The Center for Intercultural Formation, Its Reports, 1962–67, and a Critical Understanding of Mission in Latin America

The CIF Reports : Cultures,  the Church, the Americas, published  by the Center of Intercultural Formation between 1962 and 1967, were a response to John XXIII call for religious congregations to serve in Latin America.  This paper examines the discourse   and its semantic fields,  while situating the Reports at the cross-road of Vatican II and the Latin American political and religious context.

There was lack of consensus about the North American Catholic mission to Latin America as already evident at the First Inter-American Episcopal Conference held at Georgetown University, in November 1959. The Reports moved to an increasingly radical understanding of Latin American political reality and to a critique of institutional Catholicism in line with Illich’s thought, which is understandable because he was the executive director of the Center.

We argue that the Reports were intended to influence missionaries’ work through a critique of the religious as well as political and social institutions and the notion of mission.  The Reports convey a vision different from the one that was dominant in the institutional Catholic Church, but did not promote a break with the Church. It aimed at transforming the Church from within by using, in this case, the missionary project.  An examination of the semantic field conformed around notions of mission, revolution, progress and development, role of the Church gained significance within the context of the strong critique to the American Alliance for Progress and the intersection of the paradigmatic shift in the Church enabled by Vatican II.