The priest who didn't capitulate to mainstream discourse
a preview of our New York Encounter exhibit
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The New York Encounter is this weekend. Here’s the full program.
I’m helping curate and present an exhibit on the Mondragon workers’ co-op, which I briefly cited in my post-election piece:
Where are the spaces for Catholics to get directly involved in responding to social needs…spaces where one doesn’t have to compromise one’s values, or wait for someone living miles away from your community and who knows nothing about you to take care of it? There is a ghastly lack of civic and social initiatives like Homeboy Industries, co-ops like Mondragon, Boystown, the Catholic Worker…figures like Dorothy Day, Fr. Geno Baroni, the Berrigans. Surely, such initiatives still exist both within and beyond the walls of the Church. But why is it that discourse in the Church has defaulted to involvement in national elections and charitable initiatives as the normative way for Catholics to do politics, and that proposing more immediate civic initiatives has become something of a marginal rarity?
And so, we think it’s perfect timing to present an exhibit about the Modragon Corporation and its founder José María Arizmendiarrieta Madariaga, who was also troubled by the ways that Catholics—rather than offering an original proposal that is faithful to their beliefs and experience—compromised themselves and joined forces with the mainstream political forces (fascism, socialism, capitalism/liberal individualism) of his time. [Sounds very familiar!]
Here’s a preview of the content of our exhibit:
José María Arizmendiarrieta Madariaga was born in Biscay, Basque Country, Spain in 1915 to Jose Luis and Tomasa. He and his other three siblings helped to work the family farm, though his physical abilities were inhibited after he was injured by a fall when he was three years old. With his sight severely damaged, he developed a shy and introspective temperament, which went on to shape his unique spiritual sensibility and subsequently his priestly vocation and social initiatives.
Seeing his humility, penchant for spiritual discipline, and love of reading, his mother encouraged him to apply to enter the minor seminary when he was 12 years old. While life in the seminary was very much different from his life on the farm, he was determined to integrate his pride in his roots–namely for working the land and his Basque language and culture–with his new intellectual and spiritual discoveries. In 1931, he went on to enter the Diocesan Seminary of Vitoria.
During Arizmendiarrieta’s time in the seminary, Spain was embroiled in a bloody civil war. In 1931, a coalition of communists, socialists, and secularists had deposed the monarchy and set up the Second Spanish Republic, which imposed severe restrictions on the Catholic Church.
The civil war began after a failed Nationalist coup d’etat led by General Francisco Franco in 1936, and ended in 1939 with the Nationalists’ defeat of the Republicans. Arizmendiarrieta was disappointed to find that many of his fellow seminarians were sadly divided, having aligned themselves with either of the two factions in the War. Arizmendiarrieta was disillusioned with both sides’ visions for Spain’s future. While he sympathized with the Republican’s concern with the plight of workers, he disagreed with their oppressive secularism and collectivist ideology. He also expressed reservations about the Nationalist’s attitude for the Church–unlike the Republicans, they believed the Church played an integral role in society, but blurred the lines of its relationship with the State in a manner he deemed idolatrous. Further, he disagreed with how their “divinizing” of Spanish identity risked dissolving esteem for local cultures.
“The first and immediate apostles to the workers ought to be workers; the apostles to those who follow industry and trade ought to be from among them themselves.” -Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno
Thanks to his robust and comprehensive education in the seminary, Arizmendiarrieta was able to develop a nuanced response to the various factions—secular liberalism, communism, and fascism, but also of capitalism—vying for control of Spain’s future. While much of his thinking was informed by Pope Leo XIII’s seminal 1891 social encyclical Rerum Novarum, it was also strongly influenced by Pope Pius XI’s follow-up encyclical on the occasion of Rerum Novarum’s 40th anniversary, Quadragesimo Anno, which happened to be the year Arizmendiarrieta entered the seminary.
“The Cooperative, as it is actually being embodied and developed among us, through a whole constellation of services and entities at the service of the grassroots communities, involves a set of dynamic and direct relationships, without unnecessary and cumbersome intermediations, which enhance the active capacity of our emancipated workers and embodies a vast and varied range of efforts and initiatives with equivalences of the highest political and social rank. This is the Cooperative and the politics that our entities are involved in, and among them, in particular Caja Laboral Popular, which brings everyone together.” – Fr Arizmendiarrieta
Though the ensuing years were characterized by unrest among workers in several of the area’s companies, Arizmendiarrieta helped to mend the relationship between the owners and the workers. He went on to support the Zaldispe Professional School and to help establish a new housing complex for workers after creating the charitable construction entity "Mondragon Home Association". Out of a desire to be one with the workers, he didn’t take a salary and opted to travel by bike.
“The most important and obvious advantage of cooperation is defeating the loneliness that turns life into hell. When man feels alone, he experiences hell. When, on the other hand, he is aware that he is not abandoned, then he can face any kind of difficulty or hardship. And we see this in the worst moments. In this way, as your president recalled that in a cooperative “one plus one makes three”, it is also necessary to remember that in bad moments, one plus one makes a half. In this way [cooperation] ensures that bad things can be made better.” -Pope Francis
Arizmendiarrieta understood his mission in Mondragon to be two-fold: to revitalize the faith of the community, and to completely reform its social order. He knew from his study of the Church’s social doctrine that these were in fact only one task, and that each part would reinforce the other: the people could only live Christianity by practicing true solidarity.