Catholicism in One Hundred

Years of Solitude

Patricia Clevenger and Christina Echternach

History of the church

• 1493-1800s Colonial era and period of introduction of Catholicism– Church and state = same thing – Catholic ideals legitimized colonialism and indigenous repression– Bartolomé de Las Casas– Cultural Collisions and trans-cultural Catholicism

• Early to late 1800s (1819)Independence and breakdown of Catholic rule

– A time of hostility and tension between secular state and the Catholic Church.

• Late 1880s to 1950s Neo-Christendom: The Catholic church attempts to regain privileges.

Expected Gender Roles in CatholicismWomenMen

•“Semidivinity, moral superiority and spiritual strength” (Stevens 94).• •Rigid adherence to Catholic morals

•Submissive “ Beneath the submissiveness, however, lies the strength of her conviction” (95).

•Sadness

•“Premarital chastity… post-nuptial frigidity” (96)

•Buendía Men

•Lack “spiritual stamina” 95

•Sinful (in this life)

•Simple

•Stubborn

•Aggressive (sexually and physically)

Aspects of Catholicism in Macondo

• Women perpetuate Catholicism • Úrsula- enduring pillar of the

Buendía family– Chastity belt– Enforcement of Sunday Mass under Arcadio’s rule– Papal education of José Arcadio

• Fernanda – static conservative– “Her severity made the house a redoubt of old

customs in a town convulsed by the vulgarity with which the outsiders squandered their easy fortunes” (237).

– Marital nightgown – Strict adherence to Catholic rigidity

Aspects of Catholicism in Macondo• Death

– Mourning: “Úrsula ordered a mourning period of closed doors and windows,

with no one entering or leaving except on matters of utmost necessity. She prohibited any talking allowed for a year and she put Remedios’ daguerreotype in the place where her body had been laid out, with a black ribbon around it and an oil lamp that was always kept lighted” (88).

– Confession: “Amaranta answered simply that she did not need spiritual help of

any kind because her conscience was clean” (281).• Sex

– Courting: Pietro and Rebecca, General Marquez and Amaranta– Virginity: Amaranta “Thereupon Amaranta lay down and made Úrsula give public give

public testimony as to her virginity” (282).

Aspects of Catholicism in Macondo• Baptism

– Baptism of Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s seventeen sons

• Sin– Suicide: “Father Nicanor was against a religious ceremony and burial

in consecrated ground. Úrsula stood up to him. ‘In a way that neither you nor I can understand, that man was a saint,’ she said. ‘So I am going to bury him, against you wishes, beside Melquíades’ grave’” (110).

– Adultry: Aureliano Segundo’s relationship with Petra Cotes during his marriage to Fernanda.

Catholicism in Politics

• Liberals – secular theory - as society modernizes, religion becomes less important and

organized religion declines (Stephens 17).– “He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and

prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a liberal victory” (104).

– “’But we’re fighting this war against the priests so that a person can marry his own mother’” (148).

• Conservatives– Oppose secular theory– Closer ties with moral uprightness associated with the church

“The conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Christ, of the principle of authority…” (95).

Cardinal Sins in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Lust intense, unrestrained sexual craving

• Meme and Mauricio Babilonia• Seventeen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendía• Prostitution: Pilar Tenera, Petra Cotes and

Catarino’s Store, French Women• Catholicism’s Blind eye: “At the urging of Father Nicanor, [Don

Apolinar Moscote] arranged for the transfer of Catarino’s store to a back street and he closed down several scandalous establishments that prospered in the center of town” (90).

• Bestiality: José Arcadio Segundo and the donkey

Gluttonyover indulgence to the point of waste

• Aureliano Segundo and The Elephant

– “He lost consciousness. He fell face down in the plate filled with bones, frothing at the mouth like a dog, and drowning in moans of agony” (241).

– “Aurelaino grey fat, purple-colored, turtle-shaped, because of an appetite comparable only to that of José Arcadio when he came back from traveling the world” (255).

– “The bodies of the Aurelianos were no sooner cold in their graves than Aureliano Segundo had the house lighted up again, filled with drunkards playing the accordion and dousing themselves in champagne, as if dogs and not Christians had died, and as if that madhouse which had cost her so many headaches and so many candy animals was destined to become a trash heap of perdition” (235).

Greed Hoarding money when it

could be given to the poor the church.

• Úrsula – and her gold stashes• José Arcardio and land rights• Mr. Brown and The United Fruit Company • Colonel Aureliano Buendía

“No one knew why a man who had always been so generous has begun to covet money with such anxiety, and not the modest amounts that would have been enough to resolve an emergency, but a fortune of such mad size that the mere mention of it left Aureliano Segundo awash in amazement” (241).

Sloth - the sin of sadness, or laziness, indolence

• José Arcadio Buendía• Remedios the Beauty

• Arcadio Buendía “People who protested were put on bread and water with their ankles in a set of stocks that he had set up in a school room… At the head of a patrol he assaulted the house, destroyed the furniture, flogged the daughters and dragged out Don Apolinar Moscote” (105).

• Colonel Aureliano Buendía• Amaranta• Banana Massacre

Wrath - Forceful, vindictive anger

Envy• Amaranta “She knew her sister’s character, the haughtiness of her spirit,

and she was frightened by the virulence of her anger” (74). (Rebecca regarding Amaranta’s jealously over engagement with Pietro Crespi.)

“Don’t get your hopes up, even if they send me to the ends of the earth, I’ll find some way of stopping you from getting married, even if I have to kill you” (73).

• Colonel Aureliano Buendía “The omen of the dead father stirred up the last remnant of pride that was left in his heart, but he confused it with a sudden gust of strength” (227).

Pride

Works CitedGarcía Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Trans Gregory

Rabassa. Harper Perennial, New York: 2003. Gill, Anthony James Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the

State in Latin University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1998Stevens, Evelyn P. Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America

University of Pittsburgh Press: 1973. Williams, Edward J. “The Emergence of the Secular Nation-State and Latin

American Catholicism” Compartive Politics vol. 5 (January 1973): 261-277.