We had arrived in a dark downpour to our 4000-foot elevation hotel perched on the side of the Costa Rican rain forest. Morning came with dripping eaves framed by hibiscus and a blue sky that had broken through the overcast. Far below us to the west, the Pacific Ocean appeared out of the fog flanked by distant mountains. In a Central America chronically afflicted with poverty and violence, the nation of Costa Rica, located adjacent to Panama, is unique for its educated populace and a high standard of living. But religion in this nominally Catholic country seemed to be faith written lite. There are no roadside shrines, hospitals and schools display no crosses, and churches feature neither their names or Mass times. As the day grew brighter and the forests glimmered, church life in Costa Rica offered more questions than answers.
This is a small country, barely the size of West Virginia. Although the Spanish settled here in the early 1500s, for the next 300 years it remained an underpopulated region of subsistence farmers and small-scale ranchers. In this rustic world the Catholic Church held a privileged position and over time accumulated numerous land holdings. But it was also a religious a backwater where the clergy, poorly educated and few in number, were largely left to themselves. Not until 1852 did the country receive its first resident bishop.
Things began to change only in the 1880s when new national leadership, influenced by European secular thinking, advanced a progressive social agenda favoring commercial development. In pursuit of a modern economy, heavy investments were made in a railroad and vast tracts of land were transferred to American coffee, banana, and sugar conglomerates.
Economic growth led to a significant narrowing in the religious sphere. Beginning in the 1880s, foreign religious orders were expelled, churches were required to sell off land holdings, and clergy were banned from political life. Attempts to oppose these changes were unsuccessful. A pastoral letter from the Bishop of Costa Rica in 1893 urging respect for worker’s rights was condemned by many of the country’s better-off classes, even by members of the clergy. Many priests accepted restrictions on church life as a part of the cost of modernity, a situation made palatable by the fact that Catholicism remained the official religion of the state. Whereas the colonial church had often been content to enjoy privileges received from the Spanish crown, the Costa Rica Church for the first half of the twentieth century, was content to limit its influence in public life in return for state financial support.
It was only over time that the negative impact of these accommodations hit home. Because priests received 30% of their salary from teaching religion in public schools, parish life suffered. There was a notable absence of Catholic intellectual life, as well as Catholic hospitals or centers of higher learning. Church leaders confined themselves to the administering the sacraments and avoided criticizing government social policies.
The result was a nationalistic, and largely voiceless Catholicism. Government leaders routinely consulted bishops for advice but forbad any mention of civic matters from the pulpit. As late as 1942 Costa Rican law still prohibited residence to members of non-native members of Catholic religious orders. Although the government terminated church subsidies in 2005, the state maintains a tight leash. In 2017 a pastoral letter by the church hierarchy explaining the principles that voters should keep in mind with evaluating political candidates was condemned. Only a favorable ruling from the Costa Rican Supreme Court prevented the Bishop’s Conference from being charged with violating the wall between church and state.
Today Catholicism in Coast Rica is a church in search of itself. The country enjoys a better level of education, superior health care, and a higher standard of living than any other Latin American nation. Every town of size features a modest pastel-colored church of recent vintage, usually built within the last fifty years. But the spiritual health of the Catholic community is uneven. In 1990 15% of marriages ended in divorce. Today 43% of marriages end in divorce within ten years. Mass attendance is low. Yet 70% of the population identifies itself as Catholic and an estimated million people a year make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the black Madonna at Cartago and most children are baptized. A 2018 pro-life gathering in San Jose, the nation’s capital this past year attracted 50,000 participants.
Sitting on the veranda in the morning sun, I looked out at the Pacific on whose shore a cross was planted in the 1500s. and pondered. In matters of faith there were no simple conclusions that could be drawn. The people here are remarkable for their love of the land, respect for nature, and their fierce sense of pride in what their nation has accomplished. Within this surprising, self-absorbed world, the Catholic Church — struggling to find its voice — remains on its pilgrim journey.
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Bernardo Thiel: Bishop of the People
In 1884 Bernardo Augusto Thiel, a German-born Vincentian priest was nominated by the government at the age of 30 to be the bishop of the Costa Rican diocese. Within a few years, he had begun two Catholic periodicals, visited the long neglected indigenous minorities in Costa Rica’s southern jungle, and held monthly clergy conferences. Inevitably he became involved in the intense struggle over church-state relations that marked this period. As a result of his opposition to government efforts to suppress Catholic schools and liberalize divorce laws, Thiel was expelled from Costa Rica within a few years of his appointment as bishop.
Although Bishop Thiel later returned and became an outspoken champion of the poor and the indigenous peoples, most of the clergy opted for accommodation with the government. During his relatively short tenure as bishop, he made five pastoral visits to every parish in the country including missions deep within the jungles. In his cathedral church he heard confessions every Saturday and his home was always open to the lowliest of people. Over time even adversaries came to respect him. He was also a scholar of considerable note and his demographic study of the country published in 1900 remains a classic in this field. When he died at a the age of 57, the Costa Rican president and all the members of the national assembly and supreme court, Catholics, Protestants, believers and unbelievers attended his funeral. Today, in a country that still keeps religion at a distance fromm its official history, Thiel is regarded as a national hero.
