Nicaragua's churches at odds over textbooks

Christian Century, June 18, 1997

A campaign to put Roman Catholic textbooks in the hands of students at Nicaragua's state-run schools has aggravated the sensitive relationship between the country's Roman Catholic majority and its growing Protestant minority. The controversy involves a series of textbooks produced by the Catholic archdiocese of Managua.

The education official for the archdiocese, Monsignor Silvio Fonseca, contended that the Education in Faith series was designed to provide students in both church-run and state-run schools with religious material written in "Nicaraguan Spanish." Earlier texts were edited in Spain or Colombia. But according to Protestants, the new textbooks are clearly anti-Protestant and should not be used in state-run schools.

A textbook for the fourth year of secondary school has a picture of Pope John Paul II on the cover and warns Protestants not to criticize Catholic devotion to the Virgin Mary: "To scorn Mary is an absurdity, something only the devil can incite. Be careful, Protestant brothers. You're playing with fire. If you want to increase your numbers by misleading unprepared Catholics, don't mess with Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our mother. It's something serious for which you'll pay heavily."

The same book blames racial tension on Protestants. "Where Protestants are the majority, there have almost always been racial struggles," the book states, claiming that Protestants in the U.S. have been responsible for discrimination against blacks. "This hasn't happened in . . . countries . . . with a Catholic majority," the text adds.

Sebastian Castillo, human rights director of the Council of Evangelical Churches, said he was investigating several reported cases of alleged intimidation of school teachers and directors who did not want to use the books. According to Sixto Ulloa, an executive with an evangelical television station in Managua, the texts were used last year at a handful of schools, and pupils who refused to study them had 5 percent taken off their grades. Ulloa said the controversy over the books reflects government favoritism toward Catholics and represents a "strategic alliance" between Catholic leaders and the administration of Arnoldo Aleman, who became Nicaragua's president in January.

The archbishop of Managua, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, was a strong supporter of Aleman's bid for the presidency. Ulloa maintained that Minister of Education Humberto Belli has supported use of the texts in public schools as a way of repaying Cardinal Obando "for his help during the election campaign." A close ally of Obando, Belli is the only cabinet minister of former President Violeta Chamorro to have kept his post in the Aleman government. Formerly a Marxist and now a member of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei, Belli burned thousands of Sandinista-era textbooks when he took over the education ministry in 1991. He replaced them with, among other texts, a variety of traditional Catholic doctrinal statements and pre--Vatican II books on religious education. After Protestants protested, the controversial texts were removed.

According to Monsignor Fonseca, it is a "total lie" to suggest that Catholics are trying to impose their doctrine on others. "Mr. Ulloa is anti-Catholic and anticlerical," he said. "Using the textbooks as a pretext, he has engaged in the infamy of attacking the holy Catholic Church." Fonseca denied that the textbooks are anti-Protestant. "One has to be faithful to history," he said. "History is one thing, and the interpretation that others want to give it is another.