The Material Things of Life

Roman Catholics of South America and those of North America approach their faith from highly different points of view. So says Jesuit Theologian Gustave Weigel of Woodstock College, who taught at Chile's Universidad Catolica from 1937 to 1948. Writing in Notre Dame's Review of Politics, Weigel says that the Northerner believes that "life is for work, with the work occasionally interrupted with leisure so that future work be more efficient." To the Latino, "life is for leisure, interrupted occasionally with work so that leisure itself be possible." Latin American students in U.S. Roman Catholic universities, says Jesuit Weigel. are constantly complaining to him that Catholicism in the U.S. is "banal and too pedestrian. When a Latin American listens to a sermon, he wants to enjoy it with deep feeling ... I have seen Latin American boys who entered into almost ecstatic converse with Christ after Communion, though they skipped all parts of the Mass other than the Communion . . ."

The Spanish Americans, says Weigel, "are extremely intelligent as a group, quick in their perceptions and brilliant in their conceptions." The Latino also tends to combine the romantic loftiness of Don Quixote with the earthy unscrupulousness of Sancho Panza. He has genius for wholehearted friendship, and this is what U.S. statesmen should appeal to. But "on the level of mundane existence he is prone to be a refined or crude sensualist. He needs material things for life, but he is not squeamish how they are to be acquired. Since leisure, high speculation and ecstacy mean so much to him, he is coldly indifferent to how the material needs of life are to be achieved. If it requires the exploitation of a different class, he exploits his neighbor without any feeling of guilt."

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