Correspondence
Correspondence EL SALVADOR: AN EXCHANGE OF VIEWS Narberth, Pa. To the Editors: It is disappointing to see Commonweal ["El Salvador: America's Poland?" Feb. 22] give credence and weight to Zaid's...
...It is not that Lazarus might have tottered out with winding sheets still trailing, while Jesus presumably came forth in full vigor of his manhood...
...Survival in Argentina, or El Salvador, would have to be under arduous conditions underground and with the imminent threat of death...
...There is no point in setting up straw men...
...In any case, that is the vocation of a journal like ours...
...client state in Latin America...
...give the government economic assistance...
...This return to life-Jesus, not Lazarus-has had greater impact...
...THE EDITORS Easter straw men Newton, Mass...
...Under such conditions countervio-lence is inevitable and among the factions brought together underground some will express rigid dogmatism and verbal violence...
...What Mr...
...intervention itself decimates such a center...
...JOSEPH T. NOLAN...
...Death in that view, and through the continued gift of the Living One, is the moment when human existence moves from the part to the whole...
...This strikes us as the mirror image of right-wing attempts to discredit dissent from American policies because "that's just what Pravda says...
...In fact, the more vicious the third-world mafias we support, the more necessary is real or concocted denigration of the victims...
...9] is disappointing...
...What happened with Jesus and the disciples after the cross was evidently transformative, uniquely powerful...
...Garvey begs the question when he writes, "Jesus appears sometimes as a stranger recognized 'in the breaking of the bread,' or in serving breakfast to his friends," etc...
...By abstracting from the crucial fact that the United States was the sponsor of one of the "extremes," and pretending that it had a lot of freedom of action and could choose the mythical middle ground, the practical effect of this position was to weaken the opposition and subtly justify a continued U.S...
...Thomas's phrase...
...In the long run, we believe that political effectiveness is served by trying to tell the truth in its full, confusing, complexity...
...And all through the Vietnam war, its emphasis was on the desirability of the United States supporting a middle ground, which did not exist, against the "extremes" which it condemned...
...It has not been widely noted in the United States that in "totalitarian" Poland, Lech Walesa organized, propagandized, and survived - Jacobo Timmerman, a fervent anti-Communist, asks, "Do you imagine in 'authoritarian' Argentina, a movement like Solidarity...
...And he's right-in the short run...
...We believe, for example, that there is a democratically inclined "middle ground" in El Salvador-as the church there has repeatedly testified...
...his remarks here are very helpful...
...The Alpha and Omega...
...Herman has against Dissent and "social democrats" is that they, too, don't see the world in terms as simple as his...
...Cuba, to cite one complexity, had the lowest death rate and lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America before Castro's revolution...
...The disciples' reaction to all this, or participation in it, has been called a faith experience, and Moore suggests that these words do not preclude an objective reality...
...We are left with no more than a report that someone presumed dead, like a prisoner of war, is now happily reported alive...
...But it can move us in the very depth of our being, and give us the truth which lays hold of us - like music more beautiful than any we have heard before...
...Precisely...
...it indicates that the scholarly recovery of how symbols work hasn't yet got around (the same is true of myth...
...Getting us out before our progeny leave the people and countryside in (Continued on page 382) Correspondence (Continued from page 354) a state almost beyond repair (vide Nicaragua) is the clear and urgent prior: ity for El Salvador...
...Why is it that, for twenty centuries and in untold and wondrous fashion, he has been considered the Lord, and why do I look to him this Easter with the conviction that my destiny is in his hands...
...Western propaganda systems gravitate to the dogmatic-violent fringe, some of which may be creations of the CIA to allow the media and organizations that serve its purposes to quote original sources that demonstrate enemy evil...
...Nor does it expunge the fact that much of the guerrilla leadership appears deeply committed to an outlook that Polish workers, for instance, know from long experience to be a source of human debasement...
...The Catholic bishops there and here have said yes...
...Herman makes three general points: 1. Social movements that exist under conditions of terror are apt to reflect those conditions in their own internal dogmatism and violence...
...they are hardly saying "Jesus lives only as any impressive dead person lives...
...propagandists may manipulate criticism of left-wing insurgents, such criticism is to be discounted...
...He may fear that someone will consider the resurrection "only a symbol...
...Herman implies that Zaid's article "denigrating" the rebels is U.S...
...Herman's implication that because "Western" or U.S...
...It is true that readers of Gabriel Zaid's analysis in Dissent might want to temper that evaluation of the Salvadoran rebels by recalling the internecine quarrels and assassinations that marred resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe...
...Now consider the report that Jesus was raised from the dead...
...They are the way we work, and move us into a universe of meaning...
...To the Editors: John Garvey's "The Reality of Easter" [Apr...
...EDWARD S. HERMAN The editors reply: Edward S. Herman has been a tireless critic of abuses of American military and economic power...
...Of course, social democrats can reasonably distrust prospective tyrannies - but in South Vietnam and El Salvador the United States has actively and positively supported tyrannies plus socio-economic exploitation of huge dimensions...
...Suppose I believe that Lazarus was really raised from the dead, that the account in John is not a baptismal catechesis, as some scholars think, but a miraculous return of someone dead to life...
...Garvey says, "The real question is, did a man rise from the dead, not the state of mind of the early church...
...Flannery O'Connor's remark is dated...
...Herman sees the situation in El Salvador in simpler terms than we do...
...they partake of reality, and no one who understands this would now use the phrase, "only a symbol...
...It is precisely at death that some thinkers suggest what happens to us is that we move from the periphery to the center, like people who have only circled existence up to now...
...Theologians who try it should not be denigrated, and we must look to the poets and story-tellers as well...
...For that very reason, we find the implications of his letter very disturbing...
...Far more disturbing yet is Mr...
...One more comment: Garvey quotes a passage from Flannery O'Connor in which she disavows believing in the Eucharist "if it is only a symbol...
...He argues, in effect, that simplification serves political effectiveness...
...This political immobilization may be described as the real function of the Zaid piece, which has a long background of precedents...
...My handshake or embrace of you is real, but it cannot fully express my love for you...
...The masses are literate, health care is good, serious malnutrition is a thing of the past, and life expectancy is now higher than in any U.S...
...We all have to think a lot-believers and theologians both-as to what it means to gather in his name, to break bread at the Eucharist or any meal, what it means to become aware of the mystery of another person, and myself, our coming and going and brief communion...
...A strange "social democracy" that serves de facto to rationalize U.S...
...Thus although the side we are supporting may be observably committing absolutely horrendous crimes, if we can show that the resisting victims are nasty too this is obviously helpful in allowing our continued support...
...22] give credence and weight to Zaid's remarks in Dissent and use them to weaken its stance on the El Salvador issue...
...I address myself to the propaganda aspect of his piece and the role of "social democracy...
...The reason I live with hope...
...Nonetheless, understanding the genesis of the guerrillas' more sinister beliefs and deeds does not resolve the problem of how to weigh those realities now that they actually exist...
...They would kill everybody, Lech Walesa, everybody...
...The church's Legal Office in El Salvador describes events there as a "prolonged, cruel, and bloody North American military intervention," not one that is "home grown" as suggested by you...
...Herman makes the comparison to Cuba simpler than we would...
...Now Mr...
...Herman apparently does: namely, that one should minimize all criticism of the insurgent forces lest it detract from an unqualified effort to end the U.S.'s involvement...
...In what manner was this perceived...
...Cry of the People, p. 143...
...How did this perception become so real for the disciples that "the truth possessed them," in St...
...Commonweal readers should also examine carefully Penny Lernoux's description of the "Banzer plan," established under CIA auspices in Bolivia, one of whose methods "recommended to discredit Catholic progressives was the planting of subversive documents on church premises...
...One may readily agree with these points in general, but not feel that they lead to the same conclusions about El Salvador that Mr...
...presence...
...intervention...
...This is the work of the Spirit, and part of our problem is that we don't understand the Creator Spirit nor the sense in which God pervades the universe...
...should the U.S...
...try to block arms shipments to the rebels...
...And he notes that we are uncomfortable with the marvelous in our rationalist age...
...adjudication of the third world's problems, as if the United States was an altruistic state without pressing imperial interests...
...Impossible...
...2. Such extremist behavior may be emphasized or even promoted by opposing propaganda systems in order to discredit insurgents...
...In 1964 Dissent objected to a U.S...
...what it means for life to confront and delight us with "the mystery deep down in things" in which we participate in so many ways (the Eucharist is pre-eminently one of them...
...The resurrection as symbol cannot fully convey "the things the Father has in store for those who love him...
...REV...
...It doesn't help to say, as he does, that this is the mysterious one in whom we should put our trust...
...The latter is true, but more reflection is needed...
...This is probing the faith experience, an approach that Garvey chooses to call watery and insipid...
...Last year Commonweal was told by an administration supporter that an article "denigrating" the Salvadoran junta was Soviet"disinformation...
...disinformation...
...If El Salvador's rebels can be effectively denigrated, this immobilizes opposition to the large and ongoing U.S...
...Cuba can be described as a moderately authoritarian state, but one whose leaders have demonstrated a real concern for the well-being of the majority...
...Of course not...
...That concoction is big business, not just a product of hysteria or ''anti-Americanism," is documented in great detail in Philip Agee's Inside the Company...
...Clean" is that up to the imposition of martial law in Poland it was allowed to mobilize and argue - Solidarity was harassed, but it was not dismantled and its leaders eliminated by "death squads...
...One reason Solidarity can be "Mr...
...That hasn't led us to support military aid to the junta...
...support for murderous regimes overseas on the grounds of preserving a democratically inclined center against the extremes' of left and right when (a) such a center may not exist or be a viable political force and (b) U.S...
...These regimes are the ones the United States is aggressively pushing and the "social democrats" in their indirect way are once again rationalizing...
...But Commonweal has no business failing to see through this charade of the United States as adjudicator of human rights in El Salvador...
...When he says that Scripture and other sources make it clear that "Jesus is alive with a new kind of life," he is right but doesn't go on to ask the key question, how...
...The oddest line in Garvey's article is the reference to death as that place where experiences end for good...
...We should not mock or dismiss efforts to probe this faith experience, as Moore also suggests, with the help of mystics and our own flickers of light...
...3. Americans should guard against rationalizing U.S...
...We have regained an earlier understanding that symbols are not some shadow world...
...To put it briefly: a symbol discloses, or invites one to participate in, a reality which continues to be disclosed, which has many layers or riches to communicate, only one or a few of which come through at a given time...
...but should the U.S...
...I leave to others a critique of Zaid's points denigrating the rebels...
...Again, how...
...It was in no way comparable to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Indonesia...
...I invite others to improve on this language, to discover the hidden One in whom we live and move and have our being...
...Fingernails are not torn out, people are not being murdered on a daily basis, and there is a high degree of social democracy...
...withdrawal from South Vietnam on the ground of the inhumanity of such a move, which would leave the anti-Communists subject to a bloodbath...
...We think this line of argument is a red herring...
...Moore reminds us that if we don't move in this direction, if we don't reflect on whatever turned them around, transformed them (and reaches across a hundred generations to us), we do not move into the heart of the mystery (as much as anyone can...
...That situation is both my delight (that I can communicate in part) and my anguish, that I am finite and always yearning for more...
...If true the whole question seems moot for him...
...neither Schillebeeckx nor Sebastian Moore come close to expressing the feeble versions of resurrection that Garvey rightly rejects...
...El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, and Indonesia are tyrannies without any redeeming social democratic features...
...what it means for the loving situation to reveal God, as Scripture says...
...Does Lazarus then become the Lord...
...Twenty percent or more of the children in Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are severely malnourished...
Vol. 109 • June 1982 • No. 12
