Breaking Faith
Belli, Humberto
BOOK REVIEWS : BREAKING FAITH: THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON FREEDOM AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN NICARAGUA Humberto Belli/Crossway Books/$8.95 Joan Frawley During the early 1960s,...
...While he was still a student he was called "the most dangerous undergraduate Yale has seen in years...
...The tactical uses of the priests in government surfaced within months of the July 1979 triumph...
...And it trusts the reader to share his wide-angled interest...
...The increasing human rights abuses did not strain their faith in the revolution, and unlike the government, they could denounce Obando without provoking a public outcry...
...Epstein, an eminent legal scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, maintains that governments that go beyond the limits he examines are properly "unconstitutional...
...The decision to ignore the hierarchy was significant...
...Even many church progressives by the early seventies had come to accept the necessity of a "strategic alliance" between Christians and Marxists—a tactic also urged by Castro since the early seventies when local revolutionaries failed to attract popular sup-port...
...Carter is the President of the United States, not the chairman of a Committee to Free the Hostages...
...Acknowledging Duarte's progress toward democracy, they have even backed limited U.S...
...Buckley is often said to have "mellowed" (sometimes to the disappointment of old fans who yearn for red meat), and it's true enough...
...Now this is meditation, not polemics...
...From the very moment that they work for a partisan group, they are promoting division in the community of the faithful...
...In a profound break with the past, the radicals argued that Catholic faith must be validated by praxis, a concrete activity, rather than doctrine, and that such activity must be based on commitment to the poor...
...But he's the same man...
...Sandinista atheists were not becoming believers...
...Not only had the local church failed to confront an unjust status quo, according to this view, but its emphasis on personal salvation had nurtured false hopes and distracted the impoverished from challenging their oppressors...
...The late Joseph Kraft used to be hailed as the successor to Walter Lippmann...
...They had said they would Christianize Marxism...
...But in the strict sense, politics is the conquest of power, which implies working for partisan political power...
...And in-imitable...
...But most worshipers wanted a respite from Molina's revolutionary exhortations...
...By the mid-seventies, the Latin American guerrilla became the most Christ-like figure of all...
...There was a time when groups felt it was possible to use Marxist analysis without falling into Marxist ideology," San Salvador's Auxiliary Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez told me...
...Still the myth continues, arising out of frustration with regional corruption and inefficiency, or perhaps out of some suicidal impulse within the church, a reflection of the loss of faith...
...Plenty of documentation and analysis is available on their drift toward totalitarianism...
...He reflects that "the Soviet Union must feel an enormous contempt for Americans who are playing horse to its Lady Godiva...
...Jackson begins: "Integral—but absolutely integral—to the success of the Reverend Jesse Jackson is his idiom...
...The very act of imitating a real original shows you to be alien to the model you admire...
...In no way did I experience any encouragement from them to consider the validity of Christian views...
...We may presume total mastery of the genre...
...Accr.no...
...Borge and pale-faced European radicals frequented Father Molina's raucous Sunday evening "campesino mass...
...The new theologians maintained that the experience of the oppressed would serve as a starting point for a bottom-up reconstruction of an indigenous church...
...Why is it that Buckley has never won a Pulitzer...
...A fine, dry lead, tangy with mocking allusion to his own notorious anti-Communism...
...Buckley, for all his trademarks of conviction and manner, would surprise if he didn't surprise...
...Under such assumptions the Sandinista revolution was greeted with a good deal more optimism than could otherwise be expected in the wake of the boat people, the Mariel flotilla, and other embarrassing events in the recent history of liberated countries...
...Throughout Central, South, and North America, prominent church leaders and thinkers continue to serve as apologists for a government that ultimately wants to put them out of business, or retain them only as high priests for party rituals...
...He seldom surprised: he was natural Pulitzer material...
...The devaluation of doctrinal faith permitted other government officials to play with the ideological power of religion...
...Even some of Buckley's fans have been heard to grumble of late that he tends to dash off his columns carelessly nowadays, after producing them at the rate of three a week for twenty-five years...
...The difference is that the presence of mind that used to appear in slashing debate now furnishes him with a deeper observation: the contrast between King and Jackson...
...unsettling, unassimilable...
...He might marvel at Buckley's one-liners...
...We see now that this is impossible...
...Today, a Reviewing a new collection of William Buckley's columns is a little like reviewing a new novel by P. G. Wodehouse, or a new mystery by Agatha Christie...
...The government gave the denouncements wide exposure in the state-controlled media and nurtured the growth of church centers advocating liberation theology...
...Yet the inter-church rivalry confused many Catholics, especially when they heard two dramatically different evaluations of the government's performance...
...DATE SIGNATURE NAME(Prl•t) A DDRESS , This brilliant book is vastly more comprehensive than its title indicates...
...If he hadn't already accomplished all he set out to do, it would be easier to appreciate him properly...
...imperialism was the key stumbling block to progress, and, moreover, that Latin American poverty was a specific failure of the church...
...The reader still wants to know, of the day's salient event, How will Buckley react to this...
...Oh yes: that vocabulary...
...now the Latin American campesino became the depository of a new politicized theology...
...How can you not read on...
...Radicals, however, sought to rebuild the very basis of church authority and teaching...
...But Molina did not attract the poor of the neighborhood...
...But more often what shows is his remarkable energy, his readiness to be provoked and to provoke back...
...A little touch, but full of awareness of the perils of self-repetition, an awareness that becomes an effortless shared joke with the reader...
...I am not an expert in theology," Tomas Borge, minister of the interior, humbly told a conference of Central and South American religious organizations in 1982...
...Johnny Carson marvels at Buckley's vocabulary...
...It displays the nonpareil...
...Significantly, Marx's critique of religion provoked the changes sought by the liberation theologians...
...the only question in the present case is whether the master is up to snuff...
...It's a big one, all right, but what makes it the instrument it is is not the long words but the unfailing color...
...The next Buckley column begins: "On the whole, I favor frequent rather than in-frequent changes of tenure by Soviet leaders...
...Breaking Faith is a response to the siren call of liberation theologians who insist that Christians can safely use Marxist analysis as a "scientific" method without converting to its inner logic...
...So why is he still interesting...
...They [the bishops and other independent Catholics] do not want nor do they believe in the Gospel, for the same reason that they do not want the revolution...
...His "spontaneous" decision to release dozens of prison inmates beforean awe-struck foreign delegation became a regular highlight of revolutionary tours...
...There was no reciprocal process of conversion...
...BOOK REVIEWS : BREAKING FAITH: THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON FREEDOM AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN NICARAGUA Humberto Belli/Crossway Books/$8.95 Joan Frawley During the early 1960s, the failure of the Alliance for Progress to generate social change in Latin America prompted activists and theologians to undertake a critical reassessment of American power and Catholicism's role in that deeply religious part of the world...
...Meanwhile, they still criticize the justice system and compile reports on abuses—even those committed against their critics...
...Catholic Radio was censored...
...Traditionally, Catholic doctrine was derived from revealed dogma, the works of philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas, and papal encyclicals...
...Their endorsements prompted the Nicaraguan bishops to ask the Brazilian hierarchy to "avoid interference which can bring most serious consequences against the already suffering church in Nicaragua...
...But we need fear no diminution in his power of sarcasm...
...The government's manipulation of religion did not go unnoticed by the Nicaraguan hierarchy, particularly Managua's Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo...
...Salvadoran clergy and laymen who did pastoral work with the poor wee' brutally persecuted...
...10012 (212) 925.8992 STATE/ZIP _ 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1986 supported the fast of Father Miguel D'Escoto, the Nicaraguan foreign minister, who was protesting U.S...
...The new emphasis on praxis rather than doctrine allowed frustrated reformers to link the two contradictory notions of human nature and its perfectibility...
...It was in this milieu that the Sandinistas seized power...
...Accordingly, the bishops were portrayed as aligning themselves with the elite while the pro-government or "popular church" represented the interests of the poor...
...aid to the contras...
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...most of its adherents support the FMLN...
...The Iranian hostage crisis yields the tart reminder that "Mr...
...Belli, then a young FSLN member, recalls the party's tolerant approach to the revolutionary Christians whose wealth and connections provided the guerrillas with badly needed funds, transportation, and training locations: I was pleased to see these Christians coming closer to Marx and revolution...
...Calming their fears, Molina told them (according to Belli) that "only through a radical change of the present order could the poor be rescued from bondage...
...Theologians who continued to justify official repression exposed the central conceit of making Christian faith "real" through alignment with a Marxist revolution...
...In November, the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Department of Propaganda and Political Education produced a Christmas poster celebrating the birth of the "new man," the product of a new socialist society...
...In Nicaragua, Tomas Borge, one of the FSLN founders and a committed Marxist, met with Padre Ernesto Cardenal (now Sandinista minister of culture) in 1969, and in 1971 with Father Uriel Molina, an important church leader who had begun to experiment with liberation theology...
...At that point, the credibility of the Frente's religious sup-porters began to vanish...
...It no longer mattered whether an activist called himself an atheist or a believer...
...It has now been shut down...
...Yet the Salvadoran hierarchy's willingness to assess fairly the gains made in their country since 1980 shows the importance of a transcendent, non-partisan church...
...The 1983 confrontation between Pope John Paul II and the Sandinista comandantes, during the papal mass in Managua, resolved the dilemma for most Nicaraguans...
...When the new militants completed their conversions, the FSLN ordered them to maintain their ties with Christian groups and church organizations, a strategy that also served the party's interests after the revolution, when Nicaraguans publicly identified as Christians became government THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1986 31 ministers and...
...military aid, conditional on human rights improvements...
...Sometimes his weariness shows...
...And the fact that they were moving in the direction of our philosophy was one more piece of evidence of the soundness of our philosophy...
...they had said they could use Marxist analysis without succumbing to its internal logic...
...Many reached the conclusion that U.S...
...They did...
...He finds that power in Jackson's ability to "persuade the black community that just as he, Jackson, is primarily a black man, they are primarily black men and women, and that therefore their ethnic bond is the chain that binds them together above all other kinships, attenuated, that they share with their neighbors...
...Yuri Andropov dies...
...He is one of the reasons why we are where we are...
...small popular church still exists in El Salvador...
...they prefer their goods, privileges, and class advantages, which they defend and sanctify," said Father Teofilo Cabestrero, a Spanish theologian at one church center...
...Leonardo Boff, the Franciscan friar called to the Vatican to defend his theological positions, recently described Obando as a "scandal" to the church...
...The seeds of this offensive were planted in cornunidades de bases, basic Christian communities that used the Gospel message to criticize the status quo and pursued small development projects...
...Nor is Buckley just trying to,be "nice' about a man who sets most conservatives' teeth on edge: He is analytically satisfying his own curiosity about the real power of Jackson's appeal...
...LAISSEZ FAIRE BOOKS, Dept...
...of the regime's efforts to exploit religious faith for its own totalitarian purposes...
...if Richard A. Epstein is right, then the New Deal is unconstitutional...
...A piece on Jesse...
...In a wide sense, politics is the search for the common good," Obando told me...
...Takings is actually a far-ranging work of political theory and legal philosophy that develops a justification for limited government...
...We take his influence for granted...
...In contrast, I often think of one American missionary in Managua known to pass lists of suspected counterrevolutionaries to stat- -ecurity...
...Nevertheless, church problems in Nicaragua have led some Catholic leaders to reevaluate liberation theology...
...This intended compliment pro-claims Kraft's limitation: he was merely an able practitioner of a familiar craft...
...While the FMLN's church supporters evince the blind faith that motivates Nicaraguan true believers, the Salvadoran bishops understand that local politics are not static...
...These attacks followed from a key principle of liberation theology: The church could not remain "neutral" in the face of class struggle...
...My check or money order is enclosed for ^ Please bill my ^ Visa ^ Master Card...
...This is why I believe bishops and priests should not participate...
...Despite the government's heavy-handed support, the popular church attracted only a minority of Nicaraguans...
...Disturbed by the ideological content of the literacy campaign materials, the FSLN's efforts to squeeze out democrats in the government, and attacks on Miskito Indians, Obando wanted the priests in government to resign rather than extend legitimacy to Sandinista repression...
...This year, some of the Brazilian bishops publicly ORDER TOLL-FREE Charge your Visa or MasterCard 1.800.2384200 ENT 500 • Continental US • 24 hours a day • 7 days a week r NM MI Ell =I ME 11•11 MN IIIII 1111•1 1•1111 I 1 I MONEY ANT BAEECK GUAR if for any reason you are dissatisfied with any book, just return it within 30 days for a refund . 16 ----..1.111.1111I MENENM...
...That is true...
...When Belli later inquired whether the Nicaraguanbishops had been consulted about the poster, he was told that Father Edgar Parrales, the vice minister of social welfare, had agreed to the printing...
...Case in point: "James Reston struggles valiantly in his column and says perhaps they shot down the Korean airliner because they were invaded by Napoleon...
...The government canceled Obando's televised Sun-day mass, and made it difficult for him to obtain outside funds to support his projects...
...Obando's emergence as a potent voice of dissent suggested to the government another tactical use for the revolutionary Christians...
...AAA, 532 Broadway, N.Y...
...directors of FSLN organizations...
...Hehas long since made good on the threat perceived by the nameless liberal at Yale in the late forties...
...And having done so (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are among those he has inspired), he still, at age 60, hasn't used himself up...
...I remember the embarrassment and shock of Catholics there when Ernesto Cardenal joined the nine comandantes on the stage and shouted revolutionary slogans after'the Pope left in disgust...
...A nice aphorism, but the piece is no mere put-down of Jackson's flamboyance and "exuberant tribal-ism...
...Theologians operating out of pro-government church centers and priests like Father Molina—described in party dailies as the "archbishop of the poor"--performed their assignment with fervor...
...Central America's struggling revolutionary movements lost no time exploiting these developments...
...Progressives thought "a preferential option for the poor"--the advancement of social justice combined with doctrinal orthodoxy-was enough...
...It is the reaction of a whole personality to a large phenomenon, not that of the advocate in search of victory...
...They are just trying to divert more water to their mills," one observer told Belli...
...Nevertheless, his goodness, honesty, and love did not appear to inhibit his performance as state security chief, directing officially sanctioned intimidation, torture, and executions...
...Therefore, commitment to the revolution was not alien to Christianity but integral to it...
...But if to be a Christian is to be good, if to be a Christian is to be honest, if to be a Christian is to profoundly respect others, if to be a Christian is to fill the soul and the heart with love toward others, I am a Christian...
...The only way to imitate a Buckley is to be equally brilliant in a totally different vein...
...As a former Sandinista militant, Humberto Belli is a reliable chronicler Joan Frawley reports on Latin America for the National Catholic Register...
...As he unravels the conceits of church radicals, Belli also reflects on the tactical uses to which a politicized faith, robbed of doctrinal discipline and tied to the fortunes of nine ex-guerrillas, can be put...
...EXP...
...It's a strange vocation for a nun, but I'm sure her intentions are good...
...they were wrong...
...The assassinated Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero argued that officially sanctioned repression justified armed insurrection...
...Preference for and solidarity with the poor in Nicaragua today means to work under the guidance of the Sandinista Front," said pro-government Christians in a 1980 statement...
...The church was the con-science of the country and it had apparently succumbed to schizophrenia...
...Should the politically unsophisticated interpret the Sandinistas as saviors or tyrants...
...A Buckley column is as likely to say "wow" as "manumission...
...A "neutral" church, in this sense, is good for human rights and for Christian solidarity...
...UPS ($3.00 for foreign orders...
...The revolutionary Christians continued in their subservience to the Frente when it took control of the country and began to expropriate religious terms and symbols for the service of the party, with the purpose of secularizing Catholic faith...
...Seeking an alliance between the Sandinista Frente and the revolutionary Christians, Borge found a receptive audience in Father Molina, who began a cornunidade de base in his impoverished Managua parish...
...Right Reason, edited by Richard Brookhiser, culls his best columns and articles over the past seven years, a few dozen of the thousand or so he has written since his last collection, A Hymnal...
...Send me your catalog of 623 books on liberty...
...Father Molina's lessons resulted in a one-way process of conversion from Christianity to atheistic Marxism...
...To discredit Obando as a religious leader and, by extension, as a political force, they described him as a rigid traditionalist, tied to the old Somoza system and unwilling to compete with a popular revolution that threatened his authority and power...
...In many respects, pre-1981 church-state and inter-church conflicts in El Salvador bear similarities to the problems in Nicaragua...
...It was not we Marxists who had the identity crisis...
...Mean-while, the hierarchy encountered problems with publicizing its own views of the revolution and evangelizing its flock...
...He illuminates the point by contrast with "Martin Luther King's dream, which was that white and black Americans would in due course mix as though differences in the color of their skins were irrelevant...
...The minister refined his role as a secularized Good Samaritan to a high art...
...A few paragraphs later: "Ratiocination is subversive in revival meetings...
...The Christians' association with the Frente aided its efforts to present a palatable front to the Nicaraguan people...
...Marx described religion as both the embodiment of an oppressive system and its justification...
...instead, he drew the guilt-ridden off-spring of wealthy Nicaraguan families who sought to resolve the .apparent contradictions between their Christian faith and the FSLN's revolutionary ideology...
...Whoever said that had a point: it was an accurate prophecy that Buckley would go on to make a difference in this world...
...We have much less on what supposedly made their revolution so special: the vaunted role of Christians in the insurgency and in the establishment of a new Nicaraguan society...
...I doubt that either word ever appeared in a Kraft column...
...Thus if Catholicism were to en-courage economic development and social justice, the church itself would have to change., The decisive question was, how much...
...Buckley has RIGHT REASON William F. Buckley, Jr., edited by Richard Brookhiser/Doubleday/$19.95 Joseph Sobran THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1986 33...
...Because each of his columns is an intimation of an abundant and resourceful personality...
...Without it his heroic up-from-slavery posture simply evaporates...
...Marx had identified the proletariat as the essence of revolutionary consciousness...
...Liberation theologians claimed that Christians would curb the Marxist tendency to repression...
...what mattered was whether he served the interests of thepoor...
...The prelate had stubbornly resisted Somoza's efforts to coopt him, and he did not hesitate to confront the new rulers...
...What is it to be a Christian...
...the newly found option for the poor would resolve the historical antagonism between religion and Marxism...
...I suppose because he is so Joseph Sobran is a senior editor of National Review and a nationally syndicated columnist...
Vol. 19 • March 1986 • No. 3
