THE STAKES AT CELAIII III

...Ignoring the prominent Latin Americans who had prepared CELAM II and subsequently carried the theology of liberation to all parts of the world, they concentrated on conservative Europeans, such as Paul Dognin, a consultor to the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity, and Georges Cottier, a consultor to the Secretariat for Non-Believers...

...Capitalintensive production techniques mean less work and more hunger in the cities...

...To keep wages low and maintain this order without justice has foreed a massive expansion of structures of oppression: new techniques of control ranging from brainwashing in the controlled mass media through psychological torture to sophisticated weapons and computerized surveillance...

...and like almost all Italian bishops he strongly supports the Christian Democrats...

...To return to the old ways, cosmetically modernized, would be supportive of the status quo Commonweal: 495 economically and politically, favoring the objective interests of the oligarchs and the middle sectors dependent on them...

...Liberation is not a gift from others...

...In addition, he spent 20 years as a Vatican diplomat in 6 Latin American countries...

...All such societies today are based on one of two models: totalitarian collectivism or economic capitalism, both secularitsic and atheist in' their philosophical underpinnings...

...CELAM II made a positive option in favor of the poor, the voiceless, the oppressed...

...In the decade since Medellin, the distortion of the economy of every country but Cuba has escalated...

...Christianity and Marxism...

...Even more remarkable is the way it proposes to achieve this new Christendom...

...Not only in Latin America but in all parts of the world anguished cries of protest are growing in number and stridency...

...More concretely, it is easy to define what will happen if the fox and the chickens have equality of opportunity in the chicken coop...

...The slave must liberate himself...

...1 issue of Cross Currents...

...They are solidly reactionary in church matters, the only Latin American hierarchy to openly reject the Medellin call to liberation...

...The orchestra leader is Belgian Jesuit Roger Vekemans, who lied Chile in 1970 when he failed to prevent the election of Allende, and found a congenial home in Bogot~i to continue his vendetta against the theologians of liberation...

...As with the Council Fathers, however, the concept of basic change was interpreted differently by some on their return home...

...After a rambling and often self-contradictory overview of religion in Latin America today, throwing in references to all kinds of moods and movements to ensure completeness, it opts firmly for what it variously describes as a new Christian culture, a new Christian civilization, a new society, a new order...

...Yet others buckled under the pressures of the national oligarchies and their international overlords who recognized that the church envisaged by Medellin was a greater threat than the previous whipping boy, the Communist conspiracy...

...Instead of following Medellin in its cliallenge to internal and external neocolonialism, it looks to "a new civilization of love animated by the church" to achieve a unity of goals and motivations among all Latin Americans, the exploiters and the exploited, that will resolve the social, economic and political problems...

...4 August 1978:498...

...Vatican-watcher Peter Hebblethwaite, former editor of The Month (London), recently analyzed the power structure...

...Now as then also, the innovators are on the outside, have little financial support, so they must stress the issues...

...What is presented as "a third way" is in reality a defense of the status quo repudiated by Medellin, this in spite of the fact that the gap between rich and poor in Latin America has grown significantly since Medellin, and the objective misery of the poor has intensified in almost all countries...

...Its contents and its omissions alike indicate the hands of the already mentioned European theologians...

...What is now important is the steadily growing "diaspora" church, the church of the grassroots communities...

...THE STAKES AT CELArd ill GARY MacEOIN Competing ecclesiologies in Latin America Latin America is currently reenacting the scenario developed at the level of the universal church during the years of preparation for Vatican Council !I...

...He has been publicly identified at various times as a conduit for CIA money, and he also has major financial support from Bishop Franz Hengsbach as head of Adveniat, German church aid agency...

...L6pez Trujillo shares this attitude fully...

...It identified the oppression as institutionalized violence, the neocolonialism of the national oligarchies, and the external neocolonialism of "the international monopolies and the international imperialism of money...

...In Latin America, the issue has immediate political implications...

...Or should it continue on the new lines already significantly developed in places (particularly Brazil): horizontal structures developed by grassroots groups with a stress on lay ministries and a concern for ethical practices, especially in the area of politics, and understanding themselves as a community rather than a society, a network of communications, and a sign of universal salvation...

...His office gives him immense power over all bishops...

...The church has already lost its monopoly of influence not only in the ideological but even in the religious sphere...

...The conditioning of many of the bishops encourages them to opt for the "easy" solution offered by the document...

...marketmhas transferred the best land to the transnationaI corporations, leaving less and poorer land for beans, corn and rice...

...A typical curialist, he puts the interests of the church as he sees them before those of people...

...It may well be that they will find it impossible to reach a consensus on anything like the PD...

...Fernando Danel Janet Of Mexico, J.B...

...The basic criticism is that this purely idealist approach runs counter to all historical experience...

...Others who started serious implementation had second thoughts when they found priests and people wanted to run faster and farther than they judged prudent...

...The level of theological ability on their side is much higher than on the other...

...This, it urges, requires the I Christian religiosity of the people to be safeguarded during the transition so that the new society will be defined by its Christian religion...

...Hebblethwaite surmises that Baggio may dominate the troika...

...They do have two important factors in their favor...

...The dream of a neo-Christendom is naive...

...Clodovis Boff of Brazil approves of all efforts to get from the meeting something better than the PD, but he introduces another consideration...

...Starting more than two years ago, and now building up to a crescendo, supporters of each of two mutually incompatible ecclesiologies are engaged in a struggle for the minds of the bishops, with control of the church in Latin America envisioned as the prize...

...28, No...

...It is for the church to find a third way...

...Dedicated to the thesis that Christianity and Marxism are totally irreconcilable, these books call all Latin Americans to join the struggle against atheistic Communism...

...Many thought that CELAM II (Medellin, Colombia, 1968) had resolved the eonflict, as many thought in 1965 that Vatican II has resolved the same problem at the level of the universal church...

...Expansion of luxury crops (strawberries), nonfood crops (orchids), and beef--all for the U.S...

...and the extraordinary network of "grass-roots" communities in most countries of the hemisphere gives them a power base that may prove decisive in their favor, even if CELAM III can be manipulated to declare that the era of change has ended...

...Those who would want CELAM Ill to start from and go beyond Medellin are opting for one of three overlapping approaches...

...Colombia's bishops are strongly supportive of the country's corrupt oligarchy...

...Lib~nio of Brazil, and others in an upcoming Vol...

...For them, the only viable solution is a neo-Christendom in which the moral and material support of the state will guarantee a society and culture expressing the Catholic instincts they see as deeply rooted in all Latin Americans...

...The Vekemans Center in Bogotfi sent to all Latin American bishops complimentary copies of Dognin's Introduction to Karl Marx and Cottier's Hopes in Conflict...

...The 214-page Preliminary Document (PD) the official working paper of the secretariat distributed some months ago to the bishops, was prepared in strict secrecy, without input from any of the major Latin American theologians...

...Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, has been named a co-president (with Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider of Brazil and Archbishop Corripio Ahumada who was recently promoted from Puebla to Mexico City...

...So no matter what the bishops may decide at Puebla, the march of events will not be significantly affected...

...In addition, if by a miracle the approach worked, all it would mean for the poor and powerless would be a change of masters, paternalistic masters perhaps but still masters...

...While sedulously avoiding the term, it urges a rico-Christendom...

...To change would benefit economically and politically the 80 percent of Latin Americans living in extreme poverty in the countryside and the mushrooming city slums...

...Should the church continue on its traditional course and in its traditional forms: structurally, a pyramid of power, stressing religious practices, seeing itself as an international institution, the universal instrument of salvation...

...They charged that L6pez Trujillo, Veke4 August 1978:496 ma,ls and Hengsbach were using German church funds for their partisan purposes, causing "the German church again to fall under the grave suspicion of being on the side of the powerful and of overlooking the inhuman behavior of dictators who call themselves Christian...

...One of them acknowledges a subvention from the De Rane6 Foundation (Milwaukee), and the Ecumenical Council of Costa Rica has said that both books were "a generous gift" from the United States...

...As before and during Vatican II, the two opposing ecclesiologies have never faced each other in rational dialogue...

...A further factor is that many clergy continue a longstanding emotional attachment to Christian Democracy as a way to modernize and uplift the people while keeping the reins of power firmly in church hands...

...Outstanding critiques include Pablo Richard (of the Lebret Center, Paris) in Foi et DEveloppement...

...A group of major Catholic and Protestant German theologians, headed by Karl Rahner, Johann Baptist Metz, Martin Niemoller and Erns Kasemann, in November 1977 protested the "virulent" campaign against the theology of liberation...

...CRIE (Regional Center of Ecumenical Information) in Christus (Mexico City...

...In league with Baggio and equally hostile to the theology of liberation is Bishop Alfonso L6pez Trujillo, auxiliary of Bogot~i and Secretary-general of CELAM's permanent secretariat...

...In two weeks, they say, a document of this extent and internal confusion could not possibly be reformulated...

...The scenario in part spelled out, in part assumed, presents the evolution as continuing along its present lines...

...a team of Peruvian theologians in Latinameriea Press (Lima...

...Instead, they would offer a few brief statements supportive of and supplementary to Medellln...

...The theology of liberation that grew out of Medellin has proved a greater threat to the Christian Democrats as a political force than the Communists ever were...

...Secularization is an Commonweal: 497 irreversible historic fact...

...Now as then, the conservatives hold the principal power structures: and now as then, they prefer to use their ability to manipulate rather than rely on the justice of their cause and the reasonableness of their position...

...Some of its more extreme expressions have convinced innately conservative churchmen that its triumph would destroy the church as an institution...

...But even if they do, it is not too important...

...Others led by Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay are concentrating on having the PD simply rejected, as Vatican II dealt with the curial schemata presented to it...

...Vatican II...

...Thanks to all the conflicting advance input, it is likely that the bishops will come to Puebla with a broad range of attitudes...

...Finally, many cannot see how, with the personnel and material resources available, the emotional Catholicism of Latin America rooted in traditional practices and transmitted by social relationships, could be successfully transmuted into an intellectually based, personal cornmitment to Christ...

...Such situations, it concluded, call for "global, daring, urgent and basically renewing change," an unambiguously clear choice for radical transformation...

...One of the more blatant uses of power was the choice of theologians to participate in preparing the materials sent by the CELAM secretariat to the bishops...

...Many of them are making detailed critiques of the PD to alert the bishops to its underlying ideology...

...In that case, one can safely prophesy that there will be several of the pro-Medellin theologians within reach with alternative documents that will reflect less than they want but will at least save Medellin and hopefully take some steps beyond it...

...The Council of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) will hold its third meeting at Puebla, Mexico, 12-28 October next...

...The issues are basically the same as those at stake at I I GAnY MacEoIN, a long-time Latin American observer, is the author most recently o! The Inner Elite: Dossiers of Papal Candidates (Sheed Andrews & McMeel...

...Latin America, it correctly notes, is moving from a pastoral to an urbanindustrial society...