Fr. James "Guadalupe" Carney disappeared in Honduras in 1983, one of many church workers and social activists who were killed or numbered among the desparacidos (The disappeared ones) in Latin America at that time. He was hated by many wealthy landowners and government officials there; he is still revered by Honduran campesinos as a martyr for the gospel. Carney's life challenges Christians, who don't see the importance of social justice issues for their own moral lives.
The Gospel parable (Luke 16: 19 ff) about Lazarus and the rich man should be a call to action: the rich man didn't hurt Lazarus directly; he just didn't seem to notice him at his gates, and he was condemned. We in North America and Europe don't seem to see 80 per cent of the world outside our gates starving, while we let the corporate world entice us to consume more and more without ever being satisfied. Worse still, much of our prosperity comes on the backs of the poor in Third World countries. Guadalupe Carney saw this and his example can be a call to action for those of us who want to make our religion be "just between me and God."
Born in Chicago of a hard-working middle-class family, he looked on his early life as very bourgeois. He served as a soldier in France and Germany during World War II; yet strangely enough, he thought that he would let himself be killed rather than kill an enemy solider. Moreover, his stubborn resistance to authority got him in trouble at times--he felt that all people should be treated with dignity and that officers should get no more respect than other soldiers. He even spent time in the brig because he refused to quit conversing with German prisoners.
His faith was deeply important for him. Yet he was amazed at how little religion seemed to matter to so many Christians, both in his army years and later on in university studies. He also was deeply touched by the extreme poverty of North African Muslims whom he had seen in France, and he wondered why any human beings had to live in such hardship. That experience awakened a desire in him to spend his life trying to change the way people live in the world, for this had to be God's will. He tried to answer this call by becoming a Jesuit missionary in Honduras.
Communists and Christians
Even before his seminary training, in his college years he worked in the Ford factory in Detroit. There he noticed and was bothered by a strange phenomenon: he kept encountering atheistic Communists who gave themselves completely to working for a just society and a better world, while so many fellow Christians gave more attention to getting ahead and the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. He became convinced that the capitalist system was intrinsically evil, fostering a selfish, individualistic and competitive attitude. But he also rejected the Marxist systems of Russia and China, that seemed to lose the value of the human person in the collectivity of the state. He kept searching for a middle way, a form of socialism where people share what they have like the early Christians described in the Acts of the Apostles.
Already a missionary in Honduras in 1961, Carney was enlivened by the Second Vatican Council's ideal of radical service to the poor. In this poor Central America country, Carney reasoned that, just as the Son of God became fully human as one of us, so he had to truly become one with the Honduran campesinos. As Saul became Paul to signify his new life in Christ, Carney took the Spanish name Guadalupe to symbolize his total identification with the Honduran people. Eventually, and after years of working on it, he became a citizen of Honduras and renounced his U.S. birthright.
In his book To be a Revolutionary he elaborated on his ideas about spiritual formation. Traditional theological studies, Carney believed, seemed to train priests in the service of the status quo, the comfortable middle class lives most lived within the capitalist system and hidden imperialist ideals of the United States. Carney maintained that it was the poor campesinos of Honduras who really taught him the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus brought, and that we who have a more middle class outlook cannot really understand what it means "to bring Good News to the poor." The story of his life is entitled To Be A Revolutionary, because Fr. Carney firmly believed that one had to be a revolutionary to live a full Christian life. The Gospel is revolutionary.
Guadalupe saw and understood the problems of the poor. He saw how American fruit companies had taken over the best lands and plantations. They and a few wealthy Hondurans controlled 95 per cent of the wealth. The rest of the people lived in dire poverty. Attempts to organize unions often led to the deaths and disappearances of the leaders. In a rare film clip of the bespectacled priest he is quoted as saying, "the way the campesinos were treated was totally unacceptable to God and it had to be changed." In a story dated July 20, 1966 in the National Catholic Reporter, Carney is defended by his Jesuit superior Fr. Fred Schuller. The latter unreservedly described Carney's work as "that of the church." Called a Communist by the wealthy Borgan family, Carney was accused of "agitating the campesinos and preaching subversion against the Honduran government." Schuller stated that this false accusation was typical, "another instance when those defending the poor were subject to insults. The church may not keep silent when her children are poor and de-fenceless." Eventually Carney chose to live alone in his little mission churches where he completely shared the life and the poverty of his people.
Identification with the people
He taught his people the ways of liberation theology: Christ came to set people free, and to establish a kingdom of justice and peace. He became a Significant part of the people's struggle to make this a reality. There were times when the Honduran government would pass laws giving large tracts of land to poor campesinos, so that they would have a better chance to survive; then companies and wealthy landowners would influence new governments to take away the rights of the people to have their own lands. Many times threats were made that this "communist priest" would be killed if he didn't quit meddling in political affairs.
In his book Carney tells how the C.I.A. at times would bring in American unions to divide and weaken these union movements of the people. Their unions always made concessions that fitted a capitalist agenda better. The C.I.A. also trained Honduran police and soldiers to infiltrate meetings, to intimidate and at times to assassinate leaders among the workers. In his parish work Fr. Carney went from village to village doing his religious duties, but also speaking out against the injustices done to the poor; and he helped organize the Honduran unions. More threats were made on his life.
In 1979, Fr. Carney was arrested, had his Honduran citizenship illegally revoked and was expelled from the country. He wrote about his life and his ideals while living in Nicaragua; in that country he was amazed to have no conflicts with the government because they were already so strongly trying to help the poor of their country. Eventually he went back into Honduras to be a chaplain for revolutionary forces. In 1983 at 58 years of age, "Padre Guadalupe," now a legend among the Honduran poor, became a chaplain to an armed revolutionary column which was later captured by the army, who stated that "Ft. Carney had disappeared." Later, officials presented his stole and chalice to his relatives, suggesting that Jim had "probably starved to death in the mountains." This suggestion seemed ludicrous, given that Carney had brilliant survival skills and knew how to live off the land.
Smells like a cover up
In the U.S. his brother, sister and a Jesuit friend have been seeking information on his death from the government for over 20 years. The Honduran government has come up with about six different stories while in the U.S. Carney's supporters have now obtained about 100 pages of declassified documents on their friend and relative; unfortunately, almost half of the information has been blacked out as not available to the public. The C.I.A. seems to have been implicated somehow.
In a striking addendum to the above, the CBC in its Man Alive series did a show on Carney's life and the persistence of the Connollys (Jim's brother-in-law and sister) to find answers and some closure. They had become absolutely disgusted with the patent cover up by the U.S. Embassy in Honduras at the time. In a remarkable geopolitical irony, the American proconsul believed to be leading that attack on liberation theology and justice movements in Latin America at that time was the ambassador to Honduras (1981-85), John Negroponte, the present U.S. ambassador to the UN and recently named as the new proconsul in Iraq. The Man Alive show depicts Negroponte as telling the Connollys that the embassy was doing all it could in the matter.
According to a 1997 CIA inspector general's report, US officials in Honduras were fully aware of human rights abuses by the army but did not report this as it "reflect negatively on Honduras and not to be beneficial in carrying out U.S. policy." In a handwritten declassified memo of Aug. 19, 1985, proof of official obfuscation Seemed obvious: "The Fr. Carney case is dead. Front office does not want the case active. We aren't telling the family."
In the CBC show, the Connollys were introduced to Senor Cabelleros, a Honduran refugee and a former member of the Honduran death squads. He confirmed CIA involvement and said that he had heard from others that Padre Guadalupe had been murdered, thrown out of a plane into the jungle. As well, Caballeros stated that his final gesture was to hold out his arms like Jesus on the cross and forgive his captors. Caballeros later killed himself. With tears in their eyes, the Connollys stated that they knew they were right. They had been consistently lied to.
Guadalupe's Carney's life is both an eloquent testimony to the priesthood and the Christian call to discipleship. In a age of jingoism where the radical gospel of Jesus is often subverted by the seductive corrosion of nationalism, Carney reminds all of the baptized where our central commitment must lie. Twenty years after his "disappearance," we can say with the Honduran campesinos that Guadalupe Carney has not gone. Like his Salvadoran brother, Oscar Arnulfo Romero he is indeed "presente."
Larry Carney (no relation to Guadalupe) writes from Clifford, Ont. Ted Schmidt is the editor of CNT.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Catholic New Times, Inc.
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