A ¨Mary¨Time

Monday I continued my grand tour of Paraguay and visited Caácupe, the center of Paraguayan Catholicism and the place where stand both the country’s most famous basilica and the most-venerated statue of Mary, the Virgin of Caácupe. Every year on December 8^th, the Catholic feast celebrating the Immaculate Conception (Mary’s, that is) brings several tens of thousands of the devoted to Caácupe on a pilgrimage by foot. They end up in droves at the basilica, where they ask Mary for all sorts of things and petition her for all varieties of favors to be granted. The town is an important place to understand Paraguayan Catholicism, and, in effect, to understand most of Paragauyan culture, too.

The Monday that I visited, Caácupe was a quiet and simple town in the hilly countryside. The sun shone brightly and the sky was crystal blue, but plenty of green trees provided shade as the bus passed through the hills. The ride took about two hours, but I enjoyed getting out of the city a little bit and seeing the campo. The basilica and surrounding town itself is located on a large hill, so the church’s huge globe-of-a-dome can be seen from miles around. I disembarked right in front of the basilica, and proceeded to scope out the area.

The first thing I noticed surrounding the plaza of the church were the dozens and dozens of santerias, stores selling images and statues of the saints along with all varieties of rosaries, holy bracelets, and Virgin of Caácupe souvenirs. There were even blue plastic water bottles, Aunt Jemina-style, in the form of the Virgin for about $8 a pop. It all reminded me of the scene in the movie Luther, where the famed reformer is sickened by the outrageous sales of religious articles and the vendors who take advantage of unprudent religious fervor. My reaction wasn’t so strong as Martin Luther’s, but I could see that the shopkeepers definitely made a good business off of the pilgrims who come to see the famed statue of Mary.

One thing I did find revolting in Caácupe, however, was the sale of pornography in booths right next to the santerias. In a town where every penny is made by remembering a holy virgin and her purity of life, there was filth and pornographic trash sold side by side with images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. It made me sick to see how great a fall from its original Christian ideals Paraguay has taken, and how hollow indeed a society’s faith can be to allow such promiscuity to exist right next to and even intermingled with things considered so holy.

I realized too, though, that I’d be a huge hypocrite to say that Paraguayans are the only ones with this problem. After seeing the way good and evil coexisted so easily and so blatantly side by side in the shops of Caácupe, I was convicted that I, too, so often tolerate inner and disgusting sin in my life alongside all the good and outward Christian things. The Apostle James’s poignant question was pointed at me and Paraguay both—“Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs?” The answer, of course, is that “Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.” Good doesn’t come from evil, and evil doesn’t come from good, and they should not and cannot exist together in either Caácupe or my own life.

After walking around town and thinking about these things for a while, I finally entered the bright white basilica, which looks like an extraterrestrial colony set among the natural green and red hues of the city streets and parks. Inside, the walls were painted with an equally intense shade of white, but brilliant colors poured through the beautifully-stained glass windows. I was taken back by the simplicity of the basilica: I had expected to find a complex and gothic church with images of saints and the smells of incense and burning novenas everywhere, but I found a puritanical whitewashed sanctuary with strict benches and signs that prohibited lighting candles. At first, the only thing that told me for sure I was in a Catholic basilica was the papal banner hanging on one side of the altar up front.

Proceeding forward, I gingerly stepped through the church not wanting to disrupt anyone’s prayer or to look too much like a tourist with my camera in hand. As my eyes focused on the area beyond the altar, though, I could plainly see the famous Virgin of Caácupe. She stood on top of a little globe and wore a fancy crown and blue-spangled gown, representing her place in Catholic belief as the queen of saints in heaven and of the living church on Earth. Her hair was light auburn and curly, and her skin a very pale white. Set as the object of veneration among a nearly homogenous Paraguayan people with black hair and darker skin, she seemed very out of place and looked like a cheap European imported representation of the Mother of God. I was disappointed to see that the idea of beauty for Paraguayans, as represented by the Virgin of Caácupe, consisted in what seemed to me to be artificially light skin and European features.

A final thing I noted, then, about the highly-esteemed Virgin of Caácupe was that in real life the statue only stands about three feet tall. I had seen short imitation models of the statue around Asuncion, and I had always thought they were shorter just because they were copies of the real thing. Come to find out, though, up close even the real thing still just looks like a very big doll (sort of like the giant Barbie princesses I used to see in toy stores). Although so short and perhaps childish-looking in physical stature, however, the Virgin of Caácupe looms as a much taller and influential figure in the hearts and minds of Paraguayan Catholics as a guide, help, and succor for them and the nation.