is not, therefore, for man a life of the soul sundered from the life of the body, no moral reform without technical adaptation, no spiritual revolution without material revolution . . . Matter and body are not only prolongations of spiritual activity, a background of extrinsic action from which it could be detached: they are one and together, the immediate expression, the visible appearance of spiritual activity. It is therefore a distortion to speak of the primacy of economic causality as of the primacy of spiritual causality. There is no linear causality between these two abstractions, body and spirit. There are one through the other or, better, one in the other.126

This statement reflects the influence of Marxist philosophy, which Mounier praised for demonstrating the “solidarity” of mind and body.127 Mounier’s dialectical view of the relationship between the material and the spiritual dimensions of human existence was one of his most significant differences with Maritain, who elevated spiritual concerns above all others. For Mounier, neither “moralism” nor structural analysis alone was sufficient. The historical crisis was both economic and spiritual and must be dealt with accordingly: “The moral revolution will be economic or there will be no revolution. The economic revolution will be moral, or nothing.”128

Personalist praxis Mounier was a powerful advocate for nonviolent social action. He rejected all forms of political and moral evasion in favor of bold commitment and witness.129 Contributing to the work of “personalizing” the world, he believed, is the highest form of human activity.130 He challenged Christians to meet their duty to help “make a new earth.”131 He was especially critical of forms of Christianity that served merely to safeguard tradition or stabilize the status quo: “Christianity is not a brake [against social change], it is a madness, an

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irrational force of upheaval and progress.”132 Mounier’s Personalism refused spiritualized otherworldliness and political aloofness. It demanded a permanent orientation toward moral and political revolution. A Personalist is a “mystic and prophet” who announces the advent of a new order despite the inevitable experiences of doubt and uncertainty.133 Such an activist rejected the “Platonic flight into idealism and the refusal of insertion” as well as “deep and burning [historical] pessimism”.134 Mounier’s philosophy was undergirded by his confidence in human agency and an optimistic view of historical possibility. He tirelessly affirmed the ability of human beings to remake the historical and political status quo.135 In his view, the Resurrection of Christ was a turning point in cosmic history that introduced “an inexhaustible and continuous novelty into the web of time.”136 After this epochal event, history has been redeemed from stagnation and meaninglessness. Moreover, reality is not yet complete. There is no divine plan that unfolds inexorably without human participation. As Cantin describes, “Man himself is a co-​creator [with God]. He recreates himself and the entire universe. This activity is the stuff of history.”137 As such, succumbing to passivity and fatalism is one of the greatest possible human failures. History always provides the raw materials for new paths, so long as human beings are willing to envision alternatives, take risks, and dare to move forward. “Nothing is past,” Mounier declared, “definitively past, so long as human initiative is able to draw from it fresh significance and [a]‌new source of development.”138 Even in the face of overwhelming odds, “personal man is not desolate.” Rather, “he is a man surrounded, on the move, under summons.”139 For Mounier, such refusal to despair or withdraw from worldly engagement is fundamental to what it means to be fully human. “Man must fully accept his conditions and his finitude in a precarious world, and yet risk everything unto final defeat for the sake of what is best and what could be best among men.”140 Moreover, one of the consequences of human freedom is the permanent possibility of choosing evil, tribalism, and dehumanization. Cantin writes: If historical progress is possible because of freedom, it can also be retarded by refusals to respond, to communicate and to create. Thus, history’s progress does not follow a line of unremitting, undisturbed advance . . . That the movement is in the main a forward one is something the Personalist trusts. But no one can accurately foretell its ways, its halts, and its tangents.141

Importantly, Mounier shared Maritain’s affirmation of human agency coupled with the acknowledgment that the Kingdom of God in its fullness would be

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established “beyond this life.”142 In this regard, he upheld the paradoxical belief that history is simultaneously open-​ended and eschatological (i.e., drawn by God toward a salvific destiny). Mounier famously professed a “tragic optimism” that rejected both “ingenious optimism” (i.e., uncritical hopefulness) and “irrational skepticism” (i.e., enervating pessimism).143 At the same time, his faith gave him hope—​which is not the same as certainty—​in the final triumph of goodness.144 Christians have “a faith to embrace and a risk to run.”145 They must courageously “choose and act” even though the path is unclear, since “there are times when only a choice can illuminate the shadows.”146 Each person is called to respond to the urgencies of the present moment in a unique and unreplaceable way, holding what Cantin labels “a dialogue with reality” or a “dialectic of personal history.”147 Thus, Personalist philosophy is a permanent openness to God’s call upon each person to embark on an ambiguous and dangerous journey, one that mirrors Jesus’s road toward crucifixion and death. This existential path is long and difficult, often full of loss and darkness.148 Nevertheless, Mounier passionately rejected nihilism, pessimism, and any form of “theological sadism” that proclaim the moral wretchedness of humanity and of the world.149 His essential optimism and radical openness to all dimensions of existence reflected a deeply Catholic faith in the essential goodness of God and God’s creation.150 As Amato explains, Mounier viewed life as a gift to be accepted with gratitude, “for in its deepest meaning, it is part of a loving God’s creation, providence and redemption.”151 Mounier saw the destiny of humanity and the fate of the universe as indissolubly intertwined.152 “If the Kingdom starts from this hour,” he wrote, “it is . . . permissible to think that the cosmos also contains a sacred history linked with the history of human activity.”153 Individual transformation and historical progress are interwoven and causally linked processes. Just as history is open-​ended and undetermined, human life is grounded on freedom and possibility. As such, all human choices have great—​indeed, cosmic—​significance. Finally, Mounier’s assimilation of elements of Marxist thought is visible in his theory of historical action. Like Marx, Mounier asserted that practical knowledge can emerge only in the dialectical encounter with the concrete and the particular: Truth, and particularly historic truth, can only be known in living engagement. To withdraw into an upper room and from a referee’s cabin judge all and everything in the name of some abstract criteria, will in the long run turn a technique

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of lucidity into a system of objectification. For the truth of human things does not arise ready made from the axis of two coordinates; it is born of a community of destiny, from the cares, the problems, even the errors of those whose fate we share; it emerges from the comradeship of the road rather than from the diagrams of the workshop.154

As in Marxist philosophy, thought and action are one; each requires the other for its fulfillment. In the end, Mounier’s personalism was not a systematic or fully elaborated system. Instead, it was a flexible perspective that requires constant re-​envisaging in response to “living history.”155 At the same time, Mounier was convinced that Personalist praxis surpassed Marx’s in its recognition of all dimensions of the human experience: the “inward” (i.e., mental), the “outward” (i.e., material), and the “absolute” (i.e., spiritual or transcendent).156 Becoming more fully human entails a permanent interplay between all three levels. “Without reference to the absolute,” he writes, “[political] engagement is nothing but mutilation and the progressive organization of despair and senescence.”157 Personalism balances abstract idealism and reductive materialism with “spiritual realism,” which he defined as “a continuous effort to rebuild the unit dislocated by these two perspectives.”158 Only by sustaining the creative tension between these seemingly disparate elements can humanity draw closer to realizing its divine potential for “unification and perfection.”159

Personalist education Mounier shared Maritain’s view that education would play an essential role in revivifying Western civilization.160 However, this process would first entail a “profound transformation” in the school system. He criticized the prevailing pedagogies of his time as “the superficial distribution of knowledge,” the “consolidation of social cleavages,” and the perpetuation of “the values of a dying world.”161 In contrast, Personalist education would “elaborate the formation of total man.”162 While some measure of career training is necessary, education must never be reduced to “the preparation of men for being technical producers” or even to their “civic formation as citizens.”163 Rather, it should foster the development of “balanced humans” who fully accept “the profession of being man.”164 It should aim toward “the awakening of a person to living activity.”165 Likewise, it must encompass the “whole man” and aim to “influence his whole conception of life and his whole attitude toward life.”166

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Jesuit paleontologist, philosopher, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–​1955) devoted his life toward creating a synthesis of evolutionary science and Christian theology. Having recognized that many believers had “outgrown” the premodern understanding of God, Teilhard devoted his life toward renewing Christianity in the age of Darwin and contemporary science.167 Like Maritain and Mounier, albeit on a vastly different sphere and scale of exploration, he sought to push Catholicism toward a bold and creative engagement with the modern world. Born to a genteel family in southern France in 1881, his youthful passion for nature and the sciences was fired by the dramatic landscape of his childhood milieu of Auvergne, with its extinct volcanos and vast forest reserves. Following his Jesuit ordination in 1911, he volunteered to serve as a stretcher-​bearer during the First World War. He received several commendations for his valor, including the Legion of Honor. After the war, he received the permission of his Jesuit superiors to pursue his scientific training at the Sorbonne, where he received a doctorate in geology in 1922. During these years, he started to develop his distinctive fusion of evolutionary science and Christian theology. His unconventional ideas eventually caught the attention of the Vatican, which was amid a conservative retrenchment after the “modernizing” papacy of Leo XIII. Much of the hierarchy, which was still hostile toward Darwinian thought, was deeply troubled by Teilhard’s work. They were also disturbed by his world-​affirming vision, which (in their view) left too little space for the intrinsic fallenness of humanity. Consequently, Teilhard was prohibited by his superiors from publishing or teaching on theological subjects from the mid-​1920s onward. While he obeyed this painful interdict, he continued to perform research and elaborate his ideas. Teilhard spent much of the next two decades in quasi-​exile China, where he participated in several paleontological expeditions, often under harsh physical conditions. (He was part of the team that discovered “Peking Man” in 1929.) He continued reworking his writings in the hope of receiving official permission for publication—​something that never arrived. Toward the end of his life, his friends persuaded him to let them independently publish and disseminate his work. This led to growing public interest in his final years. Teilhard settled down in New York City in 1952, and he died there in 1955. His two most ambitious works—​The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu—​were published posthumously.

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Teilhard’s work remained a target of official suspicion for most of the first decade after his death. In 1957, the Vatican ordered the removal of his books from Catholic libraries and bookshops. Five years later, the Holy See issued an official warning—​signed by Pope John XXIII—​that instructed Catholic educators to “protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the writings of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers.”168 Nevertheless, Teilhard’s work never lacked defenders among progressive members of the Church hierarchy, even during his lifetime. Many of these supporters went on to play leading roles at the Second Vatican Council. Through their advocacy, prominent elements of Teilhard’s philosophy became incorporated into the counciliar documents. His influence is especially apparent within Gaudium et Spes, which formally acknowledged a far more dynamic and positive view of historical change—​and of the creative role of human beings bringing it about—​ than official Catholic thought had ever offered. Reflecting the “rehabilitation” of Teilhard’s status within the Church since the early 1960s, his work has been favorably cited by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. He is now widely recognized as one of the most creative and visionary Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century. While many of his scientific theories have not survived the test of time, he is universally recognized as a pioneering voice in the burgeoning dialogue between Catholicism and modern science. Jesuit theologian John F. Haught declared, “Even now, Teilhard’s thought remains a vital resource for a constructive theology of nature and human existence, one in keeping with the spirit of both scientific discovery and the Council.”169

Theology of evolution Teilhard’s vision encompassed all dimensions of being, from the material to the spiritual. (Indeed, he considered the existence of “spirit” an objective reality.) In The Phenomenon of Man, he laid out an overarching narrative that reinterpreted Darwinian thought in light of Christian theology. The cosmos, he argued, has been “ascending” from utter simplicity and inorganic matter to increasing levels of complexity, diversity, and consciousness from its first moment. “We see life at the head [of evolution], with all physics subordinate to it. And at the heart of life, explaining all its progression, the impetus of a rise of consciousness.”170 In the same vein, he declared: The natural history of living creatures amounts on the exterior to the gradual establishment of a vast nervous system . . . [and] on the interior to the installation

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of a psychic state on the very dimensions of the earth. On the surface, we find the nerve fibres and ganglions; deep down, consciousness.171

Teilhard viewed the evolutionary process of “complexification” as purposeful and teleological. Haught puts it this way: Although biological evolution may seem at times to resemble more a drunken stagger than a linear ascent, the net movement of the universe has been in the direction of more and more physical complexity. The process has passed from the relatively simpler preatomic, atomic, and molecular stages to unicellular, multicellular, vertebrate, primate, and human forms of life. Overall, this long cosmic journey has given evidence of a measurable intensification of organized complexity.172

This drive toward material complexity and diversity is accompanied by an increase in inwardness and spiritual depth. Teilhard was a radically nondualistic thinker. He rejected the dichotomy between spirit and matter, which he viewed as two sides of the same cosmic stuff. Theologian and biographer Ursula King writes that for Teilhard, “Spirit slowly emerges from matter. It eventually takes precedence over the physical and chemical, and it is ultimately in spirit, the highly complex, that all consistency resides.”173 The evolution of the cosmos has given rise to rising levels of consciousness, as the “invisible ‘insideness’ ” of things continues to become ever more “real, centered . . . and free.”174 Teilhard projected this process into the distant future, and he argued that this evolutionary process drives relentlessly toward the emergence of ever-increasing levels of consciousness and complexity. Since evolution is “an ascent towards consciousness . . . Therefore it should culminate forwards in some sort of supreme consciousness.”175 Teilhard labeled this final destination the “Omega Point,” which is the union of “the convergent beams of millions of elementary centers [of consciousness] dispersed over the surface of the thinking earth.”176 He identified the “Omega Point” with the Second Coming of Christ, the One who has been “directing the universe with loving, watchful care” from its inception, and who has been “communicating himself to man . . . through the ways of intelligence.”177 This “hyper-​personal” God is the “supreme Someone,” the energizing force at the very heart of reality.178 In short, evolution is guided and energized by divine love, which permeates and sustains all of reality: “Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.”179 God has been drawing the entire cosmos into “more being” from the dawn of the universe.180 Creation was not a once-​and-​for-​all act that ended on the seventh day.181 Rather, it is a perpetually unfolding story.182 Teilhard’s

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sweeping account was a radical break from the premodern Catholic view of the universe as static and unchanging.183 For the Jesuit paleontologist, reality and the universe are dynamic and unfinished. Given this incompleteness, human actions are enormously meaningful.

Philosophical anthropology Teilhard considered the prehistoric emergence of self-​aware hominids as a watershed moment in the universe’s journey toward complexification and spiritualization: “Evolution [is] so reducible to an identifiable progress toward thought that the movement of our souls expresses and measures the very stages of evolution itself. Man discovers that he is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself.”184 The moment in which life made the quantum leap from the nonhuman to the human signaled the appearance of a new order of existence on the cosmic stage. For Teilhard, Homo sapiens is the distillation of the “essence and totality” of the universe up to this point.185 The emergence of human beings inaugurated “the beginning of a new age” in which “the earth . . . finds its soul.”186 Teilhard affirmed the preeminence of human beings over all other animals by virtue of their capacity for consciousness, moral intelligence, free will, and dynamic creativity. They possess “an axial value and a pre-​eminent dignity.”187 At the same time, he viewed Homo sapiens as a way station toward even higher levels of consciousness and personhood.188 Humanity is “something much more wonderful—​the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life.”189 In other words, human existence is a vital chapter in the universe’s journey toward its final destination, but it is not the raison d’etre for all of creation.190 Teilhard considered the ability to reflect on oneself as a unique node of being and value as a cornerstone of personhood.191 Such self-awareness means “no longer merely to know, but to know oneself; no longer merely to know, but to know that one knows.”192 He elaborated: The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence of that very doubling back upon himself, becomes in a flash able to raise himself into a new sphere. In reality, another world is born. Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice and inventions, mathematics, art, calculation of space and time, anxieties and dreams of love—​all these activities of inner life are nothing else than the effervescence of the newly-​formed centre as it explodes onto itself.193

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As Homo sapiens realizes more and more of its potential—​a process that continues to this day—​it becomes “more truly human.” Teilhard labeled this process “hominisation” or “personalization.” Notably, he also used the term “hominisation” to refer to the prehistoric moment in which animal instinct gave way to conscious thought.194

Transforming the earth As mentioned above, Teilhard saw “hominisation” as a continuing process, as human beings increasingly blanket the surface of the earth. “A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious reflection,” he wrote. “The point of ignition grows larger. The fire [of awareness] spreads in ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence.”195 Teilhard called this “thinking layer” the “noosphere,” a pulsing cocoon of mental energy that was preceded by the atmosphere and the biosphere.196 For Teilhard, human activity is the main vehicle for spiritualizing the material world and promoting the “ascent” of consciousness throughout the universe. As such, he rejected escapist interpretations of Christianity. Concrete action, he insisted, is vital to becoming “more fully human.” Permanent withdrawal into private contemplation and otherworldly “spirituality” is not a feasible option. In a similar vein, Teilhard criticized selfish individualism, egocentricity, and tribalism, which he considered antithetical to the maturation of humanity. He approvingly noted that human progress has been characterized by the process of “socialization,” which is the development of increasingly cooperative social bonds and complex societal arrangements. The formation of vast civilizations has been made possible through surrendering individual self-​interest in the pursuit of a larger collective goal. “The social phenomenon,” he declared, “is the culmination and not the attenuation of the biological phenomenon.”197 In other words, human beings cannot unlock their greatest potentialities alone. Only through relationships can they grow into their full stature. Thus, “The peak of ourselves, the acme of our originality, is not in our individuality but our person; and according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can only find our person by uniting together.”198 As mentioned in the previous chapter, Teilhard’s concept of “socialization” was ultimately endorsed by Pope John XXIII in his encyclical Mater et Magistra, which was promulgated eight years after the Jesuit’s death. In the end, Teilhard’s thought had more in common with Maritain’s and Mounier’s philosophies than a cursory glance might suggest. First and foremost,

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all three were bold emissaries between Catholic tradition and the modern world. They were all passionately concerned with the nature, purpose, and ultimate destination of human beings. They shared an abiding interest with what it means to become “more fully human.” They all affirmed an irreducibly sacred and nonmaterial dimension to human existence. They all asserted that human persons are social beings who can only realize their full potential in relationship. They embraced the paradoxical position that history is simultaneously open-​ended and destined for final fulfillment in God’s embrace. As such, they unanimously affirmed that all persons are called by their Creator to live in permanent hope and possibility, to embrace the struggle of achieving their fullest individual and communal potential, and to share in the divine work of shaping an unfinished universe.

Freire and theologies of the person Freire and Catholic anthropology Freire was an intellectual descendant of Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard. Indeed, his educational praxis can be understood as a pedagogical expression of their shared Catholic vision of the nature and purpose of human existence. Their theological influence permeated Freire’s thought from his earliest days as a pioneering educator in the Brazilian Northeast. This imprint is particularly apparent in his foundational conviction was that all persons can—​and should—​meet the challenge of becoming “more fully human” through “awakening” to history and taking responsibility for creating a more just and “beautiful” world.199 This core assumption underlies the opening lines of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where Freire declared that the struggle for “humanization” is “humankind’s central problem.”200 Later in the same work, Freire famously argued that “banking” pedagogies are intrinsically immoral because they deprived learners of their “ontological and historical vocation of becoming more human.”201 Freire’s recurrent use of the term “vocation” is telling.202 “Vocation” is a long-​ standing concept within Catholicism. Derived from the Latin word vocatio (“a calling”), it signifies the Creator’s summons for each person to attain holiness through fulfilling a distinctive function or way of life, one that is most suited to his or her talents and predispositions. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The vocation of humanity is to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into the image of the Father’s only Son. This vocation takes a

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personal form since each of us is called to enter into the divine beatitude; it also concerns the human community as a whole.”203 Pursuing one’s vocation means dedicating one’s unique “gifts” toward the service of the greater good, the Church, and God. For the vast majority of the Church’s history, “vocation” referred exclusively to those in the ordained ministry or in formal religious communities (i.e., sisterhoods and brotherhoods). In the twentieth century, the Catholic understanding of “vocation” broadened to include the laity as well. At Vatican II, the Church affirmed that non-​ordained ways of life provide their own vocational opportunities. As the Catechism states, “By virtue of their rebirth in Christ there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality with regard to dignity and the activity whereby all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ in accord with each one’s own condition and function.”204 In this new framework, all baptized Christians are called to be “sharers in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their manner . . . to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world.”205 Freire took this more inclusive and less hierarchical interpretation of vocation even further. In his view, all human beings, regardless of educational, social, or religious background, are endowed with the “ontological vocation to intervene in the world.”206 He also declared, “This is the principle finality of human existence: to become human.”207 It is difficult to overstate the importance of these suppositions to his entire philosophy. For Freire, every person possesses the “ontological vocation” to grow into a historical Subject, to form loving relationships, to participate in the struggle for societal transformation, and to “become more so” both individually and as part of a community.208 “Making history and being history is the duty of men and women,”209 he proclaimed. In this light, dehumanization is “a distortion of the call.”210 Human nature, he argued, “does not contain . . . being more, does not contain humanization, except as the vocation whose contrary is distortion in history.”211 If becoming “more fully human” is defined in large part by rising to the challenge of creating a better world, its opposite is to refuse the “ontological vocation to intervene in the world” out of ignorance, passivity, complacency, fear, or selfishness.212 Notably, Freire described the teaching profession as a “vocation.”213 Certain people are drawn to this calling by “something mysterious” that motivates teachers to persist in their work with love and determination, despite its myriad hardships.214 The decisive impact of Catholic anthropology on Freire’s thought, particularly in his indebtedness to twentieth-​century Christian humanists like Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard, is writ large throughout his educational theory. For instance, his rejection of education for primarily technical or instrumental

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reasons has clear antecedents in the writings of Maritain and Mounier. Freire referenced Maritain when reflecting on his own literacy program: As Jacques Maritain has pointed out, “If we remember that the animal is a specialist, and a perfect one, all of its knowing-​power being fixed upon a single task to be done, we ought to conclude that an educational program which would only aim at forming specialists ever more perfect in ever more specialized fields, and unable to pass judgment on any matter that goes beyond their specialized competence, would lead indeed to a progressive animalization of the human mind and life.”215

For Freire, genuine pedagogy is holistic. It engages in human formation and cultivates moral intelligence.216 It resists the “bureaucratizing of the mind,” which leads to alienation from one’s freedom, body, and authentic self.217 Freire thus echoed his theological antecedents’ refusal to reduce human consciousness to materiality alone.218 Mirroring Maritain, Freire asserted that the education of technical workers should not “leave . . . [them] naive and uncritical in dealing with problems other than those of their own specialty,” but should instead aim to “harmonize a truly humanist position with technology” in order to facilitate genuine cultural and political democratization.219 Teaching methods that consist solely of top-​down transmission of pre-​sanctioned words, ideas, and questions deny the learner’s ontological vocation to be a Subject and are therefore dehumanizing. Exemplifying the intersection between his educational philosophy and religious thought, Freire asserted: How must my attitude be . . . before the Word of God? I think my attitude cannot be the attitude of an empty being waiting to be filled by the Word of God. I think also that in order to listen to it, it is necessary to be engaged in the process of the liberation of man.220

Just as God invites each person to participate in his or her own journey toward intellectual and spiritual maturity, so must educators challenge students to take an active role in their own learning.221 Freire instructs progressive educators to begin their work with absolute confidence in the universal “vocation to be more fully human.”222 Dialogic, problem-​posing education affirms the nature of persons as beings in the process of becoming—​as unfinished . . . beings in a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, people know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware of their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots of education as an exclusively human manifestation.223

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For Freire, human beings are permanently “incomplete.”224 This unfinishedness drives human beings to learn and “seek completeness.”225 Like Mounier, he saw this intrinsic unfinishedness as a powerful wellspring of possibility: “Hope is an indispensable seasoning in our human, historical experience. Without it, instead of history we would have pure determinism.”226 Over and over, he asserted that hope is “an ontological requirement” of human existence.227 “It needs to be clear,” Freire stressed, “that the absence of hope is not the ‘normal’ way to be human. It is a distortion.”228 In fact, human beings need such hope “in the way a fish needs unpolluted water.”229 Crucially, Freire’s “critical hope” is anchored in practice rather than in wishful thinking or passivity; “there is no hope in sheer hopefulness . . . Just to hope is to hope in vain.”230 This active hope is the starting point for liberatory pedagogy itself, which is itself a manifestation of “that seeking movement, that permanent search” for becoming-​more-​so.231 History is also never inexorable or immutable. Because of its unfinishedness, “I cannot . . . fold my arms fatalistically in the face of misery, thus evading my responsibility.”232 Moreover, there is no guarantee of victory: “What makes me hopeful is not so much the certainty of the find, but my movement in search.”233 These statements recall Mounier’s description of the Personalist path as a permanent journey of risk, openness, and choice.234 For both Catholic thinkers, embracing the adventure of personal and historical transformation is the proper response to the existential challenge of human existence.

“Nature” versus “culture” Freire’s debt to French Catholic thought is also visible in his frequent comparison of human and “animal” existence. In his view, human beings alone have the capacity to enter into “the domain which is theirs exclusively—​that of History and of Culture.”235 Human beings are the only creatures who exist rather than merely survive. They have the potential to transcend “mere being in the world” through conscious acts of transformation, production, decision, creation, and communication.236 Animals, who are incapable of going beyond their biological conditioning, merely “adapt” to the world as it is.237 Having no sense of historical process or becoming-​more-​so, they are confined to an eternal present. Such purely instinctual ways of inhabiting the physical world, which are characteristic of the animal sphere, are symptoms of “dehumanization” when practiced by humans.238 Freire’s Northeastern literacy program was grounded on this sharp dichotomy between “nature” and “culture.”239 The adult learners who took part in his culture circles were presented with several preprepared images

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that foregrounded the crucial philosophical distinction between human and animal behavior. One depicted a peasant hunter shooting a bird with a rifle, exemplifying an act of human ingenuity, “culture,” and mastery over the natural world. To provide a contrasting example, Freire presented a slide of a cat hunting a mouse, which represented instinctive behavior that lacked reflection or culturally generated implements.240 He was convinced this lesson would help the learners to discover that culture is just as much a clay doll made by artists who are [their] peers as it is the work of a great sculptor, a great painter, a great mystic, or a great philosopher; that culture is the poetry of lettered poets and also the poetry of [their] own popular songs—​that culture is all human creation.241

He invited his adult learners to consider that the “normal situation” for the human person is to be “a being who, through work, constantly alters reality.”242 Teilhard’s evolutionary thought informed key aspects of Freire’s educational philosophy, particularly his concepts of humanization and conscientization. Freire directly acknowledged the Jesuit thinker when describing the uniquely human capacity for critical reflection and conscious “self-​insertion” into the material world: All of us are involved in a permanent process of conscientization . . . Its original source is that point far off in time that Teilhard de Chardin calls “Huminisation,” when human beings made themselves capable of revealing their active reality, knowing it and understanding what they know.243

Just as Teilhard described “hominisation” as the evolutionary leap from unconscious to conscious life, Freire declared that “in becoming ‘hominized,’ in the process of evolution, men become capable of having a biography.”244 Freire incorporated a key excerpt from The Phenomenon of Man when discussing the concept of “conscientization”:  “Man [is] not only ‘a being who knows’ but ‘a being who knows he knows.’ Possessing consciousness raised to the power of two. Do we sufficiently feel the radical nature of the difference?”245 Similarly, Freire explained the process and significance of human evolution in Teilhardian terms: The process through which human beings became erect, produced instruments, spoke, developed understanding, and began to communicate with one another represents tasks that involve solidarity and, simultaneously, imply cause and effect due to the presence of humans and their invention in the world as well as their domination over the life support.246

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This passage evokes Teilhard’s definition of “socialization” as the evolutionary process that enabled the paramount achievements of human civilization. Freire echoes this notion in his description of the emergence of collaborative relationships and social bonds that unlock human potentiality and enable persons to accomplish far greater things together than they can alone. Moreover, Freire’s accentuation of the upright posture of human beings is noteworthy. Within the Judeo-​Christian tradition, this physical attribute has often been seen as an expression of the uniquely human capacity to commune with the Creator.247 While Freire’s meditation on human evolution stopped short of an explicitly theological interpretation, he depicted the process in teleological terms: This basic life infrastructure or life support system [i.e., the material, preconscious world] did not require or imply the use of language or the erect posture that would free the hands—​the two things that in fact would make possible the emergence of Homo sapiens. The more the hands and the brain engaged in a sort of pact of solidarity, the more the support system become “world,” “life,” “existence.”248

Likewise, Freire’s description of the transformative impact of human activity on the physical world calls to mind Teilhard’s vision of human beings as the evolutionary protagonist in the ascent of consciousness throughout the cosmos. Employing one of his most vivid (and androcentric) metaphors, Freire declared: “For men . . . to transform the world is to humanize it . . . impregnating the world with the traces of works.”249 This formulation recalls Teilhard’s belief that human activity increasingly blankets the face of the earth with a “thinking layer.”250 Similarly, just as Teilhard contended that the earth is undergoing the progressive unification of spirit and matter, Freire proclaimed: “What makes men and women ethical is their capacity to ‘spiritualize’ the world, to make it either beautiful or ugly.”251 Theologian Ilia Delio’s summation of Teilhard’s view of Christian mission can be applied to Freire as well: Teilhard emphasized that the role of the Christian is to divinize the world . . . to “christify” the world by our actions, by immersing ourselves in the world, plunging our hands, we might say, into the soil of the earth and touching the roots of life . . . For him, union with God means not withdrawal of separation from the activity of the world but a dedicated, integrated, and sublimated absorption into it. Formerly . . . the Christian thought that she or he could attain God only by abandoning everything. One now discovers that one cannot be saved except through the universe and as a continuation of the universe. We must make our way to heaven through earth.252

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Christians and history The central theological question for Brazil’s Catholic progressives was the purpose of Christianity in the modern world. Like many of his activist peers, Freire’s intellectual development vis-​à-​vis this fundamental issue was nourished by Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard. As mentioned previously, the Catholic Left came to see their foremost religious duty as the establishment of a more just, equitable, and humane society. They rejected the privatized morality, reflexive submission to established authority, and perceived political quietism of “traditional” Catholic teaching. Their new perspectives were hallmarks of Personalist thought. Indeed, Freire later acknowledged Mounier’s influence on the historical consciousness of Brazil’s Catholic activists: At that time, radical positions in the sense I have described them were being taken principally . . . by groups of Christians who believed with Mounier that “History,” both the history of the world and the history of human beings, has meanings.253

As biographer Denis E. Collins explains, Freire derived from Personalism a fundamentally hopeful understanding of history and a concomitant “summons to action.”254 Mounier’s thought helped Freire to reject the view of history as fixed, static, or determined. Rather, it is unfinished and malleable, which means that human choices and actions are enormously significant and meaningful. Along these lines, the emergence of this historical consciousness among Brazil’s Catholic activists received strong theological validation from the work of two gifted Brazilian-​born Jesuits: Almeri Bezerra and Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz. Both thinkers were deeply involved with the student movement, and both were deeply influenced by the philosophies of Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard. In 1959, Bezerra gave a warmly received presentation at the annual JUC conference in which he urged the student activists to develop a “more systematic development of a body of thought . . . which would provide the basic ideas to orient all [social] action.”255 Since the goals of “creating a Christian social order” and “restoring all things to Christ” were too amorphous, especially in light of the complex problems facing modern Brazil, Bezerra proposed that Catholic activism should be guided by a synthesis of “eternal” theological truths with “scientific” analysis of concrete historical conditions.256 Combining these elements would provide a set of “intermediate principles” to guide activists in making moral and political choices that were appropriate to their historical moment.257 Bezerra’s philosophy of social

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change was extensively shaped by Maritain’s concept of a “new concrete historical idea,” which the French philosopher described as a rough blueprint for Christian activism to achieve a “proportionate realization” of the Kingdom of God within history.258 Following in Maritain’s footsteps, Bezerra provided the university student activists with a theory of historical action that fused theology with social science, thus providing an intellectually sophisticated legitimization of Catholic political action. The philosophical groundwork provided by Bezerra was elaborated by Lima Vaz at the 1960 JUC conference. Like his fellow Jesuit, Lima Vaz was preoccupied with the “philosophical and theological bases of modern change,” and he sought to reconcile the “universal truths” of Christianity with Brazil’s contemporary social ills.259 While Bezerra was heavily influenced by Maritain, Lima Vaz was one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for Mounier.260 At the student gathering, he unveiled a theory of “historical consciousness,” which affirmed the Christian responsibility to shape history. According to Lima Vaz, the essence of Christianity is “the Existence and Action of Christ, which is located and exercised in the very heart of history.”261 Echoing Mounier’s language, Lima Vaz asserted that God is encountered as the “absolutely personal and concretely universal Center of history.”262 For Lima Vaz, “historical consciousness” arises from “conscious and critical reflection on the historical process.”263 Current historical conditions are neither arbitrary nor static but are “a result of the past and as a potentiality for the future.”264 Accordingly, history can be reshaped through human action. Recalling Mounier’s condemnation of human beings who evade responsibility for action, Lima Vaz condemned those Christians who refuse to “shoulder the destiny of creation.”265 His formulation also recalled Teilhard’s depiction of human beings as the creative vanguard of evolution, infusing history with its dynamic “substance” through creative “action . . . which transforms the world.”266 Ultimately, Bezerra’s and Lima Vaz’s work helped the Catholic activists to embrace their mission to “humanize” the world. Freire’s educational philosophy bears clear imprints of Bezerra’s and Lima Vaz’s thought. For instance, he insisted that the “point of departure” for critical reflection “must always be with men and women in the ‘here and now,’ which constitutes the situation in which they are submerged, from which they emerge, and in which they intervene.”267 Human beings, he argued, cannot be understood without taking their interactions with their environment into account: Humans find themselves marked by the results of their own actions in their relations with the world, and through their action on it. By acting they transform;

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by transforming they create a reality which conditions their manner of acting. Thus it is impossible to dichotomize human beings and the world, since the one cannot exist without the other.268

Moreover, just as Lima Vaz denounced those who shirked their historical responsibility as being the truly guilty, Freire declared: “Insofar as I am a conscious presence in the world, I cannot hope to escape my ethical responsibility for my action in the world.”269 In a similar vein, “No one can be in the world, with the world, and with others and maintain a position of neutrality. I cannot be in the world decontextualized, simply observing life.”270 Much like Mounier, Freire’s Catholic faith was thoroughly “modern” in its demand for a concrete, situated, and deeply personal response to one’s unique lived conditions and historical circumstances.271

Dialogue and relationship Freire viewed human existence as a relational phenomenon that is composed of the permanent dialogue between “self ” and “non-​self.”272 As educational scholar Peter Roberts notes, Freire saw persons as “beings of relationships . . . whose very existence cannot be comprehended without reference to others.”273 For Freire, it is impossible to become “more fully human” without acknowledging one’s incompleteness: Closing ourselves to the world and to others is a transgression of the natural condition of incompleteness. The person who is open to the world or others inaugurates thus a dialogical relationship with which restlessness, curiosity, and unfinishedness are confirmed as key moments within the ongoing current of history.274

Human formation cannot occur in isolation; it can only unfold in dialogue with others. As Collins explains, “Humanization on Freire’s terms is not pursuit of individual liberation. The goal of humanization is a social goal . . . Individual men neither know nor exist outside of society.”275 Freire depicted this process in metaphysical terms: A being in the womb of history but in the process of coming to be bears in itself some fundamental archetypes without which it would be impossible to recognize our human presence in the world as something singular and original. In other words, our being in the world is far more than just “being.” It is a “presence,” a “presence” that is relational to the world and to others.

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A  “presence” that, in recognizing another presence as “not I,” recognizes its own self.276

Accordingly, growing into one’s full humanity requires participation in an I-​ Thou277 relationship between two Subjects. This dynamic has powerful implications for pedagogy, where the potential always exists for manipulation and objectification. For Freire, teachers and learners can only become “more fully human” through relationships of mutuality and humility.278 He asserts, “Each time the ‘thou’ is changed into an object, an ‘it,’ dialogue is subverted and education is changed to deformation.”279 All participants in dialogic pedagogy are Subjects who possess their own dignity, stature, integrity, and unique expertise. Because it is grounded upon radical openness, interdependence, and mutual vulnerability, dialogic pedagogy offers a life-​giving venue for interlocutors. In contrast, banking pedagogy is an “I-​It” relationship, one that is based on hierarchy and subordination. In this context, teacher and learner are unable to fully “encounter” each other. Freire would undoubtedly have endorsed Maritain’s call for educators to recognize and unconditionally respect the learner’s full personhood.280 Similarly, he would have affirmed Mounier’s insistence that pedagogy must support the development of “balanced humans” who boldly and critically embrace the responsibilities, challenges, and uncertainties of historical existence.281 Freire’s conviction in the relational nature of human beings was grounded in Catholic anthropology, which strongly rejects individualistic notions of self-​ sufficiency or self-​invention. Catholic tradition maintains God is encountered in community and relationship, not in intellectual analysis. Freire explicitly affirmed this principle: “Existence is a dynamic concept, implying eternal dialogue between person and person, between a person and the world, between a person and Creator. It is this dialogue which makes a person an historical being.”282 The foundational relationship of human existence is between the person and the Creator. In this light, he declared: We are incomplete beings, and the completion of our incompleteness is encountered in our relationships with our Creator, a relationship which by its very nature, can never be a relationship of domination or domestication, but is always a relationship of liberation . . . Precisely because humans are finite and indigent beings, in this transcendence through love, humans have their return to their source [i.e. God], who liberates them.283

Thus, the beating heart of Freire’s educational philosophy, indeed of his entire worldview, is the relational nature of human existence. As such, any pedagogy

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that fails to place the relational dimension of teaching and learning at its core cannot claim to be “Freirean,” regardless of its intent or content.

Conclusion Freire’s youthful encounter with the works of Jacques Maritain, Emanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin shaped his educational praxis for the rest of his life. These deeply humanistic and historically oriented French Catholic thinkers nourished Freire’s understanding of education as a process of “humanization,” one that grows out of the fundamental affirmation that all human beings are bearers of the divine imprint and thus uniquely imbued with absolute dignity, moral freedom, and creative intelligence. They also helped him to develop an interpretation of his faith as demanding concrete historical action to ensure that all human beings have the opportunities and resources they need to become grow into their full personhood. Moreover, Freire’s Christian humanism provided him with a positive and optimistic view of human nature and existence. It underwrote his unflagging affirmation that human beings always possess the capacity to recognize—​and choose—​goodness, truth, and beauty. It nourished his conviction that human beings always retain some ability to shape their individual and collective destinies. Accordingly, Freire was particularly scornful of escapist or quietist religious teachings for contradicting the “ontological vocation” of persons to participate courageously in temporal affairs to help build a more equitable, democratic, and “personal” society in accordance with God’s vision for human flourishing. Much of the resonance between Freire and his French Catholic forerunners can be traced back to broad parallels between their respective historical contexts. Both mid-​century Brazil and France after the First World War were undergoing social and political upheaval. Long-​standing beliefs, institutions, and traditions were collapsing. Catholicism was rapidly losing its credibility and moral authority, especially among younger intellectuals. This shared sense of “total crisis” and spiritual uncertainty help to explain the deep affinity that Brazil’s progressive Catholic elites felt for the pioneering French thinkers. In France, this search for radically new ways of understanding and navigating the emerging historical epoch gave rise to Maritain’s Integral Humanism, Mounier’s Christian Personalism, and Teilhard’s synthesis of evolutionary science and Catholic anthropology. Above all, it inspired a fierce proclamation of

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the inviolable worth and dignity of the human person in the face of contemporary political and economic systems that seemed to deny it at every turn. These modernizing twentieth-​century theologians shared the premise that “human religiousness should be understood and interpreted from the perspective of modern knowledge and modern life experience.”284 In other words, they presented intellectual and spiritual frameworks “within which one can be deeply religious and fully modern at the same time.”285 This entailed a newfound openness toward secular modernity rather than the Church’s post-​Enlightenment stance of triumphalism and defensive hostility. Crucially, it signified the active search for potential areas of cooperation and ethical consensus with non-​ Catholics, as exemplified by Maritain’s major contribution toward the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, it signaled the emergence of a less dogmatic faith, one that grappled seriously with the lived situations of men and women rather than doctrinal correctness. In this way, they affirmed the enduring relevance and vitality of Christianity in an increasingly pluralist and secular world. These dynamic theological currents indelibly molded Freire’s faith, worldview, and educational philosophy. Their enduring influence is visible in are vealing passage he penned in the final years of his life: “I have never abandoned my first preoccupation, one that has been with me since my early experiences in education. Namely my preoccupation with human nature. It is to this preoccupation that I continue to proclaim my loyalty.”286

Notes 1 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 56–​7. 2 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 87. 3 Holbrook, “Catholic Student Movements in Latin America,” 105. 4 Ibid. 5 Jeria, “Vagabond of the Obvious,” 17. 6 Laura E. Delgado, “Intellectual in Flux: The Development of Liberal Catholic Thought in Alceu Amoroso Lima” (Unpublished thesis, Vanderbilt University, 2010), 20. Lima was a visionary whose greatest legacy was “to help bring Brazilian Catholic intellectuals into contact with current [theological] thought [from overseas], and to show a generation that one could be both an intellectual and a Catholic” (Delgado, 3). His tireless leadership stimulated a “new conscience and spirit of positive action” among the many Catholic lay elites who had dismissed the institutional Church as a venue for intellectual and social action (ibid., 27–​8).

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7 Margaret Rose Palmer and Ron Newsom, “Paulo Freire’s Consciousness Raising: Politics, Education, and Revolution in Brazil,” Educational Studies 13, no. 2 (1982): 185. 8 In sociologist Emanuel De Kadt’s survey of MEB activists, Teilhard was voted the third most influential thinker, after Louis-​Joseph Lebret and Mounier. Lebret was a French social scientist and Dominican priest who wrote extensively about Brazilian underdevelopment. De Kadt attributes Lebret’s popularity to his accessible prose style (Catholic Radicals, 142). The fourth place was taken by the Brazilian-​born Henrique Claudio de Lima Vaz, a brilliant young Jesuit who was one of the country’s most passionate advocates for Mounier and Maritain. The last two slots were filled by Marx and Jean-​Paul Sartre. 9 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 245. 10 Paul VI affectionately described Maritain as “my teacher” at the close of Vatican II. 11 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 13. 12 Joseph Amato, Mounier and Maritain: A French Catholic Understanding of the Modern World (University: University of Alabama Press, 1975), 55. 13 Ibid., 96. 14 Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, 2nd ed. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2012), 35. 15 Amato distills the “double character” of Maritain’s project: On one hand, it meant trying to demonstrate to the non-​believer the contradictions of his non-​belief and the compatibility of Christianity with truth and life. On the other hand, it meant trying to convince fellow Catholics of the superiority of their traditions vis-​à-​vis the secular world and to assure their orthodoxy in matters of Christian thought. (59)

16 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 59. 17 Ibid., 53. 18 Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1943), 7. 19 Gen. 1:26–​27, New International Version. 20 Gen. 2:7. 21 David J. A. Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53. 22 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8. 23 In The Catechism of the Catholic Church, this transcendent aspect of the human person is described as the “seeds of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material” (Catholic Church, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. [Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2011], sec. 33, http://​www.usccb.org/​beliefs-​and-​teachings/​what-​we-​believe/​catechism/​ catechism-​of-​the-​catholic-​church/​epub/​index.cfm

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24 On a darker note, the biblical assertion of human exceptionality also generated and sustained the millennia-​long belief that the created order exists largely for the gratification of human desires. In this view, human beings have been endowed with total control over the earth, without any concomitant sense of responsibility, kinship, reciprocity, or limitation. The planetary impact of this narrative includes resource depletion, mass extinction, massive pollution, and the advent of cataclysmic climate change. In recent decades, a growing number of theological voices have sought to challenge and revise this dominionist ideology. In their view, the proper role of human beings vis-​a-​vis nature is one of stewardship. God, they argue, has entrusted human beings with the duty to protect and nurture all of creation. This ecotheology received its most authoritative expression in Catholic thought within Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. He writes: We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us . . . Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures . . . Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations . . . God rejects every claim to absolute ownership”

(Pope Francis, “Laudato Si’ [Encyclical Letter on Care for Our Common Home],” sec. 67, http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​francesco/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​papa-​ francesco_​20150524_​enciclica-​laudato-​si.html). 25 Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, 66. 26 Ibid. 27 Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism, trans. Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 56. 28 Ibid. 29 The Catechism affirms: “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions . . . Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts” (Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1730). 30 Vatican Council II, “Gaudium et Spes [Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World],” sec. 17, http://​www.vatican.va/​archive/​hist_​councils/​ii_​vatican_​ council/​documents/​vat-​ii_​const_​19651207_​gaudium-​et-​spes_​en.html 31 Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, 66. 32 Vatican Council II, “Gaudium et Spes,” sec. 15. 33 Ibid., sec. 19.

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34 Carolyn Clark, “Truth, Belief, and Knowledge,” in Adult Education and Theological Interpretations, ed. Peter Jarvis and Nicholas Walters (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1993), 21–​2. 35 James P. Carroll, Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age (New York: Viking, 2014), 273. 36 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8. 37 Vatican Council II, “Gaudium et Spes,” sec. 12. 38 Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1879. 39 Gen 1:18. 40 Clark, “Truth, Belief, and Knowledge,” 49. 41 Clark, The Vision of Catholic Social Thought, 8. 42 Ibid., 13. 43 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 146. 44 Vatican Council II, “Gaudium et Spes,” sec. 26. 45 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 11. 46 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 144. 47 Maritain, Integral Humanism, 132. 48 Clark, The Vision of Catholic Social Thought, 59–​60. 49 Maritain, Integral Humanism, 269. 50 Ibid., 269–​70. 51 Ibid., 269. 52 Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, 86. 53 Maritain, Integral Humanism, 249. 54 Ibid., 289. 55 Ibid., 130. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 128. 58 Ibid., 126. 59 Jacques Maritain, Freedom in the Modern World (New York: Gordian Press, 1971), 152. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Maritain, Integral Humanism, 249. 63 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 7. 64 This “liberation” requires the cultivation of several crucial “dispositions”: the love of truth, the love of good and justice, simplicity and openness regarding existence, sense of a job well done, and sense of cooperation (Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 36–​8). 65 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 11. 66 Ibid., 36.

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Ibid., 9. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 8. Ibid. Ibid., 9–​10. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 89. Joseph M. De Torre, “Maritain’s Integral Humanism and Catholic Social Teaching,” in Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain’s Man and the State, ed. Timothy Fuller and John P. Hittinger (Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2001), 205. 75 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 89. 76 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 78. 77 Ibid., xii. 78 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 13. 79 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 5. 80 The journal remains in circulation. 81 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 159. 82 Ibid., 160. 83 Emmanuel Mounier, Be Not Afraid: A Denunciation of Despair, trans. Cynthia Rowland (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), 114. 84 Emmanuel Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, trans. Monks of St. John’s Abbey (New York: Longmans, Green, 1938), 69. 85 Eileen Cantin, Mounier: A Personalist View of History (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), 30. 86 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 69. 87 Ibid. 88 Cantin, Mounier, 59. 89 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 161. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., 101. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 95. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 182–​3. 96 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 24. 97 Ibid. 98 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 165. 99 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 25. 100 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 8.

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101 Ibid., 165. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 177. 104 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 165. 105 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 180. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid., 1. 108 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 170. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 171. 112 Ibid. 113 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 133. 114 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 52. 115 Ibid., 53. 116 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 132. 117 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 65. 118 Ibid., 95. 119 Ibid., 67. 120 Ibid., 69. 121 Ibid., 189. 122 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 137. 123 Ibid., 12. 124 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 192. 125 Quoted in Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 119. 126 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 160. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., 150. 130 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 22–​3. 131 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 95. 132 Ibid., 171. 133 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 119. 134 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 73. 135 Ibid., 105. 136 Ibid., 78. 137 Cantin, Mounier, 43. 138 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 161. 139 Ibid., 150. 140 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 106.

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141 Cantin, Mounier, 80. 142 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 96. 143 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 93. 144 Cantin, Mounier, 100. 145 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 83. 146 Ibid., 181. 147 Cantin, Mounier, 4. 148 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 83. 149 Ibid., 90. 150 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 24. 151 Ibid., 24. 152 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 79. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid., 180–​1. 155 Ibid., 114. 156 Ibid., 163. 157 Ibid., 139. 158 Ibid., 193. 159 Ibid. 160 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 122. 161 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 194. 162 Ibid. 163 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 114. 164 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 195. 165 Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 114. 166 Ibid., 112. 167 John F. Haught, “More Being: The Emergence of Teilhard de Chardin,” Commonweal 136, no. 11 (2009): 18. 168 Quoted in Haught, “More Being,” 17. 169 Haught, “More Being,” 18. 170 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 148. 171 Ibid., 146. 172 Haught, “More Being,” 19. 173 Ursula King, Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 38. 174 Haught, “More Being,” 19. 175 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 258. 176 Ibid., 259. 177 Ibid., 293.

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178 Ibid., 298. 179 Ibid., 264. 180 Haught, “More Being,” 19. 181 Gen 2:2. 182 Haught, “More Being,” 18–​19. 183 Ibid., 18. 184 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 220. 185 Ibid., 180. 186 Ibid., 182. 187 Ibid., 188. 188 King, Spirit of Fire, 176. 189 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 223. 190 Haught, “More Being,” 18. 191 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 165. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid., 180. 195 Ibid., 182. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid., 222. 198 Ibid., 263. 199 Phillip Berryman highlights the radicalism at the core of Freire’s educational thought: He believes that what philosophers have been saying about “man” for twenty-​ five hundred years is valid for Latin American poor people: that they are rational and political animals and have the capacity to enjoy or exercise freedom. This is precisely what the dominant society denies in practice if not in words. (Liberation Theology, 37)

200 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 43. 201 Ibid., 83. 202 For instance, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, trans. Patrick Clarke (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 55, 126; and Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 84, 98, 99. 203 Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1877. 204 Ibid., sec. 872. 205 Ibid., sec. 871. 206 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 55. 207 Quoted in Collins, Paulo Freire, 67. 208 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 79. 209 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 54.

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210 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 98–​9. 211 Ibid., 99. 212 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 55. 213 Ibid., 126. 214 Ibid. 215 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 36. 216 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 39. 217 Ibid., 102. 218 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), 108. 219 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 34. 220 Quoted in Elias, Paulo Freire, 89. 221 Elias, Paulo Freire, 89. 222 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 90. 223 Ibid., 84. 224 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 52. 225 Ibid., 79. 226 Ibid., 69. 227 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 44. 228 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 69. 229 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 8. 230 Ibid., 9. 231 Freire, Daring to Dream, 87. 232 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 72. 233 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 106. 234 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 83. 235 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 4. 236 Paulo Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” Harvard Educational Review 68, no. 4 (1998): 499–​500. 237 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 32. 238 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 4. 239 See Chapter 1. 240 Unlike the hunter, the cat is limited to its biological tools (e.g., claws and teeth) to capture its prey. 241 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 47. 242 Ibid., 57. 243 Paulo Freire, “An Invitation to Conscientization and Deschooling,” in The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, trans. Donaldo Macedo (Granby: Bergin & Garvey, 1985), 172. 244 Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” 502. 245 Quoted in Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” 519.

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246 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 33. 247 Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” 58. 248 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 52–​3. 249 Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” 501. 250 Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 182. 251 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 53. 252 Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 139. 253 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 17. 254 Collins, Paulo Freire, 30. 255 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 62. 256 Ibid., 63. 257 Ibid. 258 Maritain, Integral Humanism, 126. 259 Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 89. 260 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 70. 261 Quoted in Sanders, “Catholicism and Development,” 92–​3. 262 Ibid., 93. 263 De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 87. 264 Ibid. 265 Quoted in De Kadt, Catholic Radicals, 88. 266 Quoted in De Kadt, JUC and AP, 210. 267 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 85. 268 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 94. 269 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 26. 270 Ibid., 73. 271 Amato, Mounier and Maritain, 27. 272 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 98. 273 Roberts, “Rethinking Conscientisation,” 192. 274 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 121. 275 Collins, Paulo Freire, 67. 276 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 25–​6. 277 Freire’s use of “I-​Thou” and “I-​It” language was almost certainly derived from the religious existentialism of the Austrian-​born Israeli philosopher Martin Buber (1878–​1965). Buber viewed human existence as a dialogic phenomenon: “I cannot be if you are not. I cannot know alone. For me to know, it is necessary for you to know” (quoted in Donohue, “Paulo Freire,” 167). The “I-​Thou” relationship is characterized by mutual recognition and authenticity, while the “I-​It” relationship is characterized by misrecognition, instrumentalization, and alienation. Buber saw God as the ultimate “Thou,” the transcendent interlocutor for all human beings.

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278 Elias, Paulo Freire, 139. 279 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 52. 280 Freire, Education at the Crossroads, 9–​10. 281 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 195. 282 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 14. 283 Quoted in Elias, Paulo Freire, 38. 284 Paul Rasor, Faith without Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21st Century (Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 2005), 1. 285 Ibid. 286 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 115.

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Freire and Liberation Theology

Background and overview Freire’s exile was the most revolutionary and dialectical period of his career. His radicalization, which began in the aftermath of the April 1964 coup, accelerated and intensified during his time in Chile, where he spent the rest of the decade as an educational adviser, researcher, organizer, and literacy trainer on behalf of the Christian Democratic administration of President Eduardo Frei.1 Freire was deeply involved with the Agrarian Reform program, which was a major pillar of the government’s thrust to eradicate poverty and modernize Chile’s agriculture, industry, and infrastructure.2 He spent much of the next five years in the Chilean countryside, where he trained rural literacy workers, interacted extensively with farmers and other rural workers, and assisted the formation of rural trade unions. Education scholar John D. Holst describes this setting as “an exceedingly rich environment for Freire’s development, since he was able to experiment with different methodologies that the agrarian reform workers used to engage the peasantry in the creation of organizations and in literacy work.”3 Indeed, Chile’s general political climate throughout the second half of the 1960s was conducive to Freire’s ideological evolution.4 It witnessed the rapid mobilization of the popular classes in ways that paralleled recent events in Brazil.5 Freire’s frequent travels on behalf of the Agrarian Reform program brought him into extensive contact with the rural poor. He recounted how these experiences informed his composition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed: The more I  became immersed in the world of the Chilean peasant, the more I listened to the peasants speak, the more the relation of the oppressor and the oppressed, of oppressive consciousness and oppressed consciousness appeared

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before me . . . And there is this day that I came to believe that I had to write what came to me.6

Freire developed many close relationships with young Chilean activists and intellectuals, many of whom had grown disillusioned with President Frei’s adherence to nationalist-​developmentalist models of economic modernization. They were frustrated by his inability or unwillingness to break with the capitalist status quo and to institute more muscular reforms. With the encouragement of his new allies, Freire began to explore works by Hegel, Antonio Gramsci, and Marx.7 As he grew more radicalized, he started describing much of his previous political thought as “immature” for lacking class analysis.8 He now scoffed at the notion that a just and equitable society could be established solely through gradualist, consensus-​building political measures. Such strategies, he now believed, were too weak to uproot the deeply entrenched forces of wealth and power. He now maintained that only a “revolutionary transformation of the class societies” would suffice.9 Revolutionary action, he declared, is not something to be feared or avoided. Rather, it is a “natural and permanent . . . human dimension.”10 Holst observes that at this pivotal moment in Freire’s career, “he abandoned much of his more naive developmentalist-​based thinking on education, a perspective that was limited to the idea that the literacy process should help integrate the popular classes into the process of capitalist modernization.”11 Indeed, Freire later proclaimed: “After the coup, I was really born again with a new consciousness of politics.”12 Freire brought this radicalized perspective to bear on his new position at the Geneva-​based WCC. He and his family moved to Geneva in 1970 on his acceptance of the WCC’s invitation to serve as its general education secretary. Freire’s inaugural speech at the Secretariat reflected his ideological transformation: “You must know that I have taken a decision. My case is the wretched of the earth. You should know that I [have] opted for revolution.”13 The journey of ideological transformation that had begun in Chile continued and deepened during his decade-​long stay in Switzerland. As general education secretary, he supervised adult literacy programs in several postrevolutionary and postcolonial nations, most of which were in Africa and South America. He also gave numerous speeches and participated in academic events throughout the world. By the end of the 1970s, he had become the most widely recognized living educational thinker and activist. Freire’s writings from the late 1960s onward marked his emergence as a dialectical thinker and revolutionary educator. The first (and most widely read) of

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these publications was Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which he finished toward the end of his Chilean period. Many of these writings modulated to a significantly more polemical register, especially when compared with the relatively cool, measured, and neutral tenor of his previous work. Reflecting his ideological evolution, he now referred to figures like Hegel, Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara. Similarly, terms like “praxis,” “proletariat,” and “dialectic” surfaced in his writing for the first time. While the influence of Marxism on Freire’s thought from Pedagogy of the Oppressed onward has been widely acknowledged, the impact of Latin American liberation theology is less known.14 This radical theological movement envisions God as an active partisan on the side of the marginalized and the downtrodden. It calls on individuals and societies to make a “preferential option” for the poor, and it broadens the definition of sin from the personal level to the political and economic structures that perpetuate injustice. Importantly, liberation theology grew out of the seeds planted by lay movements like the Brazilian Catholic Left. Like this earlier movement, liberation theology was nourished by the modernizing theologies of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, the progressive social encyclicals of John XXIII and his successor Paul VI, and landmark ecclesial events like the Second Vatican Council. Given Freire’s long immersion in Brazil’s progressive Catholic activist milieu, liberation theology resonated powerfully with his evolving religious and political convictions. He later described the liberation theologians as kindred spirits who spoke powerfully “to the dreams of a generation that sighs for a revolutionary transformation of their world.”15 Galvanized by their work, he published a series of theologically oriented essays in rapid succession: “The Third World and Theology” (1970), “Letter to a Theology Student” (1970), “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” (1972) and “The Educational Role of the Churches in Latin America” (1972).16 In these writings, he explored the religious dimension of his pedagogy more expansively than ever before. As Daniel S. Schipani writes, Freire during this period had become deeply interested in “developing and communicating a theological understanding of his educational method and strategy.”17 For the first time, he acknowledged that theology had “indelibly marked” his educational theory and practice.18 Liberation theology was influenced by Freirean pedagogy in turn, with many of its leading practitioners adapting it as the methodological template for their interactions with the poor. The practice of liberation theology revolved around small-​group discussions in which the learners sought to apply the lessons of scripture to their own concrete experiences, struggles, and social problems.

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Drawing on Freire’s theory and practice, liberation theologian Juan Luis Segundo developed the concept of “conscientizing evangelization” in which “the gospel is viewed as a liberating interpretation of history in which men and women are subjects rather than the objects of history.”19 Segundo saw an “intimate and necessary connection” between literacy training, religious conversion, and political awakening.20 Gustavo Gutiérrez, whose groundbreaking A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (1971) is still considered the movement’s seminal text, lauded Freire’s literacy program as “one of the most creative and fruitful efforts” at working with the oppressed that had ever been implemented in Latin America.21 Likewise, the Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff lauded “the famous Christian educator Paulo Freire” for developing an innovative, locally grounded, and nonauthoritarian pedagogy to guide religious education with the poor.22 According to Boff, Freire’s approach is one in which educand and educator, catechized and catechist, enter into a process of mutual apprenticeship and exchange on learning, on the basis of accumulated experience, which is criticized and broadened in an integral perspective that attends to the various dimensions of personal, social, intellectual, affective, cultural, and religious human existence.23

By the mid-​1970s, Freire’s work had become so deeply interwoven with liberation theology that it could be described as the movement’s “pedagogical analogue.”24 This chapter explores the rich intellectual and methodological cross-​fertilization between Freire and liberation theology, especially with regard to the historical role of God as the “liberator” of the poor, an “integral” understanding of “salvation,” a more politically radical understanding of the social role of Christians, the role of “love” in activism and pedagogy, the dialogue between Christianity and Marxism, the spiritual dimension of the conscientization process, and a shared focus on the historical role of the institutional Church in enabling or opposing oppression.

The modern roots of liberation theology The Latin American context Both liberation theology and Freire’s pedagogy emerged within a historical milieu that had been permeated by Christianity for centuries. As explored in the previous chapters, mid-​century Latin American intellectuals were

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concerned with discerning how to interpret and live out their religious tradition in the face of accelerating societal and cultural change. National branches of Catholic Action grew rapidly throughout the continent, as highly educated Catholics devoted themselves to bringing their religious commitments to bear on present-​day social ills. In Brazil and elsewhere, thousands of lay elites mobilized to establish a more democratic, egalitarian, and humane society. Many of them employed the “Revision of Life” training method, which originated with the Young Christian Workers group in Belgium.25 Also known as “See-​Judge-​Act,” this approach toward the formation of Catholic “militants” was a holistic technique that fostered a better understanding of the lived conditions in which they sought to concretize their faith. (Their openness toward the social sciences and Marxist analysis was a result of this endeavor.) Religious historian Ana Maria Bidegain points out the significance of this method: In accordance with the analysis done in the Revision of Life, and their conclusions, the militants tried to change personally; over all they were committed to transforming the social reality at the same time that they preached the Gospel. This pastoral perspective was really new and missionary . . . The Revision of Life experience was the base of the theological pastoral renovation which prepared the way for Vatican II and all the transformation in the Latin American Church.26

“Revision of Life” facilitated the formation of small communities of students, clergy, peasants, and workers throughout the region. Importantly, the more time the middle-​class Catholic activists spent “going to the poor,” the more committed they became toward working for social and political change. These small groups, which became known as “basic ecclesial communities,” were the incubators for liberation theology. As Bidegain writes, “We can even say that the first Liberation Theology was a systematization of this Christian experience.”27 The turbulent political climate throughout Latin America from the late 1960s to the early 1970s was conducive to the emergence of a radicalized and highly politicized theology. Nation after nation witnessed the rise of repressive Right-​ wing dictatorships. Bidegain adds: Many laymen and laywomen, monks and nuns, priests and even bishops were killed because of their commitment to the poor. Many others learned the ways of prison or exile . . . It was in this confused, hard, distressing, and hopeful time and context that Liberation Theology was born.28

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Freire’s persecution at the hands of the Brazilian military dictatorship—​and his subsequent radicalization—​exemplified the trajectory of many Catholic activists. Powerful modernizing and progressive currents within the institutional Roman Catholic Church also fed into the emergence of liberation theology. Growing numbers of progressive theologians, clergy, and laypersons, inspired by the papacy of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, began to challenge the societal and ecclesial status quo. Thousands of “base communities” were established throughout Latin America. In these grassroots gatherings, Christians from privileged backgrounds worked, studied, and often lived among the poor. These direct experiences provided much of the greatest impetus for liberation theology. In early 1968, Gutiérrez made a landmark presentation to his fellow clergy that marked the first recorded use of the phrase “theology of liberation.” Meanwhile, the “liberationist” winds blowing throughout the Roman Catholic Church were paralleled within the WCC by the emergence of scholarly efforts to explore the theological dimension of revolutionary change. In addition, the WCC had drifted toward the political Left throughout the 1950s and 1960s. By the time of Freire’s arrival, the organization was intensely focused on issues of decolonization, democracy, development, and social justice movements in the so-​called Third World.

The Medellín Conference About 130 Latin American bishops came together in Medellín, Colombia, in August 1968 for the second general gathering of the Latin American Bishops Conference. They had assembled to seek ways to apply the insights of Vatican II to the region. In this light, they were committed to confronting the socioeconomic ills of their continent. The conference produced a remarkably progressive document called “The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation of Latin America in Light of the Council.” In this historic statement, the bishops proclaimed their intention to return to the historical and spiritual roots of Christianity. In their view, this entailed affirming the Church’s solidarity with the poor and powerless. They lamented the compounding of hunger and misery, of illness and of a massive nature and infant mortality, of illiteracy and marginality, of profound inequality of income, and tensions between the social classes, of outbreaks of violence and rare participation of the people in decisions affecting the common good.29

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In light of the “deafening cry” of the poor, the bishops could not “remain indifferent in the face of the tremendous social injustices . . . which keep the majority of [the] people in dismal poverty” and “inhuman wretchedness.”30 Accordingly, they asserted the Church’s option to “defend the rights of the poor and oppressed . . . To favor integration, energetically denouncing the abuses and unjust consequences of the excessive inequalities between poor and rich, weak and powerful.”31 They described poverty as “in itself evil,” pointing out that the biblical prophets had denounced it as “contrary to the will of the Lord.”32 Material destitution is “most of the time . . . the fruit of the injustice and sin of men.”33 In truth, God “desires to save the whole man, body and soul.”34 The bishops also recognized the existence of “institutionalized violence” caused by structural deficiencies and imbalances in industry, agriculture, and the economy as a whole, which violates “fundamental rights” and thus “demands all-​embracing, courageous, urgent and profoundly renovating transformations.”35 As such, the struggle for a just and humane social order, “without which peace is illusory, is an eminently Christian task.”36 Notably, they laid the “principal guilt” for the region’s chronic underdevelopment at the feet of wealthy nations and powerful monetary institutions that had created a system of “economic dictatorship and the ‘international imperialism of money.’ ”37 Given this exploitation, the time had come for all Latin American Christians to “act, and with dramatic urgency,” toward their continent’s “liberation from all servitude.”38 The bishops summoned the laity to participate in building a “new civilization,” one grounded on “a more profound personalization” and that faithfully reflects “the image of God in man.”39 The 1968 Medellín gathering cemented the Latin American Church’s turn toward full engagement with worldly injustice. Theologian Raymond McAffee Brown sums up the significance of this conference: Medellín was a landmark for both the Latin American and world church . . . Medellín is known as the conference at which the church opted positively for the oppressed, attacked the political and economic structures of Latin America as purveyors of injustice, pointed out the unjust dependency of Latin America on outside powers, and called for radical change across the continent. Medellín saw clearly that the present order of things guarantees that the rich will grow richer at the expense of the poor, with the inevitable result that the poor will grow poorer in relation to the rich. And the bishops refused any longer to bless such an order of things.40

Progressive Catholics throughout the region seized upon the Medellín statement as “a Magna Carta justifying a whole new pastoral approach.”41 For Gutiérrez,

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the 1968 conference marked the moment when Latin American Catholics began to “take the reins of its own destiny.”42 He praised Medellín for concretizing the innovations of the Second Vatican Council: Vatican II speaks of the underdevelopment of peoples, of the developed countries and what they can and should do about this underdevelopment; Medellín tries to deal with the problem from the standpoint of the poor countries, characterizing them as subjected to a new kind of colonialism. Vatican II talks about a Church in the world and describes the relationship in a way which tends to neutralize the conflicts; Medellín demonstrates that the world in which the Latin American Church ought to be present is in full revolution. Vatican II sketches a general outline for Church renewal; Medellín provides guidelines for a transformation of the Church in terms of its presence on a continent of misery and injustice.43

Freire and Medellín By the time of Medellín, Freire had risen to region-​wide prominence for both his innovative pedagogy and his dramatic experiences at the hands of the Brazilian military. His educational theory and practice were a tangible influence on the Medellín conference, particularly in the bishops’ official statement on education. (Gutiérrez was a primary author of the document.) In this declaration, the bishops acknowledged their “very particular attention to education as a basic and decisive factor in the continent’s development.”44 This assertion was followed by a thoroughly Freirean depiction of the Latin American cultural landscape: There exists the vast sector of men on the margin of culture, the illiterates, especially the indigenous illiterates, who are deprived at times even of the elemental benefits of communication through a common tongue. Their ignorance is a human servitude; their liberation, a responsibility of all the men of Latin America. They must be liberated from . . . their fatalistic attitude, their fearful incomprehension of the world in which they live, and their distrust and passivity.45

Likewise, the bishops’ description of the unfortunate “superstitions” and “fatalistic attitude” of the poor adapted Freire’s concept of the “magical consciousness” that permeated rural culture.46 In order to reverse these lamentable conditions, the bishops called for a vast educational program to foster critical consciousness and historical agency, especially among the poor:

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The task of education of these our brothers does not properly consist in incorporating them into the cultural structures existing around them, which can also be oppressive, but in something much deeper. It consists in equipping them so that they themselves, as authors of their own progress, develop in a creative and original way a cultural world attuned to their own abundance and which is the fruit of their own efforts.47

This vision was clearly drawn from Freire’s fundamental conviction that conscientizing education should enable adult learners to “begin to dynamize, to master, and to humanize reality.”48 Through such pedagogy, the former illiterates “come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.”49 In the same vein, the bishops rejected educational practices devoted to “professionalization” because they sacrifice “human excellence on the altar of pragmatism and immediacy in order to adjust itself to the demands of the labor market.”50 Such education “is responsible for placing men at the service of the economy and not the economy at the service of men.”51 Along similar lines, they criticized curricula that were “too abstract and formalistic . . . more concerned with the transmission of knowledge than with the creation of a critical spirit.”52 Expressing concern for the cultural and intellectual alienation of Latin Americans, they declared that education must “give its seal of approval to local and national idiosyncrasies and integrate them into the pluralistic unity of the continent and the world.”53 They laid out a Freirean vision of the Church’s evangelizing mission: The lack of political consciousness in our countries makes the educational activity of the church absolutely essential, for the purpose of bringing Christians to consider their participation in the political life of the nation as a matter of conscience and as the practice of charity in its most noble and meaningful sense . . . We wish to affirm that it is indispensable to form a social conscience and a realistic perception of the problems of the community and of social structures. We must awaken the social conscience and communal customs in all strata of society and professional groups regarding such values and dialogue and community living . . . This task of “concientización” and social education ought to be integrated into joint Pastoral Action at various levels.54

They also echoed Freire’s conviction that learners must become historical Subjects through “basic education . . . which it strives not only to alphabetize, but to enable man to become a conscious agent of his own integral development.”55 Just as Freire declared his faith in the capacity of the poor to discuss and redress various social ills, the bishops declared their radical trust in the ability of

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the masses to participate intelligently in electoral politics and advocate for their own interests. In the end, the bishops encouraged the laity to “take the initiative freely, and to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws and structures of the community in which they live,” without waiting for “orders and directives” from the hierarchy.56 The Medellín documents illustrated how progressive the Latin American Church had become since the end of the Second World War. While this transformation was influenced by dramatic external events like Vatican II and the social encyclicals of John XXIII and Paul VI, it was also the direct result of sustained reflection and activism by laypersons like Freire. This exchange of ideas and inspiration would continue after Medellín, as Freire and liberation theologians evolved in tandem from the late 1960s onward.

Intersections between Freirean pedagogy and liberation theology God the liberator Liberation theologians affirm that the biblical God is a living historical presence who yearns for the emancipation of the marginalized, powerless, and ­downtrodden—​those on the “underside” of history. They view themselves as heirs to the “prophetic” strand of the Judeo-​Christian tradition, a fiercely oppositional vein that has been largely repressed by religious and secular authorities because of its destabilizing and revolutionary thrust.57 Educational scholar David E. Purpel points out that the narratives of the biblical prophets contain some of the most central themes of Western morality and spirituality. It is a story with images of slavery and the promise of liberation; of human striving to create communities grounded in a higher law; and of profound commitments to creating a life of piety, justice, compassion, and spiritual salvation.58

In biblical tradition, a prophet is not a soothsayer or fortune-​teller. Rather, the prophet is God’s mouthpiece. The prophet’s mission entails criticizing—​often in harsh and bluntly confrontational language—​the moral failures, numbing ideologies, and oppressive structures of the prevailing order. At the same time, the prophet announces a hope-​filled and energizing vision of liberation. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann describes the fundamental task of prophetic ministry as “to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture”59 (emphasis in original).

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According to liberation theologians, the seminal event of the prophetic tradition is the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. In the book of Exodus, God is described as deeply grieved by the anguish of the Hebrew slaves. God summons Moses, the paradigmatic prophet, to deliver the future Israelites from Pharaoh’s imperial rule: The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I  am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey . . . And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.60

For liberation theologians, this act of redemption is not a one-​time event. Rather, it set “a pattern of deliverance” that provides the keystone for interpreting both Scripture and current historical experience.61 The prophets vigorously affirm God’s “special concern” for widows, orphans, foreigners, the weak, the forgotten, the excluded, and the stranger.62 They inveighed against the wealthy and powerful who “have grown fat and sleek” yet “do not promote the case of the fatherless” or “defend the just cause of the poor.”63 Importantly, the prophets reserved much of their harshest criticism for the religious authorities and institutions of the day. In the following passage, the prophet Amos proclaims God’s judgment over the temple establishment for elevating ritualistic concerns over works of mercy and compassion: I hate, I despise your religious festivals;    your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,    I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,    I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs!    I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river,    righteousness like a never-​failing stream!64

Thus, prophetic activity frequently overturns expectations, reverses hierarchies, and disrupts “common sense” consensus. The same revolutionary energy

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permeates Mary’s song of thanksgiving (or Magnificat) to God for having chosen her to bear the long-​promised Messiah: My soul glorifies the Lord   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,   for he has been mindful   of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed,   for the Mighty One has done great things for me—​   holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him,   from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;   he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones   but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things   but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel,   remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.65

In this ecstatic utterance, a peasant girl from a colonized backwater of the Roman Empire offers a vision of total reversal. Jesus’s declaration at the beginning of his public ministry echoes this radical impetus: The Spirit of the Lord is on me,   because he has anointed me   to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners   and recovery of sight for the blind,   to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.66

Liberation theologians underscore Jesus’s repeated—​and ultimately fatal—​confrontations with the political and religious authorities of his society. They exhort the Church to sacrifice its privileged status and stand alongside the poor, the exploited, and the dehumanized. This means that the Church must reject political neutrality. According to Gutiérrez: In many places the Church contributes to creating “a Christian order” and to giving a kind of sacred character to a situation which is not only alienating but is

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the worst kind of violence—​a situation which pits the powerful against the weak. The protection which the Church receives from the social class which is the beneficiary and the defender of the prevailing capitalist society in Latin America has made the institutional Church into a part of the system and the Christian message into a part of the dominant ideology.67

The Church must always “opt” for the poor and directly oppose the socioeconomic structures that create injustice and unnecessary suffering. As Gutiérrez declared: The existence of poverty represents a sundering both of solidarity among persons and also of communion with God. Poverty is an expression of sin, that is, a negation of love . . . Poverty is an evil, a scandalous situation, which in our times has taken on enormous proportions.68

Moreover, liberation theologians see the poor, the afflicted, and the oppressed as possessing a special insight into the essential teachings of the bible. Because of their familiarity with suffering and dispossession, they are far closer to the lived experiences of the original biblical authors than the elites could ever be. Accordingly, the best way to apprehend the essential meaning of the Bible is to see what the text means to the poor, not to scholars or religious authorities.69 Liberation theologians thus affirm that the primary locus for theological reflection is ongoing dialogue with those who have been sidelined to the “basements, kitchens, slums, and colonies” of history.70 In this regard, liberation theologians are rarely concerned about “whether their conceptions of God and other theological categories conform to contemporary philosophical and scientific thought.”71 Their criteria for theological relevance and credibility is the extent to which the message is liberatory for the poor. Freire shared this fundamental conviction in the “epistemological privilege” of the poor, suffering, and oppressed with regard to understanding the ultimate meaning of the Bible. He contended that only the Third World—​not in the geographic sense, but in the sense of the world that is dominated, dependent, voiceless—​is able to hear the Word of God . . . Only from the Third World too . . . can a Utopian theology emerge . . . A theology that serves the bourgeoisie cannot be utopian and prophetic and hopeful. On the contrary, that sort of theology would create a passive, adjusted man waiting for a better life in the hereafter.72

Wealthy nations, which are awash in power and material comfort, are incapable of “hearing” the truth and are too invested in preserving their privileges to give rise to liberating theologies.73 As such, the marginalized and exploited

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are the necessary protagonists in the struggle for justice and humanization: “Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation?”74 Similarly, he shared the liberation theologians’ impatience with purely “academic” discussions of religious doctrine. He endorsed their new way of “doing theology”: The role of the church must be the role of liberation, of the humanization of humankind . . . Precisely because of this I am more and more interested in working with theologians. In my point of view theology today has many things to do. That is, from my point of view theology is not something superfluous. No, on the contrary. But it is obvious, I don’t mean a false theology, not a theology of “bla bla bla”—​idealistic theology—​but a theology which is part of anthropology, which is engaged historically in order to discuss, for example, the word of God, and our relations with the very word of God . . . Because of this I think that theology, such a theology should be connected with education for liberation—​and education for liberation with theology.75

Likewise, Freire affirmed the view of God is an active historical “presence” who yearns for the liberation of the poor and the downtrodden. Indeed, he claimed to have intuitively grasped this theology early in his life. Recalling his family’s struggles during the Great Depression, he wrote: “Far from us was the idea that we were being tested by God. On the contrary, early on I found myself convinced of the need to change the world, to repair what seemed wrong to me.”76 As an adult, Freire denied that God would test human beings “with pain, need, and misfortune,” punish “rebellion against injustice,” or bless “resigned acceptance” to poverty and disease.77 He inveighed against such a “masochistic,”78 moralistic, and life-​denying theology: Who has ever heard of God’s allowing Paulo Freire’s children to study, to play Beethoven on the guitar, and allowing the children of others to go hungry? OR that he might do it to test and see if the individual loves him. Who has ever heard of this quality in God? This type of God should not exist!79

Freire insisted that poverty, hunger, exploitation, and repressive violence are never signs of God’s will.80 Such misapprehension of God’s nature, he argued, is generated by the “fabric of the oppressive situation.”81 In other words, the quietism and fatalism of much of popular religion is an understandable but flawed and self-​defeating coping mechanism practiced by the poor in the face of seemingly immutable inequality, suffering, and oppression. This fatalistic theology is

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deliberately “nourished by the oppressors” because it serves their interests. The wealthy and powerful—​along with their allies within the Church itself—​foster the belief that God “punishes rebellion against injustice and blesses resigned acceptance of antilove.”82 Freire denounced these theological “lies.”83 God could never “abandon man to constant victimization and total destitution.”84 Such a God, Freire insisted, would be “a God such as Marx described.”85 Instead, God’s true nature is “Absolute Love.”86 He recounted his lifelong fascination with this vision of God: In my long ago childhood, in catechism classes, when a . . . priest spoke of the everlasting damnation of lost souls in the fires of an eternal hell, in spite of the fear which filled me, what really stayed with me was the goodness, the strength to love without limits, to which Christ witnessed.87

Freire’s profound confidence that God is “Absolute Love” is visible in a memorable encounter with a group of adult peasants on the outskirts of Recife during his time at SESI. This anecdote provides a crucial glimpse of Freire’s faith, as well as his status as a forerunner of liberation theology. As such, it is worth quoting at length. In this incident, Freire recounts a long silence that arose in the middle of a conversation with sugarcane plantation workers. Finally one of them said, “Excuse us, sir, for talking. You’re the one who should have been talking, sir. You know things, sir. We don’t.” “Fine, I know some things that you don’t. But why do I know and you don’t?” Suddenly curiosity was kindled. The answer was not long in coming. “You know because you’re a doctor, sir, and we’re not.” “Right, I’m a doctor and you’re not. But why am I a doctor and you’re not?” “Because you’ve gone to school, you’ve read things, studied things, and we haven’t.” “And why have I been to school?” “Because your dad could send you to school. Ours couldn’t.” “And why couldn’t your parents send you to school?” “Because they were peasants like us.” “And what is ‘being a peasant’?” “It’s not having an education . . . not owning anything . . . working from sun to sun . . . having no rights . . . having no hope.” “And why doesn’t a peasant have any of this?” “The will of God.” “And who is God?” “The Father of us all.” “And who is a father here this evening?”

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Almost all raised their hands, and said they were. I looked around the group without saying anything. Then I picked out one of them and asked him. ‘How many children do you have?’ “Three.” “Would you be willing to sacrifice two of them, and make them suffer so that the other one could go to school, and have a good life, in Recife? Could you love your children that way?” “No!” “Well, if you . . . a person of flesh and bones, could not commit an injustice like that—​how could God commit it? Could God really be the cause of these things?” A different kind of silence fell. Then: “No. God isn’t the cause of all this. It’s the boss!”88

In addition to providing a first-​person account of Freire’s teaching style, this passage is noteworthy for the way Freire treated the theological issues at stake. He encouraged his interlocutors to question their assumptions while simultaneously showing deep respect for their faith. He drew on shared experiences in order to propose an alternate understanding of God as the loving “Father” of all humanity. This story also reflected his belief that God is not remote, impersonal, or otherworldly. Rather, God is met in the day-​to-​day unfolding of history. Referring to the foundational Christian proclamation that God was incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Freire asserted: “Just as the Word became flesh, so the Word can be approached only through man. Theology has to take its starting point from anthropology.”89 Similarly: [Christ] was himself the Truth, the Word that became flesh. As the incarnate Word, he himself the Truth, the word that he spoke could never be a word that, once spoken, could be said that it was, rather, it was a word that would always be coming to be.90

For Freire, God is the fundamental fount of newness and “coming to be.” Moreover, God is always inviting human beings to be “sharers in his creative work.”91 “This is how I have always understood God,” he proclaimed, “a presence in history that does not preclude me from making history, but rather pushes me toward world transformation, which makes it possible to restore the humanity of those who exploit and of the weak.”92 As the transcendent source and underwriter of human freedom, God has endowed each person with the freedom to choose to participate in humanizing or dehumanizing the world.93 Thus, while God’s presence in history is absolutely real, it does not supersede the responsibility of

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men and women to shape their own culture and destiny.94 Indeed, God is especially present to human beings in the collective struggle against injustice and oppression. Thus, Christians who have “evolved in their faith”95 refuse to pray for divine rescue. Rather, they ask God “for the strength to fight against the deprivation of dignity to which he or she is subjected.”96 Freire described his prayer life in terms that resonate with liberation theology: I have always prayed, asking that God give me increased disposition to fight against the abuses of the powerful against the oppressed. I have always prayed in order that the weakness of the offended would transform itself into the strength with which they would finally defeat the power of the great.97

In this passage and many others, Freire’s words resound with the disruptive energy of the biblical Exodus, the Hebrew prophets, and Mary’s revolutionary Magnificat.

Integral salvation One of the most significant theological outcomes of the Second Vatican Council was the explicit legitimization of Christian social action.98 At the council, the Church affirmed that God yearned for human well-​being on all dimensions of existence, from the material to the spiritual. Reflecting this broadened interpretation of “salvation,” Pope Paul VI (who succeeded John XXIII in 1963) affirmed that all human beings have the right to “integral” development, which includes “the rise from poverty to the acquisition of life’s necessities; the elimination of social ills; broadening the horizons of knowledge; [and] acquiring refinement and culture.”99 The pope described an unbroken continuity of progress ranging from basic material needs to ultimate reconciliation with God in love.100 Pronouncing the Church’s allegiance to all persons who seek “a more active improvement of their human qualities” and who are “consciously striving for fuller growth,” the pope called on all nations to heal the “ravages of hunger, poverty, endemic disease and ignorance.”101 The concept of integral salvation became a pillar of liberation theology. For instance, Gutiérrez rejected the traditional opposition between the sacred and the secular dimensions of existence: “Salvation embraces all persons and the whole person; the liberating action of Christ . . . is at the heart of the historical current of humanity; the struggle for a just society is in its own right very much a part of salvation history.”102 Likewise, Leonardo Boff and his fellow liberation theologian (and sibling) Clodovis Boff reiterated that Christianity is concerned

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with “all reality,” including “the economic, the political, and the social” spheres.103 The Kingdom of God is “not simply a utopia situated on the horizon of history,” but one that is “already present at the heart” of it.104 They elaborate: [The] Spirit of God is not opposed to matter, to body, to the human being, to the world. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit animates the human body, dwells in the depths of a person, fills the world. The Holy Spirit is the opposite only of nonbeing—​death, or evil: injustice, destruction, domination, contempt, unlove . . . sin . . . So everything that is done “according to the Holy Spirit” is “spiritual”—​even when people are dealing with material things, like eating and drinking, working, having children and raising them, loving, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and today, struggling for and with the oppressed.105

Since reality is integral, “spirit” and “salvation” are all-​encompassing categories. As a result, Christians cannot confine themselves to the “religious” sphere, but should participate wholeheartedly in all dimensions of human life. The theme of integral salvation became a dominant theme in Freire’s writings during his years at the WCC. He repudiated the “absurd dichotomy between worldliness and other-​worldliness.”106 He called on would-​be Christians to confront material poverty and the societal structures that perpetuate it: I imagine that one of the prime purposes that we Christians ought to have . . . is to get rid of an illusory dream of trying to change man without touching the world he lives in. Such an attitude, which appeals to those who enjoy comfortable living conditions, would make us want to preserve the status quo, in which oppressed peoples are kept from being fully human. As a matter of fact, it is idle talk of changing man without changing also the concrete circumstances he lives in: transforming them will transform him too—​not automatically, of course, but quite certainly.107

This statement reflected a significant evolution in his theory of sociopolitical change. Before the Brazilian coup, he was a liberal-​reformist thinker who generally agreed with Jacques Maritain’s gradualist philosophy. Accordingly, he seemingly viewed both inner transformation and structural change as equally important. After his assimilation of Marxist thought, he became convinced that his previous opinions were “naïve” and that transforming oppressive material conditions and societal arrangements must take priority. “The true humanization of man cannot be brought about in the interiority of our minds,” he now declared. “It has to take place in external history. If objective reality keeps men from being humanized, then he should change that reality.”108 Christian activists cannot wait for their “moral conscience” to be “purified” before seeking to

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change the world.109 Doing so would greatly delay—​or even permanently postpone—​desperately needed activism. As such, it would constitute an abdication of one’s moral responsibility. Moreover, Freire had become convinced that his former position ignored the impact of external conditions on one’s inner life. In other words, one’s day-​to-​day living conditions might be so wretched that they make it virtually impossible to “purify” oneself. This shift was one of the most significant instances of Marxist influence on Freire’s theological thought.

Christian praxis Liberation theology is based on a distinctive way of understanding of the role of theology in the world.110 Unlike much twentieth-​century Western theology, it has never been especially concerned with making Christianity more plausible to educated skeptics—​those whom the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher dubbed the “cultured despisers” of religion. Rather, its overriding goal is to forcefully confront the political, economic, and religious structures that have marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed countless millions in Latin America and beyond. As theologian Harvey Cox notes, “Liberation theology is more concerned with the social sources and political uses of ideas. Its purpose is not to convince so much as to unmask, its intent somewhat more polemical than apologetic, its goal more social than individual.”111 Freire agreed that theological practice must reject sectarian proselytizing or abstract theorizing. Instead, it must nourish the concrete historical struggle against material, ideological, political, and spiritual bondage. Theology, he insisted, must be “one kind of cultural action for liberation” wherein “man gets rid of his ingenuous concept of God . . . and gets a new notion of Him in which God, as a presence in history, does not in the slightest keep man from ‘making history’—​the history of his liberation.”112 Theologians are thus conscientizing educators in their own right. Their work contributes toward “awakening” believers to the enervating and alienating myths, as well as toward helping them to realize their own intrinsic freedom, creativity, critical intelligence, and historical agency. “Though I am no theologian,” Freire wrote, “I line up with those who do not find theology and anachronism, but recognize that it has a vital task to perform.”113 Liberation theologians are thus conscientizing educators in their own right. In addition to its unique conception of the purpose of theology, liberation theology also possesses a distinctive method that extensively parallels Freire’s pedagogy. As mentioned earlier, it was developed by highly committed theologians and clergy who spent countless hours in slums and poor villages working

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with everyday believers “who [were] engaged in difficult and dangerous political tasks.”114 Likewise, Cox emphasizes that what is distinctively Latin American in liberation theology is that “it begins with concrete history—​with the here and now—​and therefore it is not ‘conceptual reflection’ but ‘experiential reflection.’ ”115 In other words, liberation theologians insist that faith and religious practice must never be theoretical, escapist, or privatized. They affirm the inescapable responsibility of Christians to embody (or “incarnate”) the Gospel in their day-​to-​day living situations. As philosopher Enrique Dussel professed: We must come to realize that day-​to-​day history is the one and only place where God reveals himself to us. We have been accustomed to interiorize the faith, to think that God reveals himself within the soul of the individual . . . God reveals himself before our eyes—​in our neighbor and in history.116

In a similar vein, Argentinian liberation theologian José Míguez Bonino declared that God cannot be known “in the abstract,” but only in the “act of responding to his demands.”117 In short, liberation theologians affirm the “dialectical relation between faith and the practice of social justice.”118 The Gospel and day-​to-​day life are not separate realms, but “shed light on each other.”119 (In this regard, the influence of Catholic lay theology and activism from earlier decades is discernible.) In terms of their teaching practice, liberation theologians begin with close observation of concrete local conditions before engaging in theological and pastoral reflection. This way of interpreting the Bible and “doing theology” upends the traditional method of starting with religious doctrine and then formulating measures to enact them.120 For Gutiérrez, the Christian faith should not be the mere “simple affirmation—​almost memorization—​of truths, but a commitment, an overall attitude, a particular posture toward life.”121 Theological practice “which has as its points of reference only ‘truths’ which have been established once and for all . . . can only be static and, in the long run, sterile.”122 As such, Christians must be radically open to the “anthropological aspects of revelation.”123 Put differently, biblical study and doctrinal reflection constitute the “second step” of doing theology; the “first step” is “real charity, action, and commitment to the service of others.”124 In this vein, Bonino insisted that it is only through “concrete engagement, [and] an active relationship with reality” that knowledge can be achieved.125 Such statements reflect the “world-​centered” orientation of liberation theology.126 This is an enormous departure from the self-referential, “Church-​centered” perspective that has dominated most of Roman Catholic history. Thus, the praxis of liberation theology entails investigating the cultural

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and religious ideologies embedded within status quo. In Leonardo Boff ’s telling account of this process: The people learn to reflect in an orderly, systematic way . . . [It] entails defatalizing the poverty in which they live. It is no longer simply the will of God or a natural reality. They detect its underlying mechanisms, its agents, and their strategies of domination. Their vision of reality ceases to be the fragmented vision typical of alienated awareness. It becomes integral in the consideration of causal connections. We call this whole process “conscientization.”127

Freire’s methodological influence could hardly be clearer. Liberation theologians adapted his conscientizing practice in order to help the learners “unveil” what they considered false religious beliefs and to stimulate their historical and political agency. This indebtedness to Freire’s praxis was a major reason for Boff ’s designation of Freire as “one of the founders of liberation theology.”128 Boff pointed to Education as the Practice of Freedom and Pedagogy of the Oppressed as “the basis for the popular work of the liberation theologians.”129 In a similar vein, North American theologian James Cone acknowledged Freire’s pedagogical contribution in giving liberation theologians “the language to articulate what it means to empower people at the grassroots and to learn from their own praxis.”130 At the same time, liberation theology inspired Freire to explore his educational praxis through a religious lens. (His new position as general education secretary at the WCC was undoubtedly another motivating force.) He increasingly reflected on how the Church’s teachings might stand in the way of conscientization. He criticized those conservative and reactionary clergy who encouraged the poor to meekly (and even gratefully) endure their earthly sufferings in the hope of rewards in the afterlife. “This . . . sort of theology is a very passive one I cannot stomach,” he exclaimed.131 Such “immobilizing” theologies are profoundly dehumanizing because they encourage human beings to abdicate their historical agency.132 In other words, one cannot be “fully human” without engaging in creative, critical, and transformative activity. Freire thundered, “It is not by adapting to destitution that I make myself a man, in the plentiful sense of the word, but rather, it is by fighting against destitution, maybe even dying in destitution, but having fought against it!”133 Bringing a pedagogical lens to bear on his theological reflection, he insisted that all religious discourse must begin with close attention toward concrete existential and historical conditions: “The theologian should take, as the starting point of his reflections, the history of man.”134 Moreover, theological reflection

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must also include social action in order to be truly humanizing.135 In the end, the only road to “inner peace” is through working “shoulder to shoulder with [one’s] fellow men” to challenge oppression and injustice.136 He mocked the efforts of Latin American elites to assuage their class guilt through charitable actions: “I seek compensation by almsgiving, I send a check to build a church, I make contributions: land for a chapel or a monastery for nuns, hoping in that way to buy peace.”137 Freire dismissed such efforts as self-​serving evasions of the Gospel’s radical demands. Genuine faith, he insisted, is not a spectator sport. He scorned empty verbalism and intellectual pyrotechnics that did not lead to concrete action: “Words not given body (made flesh) have little or no value,” he proclaimed.138 Those persons who shirk the biblical commandments for humanizing praxis are accomplices “of injustice, of un-​love, of the exploitation of the world.”139 Freire was especially disdainful of religious hypocrisy. He poured contempt on those who claimed to “walk with Christ” while referring to the poor as “riffraff.”140 The opposite of faith is not disbelief but hypocrisy (which he labeled “incoherence”). Which is to say being in faith means moving, engaging in different forms of action coherent with that faith. It is to engage in actions that reaffirms it and never action that negates it. Negating faith is not being without one, but rather contradicting it through acts141 (emphasis in original).

Disclosing his lifelong struggle to comprehend and live up to the rigorous demands of the Gospels, he stated that Jesus’s teachings can be grasped only by enacting them to the best of one’s limited ability. “This is the basis of the invitation that Christ made,” he wrote, “and continues to make to us, that we come to know the truth of this message through practicing it, down to the most minute detail. His word is not a sound that simply blows in the air: it is a whole way of learning.”142 In a similar vein, Freire devoted ever-greater attention toward exploring the role of “love” in social action and pedagogy. Such love, which is known as caritas or “charity” in Catholic tradition, is not a feeling of warmth or affection. Rather, the Catechism defines it as “the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of god.”143 The exemplar for such self-emptying and self-sacrificial love is Jesus, who commanded his disciples to “love one another as I have loved you.”144 For Christians, Jesus is the ultimate manifestation of the innermost nature of God, which is unconditional, boundless, and self-​giving love. Love is thus the primary Christian virtue, taking precedence even over faith and hope.145 As

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mentioned earlier, Freire affirmed that God is “Absolute Love.” In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he emphasized that love “is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself.”146 Liberatory educators and activists must constantly practice “profound love for the world and for people.”147 Without it, they are vulnerable to lapsing into old habits of manipulation and authoritarianism. Love is thus an indispensable part of the struggle to create a just and humane society. Furthermore, Freire asserted that human beings can flourish only through “fellowship and solidarity.”148 The process of becoming “more fully human” cannot unfold in the absence of loving relationship:  “We exist explains I exist . . . I cannot be if you are not. I cannot know alone. For me to know, it is necessary for you to know.”149 He affirmed: No one saves another, no one saves himself all alone, because only in communion can we save ourselves . . . You can’t save me, because my soul, my being, my conscious body is not something that A or B can save. We work out our salvation in communion.150

Freire described the ideal form of relationship between the revolutionary leadership and “the people” in similar terms: “In cultural revolution . . . communion is so firm that the leaders and the people become like one body, checked by a permanent process of self-​scrutiny.”151 Indeed, he praised Che Guevara for declaring love the animating force of revolutionary struggle.152 Freire’s frequent use of the word “communion” to describe the revolutionary community is significant. In Catholic tradition, communion is the liturgical meal through which human beings encounter the “real presence” of God in the form of sanctified bread and wine. Participants in this ritual are mystically incorporated into the “body of Christ,” which is the transcendent union with God and with all other believers throughout history.153 In using such theologically charged language, Freire evokes a depth and intensity of solidarity that cannot be expressed within purely secular categories. Moreover, Freire argued that rebelling against injustice can be a fundamentally redemptive act because it restores the humanity of the oppressors: “Dehumanization . . . marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it.”154 The oppressors, by definition, are incapable of acting in generous, life-​giving ways. It is only the oppressed who can free themselves and their former masters.155 Similarly, Freire added that “only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.”156 He was likely referring to the biblical

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trope that God’s reign will entail radical reversals in status and power.157 In this vein, Freire professed that “in order for those to be touched by faith, [the strong] first need to be emptied of the power that makes them all-​powerful. So that, humiliated, they may live true faith.”158 Revolution can therefore be a creative and liberating “act of love” that opposes “the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressor’s violence.”159 God, he affirmed, does not condemn resistance to injustice, violation, and dehumanization as a sin. On the contrary, God blesses a faith of “loving rebelliousness” to tyranny.160

Conscientization as conversion, death, and rebirth Liberation theologians use the metaphorical language of rebirth to describe the radical inner transformation required of intellectuals and activists from privileged backgrounds who intend to work alongside the poor. This process of “conversion” was particularly true of the first generation of liberation theologians, most of whom had received extensive training in modern academic theology at elite European seminaries. Many of them spent their early years of interacting with the poor with dismissive attitudes toward popular religion. Gutiérrez recounts that these pioneering liberation theologians had to “die” to their intellectual pride and social status before they could form relationships of genuine solidarity and mutuality with the people they were seeking to serve.161 This process of surrendering their intellectual privilege and academic mind-​set was often difficult, even painful. It was a journey of death and rebirth that entailed “a rediscovery of the smell of Latin America and of the inner meaning162 of the rites and customs of the poor.”163 It is probably due to his reflection upon this aspect of this dimension of liberation theology that Freire began to more closely examine the impact of conscientizing pedagogy on educational activists from privileged backgrounds. (His early writings about his Northeastern Brazilian literacy program had explored only the experience of learners.) From Pedagogy of the Oppressed onward, he started to write about the profound transformation of middle-class activists through encountering the poor with an attitude of openness, humility, and vulnerability. As Kuni Jenkins and Betsan Martin write: Freire allows for those in the ruling classes to participate in this struggle if they undergo an apprenticeship with those in the working or oppressed classes that will permit the breakdown of elitist concepts of existence. Such an apprenticeship means the dying of superiority, the belief in their own values, and their version of the truth.164

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Just as Gutiérrez described the necessity of “dying” to one’s Eurocentric, intellectual, and class privilege, Freire declared that elite activists must surrender their sense of superiority and become “born again” in solidarity with the poor. “Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth,” he stated. “Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were.”165 They must be humbled and “emptied” of their power to avoid lapsing into old patterns of elitism and authoritarianism.166 Freire described this inner struggle as a form of “class suicide” that leads to a “resurrection during Easter.”167 He acknowledged that this is an exceedingly difficult process because it requires giving up old certainties, identities, comforts, and advantages. Freire even began to describe the process of conscientization in explicitly theological terms: Conscientization . . . involves an excruciating moment, a tremendously upsetting one, in anyone who begins to conscientize himself, the moment when he starts to be reborn. Because conscientization demands an Easter. That is, it demands that we die to be born again. Every Christian must live his Easter . . . The man who doesn’t make his Easter, in the sense of dying in order to be reborn, is not a real Christian.168

He also declares that “making one’s Easter” is necessary for all would-​be followers of Jesus. In this vein, religious educator Gillian Cooper points out: Conversion is a religious concept, describing the moment or process by which an individual comes to faith. With its literal meaning of “turning round,” it can be used of any decision which takes a person’s belief or life in a different direction.169

Christian tradition views conversion as a turning away from darkness and ignorance and emergence as a new being. In the words of St. Paul, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”170 The ritual of baptism is the sacramental expression of this process, ritually replicating the death and resurrection of Jesus. “Through baptism we were buried with him into his death,” proclaimed St. Paul, “so that, just as the Messiah was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too may live an entirely new life.”171 Freire draws on this biblical trope to describe the bourgeois educator’s life-​changing option to commit his or her entire being to the cause of the oppressed.172 These emerging activists “must undergo their own Easter,” die to “their old selves,” and be “reborn as true progressives.”173 This grueling journey is like a “painful childbirth,” one that “brings into the world this new being.”174

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Notably, Freire also called on the oppressed to “die” to their old ways of being and be “resurrected” into new ways of looking at the world. In other words, they must abandon historical fatalism and be reborn as the agents of their own fate.175 Participating in the revolutionary struggle can result in the formation of “a new society, a new man, a new woman.”176 As before, he emphasized the psychic agony of this process: “The new society is delivered through birth; it does not appear by decree or automatically. And birth, which is a process, is always more difficult than it seems.”177 Elsewhere, Freire made a revealing biblical allusion to describe the impact of conscientizing pedagogy on learners: Literacy circles introduced in poor areas only make sense in the context of the humanizing process . . . whereby the sense of self blame that has been falsely interjected can be cast out. This expulsion of self-​blame corresponds to the expulsion of the invasive shadow of the oppressor that inhabits the psyche of the oppressed.178

This passage recalls numerous Gospel accounts of Jesus’s ministry, much of which involved encounters of healing and exorcism.179 Thus, Freire draws a straight line between the emancipatory thrust of the Bible and the transformative mission of the radical educator.180 The convergence of conscientization and conversion constitutes one of the most overtly theological elements in his educational thought.181 Freire proposed that a “new humanity” can emerge through a process of radical conversion. This “Easter experience” can bridge the historical, political, economic, psychological, and cultural divides between the oppressors and the oppressed. Furthermore, this new relationship should not constitute a mere “reversal of mastery” in which the formerly oppressed become the new oppressors.182 Rather, it is a phenomenon of total reconciliation and mutual transformation. Jean-​Marc Laporte points out that in Freire’s biblically grounded vision, a “new humanity” emerges in which “the opposition of oppressor and oppressed has been overcome, in which all human beings enter into a dialogical process of ever more fully becoming who they are, as they engage in the historical task of transforming reality.”183 In this transcendent state, human beings “are no longer separated from each other in terms of those who have and those who have not but are seen in their radical unity as persons . . . The essential category is simply that of being.”184 Crucially, Laporte suggests that Freire drew this concept from St. Paul, who affirmed God’s plan to reconcile all opposites through grace: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither

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Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.185

Freire appears to have made this biblical trope the basis of his post-​conscientization vision of humanity: The man or woman who emerges [from liberation] is a new person, viable only as the oppressor-​oppressed contradiction is superseded by the humanization of all people. Or to put it in another way, the solution of this contradiction is born in the labor which brings into the world this new being: no longer oppressor nor oppressed, but human in the process of achieving freedom.186

In other words, the “humanization of all people” gradually gives rise to a loving and just community, one in which hierarchy, exploitation, and objectification have no place. Freire depicted this “new society” in a “Popular Culture Notebook” (i.e., textbook) he cocreated for use in postrevolutionary São Tomé and Príncipe: What is a new society without exploiters or the exploited? It is a society in which no man, no woman, no group of people, no class exploits the work force of others. It is a society in which there are no privileges for those who work with the pen and only obligations for those who work with their hands on the farms and in the factories. All workers are to serve in the well-​being of everyone.187

While this passage is clearly influenced by the Marxist vision of a classless society, it also evokes the Peaceable Kingdom as depicted by the prophet Isaiah: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.”188 Freire’s pedagogy thus translates and incorporates biblical themes into historical practice.189

The Christian-​Marxist dialogue Liberation theologians were open toward using modern analytical methods to examining social ills and guide their action. For instance, Gutiérrez declared that contemporary theology must be informed by “studies of the most rigorous scientific exactitude.”190 Similarly, Brazilian theologian Hugo Assmann urged Christians to adopt “the most appropriate scientific instruments the secular sciences can provide.”191 Since they were already inclined to view “open door” capitalism as the primary culprit for their region’s dependency and poverty, they

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were naturally drawn toward Marxist analysis as a useful tool to “scientifically” unmask the hidden workings of these prevailing economic systems.192 Bonino lauded Marxist analysis for providing a “verifiable and efficacious way to articulate love historically.”193 Furthermore, liberation theologians approved of Marx’s abhorrence of capitalism, his opposition to oppressive socioeconomic arrangements, his genuine solidarity with the poor, and his unequivocal commitment toward concrete action.194 Indeed, Bonino situated Marx within the prophetic tradition for his “uncompromising rejection” of commodity fetishism (or, in religious terms, the idolatrous worship of material possessions).195 Liberation theologians adapted Marx’s dialectical interpretation of history. In this framework, human societies are viewed as intrinsically conflictive and fluid rather than harmonious and static. Along these lines, Gutiérrez affirmed, “The history in which the Christian community, the church, plays a part today is marked by various kinds of oppositions among individuals, human groups, social classes, racial groupings, and nations.”196 These conflicts and tensions are “part of everyday life in Latin America.”197 As such, he called on Christians to see the world “as it really is”: Any real resolution requires . . . that we get to the causes that bring about these social conflicts and that we do away with the factors that produce a world divided into the privileged and the dispossessed, into superior and inferior . . . groupings. The creation of a fraternal society of equals, in which there are no oppressors and no oppressed, requires that we not mislead others or ourselves about the real state of affairs.198

Faced with this empirical reality, the Church cannot avoid “taking a position [in] opposing certain groups of persons, rejecting certain [oppressive] activities, and facing hostilities.”199 Political neutrality is impossible, since refusing to take a stand is a tacit endorsement of the unjust status quo.200 This dialectical analysis of liberation theology is a long way from the more conciliatory, pluralist, “communitarian” vision of Maritain. Reflecting their particular synthesis of Marxism and Catholic anthropology, liberation theologians were united in denouncing capitalism, consumerism, and economic competition.201 Bonino denounced the capitalist ethos for its preoccupation with “the maximizing of economic gain, the raising of man’s grasping impulse, the idolizing of the strong, the subordination of man to the economic production.”202 He described the capitalist system as intrinsically antihuman because it treats persons as means to an end (i.e., profit) rather than as sacred and absolute ends in themselves.203 José Porfirio Miranda described capitalism

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as the historical consummation of the sin that is described in the Bible (Marx and the Bible). Leonardo and Clodovis Boff declared that capitalism “can be more or less immoral; it can never be more or less moral.”204 One of the most ardent anticapitalists is German-​born Franz Hinkelammert, who accuses this economic system of having “committed mass murder among the working classes.”205 Hinkelammert coined the description of capitalism as a “theology of death.” Such theological attacks resonated with progressive clergy in Latin America. In Brazil, a cohort of bishops from the Amazon region expressed similarly robust criticisms of capitalism and issued a pastoral letter in 1972 that described capitalism as “the greatest evil, the rotten root, the tree that produces those fruits we all know: poverty, hunger, sickness, and death of the majority.”206 As mentioned earlier, Freire incorporated Marxist analysis into his philosophy during his five years in Chile. Accordingly, he acknowledged the existence of class struggle for the first time in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He also called for revolutionary action to counter the rise of Right-​wing dictatorships in Latin America and beyond. His position toward capitalism hardened, especially in comparison with his pre-​1964 position, when had been generally supportive of successive Brazilian administrations’ programs to modernize the country within a broad capitalist framework. By the time of his arrival at the WCC, he had become a vociferous opponent of virtually all forms of capitalism. He now dismissed those who spoke of “humanizing capitalism, but not of throwing it out altogether.”207 The basic ethos of capitalism, he argued, is immoral.208 As demonstrated in the next chapter, he would extend this critique to “neoliberalism” and globalization for replacing “the universal ethics of the human person” with the “evil” ethics of the marketplace.209 Freire’s critique of capitalism reflected his fusion of Marxism and radical Catholicism from the mid-​1960s onward. Speaking to his fellow Christians, he urged them to cease “stubbornly denying the extremely important contributions of Karl Marx” to the struggle for a just and humane society.210 He recounted a revealing encounter from his tenure at the WCC: During the 1970s, in an interview in Australia, I  told some greatly surprised reporters that it was in the woods of Recife, refuge of slaves, and the ravines where the oppressed of Brazil live coupled with my love for Christ and hope that He is the light, that led me to Marx. The tragic realities of the ravines, woods, and marshes led me to Marx. My relationship with Marx never suggested that I abandon Christ.211

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Freire viewed this mid-life “awakening” to Marxism as an outgrowth of his lifelong journey of faith. In other words, his Catholicism laid the groundwork for his eventual embrace of Marxist praxis.212

The prophetic church During his exile, Freire began to closely examine the role of the Brazilian Church in fostering the political quiescence of the masses. Before the coup, his investigations into the origins of the “culture of silence” among the Brazilian poor was aimed largely at secular factors. (For instance, he highlighted the psychosocial imprint of generations of plantation culture.) His analysis deepened after his encounters with Marxism and liberation theology. Through their influence, he started to question the ways in which prevailing religious teachings, structures, and assumptions benefitted certain sectors of society while excluding, marginalizing, or silencing others. He articulated this inquiry most extensively in his fiery essay “The Educational Role of the Churches in Latin America” (1972). In this piece, he issued his most impassioned and detailed denunciation of the institutional Church. He also sketched out a vision of a “prophetic” Church that takes the side of the poor and the vulnerable. Before exploring this pivotal work, it is beneficial to briefly examine a 1968 document issued by the Medellín bishops that seems to have provided the blueprint for Freire's ecclesiological critique. An overview of this statement, called “Pastoral Concern for the Elites,” illuminates the extent to which Freire assimilated and extended a preexisting body of Latin American theology when performing his ecclesiological analysis. In the statement, the bishops explored ways to influence those elites213 who shape the cultural, professional, educational, social, and political landscapes.214 They categorized these “high level leaders” into three groups: the “traditionalists,” the “evolutionists,” and the “revolutionaries.” The traditionalist elites, who are largely found in “the professional circles, in the socio-​economic sectors, and within the established governing bodies,” demonstrate “little or no social conscience, have a middle-​class orientation, and . . . do not question the social structures.”215 They are “primarily concerned with preserving their privileges,” and their social action as such is paternalistic and philanthropic, “with no concern for changing the status quo.”216 For these privileged group, the religious life is a matter of rote observance, adherence to tradition, and self-​interest.217 The next category is the “evolutionist” elites, who tend to occupy positions of influence in various “technological” and developmental agencies.218 They are concerned with improving the “quantity and quality” of the

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existing capitalist structures rather than replacing them altogether.219 They wish to reform the prevailing economic framework to make it more humane, profitable, and technologically advanced. According this perspective, the poor must be “integrated into the mainstream of society as producers and consumers.”220 Like their “traditionalist” counterparts, their interactions with the poor are largely paternalistic.221 The last group is composed of “revolutionist” elites, who are generally composed of intellectuals, researchers, and people affiliated with universities.222 (By this definition, the Brazilian Catholic Left would have been a “revolutionist” group.) According to the bishops, the “revolutionists” possess a “vivid sense of service for neighbor,” which stimulates them to “question the socio-​economic structure . . . [and] desire a radical change in [societal] goals as well as in implementation.”223 Moreover, these elites affirm that the popular classes “must be the subject of this change in such [a]‌manner that they take an active part in decision-​making for the reordering of the entire social process.”224 Although Freire did not acknowledge or cite “Pastoral Concern for the Elites” in his theological writings, he almost certainly adopted it as the basis for his ecclesiological analysis. He argued that the Latin American church has taken three forms (or, more properly, mind-​sets) throughout its history: the “traditionalist,” the “modernizing,” and the “prophetic.” According to Freire, the most frequent form has been the “traditionalist church,” which he described as “necrophilic,” authoritarian, and taking “a masochistic pleasure in constantly harping on sin, on eternal fire, on damnation without hope of redemption.”225 The “traditionalist” church vitiates any efforts by the poor to improve their material conditions through cultivating “cringing, fatalistic impotence” and instructing them to accept their worldly suffering in order to be “purified for heaven and an eternal repose.”226 In the same vein, “traditionalist” Christians are fond of supporting private charities, but these are mere “aspirin pills” in the face of injustice.227 “Traditionalist” religious instruction is alienating because it teaches the faithful to “despise the world as a place for sin and impurity,”228 thereby fostering a radical divide between body and soul, the worldly and the sacred. It is also a form of “banking” education that treats worshippers as empty objects to be filled with pre-​sanctioned doctrines, rather than as intelligent and creative Subjects capable of critical thought. In the end, the “traditionalist” church encourages the development of “a passive, adjusted man waiting for a better life in the hereafter.”229 As such, it can never proclaim the true Word of God, which is always creative and liberating. After this unremittingly harsh portrayal of the “traditionalist” church, Freire turned to its “modernizing” counterpart. The “modernizing” church is

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clearly analogous to the “evolutionist” elites depicted in the Medellín statement. According to Freire, the “modernizing” church is preoccupied with bureaucratic and technological efficiency.230 It is a reformist entity of “half-​way measures” that is too politically and spiritually lukewarm to promote fundamental social change.231 It defines salvation as an act of individual effort and a “change of heart” rather than “a social and historical endeavor” to create a more just and humane world.232 In terms of its religious education, it is primarily interested in enhancing instructional efficiency. It defines “liberation” as “no more than liberating pupils from their blackboard [and] from passive classes and bookish curricula” rather than fostering conscientization.233 Because it is still largely aligned with the interests of the elites, the “modernizing” church cannot commit itself to radical changes, since these would jeopardize its social position. As a result, it “freezes into immobility, while giving the impression that it is ‘progressing.’ ”234 As such, the “modernizing” church is spiritually decaying because it refuses to “die” to its privilege and be “reborn” as a servant to the poor.235 Finally, Freire took up the “prophetic” church, which parallels the “revolutionist” elites from the Medellín bishops’ statement. The “prophetic” church, Freire proclaimed, is “as old as Christianity without being traditionalist and as ever-​new . . . without being modernizing.”236 In his view, it is the only historical manifestation of the Church that has manifested the Gospel’s original vision of justice, freedom, authenticity, and human well-​being. “Christ,” he asserted, “was no conservative.”237 “Like Him, the prophetic church must be a pilgrim, constantly on the move, dying always for a continuous rebirth.”238 It embraces its historical embeddedness, refusing to “divorce this-​worldliness from transcendence, or salvation from liberation.”239 Crucially, it stands in permanent solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, and the dehumanized. It “seeks radical transformation of society” and rejects “assistential palliatives and soothing reformisms.”240 Opposed to spiritual triumphalism, it refuses to present itself as the sole repository of grace, knowledge, and salvation. Instead, it celebrates dialogue, mutuality, and communion. According to Freire, its ecclesial ethos can be summarized as “there is no ‘I am,’ nor ‘I know,’ nor ‘I liberate you,’ nor ‘I save you’—​ but rather a ‘we are,’ a ‘we know,’ a ‘we liberate one another,’ and a ‘we save one another.’ ”241 The Church should be humble and antiauthoritarian, permanently open to learning “with the people, with the children, with the daughters, with the sons.”242 Unlike the “traditionalist” and “modernizing” churches, the “prophetic” church rejects neutrality in the face of injustice. It opts for the liberation of the oppressed at every turn, inviting them to embark on “a new Exodus.”243 This

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might mean serving as a physical space for refuge and spiritual renewal in the face of tyranny, as it did for countless Latin Americans from the late 1960s onward. “This defense in fellowship,” Freire recounted, “in the intimacy of the church, the parish, sealed by faith, through the study of the Gospels, ended up by spreading and bringing into being the basic church communities.”244 As for its religious education, the “prophetic” church is committed toward investigating concrete, historically grounded subject matters. (Indeed, this radical openness and intellectual humility lead the “prophetic” church to embrace new forms of knowledge, including modern social analysis.) The day-​to-​day experiences and struggles of the poor are the point of departure for the “prophetic” church’s prayer, reflection, and social action. In this context, both religious educators and learners are united in “a clarifying praxis” that unveils the ideological myths that sustain the status quo.245 Learners are co-​explorers and interlocutors, not blank slates waiting to be “filled” with knowledge. Finally, the “prophetic” church is “utopian” in the sense of “denouncing the dehumanizing structure and announcing the structure that will humanize.”246 To “denounce” is to name—​and thus begin to confront—​the normative assumptions and social structures that sustain injustice, oppression, and dehumanization. On the other hand, to “announce” is to articulate an energizing and hope-​filled alternative to the existing order.247 Freire maintained that historical struggle requires both critique and a positive vision. Denunciation alone degenerates into paralysis, cynicism, and despair; annunciation alone is rudderless, credulous, and ineffectual. Only the permanent dialectic between both acts creates the possibility of new historical paths: “There is no authentic utopia apart from the tension between the denunciation of a present becoming more and more intolerable, and the annunciation . . . of a future to be created, built—​politically, esthetically, and ethically—​by us women and men.”248 It is significant that the term “annunciation” in Christian tradition refers to the Archangel Gabriel’s message to Mary that she has been chosen be the mother of the Messiah. This term is thus a resonant signifier for God’s promise of liberation from bondage.249 Along similar lines, Freire described Christ as “living history” and a “Presence that . . . both denounced and announced.”250 Thus, the ultimate origin, nature, and energizing force for utopian struggle is Christ himself. The “prophetic” church is summoned by the Creator to be “100 percent revolutionary and human and liberating” rather than to “die shivering in the cold.”251 It lives in permanent hope, invites the faithful to take part in social action, and refuses to “spend 90 percent of [its] time making concessions [to the ruling elites].”252 Ultimately, the “prophetic” church links critical reflection with concrete action, religious faith with

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historical commitment, and individual conversion with societal transformation. In this regard, its mission is fully aligned with Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed.

Conclusion Freire discovered his “prophetic” voice during his exile. From Pedagogy of the Oppressed onward, much of his writing became permeated by a striking degree of emotive intensity, visionary fervor, and moral clarity. Over the years, these characteristics have contributed greatly to Freire’s enduring appeal to readers from disparate intellectual and cultural backgrounds. Educational scholar Peter Mayo, writing shortly after Freire’s death, speaks for many of those who have drawn inspiration, solace, and companionship from his work: The spirit of this remarkable figure . . . lives on. It is constantly felt by those, like myself, who often seek refuge and consolation in his works, to recuperate that sense of hope and agency which can easily be lost as we are constantly assailed by the dominant hegemonic discourse of technical rationality and marketability. This sense of hope is communicated to us through the constant fusion of reason and emotion which I consider to be one of the distinctive features of Paulo Freire’s style as writer and speaker.253

Even Dale and Hyslop-​Margison, who go frequently out of their way to discount the theological sources of Freire’s vision,254 describe his impact in terms that (perhaps unwittingly) evoke its religious dimension: In a world frequently at war with itself and stained with the social and psychological consequences of profound physical and intellectual oppression, Freire’s pedagogy offers a guiding light in a turbulent sea of contemporary structural uncertainty. From our perspective, his views afford a calm in the storm; a point of refuge for weary educational travelers looking for somewhere to anchor their moral struggle for intellectual freedom and social justice.255

Indeed, I believe that one of Freire’s greatest and most underappreciated legacies has been providing the Western intellectual Left with access to the singular energies of the biblical tradition. However, his dexterity at transposing his Catholicism into nonreligious and nonsectarian terms has also made it easy for secular readers to overlook, downplay, or erase the theological foundations and substance of his educational vision. As a result, the religiously grounded power and authority that undergird and permeate much of Freire’s work have often been reduced to an idiosyncratic feature of his personality and rhetorical style,

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as Mayo has done above. Critical theorist Peter McLaren performs somewhat the same act of diminishment when he praises Freire for replacing “the melancholic and despairing discourse of the ludic postmodernism with possibility and human compassion”256 while insisting that Freire’s emancipatory vision “[does] not emerge from some transcendental fiat.”257 Appropriating the abundant fruits of Freire’s prophetic vision while severing it from its theological roots in these ways is deeply problematic. In the end, Freirean dialogue asks interlocutors to honestly recognize and appreciate each other as they truly are, not as they would like them to be. In this light, Freire’s readers should respectfully and forthrightly acknowledge the integral role of his Catholic faith in forming his activism, consciousness, and worldview.

Notes 1 President Frei was influenced by the political philosophy of Jacques Maritain, especially the French thinker’s vision of a democratic “communitarian” society as a “third way” between capitalism and communism. A key tenet of communitarianism is the promotion of harmonious relations between labor and capital (Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile,” 253). President Frei’s enthusiasm for Maritain was a major reason for his choice of Chile. 2 Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile,” 253. 3 Ibid., 259. 4 Ibid., 247. 5 For instance, rural strikes doubled between 1967 and 1969, provoking fierce opposition from landowners and the urban middle class. 6 Quoted in Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile,” 257–​8. 7 Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile,” 261. 8 Ibid., 260. 9 Paulo Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches in Latin America,” in Paulo Freire: The LADOC “Keyhole” Series, Vol. 1, ed. Division for Latin America—​US Catholic Conference (Washington, DC: USCC, 1972), 24. 10 Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” 517. 11 Holst, “Paulo Freire in Chile,” 244–​5. 12 Shor and Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 32. 13 Quoted in Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 28. 14 This is partly due to Freire’s avoidance of religious and sectarian language in this work, which was likely motivated by his desire to appeal to secular audiences. However, an unintended consequence of the disproportionate amount of attention paid to Pedagogy of the Oppressed is that most of Freire’s other works have been

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overlooked. This has resulted in the greatly oversimplified image of Freire as primarily a revolutionary Marxist and secular thinker, especially among Western intellectuals and activists. Jones Irwin also points out that it has resulted in the view that Freire’s work is “consistent in its philosophical principles and ideas,” which leads to a severe underestimation of the “degree of differentiation” and diversity that is present in his body of work (Irwin, Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education, 9). 15 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 17. 16 Freire wrote relatively little in the second half of the 1970s, largely because he was preoccupied with his extensive duties at the WCC. 17 Schipani, Conscientization and Creativity, 73. 18 Paulo Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” in Paulo Freire: The LADOC “Keyhole” Series, Vol. 1, ed. Division for Latin America—​US Catholic Conference (Washington, DC: USCC, 1972), 14. 19 Elias, Paulo Freire, 146. 20 Quoted in Elias, Paulo Freire, 146. 21 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, 15th Anniversary ed., trans. John Eagleson and Sister Caridad Inda (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 57. 22 For a full-​length liberation theology curriculum based on Freire’s pedagogy, see Pastoral Team of Bambarca, Vamos Caminando: A Peruvian Catechism, trans. John Medcalf (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985). 23 Quoted in Oldenski, Liberation Theology and Critical Pedagogy, 69–​70. 24 Coben, Radical Heroes, 88. 25 See Chapter 2. 26 Bidegain, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology,” 18. 27 Ibid., 19. 28 Ibid., 21. 29 Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops, The Church in the Present-​ Day Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council: Conclusions, 2nd ed., ed. Division for Latin America—​US Catholic Conference (Washington, DC: USCC, 1973), 38. 30 Ibid., 188. 31 Ibid., 64. 32 Ibid., 189. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 35. 35 Ibid., 61. 36 Ibid., 63. 37 Ibid., 57. 38 Ibid., 35.

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39 Ibid. 40 Robert McAfee Brown, Gustavo Gutiérrez: An Introduction to Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 16–​17. 41 Berryman, Liberation Theology, 24. 42 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 73. 43 Ibid. 44 Second General Conference, The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation, 80. 45 Ibid. 46 Freire argued that “magical consciousness” permeates societies where the poor and powerless are “submerged” within their day-​to-​day lives as spectators rather than as political actors (Education for Critical Consciousness, 39). “Magical” consciousness is “irrational,” resigned, and trapped on the surface level of perception (ibid.). 47 Second General Conference, The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation, 80–​1. 48 Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 4. 49 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 83. 50 Second General Conference, The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation, 81. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 83. 54 Ibid., 48. 55 Ibid., 86. 56 Ibid., 143. 57 Berryman, Liberation Theology, 6. 58 Purpel, “Education in a Prophetic Voice,” 5. 59 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 3. 60 Ex. 3:7–​10. 61 Berryman, Liberation Theology, 50. 62 See Deut. 10:16–​19. 63 Jer. 5:27–​28. 64 Amos 5:21–​24. 65 Luke 1:46–​55. 66 Luke 4:18–​19. 67 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 151. 68 Ibid., 168. 69 Harvey Gallagher Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 154. 70 Ibid., 208. 71 Rasor, Faith without Certainty, 157. 72 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 7.

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73 Paulo Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” The Catholic Mind 70, no. 1265 (1972): 7. 74 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 45. 75 Quoted in Rex Davis, “Education for Awareness: A Talk with Paulo Freire,” in Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, 68. 76 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 104. 77 Ibid., 102–​3. 78 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches in Latin America,” 20. 79 Freire and Freire, Daring to Dream, 100. 80 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 45; and Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 75. 81 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 102. 82 Ibid., 103. 83 Ibid., 45. 84 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 8. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 547. 88 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 38–​39. 89 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 7. 90 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 547. 91 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13. 92 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 103–​4. 93 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13. 94 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 183. 95 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 103. 96 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 183. 97 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 64. 98 Arthur F. McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Toward an Assessment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 5. 99 Paul VI, Populorum Progressio [Encyclical on the Development of Peoples], sec. 21, http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​paul-​vi/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​p-​vi_​enc_​ 26031967_​populorum.html 100 Berryman, Liberation Theology, 94. 101 Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, sec. 1. 102 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 97. 103 Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Salvation and Liberation, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984), 52. 104 Ibid., 81. 105 Ibid., 77. 106 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13.

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107 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 6. 108 Ibid., 7. 109 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 35. 110 Cox, Religion in the Secular City, 266. 111 Ibid. 112 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 8. 113 Ibid. 114 Cox, Religion in the Secular City, 136. 115 Ibid., 153. 116 Enrique Dussel, History and Theology of Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976), 139. 117 José Míguez Bonino, Christians and Marxists: The Mutual Challenge to Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1976), 40. 118 James H. Cone, Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1986), 36. 119 Marcello de Carvalho Azevedo, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil: The Challenge of a New Way of Being Church, trans. John Drury (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987), 224. 120 The overall structure of the bishops’ statement itself demonstrates the methodology of liberation theology. All of its sixteen chapters begin with factual descriptions and “scientific” analyses of societal conditions, followed by religious commentary, and conclude with pastoral recommendations. In addition, the first cluster of chapters is devoted toward ostensibly secular topics: “Justice,” “Peace,” “Family and Demography,” “Education,” and “Youth.” This group is followed by chapters on religious topics: “Pastoral Care of the Masses,” “Pastoral Concern for the Elites,” “Catechesis,” and “Liturgy.” The last section tackles implementational concerns: “Lay Movements,” “Priests,” “Religious,” “Formation of the Clergy,” “Poverty of the Church,” “Joint Pastoral Planning,” and “Mass Media.” Throughout their statement, the bishops emphasize the importance of “living out” the goals generated by their theological deliberations: “It is certainly not enough to reflect, to be more discerning and to speak. Action is required” (Second General Conference, The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation, 47). 121 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 6. 122 Ibid., 10. 123 Ibid., 6. 124 Ibid., 9. 125 Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 118–​19. 126 Cox, Religion in the Secular City, 138. 127 Quoted in Azevedo, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil, 146. 128 Quoted in Kirylo, Paulo Freire, 241.

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129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., 198. 131 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 8. 132 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13. 133 Freire and Freire, Daring to Dream, 99. 134 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 7. 135 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13. 136 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 9. 137 Ibid. 138 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 50. 139 Freire, “The Third World and Theology,” 13. 140 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 105. 141 Ibid., 104. 142 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 548. 143 Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1822. 144 John 13:34. 145 In this vein, Gutiérrez declared that all “theologies of hope, of revolution, and of liberation, are not worth one act of genuine solidarity with exploited social classes” (A Theology of Liberation, 174). 146 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 89. 147 Ibid., 89. 148 Ibid., 85. 149 Quoted in Donohue, “Paulo Freire,” 167. 150 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 10. 151 Freire, “Cultural Action and Conscientization,” 518. 152 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 89. 153 According to the Catechism, “Those who receive the Eucharist [i.e., Holy Communion] are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body—​the Church . . . Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1396). 154 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 44. 155 Ibid., 56. 156 Ibid., 44. 157 For instance, St. Paul asserted that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). Similarly, Jesus proclaimed that in the Kingdom of God, “many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matt. 19:30). 158 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 105. 159 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 45.

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160 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 103. 161 Brown, Gustavo Gutiérrez, 72. 162 For example, the popular interpretation of baptism as an inoculation against illness and death stemmed from a context of virtually nonexistent medical resources. Similarly, peasants with no political influence might understandably appeal to heavenly saints and patrons for earthly intercession (Berryman, Liberation Theology, 70). Thus, what might be viewed as mere superstition can also be seen as a logical response to powerlessness and poverty. 163 Cox, Religion in the Secular City, 243. 164 Kuni Jenkins and Betsan Martin, “Tidal Waves of Change: Divine Work with Paulo Freire,” in Paulo Freire, Politics and Pedagogy: Reflections from Aotearoa—​ New Zealand, ed. Peter Roberts (Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press, 1999), 52. 165 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 61. 166 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 105. 167 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 122. 168 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 10. 169 Cooper, “Freire and Theology,” 73. 170 2 Cor. 5:17. 171 Romans 6:4. 172 Cooper, “Freire and Theology,” 73. 173 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 163. 174 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 49. 175 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 18. 176 Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1987), 82. 177 Ibid. 178 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 78–​9. 179 In the most vivid of these stories, Jesus frees a shackled madman from demonic possession (Luke 8:26–​39). Jesus demanded the demons to name themselves. After they responded “Legion,” Jesus drove the demons into a nearby heard of pigs. Since “legion” was also the name of a Roman military unit, some commentators have interpreted this scene as a symbolic confrontation between Jesus and imperial power. 180 This raises the intriguing question of whether he would define “false consciousness” as “sin.” 181 I am indebted to Michael Welton for bringing the link between Freirean conscientization and Christian conversion to my attention. 182 Jenkins and Martin, “Tidal Waves of Change,” 56–​7. 183 Jean-​Marc Laporte, Patience and Power: Grace for the First World (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 108.

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184 Ibid., 107. 185 Gal. 3:26–​29. 186 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 49. 187 Freire and Macedo, Literacy, 82. 188 Isa. 11:6. 189 Michael Welton, “Seeing the Light: Christian Conversion and Conscientization,” in Adult Education and Theological Interpretations, ed. Peter Jarvis and Nicholas Walters (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1993), 121. 190 Quoted in McGovern, Liberation Theology, 135. 191 Ibid., 134–​5. 192 McGovern, Liberation Theology, 161. 193 Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 115. 194 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 8. 195 Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 70. 196 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 156. 197 Ibid., 159. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 200 In a similar vein, Bonino declared that a “neutral, purely objective, precommitted or uncommitted knowledge is an impossibility” (Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 119). 201 While liberation theologians borrowed elements of Marxist analysis, their use of it should not be overstated. As Berryman notes, they used Marxist elements with little concern for “a systematic and coherent adaptation” (Berryman, Liberation Theology, 194). He adds that most leading liberation theologians spend relatively little time directly discussing Marxism (ibid., 139). Instead, the vast majority of their works were occupied with theological issues like integral salvation, which surfaces far more frequently than any Marxist concept (ibid., 95). Liberation theologians also reject key aspects of classical Marxist thought, particularly its atheism, materialism, economic determinism, and its reductive critique of religion (McGovern, Liberation Theology, 159). Moreover, liberation theology infuses Marxist concepts with Christian meanings. For instance, “praxis” is redefined from Marxist revolutionary tactics to the committed enactment of the Christian faith within history (ibid., 230). Likewise, when liberation theologians speak of “the poor” as agents of their own emancipation, they are not just referring to the industrial proletariat (ibid., 230). In this vein, Bonino insisted that the Christian alliance with Marxism must be permanently challenging, selective, critical, and subject to revision based on real-​life practice (Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 116). Finally, while liberation theologians acknowledge Marxist thought for helping them recognize the reality of class conflict, they insist that

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this phenomenon does not necessitate a specifically Marxist response (McGovern, Liberation Theology, 188). Even the radical Brazilian Archbishop Hélder Câmara, who was dubbed by critics as “Lenin in a priest’s cloak” for his leftist views, rejected existing models of communism in favor of a “personalist socialism” that “respects in reality . . . the human person, and that doesn’t fall into dictatorship” (quoted in Núñez, Liberation Theology, 106). Today, most liberation theologians view democratic socialism as a more humane and democratic system than both Marxism and capitalism (Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 115). 202 Bonino, Christians and Marxists, 115. 203 Ibid. 204 Quoted in McGovern, Liberation Theology, 139. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid., 138–​9. 207 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 23. 208 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 88. 209 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 114. 210 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 7. 211 Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 87. 212 Freire was cavalier about the potential dissonances between Christianity and Marxism: My “meetings” with Marx never suggested to me to stop “meeting” Christ. I never said to Marx: “Look, Marx, really Christ was a baby, Christ was naïve.” And also I never said to Christ, “Look, Marx was a materialistic and terrible man.” I always spoke to both of them in a very loving way. You see, I feel comfortable in this position. Sometimes people say to me that I am contradictory. My answer is that I have the right to be contradictory, and secondly, I don’t consider myself contradictory in this . . . I feel myself very comfortable with this. (Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 246) His stance reflected his overriding commitment to building alliances between religious and secular activists. Nevertheless, a thoughtful exploration of the philosophical limits of the Christian-​Marxist encounter is a necessary sign of respect for the uniqueness and integrity of each system, as well as a step toward fostering a successful long-​term dialogue and collaboration. For a measured assessment of this synthesis from the perspective of a liberation theologian, see José Míguez Bonino, Christians and Marxists. For a secular point of view, see McGovern’s Liberation Theology and Berryman’s Liberation Theology. 213 The bishops put forth a different prescription for achieving societal change from Freire’s educational practice. While Freire’s conscientizing pedagogy sought to “awaken” and mobilize the poor, the bishops’ evangelizing strategy was aimed at

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those Catholic elites who possessed disproportionate power and influence (Dennis McCann, Christian Realism and Liberation Theology: Practical Theologies in Creative Conflict [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981], 165). 214 Second General Conference, The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation, 110. 215 Ibid., 111. 216 Ibid. 217 Ibid., 112. 218 Ibid., 111. 219 Ibid., 111–​12. 220 Ibid., 131. 221 Ibid. 222 Ibid., 111. 223 Ibid., 131. 224 Ibid. 225 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 20. 226 Ibid. 227 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 6. 228 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 20. 229 Freire, “Letter to a Theology Student,” 7. 230 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 21–​3. 231 Ibid., 23. 232 Ibid., 25. 233 Ibid. 234 Ibid., 24. 235 Ibid. 236 Ibid., 25. 237 Ibid., 27. 238 Ibid., 27. 239 Ibid., 25. 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid. 242 Freire, “Conversation with Paulo Freire,” 522. 243 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 26. 244 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 66. 245 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 28. 246 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 5. 247 Ana Maria Freire stated the object of utopian proclamation as “an untested thing, an unprecedented thing, something not yet clearly known and experienced, but dreamed of ” (Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 206). 248 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 91.

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249 Reflecting Freire’s influence, Gutiérrez adapted and built on Freire’s definition of utopia: “Between the denunciation and the annunciation is the time for building, the historical praxis. Moreover, denunciation and annunciation can be achieved only in praxis . . . If utopia does not lead to action in the present, it is an evasion of reality” (Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 136). 250 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 547. 251 Freire, “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating,” 10. 252 Freire, “The Educational Role of the Churches,” 6. 253 Quoted in McLaren, “Postmodernism and the Death of Politics,” 161–​2. 254 Dale and Hyslop-​Margison, Paulo Freire, 47–​8, 132. 255 Ibid., 9. 256 McLaren, “Postmodernism and the Death of Politics,” 212. 257 Ibid., 203.

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Freire, Neoliberalism, and Integral Pedagogy

Introduction In 1979, the Brazilian military government passed an Amnesty Law that opened the door to the return of thousands of dissidents. Freire and his family moved back to his homeland permanently the following year. He left at the age of 43 and returned at 58. He was eager to resume his interrupted life: “I was returning hopeful, motivated . . . to participate in the struggle for democracy . . . I was returning young, in spite of my physical appearance, my gray beard, and the thinning hair.”1 He would spend his remaining seventeen years deeply engaged with the political, intellectual, and educational struggles of the 1980s and 1990s. On returning to Brazil, he realized that he needed to relearn how to navigate a redemocratizing landscape that was beginning the arduous process of reconstructing its civic practices and institutions.2 Finding his footing in this new context would require a strategically different approach from the overtly revolutionary politics of his time in Chile and the World Council of Churches. Accordingly, Freire aligned himself with the incrementalist and consensus-​ building political strategy of the Left-​wing Brazilian PT, of which he was a founding member, alongside Luíz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. While much of his rhetoric remained vehemently anticapitalist, he embraced PT’s efforts to establish an alternative to globalized capitalism and authoritarian socialism by working within the reemerging multiparty framework.3 In this light, Freire blasted Brazil’s radical Marxist factions for refusing to set aside their dogmatism and ideological purity: A leftist party intent on bringing itself to meet the demands of its time needs to overcome the old prejudice against anything that resembles a bourgeois

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concession. It must be able to realize that, at a time as needy for humanization as ours, fighting for solidarity . . . is endlessly more valuable than any bureaucratic discourse of ultraleftist flavor.4

He described his political philosophy as a “progressive postmodernism” that was not “overly convinced of [its] own certitudes,” even as it continued to struggle against dehumanization.5 The “correct posture” for progressive activists and educators in this new political context is one of “permanent openness” to exploration, dissent, self-​reflection, and revision.6 It must be emphasized that Freire’s strategic pragmatism did not mean he abandoned his “utopian dream” of a radically transformed society. Indeed, he constantly reaffirmed his confidence in human agency and historical possibility, and he continued to denounce the evils of capitalism. Nevertheless, his post-​ 1980 writings encompassed a wider range of methods, venues, and concerns than those from his recent past. This more spacious and granular perspective can be seen in his encouragement of progressives to creatively explore various ways to foster human well-​being and social change: Obviously, it is not a question of inciting the exploited poor to rebellion, to mobilization, to organization, to shaking up the world. In truth, it’s a question of working in some given area, be it literacy, health, or evangelization, and doing so as to awake the conscience of each group, in a constructive, critical manner, about the violence and extreme injustice of this concrete situation.7

This relatively modest call to action is a striking departure in tone and substance from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he routinely called for “rebellion” and “shaking up the world.” By the same token, Freire devoted more attention toward the affective and relational dimensions of classroom practice, especially after his tenure as secretary of education of São Paulo (1989–​1991). In short, while these late pedagogical writings were permeated by Freire’s characteristic sense of moral and political urgency, they were also more holistic, more closely observed, more personal, and in many ways richer than his earlier work. Put differently, his “mature” writings exhibited what Jacques Maritain called an “integral humanism” in the sense of encompassing the full personhood of teachers and students. In this way, Freire’s lifelong faith continued to suffuse and guide his work, even when he was grappling with ostensibly “secular” concerns. This chapter begins with a survey of two major events that provided the backdrop for Freire’s late period. The first, as mentioned above, was his service as São Paulo’s secretary of education. His experiences in this position prompted

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him to reflect on classroom practice in newly “integral” terms. The second was the ascendance of “neoliberal” capitalism in the closing years of his life. Freire condemned this development as a catastrophe for human dignity, and he often drew his lines of critique from the prophetic tradition, liberation theology, and Christian Personalism. This chapter then demonstrates how Freire brought the rich theological tapestry he had assimilated over the years to bear on these new historical challenges, especially in the realm of teaching practice.

Historical and biographical context Secretary of education After settling down in São Paulo with his family, Freire returned to classroom teaching for the first time since the early 1960s, accepting positions at the University of São Paulo and the State University of Campinas. He also co-established and led the adult education program of the PT for the next six years. As Freire readjusted to life in Brazil, the nation itself was gradually returning to civilian rule. In 1985, a centrist governor named Tancredo Neves was chosen via the military-​sanctioned electoral college to serve as the country’s first civilian president since 1964. Neves took ill and died before being inaugurated and was succeeded by the vice president-​elect José Sarney. President Sarney assumed control over an economy that was reeling from runaway inflation, stagnation, and enormous levels of foreign debt, as well as the continuation of grotesque inequality between the elites and the poor. He introduced a series of economic “shock” plans that froze prices and wages in order to tame inflation. These failed to stabilize the economy. Inflation rates continued to rise, at times reaching 25 percent per month by the end of the 1980s. In contrast to these economic woes, the country’s political journey back to civilian rule was showing more promise. The redemocratization process achieved a milestone when nationwide elections were held in 1988. Freire’s PT won a variety of local and municipal elections, the most important of which was the mayoralty of São Paulo, the country’s most populous city. The newly elected mayor, Luiza Erundina de Sousa, was a social worker and a longtime friend of Freire’s. She promptly invited him to become the city’s secretary of education. This position entailed administrative responsibility over a severely underfunded and dilapidated system of close to a million students. Many school buildings were crumbling,8 and the teachers were poorly trained and severely

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underpaid. After spending almost his entire career in nonformal educational settings, Freire accepted the call to become a civil servant at the age of 68. He later explained his decision: If I had not accepted the honorable invitation by Erundina, I would have to, for a matter of coherence, pull all of my books out of press, stop writing, and be silent till death . . . To accept this invitation was to be coherent with everything I have ever said and done; it was the only way to go.9

He was eager to see if he was capable of exercising power in a democratic and collaborative way, in accordance with his oft-​proclaimed principles of nonauthoritarianism and dialogue. This insistence on “coherence” between one’s values and behavior would be a recurring theme of his late period. As the new secretary of education, Freire and his team quickly laid out a set of policy priorities that included improving the quality of instruction, with emphasis on training teachers to practice contextualized and nonauthoritarian pedagogies; raising teachers’ salaries; increasing access to schooling; raising retention rates; decentralizing and democratizing the administrative system; renovating existing infrastructure and building new facilities; providing continuing educational opportunities for working youths and adults; and cultivating the formation of critical and responsible citizens. This was an exceedingly ambitious agenda, particularly given the entrenched paternalism and authoritarianism of the Brazilian educational tradition. Seeking to promote a more democratic environment, Freire insisted that students’ knowledge, forms of expression, and cultural frames of reference must be treated with respect. He met regularly with students, parents, teachers, and other school staff to discuss their concerns, respond to their questions, and collectively brainstorm ideas for reform. For the first time, poor parents found themselves encouraged to participate in decision-​ making processes and in the affairs of their local school. Likewise, teachers were trained to enact self-​reflective, nonauthoritarian, and situated pedagogies. Freire’s agenda met with mixed results. On one hand, his tenure witnessed increased enrollment, lower “dropout” and failure rates, the construction of dozens of new schools, significant upgrades to facilities and teaching equipment, the establishment of school councils and student unions, and the creation of a citywide literacy program for adults and working youths. In addition, he initiated a curriculum reform movement that was based on collaborative inquiry into generative themes from the students’ home lives and day-​to-​day experiences. On a less successful note, he was largely unable to shift the system toward nonauthoritarian pedagogical and administrative practices. While significant numbers

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of teachers, parents, and administrators were receptive to his unconventional vision, his programs were often greeted with skepticism—​even hostility—​by many others. Historian Andrew Kirkendall writes: There was a good deal of resistance among members of the education bureaucracy who saw their power threatened by attempts to decentralize the school system, as well as a general lack of trust in the ability of the popular classes to form an opinion and make decisions regarding school issues. Administrators and teachers did not often know how to talk to parents and students in a language “accessible to everyone.”10

Moreover, many teachers could not understand, much less implement, Freire’s pedagogy. Another point of contention was the frequently uncompensated time that was required for professional development and classroom preparation. By early 1991, Freire was exhausted by the demands of running the ministry’s large, fractious, and highly politicized bureaucracy. He also longed for the time to devote himself fully to reading, writing, and teaching. He stepped down from his post in May after two and a half years. Despite the many frustrations of his tenure, Freire would describe it as one of the most rewarding experiences of his career. As he remarked to a group of fellow educators after his resignation: If I die . . . this year, I would not have written the four books I wanted to write, but I proved myself in a job that I needed to perform before dying. Much more necessary than writing those four books was to know how I would behave holding power, and I would like to tell you that I behave well, with a relative coherence.11

He had proven to himself that he was capable of living up to his principles in the face of tremendous pressure. In addition, his tenure provided the most substantial encounter with formal education of his career. His experiences also stimulated some of his richest and most concrete writing about pedagogical practice.

The neoliberal decade (1990–​2000) Brazil held direct, multiparty elections for the presidency in 1989—​the first time this had happened since 1960. The runoff featured Fernando Collor de Mello, a youthful and patrician former governor who was identified with the traditional elite, and the PT’s Lula da Silva. In the bitterly contested contest, Collor warned that Lula’s “radical” policies would exacerbate the economic crisis and plunge the poor into even deeper destitution. His strategy proved successful; Collor won with 53 percent of the vote and assumed office in March

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1990. His ascent to the presidency signaled the beginning of the “neoliberal decade” in Brazil, during which the nation would shift toward a new economic paradigm after decades of nationalist developmentalism, protectionism, and direct state support of local industry.12 President Collor began to privatize public assets, cut government expenditure, and lower barriers to foreign capital. His reforms were curtailed when he resigned in December 1992 in the face of severe corruption and abuse of power scandals.13 He was replaced by the sitting vice president, Itamar Franco. President Franco’s tenure witnessed relentless inflation, which reached 40 percent per month between 1992 and 1994. His administration’s major economic initiative was a muscular program to tame hyperinflation under the supervision of his dynamic finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a well-​regarded public intellectual and a formerly prominent Marxist politician. Cardoso’s plan introduced a new currency and pegged it to the dollar, mandated a balanced budget, hiked interest rates, and further reduced government spending. Cardoso ran for the presidency in 1994 with the promise of a pragmatic, technocratic, and “non-​ideological” approach to rescuing the economy.14 At the same time, he argued that the best way to reduce poverty and ameliorate inequality was through creating a “well-​ordered marketplace” that would prove attractive to foreign investment, with the benefits trickling down to the masses.15 Backed by a center-​Right coalition, Cardoso was elected to the presidency on the first round of balloting with 54 percent of the vote. (The runner-​up was Lula with 27 percent.) As president, he accelerated his predecessors’ economic liberalization policies. He vigorously cultivated foreign capital, with a resulting rise of annual direct investments from 2 billion dollars in 1990 to 30 billion by 2000.16 He privatized the oil, mining, transportation, and telecommunications industries, which generated 60 billion dollars between 1995 and 1998.17 Likewise, he slashed or abolished social and welfare programs to curtail the fiscal deficit.18 As a result of the drastic reduction of its presence in the economy, the state was increasingly “depleted in the areas of economic planning, control, and policy implementation.”19 Private businesses and financial entities (both local and international) rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the retreat of the state. They accumulated great influence in policy decisions, especially those regarding resource allocation, tax rates, and fiscal and trade policies. Historically low tariffs on imports opened the door to a flood of low-​ cost goods, which suddenly exposed local industries to unprecedented levels of competition. Industrial workers suffered from relentless downward pressure on their wages, and unemployment rates increased.

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Freire passionately opposed economic liberalization. In an interview held just a few weeks before his death, he expressed his bitter disappointment with President Cardoso: I will always be on this side of the fight against this man, whom I know personally and who is a great intellectual, because his sin is so serious. He was one of the major Marxists of this country who suddenly discovered that his path was on the right. I do not accept this, so I criticize him . . . It is a pity because at my 75 years of age, when I could make a major contribution to this country, I am refusing to do it. The contribution that I am making instead is to write and criticize all this.20

Freire’s sentiments notwithstanding, President Cardoso enjoyed significant public approval. He had tamed hyperinflation, which would fall to the low single digits by 1998.21 Moreover, the growing consumer class was reveling in the abundance of cheap imported goods, including an unprecedented array of luxury products.22 Even the political Left was divided with regard to the government’s economic program. Some members had become amenable to economic liberalization, while others resigned themselves to globalization and devoted their greatest efforts toward blunting its harshest edges. In 1998, one year after Freire’s death, President Cardoso won reelection on the first round of voting with 53 percent of the vote.

Neoliberal ideology and the “end of history” President Cardoso’s agenda reflected the neoliberal ideology that rose to the fore among global political, business, and academic elites in the 1990s. Neoliberal thought emerged onto the international stage in the 1970s as an alternative to Keynesian economics, which had proved incapable of arresting global stagflation. Neoliberalism “represented a coherently articulated and thus compelling alternative” for those who were “desperate for a solution to unfolding economic, social, and political crises.”23 It rejected the traditional Keynesian goal of pursuing full employment in favor of fighting inflation, which was viewed as the result of government overspending and the overregulation of business.24 Neoliberalism’s most powerful champions throughout the 1980s were President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They were instrumental in mainstreaming the antigovernment and “market friendly” ideology that would shape the political discourse in many countries over the next generation.

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Neoliberalism is grounded on certain core beliefs about the ideal relationship between the state and the market. Political economist Elizabeth Thurbon summarizes its guiding principles: 1. The free market is the most efficient allocator of resources to their most productive end. Government intervention in allocative decisions inevitably distorts the market mechanism, leading to suboptimal economic outcomes. 2. Governments should thus limit their role to the provision of the basic framework of rules in which the free market can operate, including national security, private property rights, and laws designed to promote and enforce market-​based competition. The unfettered market, left to its own devices, will take care of the rest. 3. Market-​based solutions can usefully be applied to most areas of economic and social life—​from the industrial economy to welfare, health, education, and beyond.25 The last item is particularly important because it sets neoliberalism apart from classic economic liberalism. This absolute confidence in the capacity of the “invisible hand” of the market to resolve virtually all economic and social problems has led neoliberalism to be dubbed by its critics as “free market fundamentalism.” (It has also been called “hyper-​capitalism” and “capitalism with the gloves off.”) Journalist George Monbiot starkly describes the ethos of neoliberalism: Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.26

Neoliberal thought argues that the state must leave the market to operate as freely as possible; any intrusion will only lead to “distortions,” “inefficiencies,” “imbalances,” and create additional social and economic problems. This ideal of a “minimal state” was aggressively pushed by Reagan and Thatcher, who depicted public spending on social welfare as inherently wasteful and morally corrosive because it fosters dependency among its recipients. As Reagan famously declared in his first inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our [economic] problem; government is the problem.” Competition, rugged individualism, self-​sufficiency, and economic “liberty” were valorized above other values. The interests of private enterprise became synonymous with those of the nation, which led to large tax cuts for the investor and the business class. Trade unions and collective bargaining,

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which were seen as obstacles to the “freedom” of corporations to set wages, slash benefits, fire workers, and outsource their production, were placed under constant political pressure. By the 1990s, policy makers throughout the world, including many who had previously identified with the political Left (like President Cardoso), had become fervent advocates of liberalization. The consensus among the political, intellectual, and economic elites was that deregulated markets, globalization, and free trade were not merely the best way to create prosperity, promote development, and raise living conditions for all; they were the only way. The dissemination of these ideas was abetted by an influential group of economists with ties to organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, and the US Treasury Department. Economist John Williamson summed up the shared worldview within these institutions: The superior economic performance of countries that establish and maintain outward-​oriented market economies subject to macro-​economic discipline is essentially a positive question. The proof may not be quite as conclusive as the proof that the earth is not flat, but it is sufficiently well-​established as to give sensible people better things to do with their time than challenge its veracity.27

In short, neoliberal ideology had become “part of the conventional wisdom of the age.”28 Its “common sense” assumptions had become embedded in the “belief systems of most domestic and international institutions.”29 Market forces were now seen as a “natural” phenomenon, more akin to the weather and the laws of gravity, rather than the result of policy decisions. Prime Minister Thatcher’s slogan “There is no Alternative” encapsulated the hegemony of globalization. In Brazil, President Cardoso repeatedly proclaimed that the neoliberal framework was the only viable path for Brazil. This position earned him accolades within the international financial community. Indeed, The Economist magazine paid him the compliment of likening him with Thatcher.30 A foundational element of President Cardoso’s justification for his economic reforms was the contention that capitalist globalization was not just beneficial but also inexorable. He was hardly the only major political leader to do so; his contemporaries Bill Clinton and Tony Blair also adopted this narrative of historical inevitability. Indeed, this mystique has been an enormous source of neoliberalism’s authority. The most influential scholarly contributor to this triumphalist narrative was a political theorist and US State Department researcher named Francis Fukuyama, who published an epoch-​shaping essay titled “The End of History?” in the summer of 1989. Fukuyama contended that

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the closing years of the twentieth century had witnessed the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”31 over its ideological competitors, which included ethno-​nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and totalitarian communism. Fukuyama acknowledged that while this “unabashed victory” had occurred “primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness” and was not yet complete in the material world,32 it was nevertheless apparent that all “viable systematic alternatives” to Western democracy and free market economics had run their historical course.33 In other words, the “end of history” had arrived because human society had already attained its highest possible form.34 As he declared: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such:  that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.35

One of Fukuyama’s key intellectual maneuvers was conflating democratic politics with economic liberalism. In his analysis, these systems are so symbiotic as to be virtually synonymous: That state of consciousness that permits the growth of liberalism seems to stabilize in the way one would expect at the end of history if it is underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy. We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.36

As evidence for his argument, Fukuyama pointed to the recent electoral successes of “unabashedly pro-​market and anti-​statist” parties in Britain, Germany, the United States, and Japan as the early signs of the final triumph of laissez-​faire economics and liberal democracy.37 The “desire for access to consumer culture,” he noted, was a driving force in spreading economic liberalism throughout the world, which would in turn promote political liberalism.38 He dismissed leftist critiques of capitalism, proclaiming that the “class issue has actually been resolved in the West.”39 The publication of Fukuyama’s article fed into the atmosphere of euphoria that erupted at the end of the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred shortly after the publication of Fukuyama’s article, only seemed to provide incontrovertible proof of his thesis. His theory legitimated and reinforced the rise of neoliberal ideology to global hegemony over the next decade.

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Neoliberalism and education The neoliberal regime witnessed the encroachment of the values and criteria of capitalist consumerism into almost every aspect of social and cultural life. As Peter Roberts points out, as “the market” was adopted as the fundamental template for human existence, alternative ideals grounded in non-monetary principles like “communitarian care” were dismissed as impractical and inappropriate to the current age.40 The educational sphere was not exempt from this phenomenon. In the United States, college-​bound students were encouraged to view themselves as consumers who are “shopping around” for the best commodity.41 Market-​based concepts, practices, and analytical modes like “efficiency,” “cost-​cutting,” “competitiveness,” “accountability,” “quality assessment,” and “performance indicators” increasingly dominated educational discourse. Educational institutions shifted toward providing “pragmatic” technical skills required for “competitiveness” in the global marketplace, with other areas of study being sidelined for their “irrelevance” to economic imperatives.42 The neoliberal ethos began to penetrate the Brazilian educational domain as well. In São Paulo, this process began in earnest after Mayor Erundina lost her reelection bid to the Right-​wing Paulo Maluf in 1992. Maluf ’s Social Democratic Party was highly critical of the “politicization” of the school system during the previous four years and sought to return to a more “neutral” and “pragmatic” curriculum. The new administration was also convinced that the best way to improve the public school system was by introducing more streamlined administrative and curriculum-​planning techniques.43 Mayor Maluf instituted an educational program called “Total Quality Control” (or CQT) that was adapted from corporate management.44 CQT, which was a method for promoting organizational efficiency and improving customer satisfaction, had gained wide currency among business leaders in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe in the early 1980s. According to educational researchers Maria O’Cadiz, Pia Wong, and Carlos Torres, many progressive educators and intellectuals in São Paulo were strongly opposed to the adoption of CQT. At a 1994 conference, they accused the city government of reducing teachers to workforce trainers for the benefit of industrial and business interests.45 Public schools, they contended, were being converted into marketplaces replete with neoliberal mechanisms of discipline. They also argued that the so-​called Total Quality school, “in focusing on the virtues of order, morality and ethics in educational endeavors, circumvents the critical social issues of schooling and fails to advance a proposal for pedagogic change and transformation of the broader structures of society.”46 Freire, who was in his early seventies and in deteriorating health, was forced to witness the systematic erosion of many of his hard-​fought educational

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reforms—​an experience that paralleled the dismantling of his literacy program in 1964. Nevertheless, he continued to encourage his fellow progressives to reject despair, resignation, and accommodation to the status quo. In his penultimate book, he acknowledged that his spirituality sustained his lifelong commitment to human well-​being and his rejection of fatalism: All arguments in favor of the legitimacy for a more people-​oriented society have their deepest roots in my faith. It sustains me, motivates me, challenges me, and it has never allowed me to say, “Stop, settle down; things are as they are because they cannot be any other way.”47

Freire’s late theology Pedagogy as human formation Throughout the vicissitudes of his later years, Freire’s political and educational praxis remained grounded on his commitment to human dignity. As before, his faith drove him to oppose those societal conditions and structures that hinder each and every person from “becoming more-​so.” He reaffirmed this foundational principle throughout his late writings, perhaps nowhere more emphatically than in his final book: “Here I want to repeat—​forcefully—​that nothing can justify the degradation of human beings. Nothing.”48 Genuine pedagogy must be first and foremost “an experience in humanization.”49 In contrast, much formal education valorizes technique, efficiency, technological innovation, and delivery of predetermined contents divorced from ethical considerations. As such, it “impoverishes what is fundamentally human in this experience: namely, its capacity to form the human person.”50 In an article he completed shortly before his death, Freire criticized the neoliberalization of Brazil’s educational system: Within the pragmatic-​technicist view . . . what matters is the transference of technical, instrumental knowing, which ensures good productivity for industry. This sort of neoliberal pragmatism . . . is founded on the following, not always explicit, reasoning: If there are no social classes any longer, and if their conflicts are gone as well; if there is no ideology any longer, from left or right; if economic globalization has not only made the world smaller but made it almost equal, the education needed today has nothing to do with dreams, utopias, or conscientização.51

The school system, he believed, was being coopted to support market-​oriented, business-​friendly policies. Classrooms were turning into hermetically sealed,

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ahistorical bubbles that were “bureaucratizing the mind,” thus alienating the students from their “essential selves,” from their classmates, from the teacher, and from the wider world.52 When learning is narrowed to exclusively instrumental or preprofessional concerns, it becomes a mere “exercise in adaptation to the world.”53 Such education fails to support the student’s uniquely human capacities for critical thought and historical Subjectivity and is therefore “almost like the training of animals.”54 Freire thus echoed Maritain’s stinging description of the mainstream pedagogies of his own era as “animal training.”55 Indeed, a great deal of Maritain’s educational anthropology—​as well as that of Emmanuel Mounier—​ remained embedded in Freire’s thought.56 As previously mentioned, both French Catholic philosophers believed that education must nurture the development of full, balanced, and morally conscious human beings. They also rejected pedagogies that were devoted primarily toward career preparation, the superficial transmission of information, or the interests of the prevailing politico-​economic system. Mounier, the more politically radical of the two, decried mainstream pedagogies for perpetuating social divisions.57 These substantial commonalities between the educational philosophies of Maritain, Mounier, and Freire illustrated their shared roots in Catholic anthropology and social teaching.

Pedagogy and the whole person Freire’s late works provided a fuller exploration of the ways in which educational practice encompasses all dimensions of the students’ and teachers’ personhood. “As a strictly human experience,” he wrote, “I could never treat education as something cold, mental, merely technical, and without soul, where feelings, sensibility, desires, and dreams had no place.”58 Likewise, “I know with my entire body, with feelings, with passion, and also with reason.”59 Such statements mirrored his French Catholic predecessors. For instance, Maritain described an “integral” pedagogy that would address one’s rational, aesthetic, creative, moral, and spiritual faculties.60 Similarly, Mounier proposed a Personalist pedagogy that cultivates “the formation of total man.”61 For his part, Freire explored the interwovenness of material and nonmaterial conditions within educational practice. He dealt with this issue extensively when managing São Paulo’s crumbling school infrastructure. He wrote: We cannot speak of educational goals without making reference to the material conditions of schools. Material conditions are not only “spirit” but also “body.” . . . We need to show that we respect these children, their teachers, their

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schools, their parents, and their community; that we respect what is public, treating it with decency . . . Only then can we speak of principles and values . . . We cannot speak to students about the beauty of the knowing process if their classroom[s]‌are flooded with water, if the wind enters, directly and maliciously into the classroom, cutting their not so well-​dressed bodies. In this sense, to repair the schools rapidly is already to change their face a little, not only from the material point of view, but above all, from the perspective of the schools’ “soul.”62

This call for humane learning conditions for all students was couched not just in political or ethical terms, but also in aesthetic and spiritual ones. His lamenting of decaying school buildings reflected his conviction that all learners are worthy of beautiful material conditions as well. This was a deeply holistic—​indeed spiritual—​view of the educational experience. Along similar lines, he affirmed that humanizing education should recognize the essential role “that spirituality, not necessarily in a religious sense, feelings, dreams, and utopias play in the changing of reality.”63 Freire devoted much of his post-​exile writings toward offering counsel and encouragement to classroom teachers. This was an audience he had given relatively little attention to in his previous books and articles, which were mostly preoccupied with nonformal educational settings. Teachers must “dare . . . to speak of love without the fear of being called ridiculous, mawkish, or unscientific.”64 Crucially, he applied the lenses of integral humanism and Personalism to pedagogical work: “The open-​minded teacher,” he wrote, “cannot afford to ignore anything that concerns the human person.”65 They must cultivate a wide range of virtues, including “a generous loving heart, respect for others, tolerance, humility, a joyful disposition, love of life, . . . a disposition to welcome change, perseverance in the struggle, a refusal of determinism, a spirit of hope, an openness to justice.”66 Such inner qualities, he asserted, are inaccessible to the “merely scientific, technical mind.”67 Moreover, Freire described teaching as “something mysterious . . . called ‘vocation,’ ” which explains why so many teachers “persist with so much devotion in spite of the immoral salaries they receive. And do it with love.”68 Such selflessness makes little sense in the context of the capitalist marketplace, which only recognizes profit and self-​interest. Furthermore, We must dare in order to say . . . that we study, we learn, we teach, we know with our entire body. We do all of these things with feeling, with emotion, with wishes, with fear, with doubts, with passion, and also with critical reasoning.

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However, we never study, learn, teach, know with the last only. We must dare so as to never dichotomize cognition and emotion.69

Teachers must not let their work become “so filled with rationalism that they become empty of life or feeling.”70 Likewise, they should never be reduced to “bankers” of abstract information. Dialogic interactions with students must be conducted with respectful presence, generosity of spirit, sincere attention, and a recognition of their own intellectual limits.71 He encouraged teachers to “not be afraid of tenderness . . . [and to] not close themselves to the affective neediness of beings who are kept from being.”72 Teaching is first and foremost an act of love, compassion, and care. Its overriding concern is nurturing the student’s dignity, growth, and “being.” Accordingly, the educator’s primary allegiance must be toward the learner’s full humanity rather than bureaucratic concerns like quantification, management, “accountability,” and institutional gatekeeping. This dimension of relationality and mutual encounter is one of the most tragic casualties of the penetration of market criteria and priorities into the educational sphere.

Pedagogy as “coherence” Freire maintained that educators should always align their values with their practices. The “democratic and competent” teacher realizes that “the best way to modify the situation of the world is through the consistency with which she/​he lives out his or her committed presence in the world.”73 What is most important is not necessarily the content of the lesson, but the educator’s embodied example of “his or her committed presence.”74 This consistency, Freire argued, is the basis of one’s pedagogical legitimacy and authority. Indeed, the supposedly progressive educator who preaches democratic principles but behaves autocratically is “not only ineffective but [also] harmful.”75 This teacher is more damaging than “a coherent authoritarian.”76 Freire’s insistence on aligning one’s ideals and daily behavior was a bedrock value he learned from his mother, Edeltrudes.77 A deeply committed Catholic, she taught her young son to align his own budding faith and his everyday actions. This lesson left an indelible mark on Freire’s spirituality and educational praxis. Moreover, he turned to biblical accounts of Jesus’s ministry for a powerful example of such “coherence”: Christ will always be, as he is for me, an example of the Teacher . . . Small boy, young person, and finally, a man in whom the little boy continued to live, I was

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fascinated and continue to be fascinated by the indivisibility of the content of the Gospels and the manner in which Christ communicated them.78

Freire especially admired Jesus for living out the radical implications of his own teachings, even when it involved suffering and death. In this way, Jesus was “the Word that became flesh.”79 Furthermore, he affirmed the ongoing presence of Jesus in history, one that continues to invite all persons “to know the truth of this message through practicing it, down to the most minute detail.”80 Thus, following Jesus is a “whole way of learning,” which demands the unity of thought, faith, and action in the entirety of one’s being.81 As Freire declared: I cannot know the Gospels if I take them simply as words that come to rest in me or if, seeing myself as empty, I try to fill myself with these words . . . On the contrary, I understand the Gospels, well or badly, to the degree that, well or badly, I live them. I experience them and in them experience myself through my own social practice, in history, with other human beings.82

Pedagogy as prophetic action The final decade of Freire’s life witnessed a resurgent political Right, the relentless ascent of globalization, and the supposed “end of history.” Amid this dire historical context, Freire kept on challenging progressive activists and educators to engage in “utopian” acts of opposition to dehumanization. Such resistance, he insisted, must permanently combine “denunciation” (critique and judgment) and “annunciation” (affirmation and encouragement). Both steps are required to sustain the long-​term pursuit of social change; denunciation for its own sake leads to demoralization, burnout, and even nihilism, while annunciation by itself results in naive and ineffectual optimism. In his late writings, Freire demonstrated what it means to wage a vigorous struggle against dehumanizing political, economic, ideological, and educational systems. Among his recurring targets for denunciation were capitalism and the “end of history.” He decried the “globalizing neoliberal crusade” as the apotheosis of the “intrinsically evil nature” of capitalism.83 He deplored the “dictatorship of the marketplace” as irredeemably immoral because it is founded on “the perverse ethic of profit.”84 Drawing on liberation theology and Christian Personalism, he proclaimed: “Now . . . it is essential and urgent that people unite against the threat that looms over us. The threat, namely, to our own identity as human persons caught up in the ferocity of the ethics of the marketplace.”85 The capitalist

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ethos, he declared, is a “malevolent ethics that does not respect the human presence.”86 In the logic of the market, people are worth what they make in money every month, and embracing the other, respect for the weaker, a reverence toward life . . . a caring attitude toward things, a taste for beautifulness, the value of feelings—​all this is reduced to almost no importance or to no importance at all.87

By cultivating radical individualism and social Darwinism, the capitalist system violates the “universal human ethic . . . which calls us out of and beyond ourselves.”88 Thus, capitalism violates the essential human capacities for solidarity, community, and self-​giving. He derided the presumed ideological and economic superiority of capitalism in one of the most overtly prophetic passages in his body of work: What excellence is this, that, in the Brazilian Northeast, coexists with a degree of misery that could only have been thought a piece of fiction: little boys and girls, women and men, vying with starving pups, tragically, like animals, for the garbage of the great trash heaps outlying the cities to eat? What excellence is this, that seems blind to little children with distended bellies, eaten by worms, toothless women looking like old crones at thirty, wasted men, skinny, stooped populations? . . . What excellence is this, that strikes a pact with the cold-​blooded, cowardly murder of landless men and women of the countryside simply because they fight for their right to their word and their labor, while they remain bound to the land and despoiled of their fields by the dominant classes? What excellence is this, that gazes with serene regard upon the extermination of little girls and boys in the great Brazilian urban centers . . . and that calls all of this “capitalistic modernity.”89

In this outcry of moral indignation, Freire rebuked the abject moral failures of the elites and shone a light on the agonies of the weak, powerless, and dispossessed.90 Implicit in his statement is the prophetic call for the polity to establish a “human community worthy of divine approval and to renew its commitment to those goals.”91 In a similar vein, Freire linked the perpetual struggle for a just and humane society with a prophetic rejection of the “end of history”: “Once time ceases to be a matter that I must reflect upon, knowing that I can interfere with it, the death of history will solemnly pronounce the negation of my essential humanity.”92 Turning his denunciation to the educational domain, he attacked teaching

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methods, curricula, and institutional structures that fostered fatalism and resignation among both teachers and students. Such practices serve dominant economic interests by stripping education of its political dimension and conditioning learners to adapt themselves to the existing order.93 Accordingly, educators must reject the “trickeries of neoliberal ‘pragmatism’ which reduces the educational practice to the technical-​scientific training of learners, training rather than educating.”94 At the same time, Freire combined his critiques with consistent reaffirmation of his confidence in human agency. While changing the status quo is difficult, it is possible. Accordingly, teachers must always remember to offer their students a vision of historical possibility:  “As human beings, there is no doubt that our main responsibilities consist of intervening in reality and keeping up our hope. While progressive educators, we must be committed to those responsibilities.”95

Conclusion While the critical and political aspects of Freire’s educational praxis have long been recognized, his exploration of the relational and affective dimensions of pedagogy remains relatively obscure. During his post-​exile period, he explored an integral vision of pedagogy that addressed the full personhood of teachers and learners in richer, more comprehensive, and more concrete ways than before. Throughout his late works, Freire emphasized that a progressive teacher’s commitment to political liberation unfolds within the context of an encounter with the total humanity of the student. This certainly does not mean that educators should uncritically affirm all their students’ beliefs or claim to practice a “neutral” pedagogy, thereby abrogating their professional and ethical responsibilities. Nevertheless, Freire was adamant that progressive educators should avoid operating solely at the level of political and ideological critique. First of all, it could lead to further alienation on the part of the student. Composition-​ rhetoric scholar Shari J. Stenberg highlights this danger: While I agree . . . that ideally we help students see beyond the normative roles culture has prescribed, I  wonder about the consequences of valuing a critical position over the [student] writer herself? What is the cost of a pedagogy that is built on dismissal?96

Moreover, genuine dialogue—​a cornerstone of Freire’s pedagogy—​requires an open listening stance. This places an extra responsibility on progressive teachers

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to practice with great sensitivity and respect for their students, particularly given the irrevocable power differential conferred on them by the institutional setting. Second, liberatory educators must be constantly wary of succumbing to the authoritarian temptation to “bank” predetermined beliefs and positions. According to educational sociologist Barry Kanpol, such teachers must carefully avoid “essentializing certain virtues at the expense of students exploring and formulating their own values,” because such pedagogy would constitute a form of domination in its own right.97 Third, transformative learning does not primarily occur at the intellectual or rational level. It must encompass and activate the totality of the learner’s being. As Christian educator Michael Dallaire writes, “Thinking divorced from intuition, imagination, feeling, aesthetics, culture, values, and relationships often lead to knowledge that is incomplete.”98 Similarly, the educator and activist Parker J. Palmer calls on teachers to reject the damaging dualism between “the head and the heart” that permeates formal education, especially in the college classroom.99 This dichotomy, he argues, leads to lifeless, “bloodless,” and alienating pedagogies.100 In this regard, Freire’s insistence on consistency between an educator’s beliefs and behavior takes on added significance. As he drily noted, “It serves no purpose, except to irritate and demoralize the student, for me to talk of democracy and freedom and at the same time act with the arrogance of a know-​all.”101 Religious educator Clifford Mayes puts it this way: Explicit declarations . . . rarely impress and almost never convince. Rather, it is the lived example of the teacher—​in the class, with the class, and for the class—​ that conveys the message. This leaves the student free to appropriate the message in the ways that make the most sense to her.102

Finally, an integral pedagogy can itself constitute an act of opposition to the persistent political, economic, and institutional pressures to reduce education to high-​stakes testing, credentializing, standardized curricula, managerial roles for teachers, sorting and tracking mechanisms, and workforce training. In light of such pressures, the cultivation of a relational, person-​centered, humanistic pedagogy is an act of resistance and affirmation, one that honors the essential mystery of teaching and learning. Mayes brings Martin Buber’s spiritual existentialism to bear on the relationality that ought to lie at the heart of pedagogy: The single antidote to our culture’s tendency to “objectify” the other is the fostering of the “I-​Thou” relationship . . . Where teachers and students protect and promote ways of learning and growing together within the sacred precinct of “I-​Thou,” they are engaged in a spiritual act of political resistance.103

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Freire’s refusal to sever his pedagogy from historicity, community, wonder, suffering, compassion, hope, laughter, and love reflected his enduring theological commitment to defending the absolute dignity, sacred potentiality, and transcendent worth of the human person.

Notes 1 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 72. 2 In contrast, his literacy work at the WCC was often conducted with one-​party states, which enabled him to bypass the messiness and give-​and-​take of pluralist democracy. Furthermore, many of his literacy projects were both large scale and short term, which did not enable him to develop the deep familiarity with the cultural and linguistic particularities of the educational sites. I suspect the nature of these arrangements fed into Freire’s newfound penchant for sweeping generalities and absolute pronouncements. 3 O’Cadiz et al., Education and Democracy, 25. 4 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 83. 5 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 34. 6 Ibid., 119. 7 Ibid., 75. 8 Freire depicted a bleak situation: “About fifty school buildings were in a deplorable state with ceilings failing, floors caving in, electrical wiring presenting real threats to life; fifteen thousand school desks were broken, and many schools were without any desks whatsoever” (quoted in Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 161). 9 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 59. 10 Kirkendall, Paulo Freire and Cold War Politics, 161. 11 Quoted in Schugurensky, Paulo Freire, 35. 12 Wendy Wolford, “Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism in Brazil: Competing Worldviews and the State in the Struggle for Land,” Environment and Planning A 37 (2005): 246. 13 Freire was a vehement critic of President Collor. He accused his followers of brazen larceny, corruption, and murder: “To them, deceit is a virtue, dirty business the model. Shamelessness is the example to follow” (Freire and Macedo, Letters to Cristina, 46). 14 Wolford, “Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism,” 246. 15 Ibid., 257. 16 Edmund Amann and Werner Baer, “Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 4 (2002): 949.

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17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 958. 19 Alfredo Saad-​Filho, “Neoliberalism, Democracy and Development Policy in Brazil,” in Developmental Politics in Transition: The Neoliberal Era and Beyond, ed. Chang Kyung-​Sup, Ben Fine, and Linda Weiss (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 136. 20 Quoted in Avadhuta, “Educator of the Oppressed,” 302. 21 Amann and Baer, “Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in Brazil,” 957. 22 Marxist economist Alfredo Saad Filho drily observes, “Neoliberalism bribed those it had not yet convinced, and it seemed that it could do no wrong” (“Neoliberalism, Democracy and Development Policy,” 129). 23 Elizabeth Thurbon, “From Developmentalism to Neoliberalism and Back Again? Governing the Market in Australia from the 1980s to the Present,” in Kyung-​Sup et al., Developmental Politics in Transition, 279. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 278. 26 George Monbiot, “Neoliberalism: The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems,” The Guardian, April 15, 2016, https://​www.theguardian.com/​books/​2016/​apr/​15/​ neoliberalism-​ideology-​problem-​george-​monbiot/​ 27 Quoted in Amann and Baer, “Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in Brazil,” 946. 28 Saad Filho, “Neoliberalism, Democracy and Development Policy,” 131. 29 Ibid. 30 Wolford, “Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism,” 246. 31 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest 16 (1989): 3. 32 Ibid., 4. 33 Ibid., 3. 34 Ibid., 13. 35 Ibid., 4. 36 Ibid., 8. 37 Ibid., 10. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 9. 40 Peter Roberts, “Freire, Neoliberalism and the University,” in Roberts, Paulo Freire, Politics and Pedagogy, 99. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 100–​1. 43 O’Cadiz, Wong, and Torres, Education and Democracy, 30–​1. 44 Ibid., 30. 45 Ibid., 32. 46 Ibid. 47 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 104.

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48 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 93. 49 Ibid., 103. 50 Ibid., 39. 51 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 77–​8. 52 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 102. 53 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 84. 54 Ibid., 84. 55 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 9. 56 See Chapter 3 for an exploration of Maritain’s and Mounier’s educational philosophies. 57 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 194. 58 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 129. 59 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 30. 60 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8–​10. 61 Mounier, Be Not Afraid, 194. 62 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 29–​30. 63 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 76. 64 Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, Expanded ed., trans. Donaldo Macedo (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005), 5. 65 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 127. 66 Ibid., 108. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 126. 69 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 5. 70 Ibid., 92. 71 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 81, 104. 72 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 91–​2. 73 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 110. 74 Ibid. 75 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 90. 76 Ibid. 77 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road by Walking, 245. 78 Freire, “Know, Practice, Teach the Gospels,” 547. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 548. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 114. 84 Ibid., 115. 85 Ibid.

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86 Quoted in Avadhuta, “Educator of the Oppressed,” 301. 87 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 46–​7. 88 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 25. 89 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 81. 90 Freire’s condemnation of the moral callousness of the elites echoes the prophet Jeremiah’s:

Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,   his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing,   not paying them for their labor. He says, “I will build myself a great palace   with spacious upper rooms.” So he makes large windows in it,   panels it with cedar   and decorates it in red. “Does it make you a king   to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink?   He did what was right and just,   so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy,   and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?”   declares the Lord. But your eyes and your heart   are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood   and on oppression and extortion. (Jer. 22:13–​17). 91 Purpel, “Education in a Prophetic Voice,” 11. 92 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 103. 93 Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation, 77. 94 Ibid., 19. 95 Freire and Freire, Daring to Dream, 5. 96 Stenberg, “Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies,” 283. 97 Kanpol, “Critical Pedagogy and Liberation Theology,” 111. 98 Michael Dallaire, Contemplation in Liberation: A Method for Spiritual Education in the Schools (Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen Press, 2001), 30. 99 Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, 10th Anniversary Edition (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass, 2007), 66.

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100 Ibid., 68. 101 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 61. 102 Clifford Mayes, “Teaching Mysteries,” Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice 16, no. 3 (2003): 45. 103 Ibid., 48.

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Final Thoughts

One of Paulo Freire’s most enduring contributions to educational praxis is his permanent challenge to teachers and policy makers to foreground issues of meaning, value, morality, and purpose. Freire forces us to ask: Why do we teach? Whose interests are we promoting? What kind of personhood are we cultivating? What kind of society we are helping to build? Such questions are indispensable, especially in an era when much of formal education has been reduced to standardized testing, credentializing, and technical know-​how, all with an eye toward fostering “competitiveness” in the globalized economy. Educational philosophers David Purpel and William M. McLaurin Jr. rightly contend: The questions of what our [educational] vision is and should be are in fact the most crucial and most basic questions that we face . . . We need to see the crisis in education as not primarily problems of technique, organization, and funding but as a reflection of the crisis in meaning.1

As Freire realized, these concerns are far from esoteric. Rather, they are eminently “practical” in that they underlie and shape every aspect of one’s teaching practice. Freire’s own lifelong pedagogical work was rooted in and legitimated by his Catholicism. From his theological imagination, Freire derived a sacred sense of the inviolable dignity, worth, and well-​being of the person. His faith provided the basis and inspiration for his decades-​long struggle to promote a more “humanized culture” and a “person-​oriented society.”2 This fundamental moral and spiritual concern saturated and informed almost every aspect of his educational and political praxis. Indeed, Freire’s faith gave him the transcendent unconditional moral criteria to condemn all systems that disfigured human personhood, freedom, creativity, and potential for “becoming more-​so.” It

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endowed him with the courage and authority to proclaim, “Nothing can justify the degradation of human beings. Nothing.”3 In addition, his Catholicism furnished him with a permanent confidence in human agency and empowered him to reject historical fatalism, quietism, and despair. In the end, Freire’s educational praxis demonstrated that while issues of pedagogical technique are important, they are secondary to (and derived from) questions of meaning, purpose, and spirituality. It is crucial to emphasize that practicing a spiritually grounded pedagogy does not require adhering to any particular creed or religious tradition. Contrary to conventional wisdom, faith is not primarily expressed through intellectually assenting to certain beliefs and doctrines. Instead, it is what the influential Protestant existentialist theologian Paul Tillich called “the state of being ultimately concerned.”4 According to Tillich, faith is that which “matters infinitely for the life of the believer.”5 It is “an act of the total personality”6 that turns him or her toward the “infinite.”7 Put differently, faith is not about “thinking correctly” about particular dogmas (which is the definition of “orthodoxy”).8 Rather, it is the all-encompassing commitment to what one considers of absolute importance, and that one is willing to affirm unconditionally in word, thought, and deed. For postmodern theologian John Caputo, faith is a matter of “deeper fidelity, a deeper responsibility to what is calling upon or visiting itself upon us unconditionally, wherever we live and whatever we believe.”9 Or as educational scholar Clifford Mayes puts it, “Spirituality is born whenever one views oneself and others against the backdrops of eternity—​as mortal beings who must grapple with timeless questions.”10 In this light, every aspect of human life and experience is sacred. Freire upheld this distinction between “spirituality” and “religion”: “Fundamentally I am a spiritual person. I don’t say that I am religious, but I am a man of faith . . . In me there is always the mixture of the mundane and the transcendental.”11 Affirming a non-​confessional spirituality can have vital implications for educators, especially those who are “non-​believers” or work in pluralist settings. As Mayes argues rightly, one’s teaching practice need not be “religious” to be deeply “spiritual”: The pedagogies that grow from the fecund soil of the love of others and the sacred are—​despite the teacher’s formal religious commitments or lack thereof—​ spiritual pedagogies. The teacher’s practice does not need to be established on a particular religious creed to be spiritual, but it must be energized by some form of spiritual commitment.12

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Likewise, Parker J. Palmer and Arthur Zajonc profess the central role of spirituality as a component of a truly integral education. They declare: Giving students knowledge as power over the world while failing to help them gain the kind of self-​knowledge that gives them power over themselves is a recipe for danger—​and we are living today with the proof of that claim in every realm of life . . . We need to stop releasing our students into the wild without systematically challenging them to take an inner as well as an outer journey.13

Furthermore, Freire would have strenuously emphasized that spirituality must result in practical action14 to avoid solipsism or escapism. As religious educator Michael Dallaire states, “spirituality is about living, not dogma or doctrine.”15 Freire’s activism was grounded on this understanding of faith as a permanent adventure that requires concrete activity: “I understand the Gospels, well or badly, to the degree that, well or badly, I live them. I experience them and in them experience myself through my own social practice, in history, with other human beings.”16 Freire’s spirituality was forward-​looking, other-​oriented, and practically realized. It was not only a source of solace and inspiration but also an absolute demand to participate in historical struggle. His “ultimate concern” for establishing a more just and humane society provided him with a wellspring of nourishment, meaning, and purpose throughout a long career that witnessed much hardship, vicissitude, and the ever-​present temptation to fatalism and despair. Educators can view Freire’s experiences as an example of how a hopeful and deeply rooted sense of faith can guide, sustain, and revitalize their practice. As Barry Kanpol argues: For teachers the terrain of struggle is more than just the culturally reproductive and culturally productive practices of the everyday lifeworld; teachers require also a transcendental hope, belief, and a commitment to the historical, spiritual, and ethical potential of what it means to be human, as well as a belief in the mystery of life that embraces the sacred as a departing point for a sense of the possible.17

Indeed, the absence of an “ultimate concern” can leave one’s work susceptible to cynicism, sterility, and enervation. As Robert V. Bullough et al., argue, the teacher whose training and practice are severed from a sense of the sacred “runs the risk of getting swallowed up and lost in dehumanizing corporate agendas that alienate the teacher from her work and alienate the student from the teacher.”18 The relentless pressure to reduce teaching to technique, assessment,

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content transmission, and workforce preparation make it difficult to keep the horizon of deep meaning and ultimate purpose at the forefront of one’s professional consciousness and day-​to-​day classroom practice. Along these lines, Mayes contends: The approaches to teacher education that see good practice as merely the mastery of depersonalized, decontextualized “competencies” that can be sequentially listed and systematically implanted in the “pre-​service” teacher . . . run roughshod over the ontological ground of the teacher’s vocation . . . Instead of promoting personal and political liberation, teaching is now forced into becoming an agent of psycho-​social domination of both the teacher and student.19

Even Freire’s pedagogy has not been immune to these technocratic currents, especially in North America. Stanley Aronowitz has rightly criticized the tendency among many well-​intentioned educators to reduce Freire’s work into a set of classroom techniques.20 Peter Roberts emphasizes: Freire’s pedagogy cannot be reduced to a set of methods, techniques, or skills . . . Liberating education . . . represents a particular approach to human beings and a specific orientation to the social world, from which general principles—​not universally applicable methods—​for teaching and learning can be generated.21

In other words, a would-​be Freirean educator must begin by clarifying which “human ideals” one wishes to promote before taking up issues of methodology or content.22 Or as Freire himself insisted, “The fundamental task of educators is to live ethically, to practice ethics daily with young people and children. This is much more important than the subject of biology, if we happen to be biology teachers.”23 This leads back to the most essential questions that confront all educators: What is a person-​centered and “humanizing” pedagogy? How might we define “human well-​being”? Once again, the theological tapestry within Freire’s work provides powerful seeds for exploration. Along with his spiritual forerunners, he affirmed the profound unity of human existence: mind, body, emotion, and soul. (Indeed, the roots of the word “holy” are “whole” and “inviolable.”) Accordingly, they opposed all social, political, economic, or philosophical systems that reduced human beings to any single facet of their existence. Theologian Sharon Welch affirms: “Liberating communities of faith show no separation between the spiritual and the political. The worth of human life is undivided; spiritual transformation is inextricably tied to social and political transformation.”24 Freire

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upheld this theological stance throughout his career. As John Elias notes, Freire did not make “a deep separation between religion and culture, nor between the sacred and the secular.”25 In the end, the radical holism of Freire’s praxis points toward some guiding principles for educators who wish to follow in his footsteps. These broad goals include the commitment to ¬¬

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practice a “prophetic” pedagogy that calls students’ attention to situations of injustice and oppression, as well as the ideologies that naturalize them; provide students with positive, hope-​filled, and energizing visions of historical possibility;26 foster students’ awareness of their capacity to shape culture and history; support students in developing a critical and compassionate consciousness, with the concomitant sense of responsibility for creating a more peaceful, equitable, democratic, and environmentally sound world; teach in a spirit of hospitality, generosity, humility, and patience, especially when dealing with students with behavioral issues that may stem from impoverished or traumatic backgrounds; align one’s values and behavior; challenge institutional ideologies and practices that narrow pedagogy to purely instrumental and managerial ends;27 participate in sociopolitical movements that confront the structural roots of injustice; foreground questions of meaning, value, and purpose in one’s pedagogy; and enact a pedagogy of encounter that seeks to honor the dignity, potentiality, and absolute worth of every student.

Through such efforts, educators can take part in building a world that is more just, peaceful, and humane.

Notes 1 Purpel and McLaurin, Reflections, 41. 2 Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, 104. 3 Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, 93. 4 Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), 1. 5 Ibid., 4. 6 Ibid., 4–​5.

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220 7 Ibid., 18. 8 Freire rejected such behavior:

I think that my attitude cannot be the attitude of an empty being waiting to be filled by the word of God (quoted in Davis, “Education for Awareness,” 68). Such forms of religious practice were forms of objectification and alienation. “This would be the way to bureaucratize the Word, to empty it, to deny it, to rob it of its eternal coming to be in order to turn it into a formal rite.” (Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 548)

9 John D. Caputo, Hoping against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 97. 10 Mayes, “Teaching Mysteries,” 2. 11 Avadhuta, “Educator of the Oppressed,” 301. 12 Mayes, “Teaching Mysteries,” 89. 13 Parker J. Palmer, Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner, The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal; Transforming the Academy through Collegial Conversations (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass, 2010), 49. 14 This can be called “orthopraxis” or right practice. 15 Dallaire, Contemplation in Liberation, 97. 16 Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels,” 548. 17 Kanpol, “Critical Pedagogy and Liberation Theology,” 110. 18 Robert V. Bullough Jr., Clifford T. Mayes, and Robert S. Patterson, “Wanted: A Prophetic Pedagogy: A Response to Our Critics,” Curriculum Inquiry 32, no. 3 (2002): 342. 19 Mayes, “Teaching Mysteries,” 18. 20 Aronowitz, “Paulo Freire’s Radical Democratic Humanism,” 8. 21 Roberts, Education, Literacy, and Humanization, 67. 22 Ibid., 69. 23 Quoted in Torres, First Freire, 130. 24 Quoted in Oldenski, Liberation Theology and Critical Pedagogy, 75. 25 Elias, Paulo Freire, 45. 26 For a theoretical and practical exploration of such a pedagogy, see Oldenski’s superb Liberation Theology and Critical Pedagogy. 27 This includes the practice of grading, which is the most fundamental manifestation of the capitalist logic of sorting and ranking, discipline and control within the formal educational system. Purpel and McLaurin provide an apt assessment of this “primitive practice”: Teachers and students need to be free of the fears of dominating and being dominated in order to facilitate free common inquiry . . . Grading degrades and dehumanizes in its inherent process of creating hierarchies. It is also anti-​ intellectual in its irrational and arbitrary character, and it is a serious barrier to the true educational process of inquiry, sharing, and dialogue. (Reflections, 123–​4)

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Acknowledgments Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York. Thank you to my remarkable students at LaGuardia Community College for continuously inspiring me to become the best teacher I can be. My immense gratitude to Ira Shor, who introduced me to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and who has been a tireless and generous mentor. My warmest thanks to St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church for two decades of spiritual nourishment and radical welcome. Maraming salamat to my family in the Philippines for giving me the opportunity to follow my own path. Finally, my grateful love to Catherine, Julia, and Henry—you are the treasures of my life.

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231

Index adult education 19, 22–​3, 29, 32, 33, 65, 71, 193 “The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom” 31 Agrarian Reform program 145 Amato, Joseph 97, 102, 108, 109, 134 n.15 antiauthoritarian pedagogy 1, 30, 33, 76, 176 Araújo, Aluizio Pessoa de 18 Aronowitz, Stanley 3, 218 Arraes, Miguel 23 Assmann, Hugo 171 banking education 22, 122, 131, 175 baptism 169, 185 n.162 basic ecclesial communities 149–​50 Berryman, Phillip 86 n.28, 140 n.199, 186 n.201 Bezerra, Almeri 128–​9 Bible 61, 100, 153, 154–​5, 157, 164, 170, 173 Bidegain, Ana Maria 60, 88 n.87, 149 Boff, Clodovis 161–​2, 173 Boff, Leonardo 148, 161–​2, 165, 173 Bonino, José Míguez 164, 172, 186 n.200, 186–​7 n.201 bourgeois civilization 18 Brazil democracy 57 and industrialization 19 industrialization and urbanization 45–​6 modernization of 67 neoliberal decade 195–​7 plantation culture 16, 48, 159, 174 progressive clergy 63–​6, 71, 173 revolutionary ferment (1960–1964) 26–​9 Brazilian Catholic Action (ACB) 19, 57–​60, 65, 84, 87–​8 n.72 Brazilian Catholic Left 3, 27–​8, 57, 60, 62, 66, 70, 74, 76, 77, 82–​5, 128 Catholic Action 57–​62 Catholic University Youth (JUC) 66–​71 emergence of 46–​7

impact of Reformist currents from Rome 77–​83 mobilization of 82–​3 Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB) 74–​7 Popular Action (AP) 71–​4 progressive clergy 63–​6 and progressive clergy 63–​6, 71, 173 social analysis forms 62–​3 theological background 50–​3 Brazilian Church 47, 59, 65, 78, 81–​2, 85 n.16, 174 effect of reformist currents from the Vatican 77–​83 efforts to “re-​Christianize” society 55, 57 elitist orientation 85 n.16 fragmentation of hierarchy 47 pre-​twentieth century 48–​50 progressive clergy 63–​6, 71, 173 reflexive opposition to secularity 64 “Romanization” of 49 and rural unionization 66 theological background 50–​3 Brazilian coup (1964) 19, 28, 30, 45, 46, 48, 71–​2, 74, 77, 95, 145, 162 Brown, Raymond McAffee 151 Brueggemann, Walter 154 Bruneau, Thomas 46–​7, 49, 82–​3 Buber, Martin 142 n.277, 209 Bullough, Robert V. 217 Cabral, Mario 32 Câmara, Hélder 54, 59, 65, 78, 88 n.75, 96, 187 n.201 Cantin, Eileen 108–​9, 115 capitalism 46, 69, 72, 110–​11, 146, 172–​3, 206–​7 antihuman 172–​3 as evil 110, 192 as a “theology of death” 173 Caputo, John 216

232

232

Index

Cardijn, Joseph 60, 61, 88 n.84 Cardonnel, Thomas 69–​70 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique 196–​7, 199–​200 caritas (charity) 166 Carroll, James P. 101 Catechism of the Catholic Church 101, 122, 123, 134 n.23, 135 n.29, 166, 184 n.153 Catholic Action 57–​62, 66, 104, 149 Catholic activism 4, 19, 45, 57–​62, 66, 67–​8, 71–​2, 79–​80, 84, 87–​8 n.72, 96, 104, 128–​9, 149, 164 Catholic anthropology 9, 98–​100, 103, 106, 107, 110, 122–​5, 131, 132–​3, 172, 203 Catholic Electoral League (LEC) 54 Catholic elites 45, 48, 57, 68, 76–​7, 83, 96, 132, 187–​8 n.213 Catholicism 6, 9, 56, 107, 132 in 1920s–​1950s 53–​7 mainstream 55–​6 progressive Catholicism 59 Catholic social teaching 45, 58, 78–​9, 83, 111, 203 Catholic university students in Brazil 19, 23, 45, 58, 59, 62, 67, 75, 78, 81, 84, 89 n.119, 96, 129 Catholic University Youth (JUC) 60, 66–​71, 72, 74–​5, 77, 89–​90 n.120, 95, 128, 129 Chile 145–​6 Chomsky, Noam 40 n.67 Christ 4, 17, 84, 160, 166, 171, 176, 177–​8, 205–​6 Christian activists 162–​3 Christian Democracy 29, 107, 145 Christianity 4, 111, 114, 129, 133, 161–​2 Christian-​Marxist dialogue 171–​4, 187 n.212 Christian praxis 66, 67–​8, 163–​8 Christians and history 128–​30 Church hierarchy 28, 52–​3, 61, 104, 118 The Church in the Present-​Day Transformation of Latin America in Light of the Council 150–​1 civilization 102–​3 Clark, Meghan J. 78–​9, 101, 103 class harmony 69 class suicide 169 Clines, David J. A. 98 Coben, Diana 8

co-​creators (human beings vis-​à-​vis God) 114 collectivism 99, 102, 106, 109 Collins, Denis E. 55, 128, 130 Collor de Mello, Fernando 196 common good 59, 69, 81, 102–​3, 150 communion 100, 101, 112, 157, 167, 176, 184 n.153 communism 4, 21, 23, 36, 54 community 100–​1 Cone, James 165 conscientization 4, 8–​9, 24–​5, 34, 62–​3, 66, 77, 126, 153, 163, 165, 168–​71, 202 “Conscientizing as a Way of Liberating” 147 conscientizing evangelization 148 consciousness, ascent of 121, 127 conversion 103, 113, 148, 168, 169–​70, 178 Cooper, Gillian 169 cosmos 118, 119 Cox, Harvey 163, 164 creativity 68, 106, 120, 163, 215 Creator 100–​1, 106, 109, 122, 131 critical consciousness 21, 25, 32, 152 critical pedagogy 2 crucifixion 115 Cuban Revolution 68 “Cultural Action and Conscientization” 31 culture circles 23, 28, 39 n.59, 76, 125 Dale, John 3, 5, 178 Dallaire, Michael 209, 217 Dawkins, Richard 6 death 168, 206 de Azevedo, Thales 55 deconstruction 7 dehumanization 16, 65, 105, 106, 108, 112, 114, 123, 124, 125, 156, 165, 167–​8, 176, 177, 192, 206, 217, 220 n.27 Delio, Ilia 127 democracy 200 democratic “communitarian” society 179 n.1 dependency theory 27, 89–​90 n.120 de Sousa, Luiza Erundina 34–​5 Dewey, John 2 dialectical analysis 30, 71, 73–​4, 89–​90 n.120, 103, 113, 115–​16, 164, 172, 177 dialogic and problem-​posing education 76

233

Index dialogue 9, 16, 22, 34, 80, 101, 130–​2, 208–​9 dominionist ideology 135 n.25 Dussel, Enrique 164 Easter 169–​70 economic liberalization 36, 41 n.79, 196–​200 educational philosophy 1, 18, 22, 29, 31, 32, 56, 61, 73, 83, 96, 105, 106, 124, 126, 129, 131–​2, 133 “The Educational Role of the Churches in Latin America” 147, 174 Education as the Practice of Freedom 23, 30, 92–​3 n.209, 165 Elias, John L. 19, 30–​1 end of history 72, 200–​1, 206, 207, see also historical fatalism Engelke, Inocencio 63–​4 evangelization 75, 82, 153 evolution 96, 117, 119, 120–​1, 126–​7, 132–​3 faith 4, 6, 9, 56, 166, 216 fatalism (and anti-​fatalism) 17–​18, 24, 38 n.20, 52, 83, 86 n.28, 104, 114, 152, 158, 159, 170, 202, 208, 216, 217 Filho, Alfredo Saad 211 n.22 Francis, Pope 118, 135 n.24 Franco, Itamar 196 free market economics 198, 200 Freire, Ana Maria Araújo (Nita) 18, 34, 37 n.1, 38 n.15, 188 n.247 Freire, Edeltrudes Neves 15–​16, 17, 52 Freire, Elza Maria Costa de Oliveira 19 and ACB 59 Freire, Joaquim Themistocles 15–​16, 17, 19, 52 Freire, Paulo 1 academic studies 22–​3 and ACB 59–​60 adulthood 15–​16, 55 as an attorney 38 n.25 and AP 71–​2 attachment to Christ 5 birth of 15 and Catholic anthropology 122–​5 and Catholic Left, see Brazilian Catholic Left childhood 15

233

and childhood malnutrition 17, 38 n.18 children of 19 in Chile 29–​31 and Christianity 30–​1 Christians and history 128–​30 death of 36 and death of Elza 34 dialogue and relationship 130–​2 educational praxis 215–​16 emergence of pedagogy of 19–​24 exile 4 final years 36 and Goulart 27–​8, 73 homecoming 33–​6 honors 33–​4 imprisonment 28–​9 international years 31–​3 and JUC 66, 67–​8 and liberation theology, see liberation theology marriages 19, 34 and Marxism 2, 4, 30, 147, 187 n.212, 191 and Medellín Conference 152–​4 methodology of literacy program of 24–​6 in municipal administration 35 on nature versus culture 125–​7 on neoliberalism 197, 202–​3 nonpartisan and politically neutral literacy campaign, emphasis for 28–​9 parents’ religious liberalism 53 pedagogy and the whole person 203–​5 pedagogy as “coherence” 205–​6 pedagogy as human formation 202–​3 pedagogy as prophetic action 206–​8 prophetic optimism 8 as secretary of education of São Paulo 193–​5 and secularism 7, 8, 9 spiritual crisis 56 on spirituality 217 and WCC 31–​2 work at University of Pernambuco 23 work at SESI 20–​1 Worker’s Party (PT) 33, 34 Freyre, Gilberto 48 Fukuyama, Francis 200–​1

234

234

Index

Gadotti, Moacir 17 Gaudium et Spes 100, 101, 102, 118 generative words 25, 26 Genesis (Book of) 98, 101 Glass, Ronald David 1–​2 globalization 9, 36, 173, 197, 199–​200, 202, 206 God 98–​100, 104, 108, 109, 110, 119, 122, 124, 131, 135 n.25, 147, 154–​61, 155, 158–​61, 164, 167–​8 as Father 160 as liberator of the oppressed 148, 154–​61 as Love 159, 167 as presence in history 163 God’s will 17, 25, 51, 52, 86 n.28, 158 Gospels 5, 56, 60, 84, 148, 164, 166, 176, 177, 206 Goulart, João 27–​8, 73 Great Depression 17, 158 guiding principles for educators 219 Guinea-​Bissau literacy program 32 Gutiérrez, Gustavo 148, 150, 151–​2, 156–​7, 161–​2, 164, 168, 169, 171, 172, 184 n.145, 189 n.249 Harris, Sam 6 Haught, John F. 118, 119 heaven/​afterlife 47, 51, 52, 82, 104, 127, 165, 175, 185 n.162 Hebrew prophets 100, 155, 161 hell 159 Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies (ISEB) 62–​3 Hinkelammert, Franz 173 historical agency 103–​5 historical consciousness 128–​30 historical crisis 110, 113 historical fatalism 170, 216, see also end of history historical intervention 9 history (transformation of, unfinishedness of) 125 Hitchins, Christopher 6 Holbrook, Joseph 58, 89 n.119, 96 Holst, John D. 29, 145–​6 Homo sapiens 120–​1, 127 hope 4, 7–​8, 36, 114, 115, 122, 125 human agency 104–​5 human capacities 99–​100

human flourishing 8, 102, 132, 167 human formation 124, 130, 202–​3 human freedom 72–​3 humanism 140 n.199 humanity 97–​8, 120, 167 humanization/​hominisation 46, 68, 70, 95, 109, 121, 122, 126, 129, 130–​1, 132, 153, 158, 162–​3, 171, 192, 204 human nature 95, 99, 105, 123, 124–​5, 132, 133 humans versus animals 108–​9, 120 Hyslop-​Margison, Emergy J. 3, 5, 178 "I-​It” relationship 131, 142 n.277 imago Dei 98, 100, 101, 103, 108 incarnational faith 67 incompleteness 120, 124–​5, 130, 131 individualism 99, 102, 109–​10, 111, 112, 121, 131, 198, 207 industrialization 19, 45, 46, 59, 62, 78, 79 injustice 1, 4, 5, 8, 31, 69, 73, 92 n.200, 147, 151–​2, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 166, 168, 175, 177, 192 institutionalized violence 151 Integral Humanism 102, 192 integral pedagogy/​education 105–​6, 204, 209–​10, 217 integral salvation 161–​3, 186 n.201 integral theology 64–​5 Italian Catholic Youth Society 57–​8 "I-​Thou" relationship 142 n.277, 209 Jenkins, Kuni 168 Jesus 5, 45, 75, 100, 105, 160, 167, 169, 171, 184 n.157, 185 n.179, 205–​6 John XXIII, Pope 79–​81, 81, 83, 118, 121, 147, 150, 154, 161 justice 8, 64, 92 n.200, 103, 111, 158, 164, 176, 178, 204 Kanpol, Barry 209, 217 King, Ursula 119 Kingdom of God 105, 109, 115, 129, 162, 184 n.157 Kirkendall, Andrew 195 Kubitschek, Juscelino 26 laity 47, 51, 54, 64, 82, 103, 121 land reform 81

235

Index Latin American liberation theology 148–​50 Laudato Si’ 135 n.24 Lebret, Louis-​Joseph 63, 134 n.8 Left 3, 7, 46, see also Brazilian Catholic Left Leo XIII, Pope 47, 78–​9, 92 nn.199–​200, 111, 117 “Letter to a Theology Student” 147 liberation theology 178–​9 background and overview 145–​8 Christian-​Marxist dialogue 171–​4 Christian praxis 163–​8 conscientization 168–​71 God the liberator 154–​61 integral salvation 161–​3 Latin American context 148–​50 Medellín Conference 150–​4 methodology of 183 n.120 prophetic church 174–​8 Lima, Alceu Amoroso (Tristão de Ataíde) 96, 133 n.6 Lima Vaz, Henrique Cláudio de 128, 129–​ 30, 134 n.8 literacy 19–​20, 23–​6, 27–​8, 32, 146, 148 literacy circles 23–​4, 27 logos see The Word love 103, 105, 123, 131, 159, 166–​7, 168 loving rebelliousness 168 Macedo, Donaldo 3 magical consciousness 25, 40 n.71, 83, 152, 181 n.46 Magnificat 156, 161 Mainwaring, Scott 51–​2, 56, 64, 91 n.177 Maria, Julio 79 Maritain, Jacques 18, 56–​7, 96–​8, 192, 203 and Catholic anthropology 98–​100 historical agency 103–​5 integral education 105–​6 new civilization and the common good 102–​3 relationality and community 100–​1 market liberalization 26–​7 Martin, Betsan 168 Marxism 2, 8, 30, 70, 73, 111, 116, 147, 172, 173–​4, 186–​7 n.201, 187 n.212, 191 Mary 156, 161, 177 Mater et Magistra 80–​1, 83, 92–​3 n.209, 121 materialism 99, 111, 116, 186 n.201

235

Mayes, Clifford 209, 216, 218 Mayo, Peter 3 McLaren, Peter 3, 179 McLaurin, William M., Jr. 7, 215 meaning 8 Medellín Conference (1968) 84, 150–​4, 154 minimal state 198 Miranda, José Porfirio 172 modernization 59, 82, 84, 95–​6, 133, 146, 176–​7 Monbiot, George 198 Montini, Giovanni 59, see also Paul VI, Pope moral intelligence 99, 106, 120, 124 moral revolution 113 Moses 100, 155 Mounier, Emmanuel 18, 56–​7, 68–​9, 96, 107–​8, 203 Personalist anthropology 108–​10 Personalist civilization 110–​13 Personalist education 116 Personalist praxis 113–​16 Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB) 28, 65–​6, 71, 74–​7, 83, 91 n.177, 134 n.8 Movement for Popular Culture (MCP) 23, 96 naïve transitive consciousness 25 National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) 47, 65, 74, 78, 81, 95 nationalist developmentalism 26, 27, 41 n.79, 146, 196 National Literacy Plan 28 nature versus culture 125–​7 neoliberal education 201–​2 neoliberalism 9, 173 1990–​2000 195–​7 and education 201–​2 ethos of 198 ideology 197–​200 New Atheists 6 New Christendom 58, 64, 87–​8 n.72, 103 new civilization 102–​3 New concrete historical ideal 105, 129 “New Man” 112 Northeastern Brazil 15–​19, 40 n.74, 95 168

236

236

Index

objectification (of human beings) 116, 131, 220 n.8 O’Cadiz, Maria 201 Omega Point 119 “open door” trade policies 46 oppression 3–​4, 5, 20, 31, 40 n.71, 69, 158, 161, 166, 177, 178 Original Sin 105 Pacem in Terris 80, 81, 83 Paiva, Vanilda 48 Palmer, Parker J. 209, 217 Paulo Freire: Teaching for Freedom and Transformation 3–​4 Paulo Freire Institutes 2 Paul VI, Pope 59, 161 pedagogy becoming more “fully human” 95, 103, 109, 116, 121–​2, 123, 124, 130–​1, 165, 167 becoming “more-​so” 125, 202, 215 as coherence 205–​6 as human formation 202–​3 as prophetic action 206–​8 and the whole person 203–​5 A Pedagogy for Liberation 34 Pedagogy in Process: Letters to Guinea-​Bissau 32 Pedagogy of the City 35–​6 Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1, 3, 22, 30–​1, 36, 71, 95, 145–​6, 147, 165, 167, 168, 173, 178, 179–​80 n.14, 192 Perkins, Priscilla 3 the person 132–​3 Catholic anthropology 98–​100, 122–​5 Christians and history 128–​30 dialogue and relationship 130–​2 historical agency 103–​5 integral education 105–​6 nature versus culture 125–​7 new civilization and the common good 102–​3 overview 95–​6 Personalist anthropology 108–​10 Personalist civilization 110–​13 Personalist education 116 Personalist praxis 113–​16 relationality and community 100–​1 Personalism 62, 69, 72, 96, 102, 107, 112, 125, 128, 132, 193, 204, 206, 216

anthropology 108–​10 education 116 praxis 113–​16 socialism 186 n.201 Personalist anthropology 108–​10 Personalist civilization 110–​13 Personalist education 116 Personalist praxis 113–​16 The Phenomenon of Man 117, 118, 126 The Philosophical Influences on the Work of Paulo Freire 3–​4 philosophical/​theological anthropology 9, 98–​100, 103, 107, 108, 110, 120–​1, 122–​5, 131, 133, 158, 160, 172, 203 Pires, José Maria 82 Pius XI, Pope 58, 65, 88 n.84 Pius XII, Pope 65, 79 Popular Action (AP) 71–​4, 91 n.157 popular education 40 n.62, 72 postmodernism 6, 36, 179 practical knowledge 115–​16 praxis 6, 8–​9, 35, 66, 68, 84–​5, 95, 113–​16, 132, 164–​5, 186 n.201, 208 “Praxis Marxism” 4–​5 prayer 19, 45, 51, 60, 61, 67, 161, 177 prophetic Christianity 5, 154–​5 prophetic church 174–​8 prophetic pedagogy 219 prophetic rhetoric 30 Protestantism 31, 49, 53, 58, 65, 66 Purpel, David E. 7, 154, 215 purpose 8, 10, 96, 106, 112, 122, 215, 216, 217, 218 Quadros, Jânio 74 Reagan, Ronald 198–​9 rebirth 123, 168–​9, 176 Recife 9, 15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 28, 33, 59, 62, 67, 72, 88 n.75, 96, 159, 173 reconciliation 73, 77, 129, 161, 170 relationship/​relationality 9, 73, 80, 92–​3 n.209, 100–​1, 121–​2, 127, 130–​2, 205, 209–​10 religion 3–​4, 5, 6, 8, 12 n.30, 49, 50, 52, 158, 163, 168, 216, 219 Religious Right 8 Rerum Novarum 47, 78–​9, 111 Resurrection 109, 114, 169 Revision of Life, see See-​Judge-​Act method

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Index revolution 45, 73, 77, 112, 114, 146, 167–​8 versus reform 65, 175 Right-​wing dictatorships 149 Roberts, Peter 3, 40 n.71, 130, 201, 218 Sanders, Thomas 45, 58, 67, 68 Sarney, José 193 Schipani, Daniel S. 147 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 163 Schugurensky, Daniel 22 scripture, see Bible Second Coming of Christ 119 Second Vatican Council/​Vatican II 47, 81–​3, 88 n.87, 100, 107, 118, 123, 147, 149, 150, 152, 154, 161 secularism 7, 8, 18, 64 See-​Judge-​Act method (also known as Revision of Life) 61–​2, 67, 68, 75, 88 n.87, 149 Segundo, Juan Luis 148 self-​awareness 120 self-​emptying 124, 175, 206, 220 n.8 self-​sacrifice 112 self-​surrender 108, 121, 168 semi-​intransitive consciousness 25 Shor, Ira 10 n.7, 34 Silva, Lula da 195 social analysis 30, 62–​3, 67, 177 socialization 72, 80, 121, 126, 127 Social Service Ministry (SESI) 20, 21, 22–​3, 59, 63, 67 social/​structural sin 147 society of persons/​Personalist society 27, 46, 73, 112 solidarity 68, 72, 83, 112–​13, 126, 127, 150, 157, 167, 168, 169, 172, 176, 184 n.145, 192, 207 Spiritism 15, 52–​3, 86 n.33 spiritual imperialism 111 spirituality 6, 61, 121, 202, 205, 216–​17 versus religion 6, 204, 216 Stenberg, Shari J. 6, 8–​9, 12 n.30, 208 subjects versus objects 76, 148, 175–​6 suffering 51 Teachers as Cultural Workers 35–​6 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 10, 62, 72, 85, 95, 117–​22, 126, 132 philosophical anthropology 120–​1

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theology of evolution 118–​20 transforming the earth 121–​2 Thatcher, Margaret 198, 199 A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation 148 “The Third World and Theology” 147 Thomism 97–​8 Thurbon, Elizabeth 198 Tillich, Paul 216 To Live Means to Struggle 75, 77 Torres, Carlos Alberto 3, 201 Total Quality school (CQT) 201 traditionalist church 47, 58, 81, 87 n.52, 174–​6 ultimate concern (faith as) 217 unfinishedness (of the human person, of history, of society) 125, 130 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 98, 133 urbanization 19, 46, 59, 62, 79 utopia/​utopianism 6, 8, 31, 105, 157, 162, 177–​8, 188 n.247, 192, 202, 204, 206 Vargas, Getúlio 37 n.10, 55, 57, 58, 86 n.44, 87–​8 n.72 Vatican 47, 49, 59, 89 n.111, 118 and Catholic Left 77–​83 and Communism 54 Vatican II see Second Vatican Council vocation/​ontological vocation 9, 21, 51, 71, 108, 112, 122–​4, 132, 204 Weiler, Kathleen 3 Welch, Sharon 218 West, Cornel 1, 7 Williamson, John 199 Wong, Pia 201 The Word (logos) 124, 157, 160, 175, 206, 220 n.8 World Council of Churches (WCC) 9, 31–​2, 33, 71, 146, 150, 162, 165, 173, 191 World War I/​Great War 107 World War II 55, 95, 97 Young Christian Workers (JOC) 60–​1, 67, 88 n.84, 149 Zajonc, Arthur 217

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