Boot Camp for Urbanites

Flowery Cuernavaca. an hour over the mountains from Mexico City, has been called "a sunny place for shady people"; its ravines and ridges sparkle with the swimming pools and haciendas of the international rich, and the campesinos have learned not to be surprised at anything. But the goings-on in a 150-room stone and adobe villa across the way from Barbara Button's $1.5 million place are causing talk. Some say that the place is a nest of Communists, some that it is a training center for an illegal Roman Catholic underground. The Red newspaper, Politica, charged that it was a "penetracion Yanqui." And some of the inmates of Villa Chula Vista this week are not sure themselves what they have got into, or what manner of wild man is this dark, cadaverous Ivan Illich, who yells at them and lectures them, prays and plays with them, insults them and drinks with them.

Ivan Illich, 35, was born in Vienna; his mother was a Spanish Jew and his father was a Yugoslav Roman Catholic. He took a Ph.D. in history at Salzburg when he was 24, studied theology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1951. He came to New York City, became interested in Puerto Ricans.

Who Hates Yankees? Father Illich was sent to Puerto Rico five years ago, where he became vice rector of Catholic University and a monsignor. He lost the favor of Puerto Rico's Bishop James McManus when he spoke out against the bishop's order forbidding Catholics to vote for Governor Luis Munoz Marin (TIME, Oct. 31. 1960). Yanked home by New York's Cardinal Spellman and assigned to Fordham University. Msgr. Illich wangled money and Fordham's sponsorship for a project that he had been hatching for years: to train a corps of men and women to serve the priest-poor church in Latin America by living lives of work with the people. Too many missionaries from the U.S. have rubbed Latinos the wrong way, Illich feels, by their North American prejudices and sense of superiority.

Last June. Msgr. Illich's Center for Intercultural Formation opened at Chula Vista with 68 students--about half laymen and half priests and nuns. Only 32 survived the rigors of the four-month. $750 course and are ready for assignment by their sponsoring agencies. The attrition of five and one-half hours daily of language drill, plus lectures and discussions that may last as late as 2 a.m., was only partly responsible for the high mortality; Illich and his staff deliberately make the students angry, start arguments, challenge cherished beliefs. "I hate Yankees!'' Illich may yell at a mild-mannered nun from New Jersey.

Who Loves Pedro? Last week. Msgr. Illich greeted his second class at Chula Vista--35 men and women, eleven from Canada, including three married couples. All have some special skill that they plan to use in their minimum of three years' missionary work: nurse, teacher, agricultural expert, credit union or cooperative manager. "We presuppose these skills; we do not provide them." says Illich. "Those of good will alone need not apply." For skilled North Americans, coming from a highly technological society, have a special mission to Latin America, which is beginning to go through the same urbanization that the U.S. has experienced. "Many laymen in the U.S. understand better than their priests what it means to be a Catholic in a modern, structured society," says Msgr. Illich.

He cited the case of a typical Pedro who leaves his village and comes to the city, where he loses his face and his name and suddenly becomes a man who does not fit. What' kind of help does Pedro want? He wants help from someone who shares his life, someone who loves him.

"Do you love him?" Illich asked intensely, searching the faces of his students. "Do you love him for himself, for what he is? Or do you love God in him? If you love him because you love God in him, you are wrong. There is no worse offense. It is a denial of the natural order." And it is through the natural order that man approaches the supernatural--this is the paradox of the Incarnation. "The world and everything in it," said Msgr. Illich, "is redeemed."

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