Sin and Synodality: The Struggles of the Third Mexican Council

Abstract

This paper is a historical and contextual investigation of the practice of synods and synodality in the historical moment of the colonial Church of New Spain. Bishops, clergy, and religious orders vied for ecclesial and spiritual power against civil and royal authorities, and often even against themselves. The bishops of New Spain did not use the language of “enlarging the space of one’s tent”, but they were deeply and genuinely disturbed by the evils present concretely before the eyes of the Church. The Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585 will be examined as a case study of how the Church has listened to and responded synodally to large-scale abuse of human dignity perpetuated and legitimized by the social order. The paper will then explore how the Council’s decrees anticipate modern notions of synodality. The historical perspective of the bishops of New Spain and contemporary documents of the Synod on Synodality will help form the basis for questions about how Christ is made central in synodal gatherings.

1. Introduction

When the Third Mexican Council of 1585 was convened by the third bishop of Mexico, Don Pedro Moya de Contreras, one of the primary concerns of the bishops was the treatment of the Native Americans in what the council called material and spiritual matters. Materially, they were subject to the labor system known as the repartimiento. The Church was also concerned with the pastoral care of Mesoamericans (Poole 1961, p. 154).1 The council was officially called to tie up matters from the previous synod of 1565, to update Mexican church law, and to implement the reforms of Trent (Corcuera de Mancera 2005, p. 169).2

The synods and councils of sixteenth-century New Spain do not fulfill the modern notions of “walking together” that our modern understanding of synodality evokes. The colonial world that the clerics and the Mesoamericans lived in was a class-based society where blood lineage and doctrinal fidelity mattered greatly. At the same time, the Church of New Spain challenges us today to think of how ecclesiastics have advocated for and fought for the voiceless and afflicted at their own risk. This article does not want to just give credit where credit is due, and neither does it seek to simply malign the Mexican Church as a mere colonial tool, but to understand and gain perspective on synodality by analyzing how even a colonial church succeeded at acting synodally, and also how it failed to overcome its many flaws.

Synodality thought of in terms of what we want to become (O’Loughlin 2023, p. 165) or in terms of intersecting contexts (Osheim 2019)—like geography, history, culture, race, politics, economics—or in terms of the Church coming to terms with its role in conflict (Aina 2007) echoes the challenges of the sixteenth-century Church of New Spain. The most pressing concern of the Third Mexican Council was the treatment of Native Americans in the oppressive system of forced labor known as the repartimiento (see (Poole 1963) and (Simpson 1934)).3 Modern reflections on the nature and scope of synodality provided by Thomas O’Loughlin and documents from the Synod of Bishops will help refine our understanding of how the Church of New Spain operated in a synodal spirit and provide space for asking questions of our current Synod.

2. Taxonomy of Synodality

Pedro de Moya intended to call a council from the first year of his consecration as archbishop of Mexico in 1574, but for unknown reasons, it would be a decade before the announcement of a third provincial council was made (Poole 1987, p. 126). He intended for it to be a Provincial Council, and that carries a certain canonical meaning and weight. Councils are formed by a corporate body of bishops who legislate for multiple dioceses, for instance, in an ecclesiastical province. Diocesan synods are held at the pleasure and authority of the local bishop who generally presides by virtue of the office (Moutin 2016, p. 165n25). However, at the time of Spanish expansion in the Americas, the terms were used simultaneously and on an equal basis to mean the assembly of the bishop and his clergy or gathering of various bishops (García y García 1985, pp. 373–74). The Church in central Mexico had held numerous juntas (meetings) of bishops and clergy from early in the sixteenth century. In fact, Hernando Cortés himself was present at the first Apostolic Junta in 1524 (Navarro 1944, p. 397). After the bishopric of Mexico was elevated to the status of a Metropolitan and Archiepiscopacy the juntas took on the character of either a synod or a council (Navarro 1944, p. 400).

The matter of what status this meeting of bishops held caused controversy when it came to publishing the decrees of the council. The king, Philip II, had ordered by royal cédula in 1560 that “prelates of those parts (the Indies) send the synods which they hold, before publishing or printing them, before us to our Council of the Indies” (Poole 1968, p. 129). All council decrees had to have royal approval, via the Council of the Indies, before they could be published and promulgated. Moya, having the unique fortune of being both the Metropolitan and viceroy before the council, acted as a representative of both the Church and the crown during and after the council.4 In this role, Moya witnessed the near “obsession” the council had with the well-being of the Native people (see Poole 1965).5 Stafford Poole makes the forceful claim that even considering the fact that many in the Church benefited from the repartimientos, no other people in history has had the defenders that the Native Americans of Mexico had at the Third Provincial Council ((Poole 1968, p. 154). See also (Simpson 1934, pp. 84–192)). When the council was concluding, Moya was between a rock and a hard place. He wanted the decrees of the council sealed and sent to the king for approval, with which the bishops of the council unanimously disagreed.

The space between church and crown, or religious and civil matters, was fraught to say the least in New Spain. The patronato real, the term that describes the laws and privileges the crown had over the Spanish Church in the Middle Ages, meant that there were severe infractions on the rights of bishops to govern freely in their diocese. Government intrusion was a reality with which all ecclesiastics of New Spain had to contend. In fact, government intrusion into church business was a common complaint of the bishops who were called to the Third Council (See Burrus and Velazco 1960).6 Hence, Archbishop Moya, acting as viceroy and archbishop, had serious reasons for not wanting the decrees to be published without royal approval. In any case, the matter was serious, but also semantic. The royal cédula used the word sínodos (synods), hence the bishops argued they did not need royal approval because the cédula referred only to diocesan synods and they had met in a provincial council at the request of the archbishop (Poole 1968, pp. 129–30).

None of this contradicts what was stated earlier, that the terms were used interchangeably at this time. As will be seen in this article, the bishops apparently felt free to use the term synod to describe themselves in the decrees while the council was in session, while later maintaining that they were truly a council, and not merely a synod. The contention that they were not a council, but a synod, was not raised until after the decrees were written.

Sidestepping much of the political minutia, the decrees were eventually publicly promulgated after much fierce back and forth between the bishops, royal representatives, and Moya. Archbishop Moya caved to the other bishops, but opposition to the council continued.

The opposition was not coming from a colonial society so full of avarice that it was trying to stomp out the noble attempts of the Church to defend conquered victims from injustice and abuse. Much of the opposition to the promulgation of the Council’s decrees came from the secular clergy and religious who protested the “rigor” of some of the decrees.7 But anybody who felt attacked by the decree, civil or ecclesial persons, lodged appeals. Claims of nullity against the Council were made because of the failure to obey the royal cédula. Years of legal struggle eventually led to papal and royal approval.8

Further, the bishops and clerics of the Third Mexican Council were concerned with the abuse of Native Americans by virtue of their God-given human dignity. They also made claims about the condition of Native peoples because of their baptism. Albeit in paternalistic tones, the Council called for the care of “Indians recently converted to the faith, especially in regard to their spiritual and corporal good” (Poole 1963, p. 4). That the Native People “must be sustained and sheltered in the bosom of Christian charity (el seno de la caridad christiana)” (García y García 1985, p. 365) points to the centrality of Christ whose life makes real, truly incarnates, and embodies the charity of God. At their word, they express sentiments that anticipate the current Synod on Synodality’s emphasis on baptism and the centrality of Christ.

3. Communal Sin and Divine Judgment

Thomas O’Loughlin offers a series of “pen pictures” of what a “synodical” church looks like. These types show us what the Church might look like when individual communities of the Catholic Church act synodally. A synodal church must foster affective connections with its members. The community, a network of individual relationships, is formed by remembering and re-enactment. With respect to the liturgy, the Church acts synodally when it does not merely mime Jesus’ activity but takes the status of a servant. O’Loughlin challenges us to reach into the depths of our tradition to rediscover the implications of Jesus’s shocking practice of washing the disciples’ feet (O’Loughlin 2023, pp. 174–75). At the same time, O’Loughlin refers to what he calls the “dark side of belonging”. In the church community, it is the reality of the collective guilt of our predecessors when it comes to historical realities like colonialism and racial supremacy (O’Loughlin 2023, pp. 175–77).9 Sinfulness in a synodal church acknowledges the reality and effects of the sin of the group:

and so it is at the community level we need to make decisions for amending our life, seek divine aid, and acknowledge our need for divine mercy…if we are to have a truly synodal Church, then every church has to take its common guilt for its crimes and omissions as seriously as we urge each individual to acknowledge their sins.

(O’Loughlin 2023, p. 176)

O’Loughlin places these reflections in terms of community reconciliation in the liturgy expressing a communal failing of the covenant. But expressions of communal guilt and recognition of large-scale social crimes are something that the sixteenth-century Church of New Spain would have related to directly.10

The Third Mexican Council spoke not just about the harm done to Natives, but also about how the Spanish were implicated in the abuses, and it is worth reflecting on their words:

The bishops and governors of these provinces and realms ought to consider that no other care is so strongly entrusted to them by God as the protection and defense, with every affection of soul and paternal heart, of the Indians recently converted to the faith, especially in regard to their spiritual and corporal good. For the natural meekness of the Indians, the submission and constant work with which they serve the profit of the Spaniards, would soften the hardest and fiercest of hearts and would oblige them to take up their defense and to have compassion on their miseries, rather than cause them the harassments, injuries, violence, and extortion with which daily for such a long time every type of person is destroying them… the present Council, with great sorrow at not finding kindness and humanity in those very persons who ought to have it in a great degree, with all possible efficacy exhorts in the Lord the governors and royal magistrates of this province that they treat kindly and gently the unhappy Indians and reprimand the insolence of their ministers and of those who harass the Indians with vexations and grievances, so that they will consider them free people and not slaves…With regard to the total execution and fulfilment of these things, the Council charges consciences and threatens dissemblers with the wrath of Almighty God on the tremendous day of judgment.

(Poole 1963, pp. 4–5)11

The Church, in its continued longing for Christ, sought divine aid and acknowledged its need for divine mercy. The Council directs their statement to those Spaniards who should feel compassion for the Native person (all should have) and who have been charged with their care. The Church is implicated in the lack of a defense of and compassion for the Native people for the bishops are named from the beginning with the governors, and further, “every type of person”, ecclesiastics not excluded, “is destroying” the Native people. Communal failing is represented in these words, crimes and omissions alike. The Church in New Spain urged the Spanish to acknowledge their sins against the Natives.

Surely the Council had a sense of the guilt of their predecessors, but the crimes against the Natives were ongoing and present to the bishops and the Council at the time these words were being written. In more severe terms, the brutality of the truth was addressed,

…it greatly pains this holy synod that not only in times past have so many offenses and coercions been done to these poor ones with such excess…, pray by Jesus Christ, and admonish all justices and governors that mercies be shown towards the Indians, and that they restrain the insolence of their ministers, when it is necessary, and that they treat these Indians not as slaves but as free men and vassals of his royal Majesty…And to the priests and other ecclesiastics he commands truly that they remember they are pastors and not butchers, and like children they [the Natives] must be sustained and sheltered in the bosom of Christian charity.

(García y García 1985, p. 395)12

The Council’s statements on “free men and vassals” must be taken in their sixteenth-century context. The bishops were asking the Natives to be put at a slightly higher status in what was a class-based society. At the same time, the petitions made on behalf of the Natives in the name of Christian charity in the decrees of the Council are to the bishops’ everlasting credit. Remarkably, the Council calls attention to the abuses of its own ministers who should not be like butchers, an implicit comparison to the Spanish colonists. The invocation of Christian charity strikes the proper tone, but was that enough? Reminding the Spanish, including the Church, of their duty toward Christian charity was not going to put the brakes on a highly profitable system. The Council’s composition of a Directory for Confessors was meant to make their pleas a reality.

The “Directorio para confesores” had the force of the Council who also invested much into the potential for results of the Directory. In short, the Directory instructed priests on how to elicit a good confession from Spaniards who were a part of the repartimiento system. The Directory’s force was to be in the fact that it counseled priests to withhold absolution in confession if the penitent was unwilling to make proper restitution and satisfaction for his treatment of Natives.13 The decree then states, “In carrying out all these things this synod burdens consciences and threatens the perpetrators with the wrath of Almighty God on the fearful day of judgment” (Poole 1987, p. 151). The Church of the late-sixteenth century held the visage of eternal hellfire over the head of society in New Spain, but the threat and admonishment began and ended in these words. The Directory was never printed, published, or circulated in any way.14

Despite not being published, the Directory preserves for us what the Church of New Spain witnessed in its day and what it was willing to undertake. In many ways, the Council’s decrees and writings like the Directory were acknowledging communal failing, the perspective that we sin as a group, and that we can address the sin by acting collectively (O’Loughlin 2023, p. 176). The repartimientos were not the fault of any one Spanish colonist, but their society, by and large, accepted the system as beneficial. And it is arguable that many of the Church accepted it as a necessary evil, because it was seen as the only way at the time to allow Native people a way to earn their own wages through work willingly, and it at least gave the appearance of concern for the rights of Natives. The bishops of New Spain acted collectively at the Council in the way they thought most conducive to effect change within their range of spiritual and temporal power.

The Council’s sense of communal sin is certainly an area for further exploration. The Directory for Confessors, being an aspect of that sense of communal sin, shows us a sense of synodality that today’s Church can recognize—not the means, but the just concern behind it. The bishops of New Spain, fearing that they be implicated in the abuse of the Natives, attempted to urge their flocks to confess their common sin with the force of a common punishment. The Church then did not lose its sense of individual sin, but synodally, with the group at large in heart and mind, it realistically assessed the state of society, and also of itself. If it failed to speak, the consequences were dire for these sixteenth-century shepherds.

But these shepherds were beholden to the times in which they lived. The “Directorio para confesores” included the idea that the use of African slaves would have mitigated the suffering of that Native people.15 Though they unequivocally condemned the repartimiento, they are worthy of criticism for offering this alternative. However, the Council and its Directory should not be dismissed for being unable to escape the social standards of their age. Their protests on behalf of Native people suffering under colonial Spanish rule and the repartimiento were a real attempt to move beyond what benefited them as participants in an unjust system. The fact that the Directory had no impact because it was not published does not indicate mere failure, but also that these sentiments, the good and the bad, were still circulating among ecclesiastics at that time. The Church paid attention to the victims, their needs, and their personhood.16

4. Synodality and the Centrality of Christ

What should one expect to learn about synodality from the Third Mexican Council? The Church of New Spain, for all its failures, acted synodally in many aspects. The Church of the Third Mexican Council practiced synodality in recognizing a common baptism between the Spaniard and Native person. Attention should be called to key points made in the North American Final Document which was published this year (Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 2023).17 Three key themes are highlighted in the final document: Christians are “called and gifted through baptism”, have “communion with Christ and one another”, and Christians are “sent forth on mission”. The North American Final Document calls attention to the fact that at all levels of the Church, the baptismal call of the faithful is related to our equal dignity and that we share in the mission of the Church from our baptismal dignity (Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 2023, ##14–22). The centrality of Christ with whom Christians are united by baptism was another common remark in the North American sessions. The image the Synod offers of enlarging the tent should imagine Christ at the center, as one of the group sessions expressed (Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 2023, #23). In other words, the communion of the faithful can be understood in our baptism: “There was a recognition that we cannot fully live out our baptismal dignity and responsibility without addressing the areas where our communion with one another, and thereby our communion with Christ, is stressed almost to the breaking point” (Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops 2023, #24). Our common baptism in effect should strengthen our communion.

The Third Mexican Council considered all seven sacraments with respect to the Native people in their care. On baptism, the council discussed the instruction that adults should receive, the things they should know of the faith, and that they should repent from sin. Children, Native and Spanish, the Council said, should be baptized no later than nine days after birth. In order to increase devotion to the saints, and to remove any remnants of paganismo, names of those from the New Testament should be chosen (Navarro 1944, pp. 415–17). Within these words can be seen concern for the licit nature of administering sacraments like baptism, but also that the Spanish and Native share a common baptism, and in that the Council affirms communion with them. As unremarkable as this may seem, it is worth pointing out just the fact that the Church was discussing the Natives as baptized Christians, and that the centrality of Christ included the Native peoples themselves.

The centrality of Christ for the Mexican Church also meant the possibility of de-centering Christ. They emphasized communion with Christ by pointing to the sins that were creating a break with Christ and hastening divine judgment. Other words written by the bishops in a letter to Philip II express their existential concern:

We ought to have commanded it by public decree [that the repartimiento system be condemned by society] and to have charged the consciences of the governors and audiencias. We have not done so except by a general decree in which we represented to them how important it is for them to look to the ill-treatment and harassment of these Indians, because the judgment of God awaits them. Their oppression cries before the presence of God and demands vengeance of Him. But the jurisdiction of the Church and the authority of the prelates is so oppressed and downtrodden in this realm, on the pretext that it hinders profit and that little money will be made and that the proper fidelity and vassalage of Your Majesty has been lacking [that] it would do nothing but provoke them to hatred and rage and incur the indignation of those who, stuffed with the blood of these poor creatures, are carried forward only by their greed and their ambition to be rich in violation of our faith and in harm to their neighbor. It would have achieved no other effect than more harm and evil because of their hardened contumacy.

(Navarro 1944, pp. 415–17)

The letter from which this excerpt is taken was sent to the king at the close of the Council. In addition to the treatment of the Native people, it indicates a lack of coercive power the Church had in the Americas, but also the Church’s hope in God’s justice. The centrality of Christ meant also the possibility that Christ could be forsaken. God’s justice will find all, and it seeks vengeance. Despite one’s baptismal calling, communion with Christ could be lost for the bishops of the Council. The bishops were effectively offering political and spiritual counsel to the king—this was a problem only he could remedy. The promise of God’s justice written in a letter by the bishops to the king did not improve the lot of the Native people.

And this is where any congruencies between the two synodal gatherings, past and present, begin to become outnumbered by the historical, cultural, and chronological gaps. The Third Mexican Council failed in many respects and in ways that had concrete outcomes for real people, Native and Spanish alike. It would be premature to speak of the failures of the Synod on Synodality, but we can ask what the Synod is not seeing or listening to. While the current Synod aims at creating a more synodal church, historical synods like the Third Mexican Council indicate how even with the noblest of causes at stake a church acting synodally towards those just ends is subject to communal failing. The shadow of the repartimiento, long and dark across the doors of the Church at the end of the sixteenth century, did not prevent bishops from taking up positions that delayed the promulgation of their synodal decrees. Neither did it prevent the friars, who were firsthand witnesses to the horrors of the repartimiento, from opposing the Council on the basis that the bishops sought to seriously curtail the privileges the friars had been given by the pope as the original missionaries long before there was a bishop in Central America.18

The bishops, religious, and secular priests of New Spain—for pride, or protocol, or a sincere belief in their quarrels with each and against the Council—failed at producing change concerning the repartimientos. What sense of their communal failure did they have while at the same time condemning the evil of the social order? It seems they were not seeing or listening to what needed to be seen and heard.19 Has our Synod heard and listened to what it should? Further, acting synodally, and in light of the Third Mexican Council, challenges the contemporary Church to think seriously about opposing evil in the modern world. What is the cause of our Synod? Will it oppose real evil?

Surely the Church can hold a synod without needing to address evils that are largely socially acceptable, as the repartimientos were. The Synod does allow that liberation from evil is needed though: “Through [Jesus’] words and actions, he offers liberation from evil and conversion to hope, in the name of God the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Synod of Bishops 2021, #17). The preparatory document, from which this quote comes, goes on to discuss further Cornelius and Peter’s meeting in Acts 10: “Peter listens to him and then speaks, reporting in turn what has happened to him and testifying to the closeness of the Lord, who goes out to meet people individually to free them from what makes them prisoners of evil and mortifies humanity (cf. Acts 10:38)” (Synod of Bishops 2021, #24). Twice the preparatory document tells the Church that one can be a prisoner of evil, but the possibility of severing communion with Christ is not broached, at least not here.

The entire passage from Acts 10.34-38, which the preparatory document references, is a fitting point for close reflection with both synods and both sets of bishops, and both sets of the bishops’ flocks, in mind.

And Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him”.

(RSV)

What slavery or oppression does the Synod seek to liberate people from? Or is it a series of theological niceties? Was God impartial towards these peoples, these nations? And did the bishops and ecclesiastics do what is right to God? These questions may be asked about both synods. If both are led by the Spirit, how are they aiding the oppressed, or as Acts phrases it here, how are they healing all oppressed by the devil?

The Third Mexican Council faced many devils, but was God with them? Their infighting is difficult to justify from our modern perspectives. In their effort to promote healing and prevent further abuses, they affected little. Still, the Church did not give up and succeeded in gaining royal and papal approval of their sínodo. We might think differently of the past with the help of our modern Synod.

… the Church in Canada and the United States, we heard those who feel wounded or cast aside by the Church. This does not solve the issues or heal the wounds, but it is an important beginning. “The Indigenous want to know that the Church knows. This needs to be in the document. We must let them know that we understand the issues they are dealing with in their daily lives, and we are listening to them”. A woman who is a leader in her Indigenous community told a Canadian bishop, “Don’t give up on us. Yes, we are grieving and, yes, we are angry, but don’t give up on us”.

(CCCB and USCCB 2023, #53)

Moya did not give up. If the Spirit leads the Church, past and present, it may lead the Native Americans past and present. If Christ is at the center of the Synod’s tent (CCCB and USCCB 2023, #23) as the Synod listens to the faithful and is present with them, he was present with the ecclesiastics who were interested in the sacramental baptism and well-being of Mesoamericans. We should look to the past with “synodal eyes”, discerning the presence of the Holy Spirit amid evil and human failure, and pray that the Synod today is also able to do the same.20