Perspective:
By Andy Porras

That legions of Latinos pin their hopes and dreams on La Virgen de Guadalupe’s iconic tunic is probably an understatement of miraculous proportions.

Thus, that almost every Catholic pauses on December 12th to pay homage to La Emperadora de las Americas, is a truism.

No other religious image enjoys such veneration from the faithful. Her unique temple on a hill overlooking Mexico City is second only to the Vatican among holy sites visited by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Few would’ve ever thought that a brown-skinned Virgin, in a religion brought to the Americas by Europeans, would spiritually dominate half of the world.

In today’s global raging debates regarding religion have its main personalities caught in a spiritual drama of believers and non-believers. Books declaring that Jesus Christ was married and fathered three sons are on best seller lists. Certain British subjects, for example, swear that religion causes more harm than good. Their rationale cites research that casts much of the blame on the internet for the broadcasting everything from Isis beheadings to stories about Catholic hospitals denying care to miscarrying women.

Here in America, Mormons finally admitted that their founder was indeed a polygamist with some 47 wives, some already married. However, faith and love for La Virgen has never wavered among Latin American countries and its citizens, wherever they may make their home.

Sociologist Phil Zuckerman’s Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, for example concludes that the least religious societies tend to be the most peaceful, prosperous and equitable, and actually help people flourish while decreasing both fear and economic greed.

Whether prosperity and peace may cause people to be less religious or vice versa, there’s good reason to suspect that the connection between religion and damaged societies can go either way. However, this study and other investigations, provide support that religion thrives on existential anxiety.

Recently, an art instructor at Texas A&M Kingsville, paired with one of her advance classes and created a mural of the Virgen in a large lot that was once a gas station. Once the mural was completed, several Kings-ville residents begin to tell the faculty member of several unexplainable experiences that they attributed to their prayers to honor the Lady. Not to long after that they begin to tell their fellow townspeople of the former gas sation’s parking lot Lady’s “miracles.”

A mother of one of the students assisting on the mural project, prayed that a younger and sick daughter would survive from a serious illness and when she did, the woman left fresh roses near the painting to acknowledge the virgen’s intervention. When told of the act, the professor admitted that after painting the mural, her own car smelled like roses for days.

Once the South Texas media begin releasing stories about the Virgen art piece, people from all over South Texas flocked to the former gas station to get a glimpse of La Guadalupana.

Science has been slowly chewing away at territory once strongly held by religion; traditional religious beliefs require greater and greater mental defenses against threatening information from non-believers.

Religion, experts say, however has coached its believers to practice self-deception, to shut out conflicting evidence and to trust authorities rather than allow them to think on their own. The danger, they claim, is that such an approach sneaks into other parts of a believer’s life, becoming a struggle between competing ideologies rather than a quest to figure out practical, evidence-based solutions that can promote the wellbeing they desperately seek.

In the case of La Guadalupana, Mexicans look and pray to her likeness for daily solutions. Mexican TV novelas, for example, are notorious for having her images in some of their scenes, especially those depicting homes of the poor and at worksites.

Even brothels.

Does religion encourage helplessness? How many times have we heard our own elders utter phrases like, “Si Dios Quiere-God willing,” or even the phrase printed on America’s money, “In God we trust.” This leads skeptics to believe that we can’t recognize the deep relationship between religiosity and resignation.

Perhaps the greatest miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe took place several hundred years after her initial appearance, when Father Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende were able to unite their very disparate forces—a band of indigenous peasants and Mexican-born Spanish military officers—under the banner of the Virgin to begin the struggle that would ultimately lead to Mexican independence.

Meanwhile, walk into any church service and you’ll hear how our state’s current drought situation is attributed to the will of God, rather than bad government, state water department decisions or antiquated delivery systems. The faithful will wait for God to intervene and resume their own campaign of praying for rain.

Which brings to mind a quote by St. Augustine.

“Pray as though everything depended on God,” he said, “but work as though everything depended on you.”