Catholicism in One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Catholicism in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Patricia Clevenger and Christina Echternach
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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.

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Expected Gender Roles in Catholicism
Women
Men

• 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)

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Aspects of Catholicism in Macondo

• Women perpetuate Catholicism
• Úrsula- enduring pillar of the
• Buendía family
• Chastity belt
• Enforcement of Sunday Mass under Arcadios 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

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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).

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Aspects of Catholicism in Macondo

• Baptism
• Baptism of Colonel Aureliano Buendías 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 Segundos relationship with
  Petra Cotes during his marriage to Fernanda.

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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 were 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).

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Cardinal Sins in One Hundred Years of Solitude
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Lust intense, unrestrained sexual craving

• Meme and Mauricio Babilonia
• Seventeen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendía
• Prostitution Pilar Tenera, Petra Cotes and
  Catarinos Store, French Women
• Catholicisms Blind eye At the urging of Father
  Nicanor, Don Apolinar Moscote arranged for the
  transfer of Catarinos 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

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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).

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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).

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Sloth - the sin of sadness, or laziness,
indolence

• José Arcadio Buendía
• Remedios the Beauty

Wrath - Forceful, vindictive anger

• 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

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Envy

• Amaranta She knew her sisters character, the
  haughtiness of her spirit, and she was frightened
  by the virulence of her anger (74). (Rebecca
  regarding Amarantas jealously over engagement
  with Pietro Crespi.)
• Dont get your hopes up, even if they send me
  to the ends of the earth, Ill find some way of
  stopping you from getting married, even if I have
  to kill you (73).

Pride

• 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).

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Works Cited

• García 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 1998
• Stevens, 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.