by Teotonio R. de Souza, S.J.
BASIC CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES :
From Roman Catholicism back to Early Church Catholicism
Modernization, Democratization, Participation
"Basic Christian Communities" [BCCs](1) are a phenomenon of the early 60s, and they inaugurated a return to the grass-roots communities of the early Christian era. The Brazilian liberation theologian, Leonardo Boff, has even entitled one of his books Ecclesio-genesis: Base communities reinvent the Church. The rapid development of these communities in the Third World is causing large-scale social upheaval and rootlessness. In such a context, a Church at the grass-roots can give to the marginalized poor a hope of life against the developmental trend that exploits the poor and makes them poorer for the benefit of the dominant class or classes, leaving them with no say in shaping their future. Uniformity of mass production and massive political and economic structures that supervise and control the process have brought about a reaction in the form of small communities in which persons recognize one another, assert their individuality, and "have their say".
I see this as a part of the process of "democratization" generated unwittingly by the very system of exploitation. The modern high level of technology demands increasingly higher levels of information on the part of workers. At the same time, the high levels of media exposure have created greater longings and demands for participation in the decision-making process. The capitalist tendency to maximize profits does not concede such demands without hard bargaining, and even without resorting to violent repressive measures, unless they prove too expensive.
It was in such situations, under the military repressive bourgeois regimes of Latin America, that BCCs provided space for resistance and survival. Participants in BCCs could find in the Bible faith and hope in God, Giver of Life. This led them to sociological reflection on the man-created sinful structures that are depriving masses of people of dignity and the means of living. They discovered in the Bible a power for political action, contrary to the traditional Church reading of it that did not allow the Church leaders to feel at home with the poor. As Gutierrez writes: "the Church goes to work in the world of the poor, but it is not really living there. The Church has its home in other social and cultural sectors, where it is at home. The emergence of BCCs is seen as a challenge to the traditional structures of "authority" within the Church, because it cannot promote "democratization" by retaining its "theocratic, divine-sanctioned, top-down" model of authority that has been discarded in most modern societies and is in the process of being discarded wherever it still survives. However, just as the process has been painful in the secular world, it is not going to be otherwise within the Church world. But the rate and intensity of change will be conditioned by the national histories and world developments, as well as by the history of the institutional Church at the centre and in different parts of the world.
What is discernible is a tendency to "control" the BCCs and bring them under "official" Church teachings and clerical supervision. Some conclude that the outcome－the Catholic Church being what it is－can only be "recuperation" or separation. Even though Vatican II opted for "co-responsibility" of all, the switching of models is proving difficult and the process is being sabotaged because of the centuries-old predominance of the authoritarian model and the bringing into operation of the new model is in the hands of people opposed to it. The very nature of the new model does not allow its supporters to use constraint or threats to remove obstacles and to ensure the success of their cause, for they cannot adopt the very methods they object to. The "communitarian-charismatic-prophetic aspect" of the BCCs seems more relevant for promoting a better response to the needs of the masses of the marginalized poor in the modern world. It still needs the institutional expression as a function of the communitarian-utopian aspect, and to that extent the institutional and hierarchical Church is challenged to re-examine its functions in service of the community, and to cease acting as producer and consumer of sacraments.
BCCs have a critique of the ministries in the Church on the basis of a different ecclesiology (not parochiology): if all are one in Christ (not halves, quarters, etc.), then all bear equal responsibility. All need not do everything, but there cannot be some services more important than others. Then, instead of a hierarchy of bishops, priests and laity, with one-sided accountability, all are accountable to each other. Hence, BCCs call for a new social structuring of the Church and to indicate this the term "ecclesiogenesis" was coined on the occasion of the 4th inter-Church meeting of the BCCs of Brazil in 1981. At this meeting it was realized that the new Church cannot be guided only by wise mentors who deny the people the right to meet and work out their own reflections. In the history of the Church, it has been seen that deviations are possible both among people and guides. A mutual apprenticeship is seen as the best means to avoid deviations.
1."Basic Ecclesial Communities" are better known as "Basic Christian Communities" [BCCs] in Hong Kong. Hence, BCC is used throughout the edited version of this paper, except at one point where the name "Basic Ecclesial Communities" is necessary to the discussion. [Ed.]
Vatican II and Latin-American Response
This new model of the Church emerging from the grass-roots has not been entirely out of tune with the Church of Rome, even though all its implications and applications are not yet acceptable to the "official" Church. "Vatican II must be seen as a historic cultural turning point for Roman Catholicism. It sanctioned with the highest authority movements for institutional, liturgical, and theological reform that had been resisted if not repudiated for two centuries ... It relativized the normative character of the language and habits of thought with which the Church had legitimated its teachings and activities ... It abandoned the idea of a single normative culture, identified with Western "Christian civilization," and called for an incarnation of Catholic Christianity in the variety of the world's cultures".(2) Until Vatican II, the Catholic Church had regarded the culture that Christendom had created as an unsurpassable ideal, which only needed minor adaptations to be relevant to new historical eras or to newly discovered societies.
For the assumption of local self-responsibility for the Church, the Medellin Conference (1968) had a paradigmatic character. There the Latin American Church reflected on itself both "in the light of the Council" and in the context of "the present-day transformation of Latin America". Medellin and Puebla became models for other Churches to imitate. Africans and Asians have also made their own moves in this direction, but if the results have not received as much notice it is only because the Christian influence for bringing about any major social-political change continues to be weaker in these continents than in Latin America.
It is also important to keep in mind that Latin America had at least nominally a century-long existence of independence even before the decolonization process started in Asia and Africa. Afro-Asian decolonization and the rise of non-aligned consciousness brought more sharply into focus for the Latin Americans their own situation of century-long dependence which was now termed neocolonialism. Particularly since the Great Depression, the Latin-American countries have very severely experienced their dependence on Anglo-American capital, and their efforts to introduce greater industrialization with import-substitution led to labour controls, with populist politics and the corresponding growing popularity of left movements. The Reconstruction of Europe and the Marshall Plan provided wide scope for American investments and for exploitation of cheap labour during the immediate post-war period. The East-West divide and the formation of the Socialist Block with its Comecon demanded new areas for investment for Western capital. Latin America has always been the first to suffer in this connection, because of its proximity to the US.
As well as that, the rest of the Third World in the 1960s was targeted for such investments under the guise of the "development decade". The Church's strong antagonism to Communism was exploited to recruit its services as an international agent of "development". Vatican II did much in this regard, but the political economists and social scientists of Latin America had already developed their own analysis in the form of "dependence theory", which the Latin American Church adopted at Medellin. The "dependence theory" saw in the zeal for development on the part of "metropolitan capital" a way of promoting their own interests through control of "dependent capital" in the underdeveloped countries. This was articulated into a new pastoral methodology in the form of BCCs and the new theological-pastoral framework of Liberation Theology, which based its reflection on the praxis of the people's struggle for an integral liberation, borrowing the Marxist social analysis of class conflicts in society and making a preferential option for the poor.
2.Joseph A. Komonchak, "The Local Realization of the Church", in: The Reception of Vatican II, (Washington D. C., 1987) 81.
BCCs : Definition, Methodology, Prospects
Luis Femandes (3) suggests that there is no fixed prescription or formula for starting BCCs. Diverse situations require diverse types of BCCs. He sees as common a faith commitment in the context of a personal and collective commitment to life and action.. This commitment, moreover, does not come by instructions from the hierarchy : it emerges from the reflection of the people with one eye on the Bible and the other on their reality of poverty. Fernandes lists several cases of parish priests going about dividing their large parishes into areas and jobs, and believing that they have founded BCCs.
Despite the difficulty of having a consensus definition of BCCs, and consequently of giving any meaningful estimates of how many BCCs exist or of specifying some definitive programs and activities to which one could point with confidence and say: "This is what BCCs always do", I shall present a skeletal working definition for bringing some clarity into what is said hereafter regarding the theological assumptions and practical consequences of the new reality of BCCs. At a minimum, BCCs are small groups, usually homogeneous in social composition, which gather regularly to read and comment on the Bible. They all originate in some linkage with the institutional Church, and this linkage is maintained in some form. This bare-bone definition highlights three common elements that make up the name "Basic Christian Community" or "Basic Ecclesial Community": a striving for community (small, homogeneous); a stress on ecclesial linkage; they are at the base of both the Church and society. It is this "base" characteristic that makes them suspect and causes unease in the class groupings dominant in the traditional Church structure.
The BCCs are not anti-parish. They are to be seen as living Church cells linked to the parish. Tension often does result where parishes are too centralized, because such a centralization is opposed to the very nature of the BCCs, which believe in the human right to make their own decisions democratically and with wide participation of the lay members. Hence, one bishop suppressed his parishes with a view to giving his 1,600 BCCs great room for manoeuvre.
This does not rule out either the initiative of Church leaders or their constant encouragement and sustenance of the BCCs. "Pastoral agents" (Church leaders) are expected to "accompany" the BCCs, not rule them. Therefore, such pastoral agents should be formed within the BCCs, and their main concern should not be to maintain unity with Rome following the same discipline, the same rites, and the same canon law without exception. The centre of the Church is where the poor are, and the point of departure for theology is not Church doctrine but the grass-roots situation. Salvation is not to be separated from liberation, just as redemption makes no sense without creation. The God of Jesus first gave life, and then chose to give it more abundantly through the Son and the Spirit. Hence, for BCCs the Church has to be a sacrament of life for those who are being denied their God-given life and right to live. This theological approach of the BCCs represents a new Church that refuses to manipulated by the propertied and dominant classes, and to that extent it is bound to face resistance and opposition from the traditional Church and its traditional allies both within and outside.
The BCCs in practice have not been a great attraction for the middle classes, who tend to be individualistic and profit seekers. Apparently, some Europeans who sought to establish BCCs in Latin America often failed because of their life-style, which was more private and individualistic. There was a tendency among them to make their solitude a collective experience, a sort of loners seeking other loners. The BCCs have been popular with the marginalized sectors, and their vision of the world. As such, they have no problem with the official Church. Communists, just like the middle and upper classes influenced by positivist rationalism, fail to understand that there is no advantage in separating the people from the Church or from religion. The very source of people's motivation for political action in the BCCs is the link of faith with life, contrary to the traditional manipulation of religion to put people to sleep. Some surveys have even confirmed a positive link between BCCs membership and higher frequency of sacraments.
The BCCs and liberation theology have been suspected in official Church quarters and in the capitalist countries of making use of Marxist theories. Real Marxists fighting at the grass-roots frequently encourage the BCCs to see Marxism as a popular movement. They act as genuine friends and companions of BCCs, and BCC leaders have had often to share prison cells with Marxists. But the BCCs often speak of the satanic side of Marxism and hold in horror the suppression of the freedom of religion. The problem however remains of BCCs being manipulated by political parties, including left-wing parties, who share more the idealism of the BCCs in favour of the poor. The BCCs and MABs (Movimento dos Amigos de Bairros = Urban Neighbourhood Movements, since mid-70s) do not bind their members to a political party and the members are free to decide their partisan options. At that level, there have been internal tensions calling for more mature reflection and action. The hierarchy in Brazil has encountered such situations, recognized the political inability of its own structures to sustain further political involvement of the MABs and allowed the movements to proceed on their own. This recognition of autonomy with continued moral and even financial support has kept the popular movements close to the Church. The MABs have been strongest where the Church has promoted and supported the BCCs. Grass-roots leaders were thus prepared to enter into the larger arena of town politics and national politics.
When one talks of Basic Christian [Ecclesial] Communities in Latin America it is very important to remember that the BCC is neither a univocal concept nor a model of organization. Furthermore, historical development in Latin America is not a single continuum. Hence both the development and the nature of BCCs in Latin America vary according to the different regional historical developments. One can identify roughly three different models, namely Brazilian-Chilean, Mexican-Colombian, and Central American.
In the first model, the Brazilian-Chilean model, the military-authoritarian regimes allowed space for self-expression only in the Church, and as a result dynamic ties evolved between the Church and the popular movements through the BCCs.
In Brazil, the Church has never grown as a rival to the State, and as a result has had always to depend on popular support.
In Mexico and Colombia, the Church has always succeeded in maintaining its institutional strength despite sporadic challenges and attacks by the State. Against this background, the hierarchy has sought to exercise strict control over popular movements. Polarization within the Church has therefore been far greater and many are forced to function outside the Church.
Finally, in Central America the Church is divided in its support of the popular revolutionary thrust. In this situation, on the doorstep of the USA, no real State exists and the hierarchy has to confront the frustrated peasantry who have lost all hope of reform. Because of strong pressure from the Vatican through the USA, few in the hierarchy or clergy are openly supportive of the revolution.
3.Luis Fernandes, Como se faz uma comunidade eclesial de base (5th ed., Petropolis, 1986).
The Church and the Independence of Latin America
After introducing the immediate political, economic and ecclesiastical background that explains the emergence of the BCCs, I wish to link up this emergence with its more distant historical background. It is important to establish such a link for a fuller understanding of the present-day developments and future trends. Such an exercise will need to be done with regard to Asia in general and to Hong Kong in particular. Critical intervention in history at the present for a better future cannot be done without gathering the past.
The struggle for the independence of Latin America was the struggle between the Creoles and the peninsulares [people of Peninsular Iberia] and both sides sought the ideological and economic support of the Church. The nationalist tensions were brought to the fore during the Napoleonic Wars, when the English blockade made supplies from Spain to the Indies difficult. Spain had to decree the ports of the Indies open to neutral shipping to save the situation. North Americans jumped in and almost monopolized the situation.
The Napoleonic invasion of Spain changed the Spanish anti-English stance. The Creoles of the Indies were not against the Monarchy or the Church in Spain as long as they were left to run their own affairs. They wanted no Jacobinism and no Bonaparte. Latin America was shaken by insurrections all over, starting with the newer viceroyships of La Plata and New Granada. There was no general coordination. Only in Mexico was the insurrection more a popular revolt caused by land hunger and led by a priest named Hidalgo, and there the Creoles joined the Spanish viceroy in stamping it out. From 1814-16 the Spanish rule was restored, except in Buenos Aires. Bolivar (Venezuelan liberator) and San Martin (commander of the La Plata army) took up the common cause of Latin America and with patriotic and mercenary forces gained the liberation of the rest of Latin America (1816-25). But the captains could not cooperate and both the leading conquistadors had to leave for exile.
Their followers partitioned the subcontinent and its large viceroyships into different unitary and centralized states. Most of the new rulers were even noisily pious, but they were all unanimous in desiring to restrict the independent political activities of the Church and employ it as the guardian of the new social order. However, things did not work out that way. From the beginning the Church Hierarchy for the most part supported the royalist cause as a natural response to the Patronato real. The overwhelming majority of the hierarchy were peninsulares and identified with the interests of Spain. They also recognized the threat posed by revolution and liberal ideology to the established position of the Church. Bishops whose loyalty to the crown was suspect were either recalled to Spain or effectively deprived of their dioceses. Most dioceses were filled with candidates of unquestioned political loyalty, but there were a few who clearly sympathized with the patriots.
The lower clergy, especially the secular clergy, were predominantly Creole and though divided, like the Creole elite as a whole, were more inclined to support the struggle for self-rule and eventually independence. There was a deep resentment at the virtual monopoly of the higher ecclesiastical posts by peninsulares. Some of the lower clergy played an outstanding role in the struggle for Spanish American independence, and they proclaimed the Virgin of Guadalupe the patron saint of the Spanish American Revolution. By 1815 over 100 priests had been executed in Mexico. At the same time, a substantial number of loyalist priests preached obedience to the Crown. This was particularly the case in the religious orders, where the proportion of peninsulares to Creoles was higher.
Throughout most of the period of the revolution and the wars for Spanish American independence, the papacy maintained its traditional alliance with the Spanish Crown. In his encyclical Etsi longissimo (30 Jan. 1816), Pius VII urged the bishops and clergy of Spanish America to make clear the dreadful consequences of rebellion against legitimate authority. Later the Vatican became more neutral, partly in response to petitions from Spanish America, and partly because of the anti-clerical attitude of the liberal government in Spain after the Revolution of 1820, culminating in the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio in January 1823. However, under Pope Leo XII, a strong defender of legitimate sovereignty, Rome's attitude towards revolutionaries hardened again, and that at a moment when the royalists were about to suffer their final defeat.
The Catholic Church in Spanish America emerged from the struggle for independence considerably weakened as a result of its too close ties with the Crown. The same voices of reason that repudiated absolute monarchy also challenged revealed religion. The architects of independence sought a moral legitimacy for what they were doing, and they found inspiration not in Catholic political thought but in the philosophy of the age of reason, particularly in the utilitarianism of Bentham. As a result the position of the republican State vis-a-vis the Church was not friendly. Under pressure from the Holy Alliance powers, Rome continued adamant in its opposition to the liberal republics, and most dioceses remained vacant for long periods. It was only under Pope Gregory XVI (1831-46) that many vacancies were filled and, beginning with New Granada in 1835, political relations established with the Spanish American republics.
The structure of the Church was much damaged during the post-revolutionary period as a result of the hostile legislation that closed many convents and appropriated their properties and capital. While acknowledging Catholicism as the State religion, the new governments frequently accepted the principle of religious toleration under pressure of Britain. The Inquisition was invariably abolished. The Church for its part, especially during the papacy of Pius IX, increasingly resisted and mobilized in its defence the conservative forces in Spanish American society, including popular forces. As a result, the conflict between the liberal State and the Catholic Church became a central political issue throughout Spanish America in the middle decades of the 19th century, especially in Mexico, where it led to violent confrontation and full-scale civil war in the 1850s and 1860s. The situation was somewhat similar in Colombia.
As was the case elsewhere, the Catholic Church in Central America was a strongly conservative force. In the 1920s, for example, the Nicaraguan bishops paid little attention to the struggle of Augusto Cesar Sandino except to urge his followers to abandon their "sterile struggle" and return to family, work, and religion. In 1942 the archbishop of Managua crowned President Anastasio Somoza's daughter Queen of the Army in a ceremony using a crown from the statue of Our Lady of Candelaria. In 1954 Archbishop Rossell of Guatemala City organized nationwide processions with a popular "black Christ" to stir up anti-communist sentiments, and he cooperated with the US Embassy in the CIA overthrow of the Arbenz government. In general there was the day-to-day reinforcement of a fatalistic world view through popular religiosity, in which the image of God resembles a celestial hacienda owner. As has been frequently stated, the Church was one of the three pillars of society, the other two being the landholding oligarchy and the military.
The situation of the Church in Brazil was somewhat different, as it had neither the institutional strength and political influence, nor the economic wealth and juridical privileges which it had in Mexico or Peru. Under the padroado real, Brazil's one archbishop and six bishops were, like the Spanish American episcopate, appointed by and subordinate to the Crown. The Church hierarchy, however, included many Brazilians and there was much less of a divide－economic, social or ideological－between the hierarchy and the lower clergy. The transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil in 1807 saved Brazil and its Church from the extreme political and ideological conflicts which beset Spanish America. In the political crisis of 1821-2, the majority of the Brazilian clergy supported the Brazilian faction and eventually the independence of Brazil. There were some pro-Portuguese elements within the Church, some of whom were deported. There were also some extreme liberal and republican priests, but most were moderate liberals and played an important role in the politics of the time.
The first legislature (1826-9) included more priests (26 out of 100 deputies) than any other social group. The relatively peaceful political transition in Brazil and the continuance of the Monarchy ensured that the Church emerged relatively undamaged and was not threatened by aggressive liberal anticlericalism in the period after independence. There were no serious clashes between the Church and the State till the Brazilian hierarchy came under the influence of ultramontanism in 1870s. Today, Brazil is making a most creative contribution to the evolution of the Church in Latin America through its very wide existing network of nearly 150,000 BCCs in 252 dioceses. This is possible in Brazil because of its supportive Hierarchy, unlike elsewhere in Latin America as we shall see in the next section.
Neo-Colonialism : Church Patronage
This phase is marked by the hangover of "colonialism" in the Church. Used to command alongside the State, the Church continues to be burdened by colonial baggage, which it finds difficult to shed, namely clericalization and institutionalization. Burdened in this way, the Church now finds itself confronted with a "Church-people" that is emerging in the form of basic communities and other movements. That is why we have adopted the terminology of "Crown Patronage" and "Church "Patronage" to designate the colonial and neo-colonial phases respectively.
There was an early phase of the Church involvement in the social problems of Latin America, as in the Falange movement in Chile, 1935-1941. This phase, usually known as the "ethical phase", was inspired by Catholic Action. That was a period of idealism and personalism, when it was believed that society could be restructured by preaching social justice. This was followed by the stage of Christian Democracy, which emerged with contributions of CEPAL (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America) and the belief that the movement could join party politics and draw up programmes for change. The development decade of the 60s and massive aid programmes by the transnational commercial banks brought in the militarization of Latin America to protect the investments under the overt and covert backing of the United States.
Neither the ethical perspective nor economic analysis and development showed a way out of the impasse. Revolution, and not development, was felt to be the only way out. Most committed Christians were convinced that the teachings of the Church were insufficient for bringing about change. The Church was seen as limited to correcting abuses in the system, but not ready to raise questions about the system itself. There was a large-scale exodus of Christians in search of Marxist solutions. Camillo Torres, the Colombian priest who met his death in 1966, symbolized the dilemma of involved Christians at this point: either stay with the Church and adopt reformist positions or opt for revolution and leave the Church. Many Catholics, including priests and male and female religious, joined the ranks, while many lay people joined the movements clandestinely.
It was against this background in Latin America and the Third World in general that the Church began changing its attitude and distancing itself gradually from the Right. The Encyclical Mater et Magistra [1961] was the first indicator of the change. Then came the Second Vatican Council. The Council did not mark the beginning of a change, but rather the acceptance of drives for change that had been rejected for too long. This new acceptance saw its implementation by the Latin American Church at Medellin (1968). Medellin marked a major change in the Latin American Hierarchy, which had blocked the election of Allende in 1964 and helped elect Eduardo Frei. Despite Pope Paul VI 's rejection of any form of revolution during his visit to Bogota in 1968, the revolutionaries got the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America [CELAM] to declare at Medellin that revolution against tyranny was justified. The tyrant could be represented by "unjust structures".
Medellin defined the situation in Latin America as charged with "institutionalized violence", and made the theory of dependence its own, condemning neo-colonialism and internal colonialism, and calling for liberation. The mainstream liberation theologians who had been preparing the ground for Medellin did not always understand dependency in the same manner. For their protagonist Gutierrez, the class-struggle is an important concept for clarifying the fact that it is not nations that are at war but certain classes within nations. For the oppressive regimes, Medellin became a word that meant subversion. The Rockefeller Report warned President Nixon and his southern allies of the likely "revolutionary character" of the changes demanded by the post-Medellin Church. This warning was backed by action: Tupomaros were silenced by the Armed Forces in Uruguay in 1973. The MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) brought about a coup d'etat in Chile in the same year. Montoneros in Argentina, after breaking away from the main popular body of Peronism, were equally wiped out. Fr. Carlos Mugica was a parallel of Camillo Torres, and was assassinated in Buenos Aires.
Following Medellin, the World Synod of Bishops in 1971 made "liberation" the key word and declared that "action in support of justice" was "part and parcel of the preaching of Gospel". It was understood that denunciation of injustice was consequently political but essentially evangelical. The Bishops of Brazil issued two documents that same year denouncing capitalism as "the greatest evil". Bishop Dom Candido Padin had already been responsible for the open denunciation of the doctrine of National Security in July 1968. The theme was taken up at a meeting of seven Latin American bishops and some US bishops at Riobamba in 1976. The meeting was closed down by the police.
That same year, 1976, the Brazilian bishops took an unusual step: the organization of International Days for a Society Overcoming Domination. The idea was supported by Bishops' Conferences in France, Canada, USA and Asia, as well as by the International Commission of Jurists. Many studies were collected over a period of two years, preparing for a general meeting to be held in Paris in May 1978. The meeting was cancelled due to the interference of some regimes through the Holy See. Despite such opposition the Bishops of Latin America repeated the "preferential option for the poor" at their general meeting at Puebia in January 1979. The Bishops of Nicaragua asked the USA to stop aid to Somoza. To quote from the official communique on religion issued by the National Directorate of the FSLN on October 7, 1980: "Patriotic revolutionary Christians are members of the Sandinist Popular Revolution and have been for many years. The participation of Christians, both lay and religious, in the FSLN and in the National Reconstruction Government (GRN) is a logical consequence of their outstanding identification with the people throughout the struggle against the dictatorship". It continues: "Thus Christians have been an integral part of our revolutionary history to a degree without precedent in any other revolutionary movement in Latin America and possibly throughout the world. This fact opens new and interesting possibilities for Christian participation in revolutions in other lands, not only in the period of the struggle for power but also in the next stage, that of the reconstruction of a new society".
In El Salvador, 48 hours after the coup d'etat against President Romero (Oct. 1980), the Archbishop of San Salvador, Mgr. Oscar Romero, expressed his support for the Revolutionary Junta's government. But when the Junta did not live up to the people's expectations Mgr. Romero spoke strongly against it and against the support of Washington. He was shot dead while saying Mass and after preaching: "We are living in a pre-insurrection period, and the teaching of the Church justifies insurrection when all peaceful means have proved useless".
It is important to note the active follow-up of the changes in the Latin American Church on the part of US agencies. At the Santa Fe Conference held in 1980, conservative American politicians worked out the US policy with regard to Latin America. One of their conclusions was that "in the interest of the U.S., Liberation Theology must be frustrated" (confidential report). After Reagan's election the same group established in Washington the "Center for Religion and Democracy" (1981), financed by the Republican Party and some private rightist organizations. The Center operates under the direction of the Protestant sociologist Peter Berger and the Catholic theologian Michael Novak. The elimination of Liberation Theology is the major item on the Center's agenda. This is to be done by propagating "privatized religiosity", leaving the public domain to the State. The Center seeks to encourage an apolitical religiosity which focuses on the feelings of consolation in human inferiority, delinked from any critical engagement in society. It is believed that the two avowed opponents of Liberation Theology in Latin America, namely the Archbishops Obando y Bravo and Lopez Trujillo were raised to the cardinalate in 1984 and 1985 through the good offices of the Centre.
While elsewhere it is State governments that have been throwing foreign missionaries out, in Nicaragua it is the Church Hierarchy that has been expelling the foreign missionaries who have learned to collaborate with the BCCs and with the laity involved in national reconstruction. The reestablishment of ambassadorial relations between USA and Vatican on 10 January 1984 after a break of 117 years was connected with Regan's policy towards Poland and the Eastern bloc, as well as the expectations of USA regarding the Vatican's control over the Latin American Churches, particularly the revolutionary clergy of Nicaragua.
The "Instruction on Certain Aspects of Liberation Theology", issued by the Vatican in 1984, may also be understood against the same background. Contrary to the convictions of most mainstream liberation theologians, who see the world as one and salvation history as one, and consequently as a single plane for clergy and laity to operate on, the Church magisterium has been insisting that the clergy leave the politicking to the laity, and that activists shun such Marxist concepts as class struggle. That same year one of Brazil's best known liberation theologians, Leonardo Boff, was called to the Vatican for interrogation and later forbidden to make public pronouncements for a year. As recently as 1989, Cardinal Arns of Sao Paulo was admonished by the Vatican for writing a letter to Fidel Castro, asserting that the Cuban revolution displayed "signs of the kingdom of God", and Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga, who visited Nicaragua to strengthen the basic communities, was told by the Vatican not to go there again. Both these leaders of the Brazilian Church are held in the highest esteem and veneration by the masses of the Brazilian people.
A team of Asian Bishops that visited Nicaragua and spent 10 days moving freely and meeting anyone they wanted to meet, submitted a report that is very critical of the Hierarchy of Nicaragua as unwilling to compromise and to join hands with the Sandinista government in the face of a ruthless American trade embargo and the "Contra" war. The team of Asian bishops has words of great appreciation for the achievements of the Sandinistas in their attempts at real democratization.
All of this is in keeping with the philosophy of the Trilateral Committee, which was established at the beginning of the 70s under the leadership of Zbigniew Brezezinski. Brezezinski was critical of Kissinger's policies (1969-76): shuttle-diplomacy and tight-rope walking. He favoured a compact global policy, which implied that the democratic system was no longer capable of governing and that the system was too vulnerable to undesirable changes. The Trilateral proposed that the foreign policy makers of imperialism should be "architects", not "tight-rope walkers", and that they should develop a solid edifice. This would require trans-national capitalism to adopt a new face, with a minimum of democratic freedom in politics and absolute freedom in economy. Detente would be one of the pillars of the Trilateral policy for the superpowers and the entire globe. That would prevent any further exodus into the socialist world. In practice any tendencies in this direction were to be discouraged by a powerful military force (rapid deployment). But all this is to be achieved with smiles. Detente would also include ideological pluralism.
This explains the measured and calculated opening towards Eurocommunism, which was to be used to encourage dissidence in the socialist bloc. The results of the media manipulation are clear from the developments in Eastern Europe. After the victory on technological grounds, the Trilateral decided to move on to ideological grounds. The Carter rhetoric of human rights (with control or displacement of military abuses where necessary) in the capitalist sphere of influence was meant to balance the Western embarrassment with the demands for freedom for dissenters in the Socialist bloc.
Against this background, the "upsurge of democracy" in Latin America and elsewhere is a face-saving device and a longterm illusion! Latin America is a part of the world where the Trilateral has nothing to fear, and as such can safely put up "democracy shows". Gorbachev may have learned from the Trilateral to work out a socialism with a human face but that has yet to become a fitting challenge to Trilateral's capitalism with a human face. There is no change of goals and allies in either camp, but only a change of methods. When military force does not provide the expected "security" for the imperialist logic of domination and accumulation of benefits, it is considered advisable to put on a civilian uniform or even to set up a genuinely cooperative civilian rule. The Trilateral project does not envisage justice for the masses, but only a better balance for the upper landed and commercial-industrial interests.
The new "democratization" and promotion of sub-nationalities can be explained as yet another stage in the development of world capitalism. Following the breaking down of the colonial barriers to its capital penetration and the creation of "independent" nations, the new requirement seems to be a further breaking up of the nations into "sub-nations", which would be more vulnerable and therefore more dependent on world capital for their survival.
Concluding Remarks
The colonial Church in the Third world (the image and likeness of the metropolitan Church) has built a solid material basis for itself by having landed property and buildings and other sources of regular income. The price to pay for this is dependence on the dominant classes, whose help is indispensable for the maintenance of and augmentation of the Church's patrimony. Of course the poor were never neglected: they had the sacraments, processions and alms. These were meant to console and confirm them in their natural fatalism. Compared with this situation, the BCCs foster critical relationships and do not allow themselves to be used for maintaining the stability and progress of some classes and of the government that ensures this. It is up to the official Church to support the poor prophetically, abandoning its strong position and temporal power.
It is in the history of Hong Kong that one will have to seek the elements for a creative response in view of its future. The social, political, economic and ecclesiastical structures that have taken root in Hong Kong will need to be carefully evaluated for their constructive or deviating contribution to the majority of the people of Hong Kong. It will be necessary to assess deviation in terms of values that are not in keeping with the "Kingdom of God" and are becoming a block to responding prophetically to the call of the God of history. It may be necessary to do much genuine soul-searching to see how much of the concern for "democracy" is truly a concern for justice for the marginalized or only a concern for safeguarding the benefits reaped by the institutional Church and the well-to-do Christians of Hong Kong. It may also be necessary to distinguish "Church and State" from "religion and politics". When Church and State cannot count on each other for mutual support, when ideologies and public legitimations change, then it is only a new understanding of the tasks of religious faith, with new structures of participation and community building in the Church, that will enable the Christians of Hong Kong to outlive any particular historical conjunction and provide a new creative basis for expressing religious commitment in daily life.
Unwillingness to undertake a serious response to the above points could vitiate any plans to embark on adapting traditional Church structures, turning them into a mere political strategy of the middle class (presuming that the upper class has plans for, and access to, better pastures elsewhere). Any ideas of strategy could end up with frustration faced with intra-Church confusion and political anxieties that may become the lot of Hong Kong Christians in the wake of its integration into the People's Republic of China. The one and only predominant desire ought to be to see in the new developments an historic opportunity to carry the faith and its liberating message into the Mainland in the midst of any trials that may be awaiting.