At the center of it is the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe, once perhaps a pagan goddess, but now unquestionably the patron of the Mexican peon with whom she identifies. I tell students that if they want to understand what Catholicism was like before the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, they should look at Mexican popular Catholicism and read the plays of Shakespeare. The "religion of the border" (as my colleague James "Big Jim" Griffith calls it) does not need, for example, the approval of the Congregation for the Making of Saints to proclaim their saints -- just as Catholics did for a thousand years.
Sometimes these saints disturb us Celts. I have in my possession (but never wear) a medallion of San Juan Malverde, the patron of the narcotrafficantes. In Perez-Reverte's great novel "The Queen of the South," the protagonist prays fervently to both Malverde and Guadalupe without any sense that there might be an inconsistency in such devotions.
Go figure.
The article written by Andrew Greeley and describes his thoughts on the Council of Trent and its effect in the Americas.
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