ANOTHER ROUND
Cort, John C.
CHRISTIAN-MARXIST DIALOGUE ANOTHER B O UND It might have worked out better if William Luther White, speaking in a workshop toward the end of the conference, had made his point at one of the...
...Perlo wasn't admitting anything...
...Few could disagree with his indictment of American ,capitalism...
...Marx was "a dyspeptic personality" who shared some responsibility for "the nasty, intolerant, polemical tradition of socialism" which could clearly use more of the Christian virtue of charity...
...and, finally, 3) the introduction of selected issues where disagreement or misunderstanding persist...
...He was willing to admit that Marx made plenty of mistakes in prophecy and analysis and that many of his current disciples, most notably in Russia, were way off the track in the direction of state capitalism ("any fool can nationalize...
...CHRISTIAN-MARXIST DIALOGUE ANOTHER B O UND It might have worked out better if William Luther White, speaking in a workshop toward the end of the conference, had made his point at one of the general sessions at the beginning...
...Harrington said that "religion should confine itself to problems beyond the capacity of Marxism, such as evil and death...
...Space limitations prevent proper attention to the two black speakers, Marxist Michelle Russell and Christian Shelby Books, who agreed on the white drift toward black genocide, or an excellent Christian economist named...
...Commonweal: 455...
...Wouldn't it be interesting if Niebuhr, so recently criticized for contributing to the Cold War outlook, could really bring us together...
...Harrington's act--compounded of wit, eloquence, sweet reason, and missionary fervor--is a very tough act to follow and Charles West, a Presbyterian theologian from Princeton, was, in addition, the victim of a scheduling error which had him giving a 45-minnte reply to Harrington's 45-minute statement without so much as a'chance for the audience to stretch...
...Marxism could not solve, the proJ~lems of evil, death or unhappiness in love, but it was still "the most emancipatory ideology the world has ever known" and "Marx's method, values, and dedication to freedom represent the highest point of human thought...
...A professor from Villanova, Fred Carrier, had just asked, "What other class analysis is there but Marx's...
...2) an admission of some problems or weaknesses in one's own tradition...
...At Rosemont in 1978 Michael Harrington was easily...
...Hruby's dirty laundry list was simply "the whole pot of Czarist 6migr6 counterrevolutionary garbage designed to promote antiSovietism and militarism...
...No Roger 'Garaudys were visible among us...
...He then ticked off Solzhenitsyin, Sakharov, Yuri Orlov, the Stalin trials, strictures on Jews and Christians, Prague in '68, etc., etc...
...This being the first sizable conference of dialogue between, or among, American Christians and American Marxists, a certain gaucherie was understandable...
...Then James Will from Garrett Seminary in Illinois, without explicitly answering the question, pointed out that several thousand years before Marx the Hebrew prophets had provided us with a very sharp class analysis, which Christ and the Fathers of the Church had further developed...
...Democratic centralism," especially as practiced in Castro's Cuba, seemed to enjoy considerable favor in this workshop...
...and great grace was in them all...
...but that was limited to 56 participants and the Marxists were mostly from East and West Europe (Commonweal 3/4/77...
...This fondness for Marxist superlatives and religious confinement led a later speaker to remark, with a touch of resentment, "Harrington tells us Chdstans, 'You take care of death and we'll take care of life'," but it wasn't quite that bad...
...John Murphy from Catholic University, or 40 other workshop speakers, or a delightful discussion this writer had with some Protestant theologians in the dormitory lounge late Saturday night...
...As female saints looked down from the stained-glass windows, he read and commented movingly on the passage from "the Acts of the Apostles, "Now the multitude of the believers were of one heart and one soul, and not one of them said that anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common...
...They had previously cooperated with several European organizations in putting together a Christian-Marxist symposium, also at Rosemont in January, 1977...
...Fortunately, most of the conference, including other exchanges with Victor Perlo, at least on the human as opposed to ideological level, took place on a somewhat higher, more rational plane, and Paul Mojzes and Christians Associated for Relationships with Eastern Europe (CAREE) deserve a round of applause for organizing this gathering...
...He was "the greatest thinker the world has ever known...
...JOHN C. CORT (lohn C. Cort is editor o] Religious Socialism, quarterly newsletter of the Religion and Socialism Committee ol DSOC...
...A man in the audience named Blahoslav Hruby, who edits a newsletter called Religion in CommunistDominated Areas, responded to this chauvinism by rising, and saying, "It is obvious, Mr...
...In Detroit in 1975 there was a larger Theology in the Americas conference, but this was mainly Latin American liberation theologians talking with North American Christians...
...the most persuasive Marxist and if any group came out of the conference with plus points it was his Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC...
...The essay in dialogue often follows some such outline as this: 1) an expression of appreciation for some valid criticism or achievement of the other position...
...When even the Marxists began quoting him, I recalled my favorite, "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible and his capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary...
...Most emancipatory ideology the world has ever known" indeed...
...And with great power the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord...
...That would have been a dialogue to remember...
...He said, "The pattern for dialogue since 1963 has resembled the style of diplomacy more than the style of politics...
...On the last day the imbalance toward Marx was further corrected by a brilliant address from Max Stackhouse of Andover,Newton Theological School, responding to the engaging Dick Roberts, a Trotskyist from the Socialist Workers Party...
...Victor Perlo, for example, speaking for the Communist Party, showed an unusual fondness for the multiple thousand: "American violations of human rights are a thousand times worse than those of the USSR . . . . As Lenin said, the USSR is a thousand times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy . . . . The USSR comes a thousand times closer to the UN's Human Rights Convention than any bourgeois democracy...
...Perhaps some of us, more trained in politics than diplomacy, looked upon the recent (May 26-28) Christian-Marxist dialogue conference at Rosemont College in Philadelphia as more of an opportunity to score points than either to express appreciation or admit weaknesses...
...Certainly far more of those present were Christians who had been converted to some variation of Marxism than Marxists who had been converted to some form of Christianity...
...Howe would have been surprised to see how many serious people, including Christian socialists, were still believing what he said they could no longer believe...
...Stackhouse, also a member of DSOC, spoke for the Christians with such grace and power that I couldn't help wishing he had been matched up with Harrington...
...We could have used some of those 1350 Communists who recently signed a manifesto demanding an end to democratic centralism in the French Party...
...Nor was there anyone among them in want...
...This writer, in one of the workshops, tried to start a new variation of the dialogue, namely, between Christian socialists who take seriously the words of Irving Howe ("The notion that democracy, even in its most corrupted forms, is anything but a precious human conquest, that it's just a facade for the rule of the oppressors: this serious people can no longer believe") and, on the other hand, Christian Marxists who emerge from Latin American revolutionary experiences that (at least to some, including myself) have left them, perhaps understandably, less than clearly devoted to democracy and democratic process...
...Pedo, that you haven't lived in Russia or seen the inside of its jails...
...West was more effective at the ecumenical service in the Rosemont chapel on Sunday morning...
...Unfortunately, Harrington had long since departed...
...About .the middle of a workshop on Saturday evening I got the feeling that Marx was doing better than Christ...
...For . . . dis21 July 1978:454 tribution was made to each, according as anyone had need...
...One of the more intriguing and encouraging signs was the frequent quoting of Reinhold Niebuhr...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 14
