Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America by Theresa Keeley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America by Theresa Keeley Joseph P. Chinnici Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. By Theresa Keeley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 352. $49.95. ISBN: 9781501750755.) Awarded the John Gilmary Shea Award by the American Catholic Historical Association in 2021, Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns is an important work. It richly illuminates multiple dimensions of post-conciliar divides in the Catholic community in the United States: the movement away from the Cold War alliances with conservative political structures in Latin America; the emergence in the 1960s of a leftward critique of U.S. foreign policy; the importance of missionary experiences and international exchanges as shaping internal divisions within the American Catholic community; the mirroring in the United States of polarized views on the presence of the Church in society, and different implementations of the Council in the 1980s. All of this is done through a singular focus on developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua (with some reference to other Latin American countries) and the role of the Maryknoll sisters. The bulk of the work covers the period from the murder in El Salvador of Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, the Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and the lay missionary Jean Donovan (December, 1980) to the murder of the members of the Society of Jesus and their co-workers in November, 1989. After a very comprehensive and summary Introduction, Keeley breaks the period up into chapters. Chapter One describes the evolution of the missionary vision and its alliance with the option for the poor, while Chapter Two covers the opposition in Nicaragua between the Maryknoll congregation and U.S. backed strong man and the familial consortium of Anatasio Somoza. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters describe developments in El Salvador leading up the killing of Archbishop Romero and the strong alliance between the missionaries, liberation theology, and the Sandinistas. Here, the politically driven divide between the Reagan administration and its support by conservative Catholics fuels the domestic image campaign against allegedly pro-communist, radical religious women, liberation theology, and left-wing Catholicism. Politics and theology begin to blend as the various sides take different approaches to liturgy and the understanding of the “people’s Church.” Chapter 6, entitled “Real Catholics versus Maryknollers,” details the alliance between Tip O’Neill and the sisters. In doing so, it brings the divisive picture into particular sharpness by analyzing the gender bias of the conservative campaign when it paints a picture of the relationship between developments in Nicaragua and the role of women in society and Church. The last two chapters (7 and 8) cover the Nicaraguan Iran-Contra affair and the murders in El Salvador. The epilogue moves beyond the careful attention to documented historical data that marks the whole work and attempts to identify analogous divisions in the debates over the Catholic Church and the government’s health-care directives in the second decade of the twenty-first century. [End Page 221] The author is to be congratulated for providing a close analysis of how presidential policies, international developments, and religious perspectives crisscrossed and enabled the solidification of political Catholicism in the United States. While the argument is for the most part sound, it is also provocative and probably awaits modification. Attention to the economic disparity in Latin America is hinted at but never treated as a component part of the right-left divide. Relying on newspaper reports, the interpretive methodology offers little critique of the virtual reality created by the press, both left and right, for its own purposes. The analysis may also be modified when other archival depositories become available: the religious and political interventions of the Holy See, the discussions among the bishops, government sources that remain untapped. Still, this reviewer recommends Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns for all students of contemporary Catholicism and its divides. Joseph P. Chinnici Franciscan School of Theology at the University of San Diego Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...