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Since the 1970s, both foreign and U.S. opponents of U.S.-Central America policy have cited the 1969 Rockefeller Report on the Americas: The Official Report of a United States Presidential Mission for the Western Hemisphere as the beginning of U.S. government efforts to eradicate liberation theology. During the 1980s, progressive Catholic press accounts in the United States and abroad emphasized the similarities between the Report and President Ronald Reagan’s approach to Central America. But critics’ charges are misplaced. The Report supported the Church’s leftward turn, and Nelson Rockefeller was the reason. Early report drafts and Rockefeller’s comments reveal that he enthusiastically welcomed the Medellín documents. It was family planning that preoccupied Rockefeller, not communist subversion.

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This chapter shows how the Maryknollers' leadership that oppose Nicaraguan president Somoza led conservative American non-Catholics to adopt conservative Catholics' concerns about Maryknoll by the late 1970s. It talks about conservative U.S. Catholics that bemoaned some Maryknollers' opposition to Latin American governments and support for socialist ideas. It also marks the shift from the 1960s and early 1970s when the Melvilles or Charles Curry took controversial stances. The chapter explores the Maryknollers' involvement in Nicaragua debates that reflected larger shifts in what it meant to be a Catholic missionary and showed the growing strength of religious witness in the name of human rights. It refers to Father Miguel d'Escoto who proposed the creation of Maryknoll's Orbis Books, which are the bane of conservative U.S. Catholics.

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