The quiet strength of liberation theology

...It is almost universally surmised that the 1982 elevation to cardinal of Alfonso Lopez-Trujillo, the Colombian bishop who was secretary of the Latin American bishops' conference for the Puebla confer- ence and a bitter foe of liberation theology, was instrumental in initiating the Vatican's move...

...The course is repeated in August for 700-800 additional students...

...The failure of the government to deal with all these prob- lems led to the election of many leftist candidates in the municipal and district elections late in 1983, provoking specu- lation about the May 1985 national elections and the reaction of the military to an electoral move to the left...

...First, the pastoral agents and other workers in this move- ment connect faith to life...

...Peru is in full recession as more and more national companies fold under the open import system demanded of Peru and other third-world nations by the International Mone- tary Fund as a condition for rolling over Peruvian debt...

...As an example --some communities conduct a year of fundraising to send a group to the course...

...The group must then return and teach the course in its district during the following year...

...There is a sense in which they feel themselves pioneers, just beginning missionary work, testifying to the power of the Spirit in the hearts of the gentiles (the poor), and undergoing persecution for the Gospel...

...He has been and remains in excellent standing with" his own bishop, Cardinal Landazuri Ricketts of Lima...

...It will take years to replenish them...

...The crops died, even the seed potatoes, the food staple of the mountains...

...This summer course began fourteen years ago, largely at Guti~rrez's initiative...

...That is Christian liberty --God's love at work, freeing people to act lovingly toward others...

...The stories that come out from there tell of thousands jailed without trial, of massacres of peasants, including pregnant women and young children, of ongoing discoveries of mass graves...

...But most important, to accept the Gospel is to experience that in the work of organizing, strug- gling together responsibly for human growth in all its dimen- sions, God's love overwhelms one, animating all one does...

...In mid-May the Peruvian bishops announced they had ended the investigation, but would not issue a statement on Gutidrrez or on liberation theology...

...to suppress a terrorist movement which, though small and centered in the Andean province of Ayacucho, has shown an uncanny ability to bomb key targets and thus disrupt the routine functioning of Peruvian life, especially in the cities...

...Both these levels have two to four hours of lectures each evening with two hours of small group discussion on the lectures each afternoon...

...Commonweal: 366...

...The second reason why I doubt this movement can be deterred is its relationship to martyrdom...

...They demonstrate their support for Gustavo Gutitrrez at every opportunity, but when outsiders talk as though his ecclesiastical difficulties, including the likely reintroduction of hearings in Rome, are going to be tragic for him and for the movement, the pastoral agents disagree, for two reasons...

...Animals without pasture died in droves...

...A few years ago I heard Gutitrrez remark that his people are hungry for bread and the Gospel, both together, not first one and then the other...

...The morning ses- sions, which Gutitrrez teaches himself, are graduate-level seminars...

...The southern Andes, on the other hand, received almost no rain for eighteen months...

...They feel very at home in the New Testament, not just because the texts seem familiar, but because they feel they are living every day the experience of the early church...

...To believe in the resurrection is to believe in victory over death --death by hunger, repression, or unnecessary epidemics that plague the poor...

...It is generally agreed that on matters of historical orthodoxy such as incarnation, trinity, resurrection, eucharist, even issues of authority, such as papal infallibility, celibacy, etc., Gutidrrez is extremely orthodox...

...Though police and army centers have been hit, the principal targets have been relay towers that carry electrical power to Lima and other cities from the hydroelectric plants in the mountains...

...The bishops' difficulties in reaching a joint decision were mag- nified by the current unsettled nature of Peruvian politics...

...The Vatican had initiated an investigation in February 1983 when it sent to the Peruvian bishops a list of observations questioning Guti6rrez's orthodoxy...

...Rather it had focused, for the most part, on issues of church and state, the use of the social sciences (including Marxist analysis) in theology, the role of priests and religious in social movements, and similar "l~olitical" questions...

...If all this were not enough, Peru will take years to recover from the economic and social effects of last year's climatic disasters...

...A French lay worker with a campesino community was held for over a month in Cajamarca on charges of working with terrorists in a bombing, though her passport proved she was in France during the incident and her bishop denounced her arrest as a fraud...

...I had arrived in January during a time of crisis for the Peruvian church...

...The December death of Sister Joan Sawyer, a nun taken hostage by prisoners at Lima's Lurigan- cho prison and killed by the police (with eight prisoners), the failure of the government to seek an alternative to killing and wounding the hostages, and the callous brutality witnessed by hundreds toward all the dead and wounded in the aftermath, were an example of official attitudes towards those who work with the poor and oppressed...

...This is a people who, like the early Christians, brave discomforts and dangers, threats and persecution, al- ways praising the gratuitousness of God's love which has produced such freedom in them...

...There are now at least 179 documented cases of persons recently "disappeared" in Peru, many of whom are church workers...

...The course demonstrated a widespread hunger not only for the Gospel, but for theology --for reflec- tion on the Gospel and on the experience of living/working in the light of the Gospel...

...Unless the conservative opposition develops a popular base, including an expansion of its adherents among clerics, religious, and lay people Who work with the masses, it will have no chance of stopping the popular liberation movement...

...Paul --totally contemporary and relevant to their lives and work...

...In order to understand how Latin Americans confront the problem of liberty and obedience in the church, one must appreciate the nature and significance of such a course...

...This year these sessions were canceled because Gutitrrez was too busy replying to questions from various bishops and groups of bishops...

...Poor women who share resources to build milk programs, collectives of poor Andean campesinos who send a shipment of their meager stock of potatoes to another community even more severely affected by drought -- these people experience God's love at work within the realization of their own ability to change the world, to challenge death and disaster...

...Paul identified as gifts of the Spirit all the talents developed in the community...

...The reasons are twofold...

...To accept the Gospel is to know that all suffering is not the cross --that the cross is suffering voluntarily accepted for purposes of freeing others from sin and death...

...Human infant mortal- ity rates, which can run as high as fifty percent in some remote parts of the Andes, almost doubled in some places...

...The northern coast was plagued with massive flooding and landslides...

...The elected government of Belaunde is attempting unsuccessfully CI-/R/STINE GUDORF teaches in the theology department of Xavier University in Cincinnati.This article is the result of a recent sabbati- cal spent in Latin America researching base communities...

...The course is the high point of the year for most of the participants, who exchange news and ideas, retrain, and get a more global picture of the process of which they are a part...

...In the midst of this political and ecclesiastical upheaval, the Catholic University of Lima once again offered its summer (February) theology course...

...They are full of wonder, of joy, for they know that joy, not happiness, is the opposite of suffering, and that this joy comes from participating in the overcoming of suffering, through suffering...

...The process of investigation, set in motion by the Vatican over a year ago, had been a headache for the bishops as well as for Guti~rrez and the popularmovement, chiefly because the bishops of Peru are split into factions...

...The other two divisions are for pastoral agents, i.e., church workers at the staff level, and for lay catechists, active lay volunteers with minimal theological training...

...It would be very dificult to imagine that so strong a move- ment will be stopped, especially since the efforts to stifle it have been working mainly through a hierarchy far removed from the popular base of the liberation movement...

...They do what they can to avoid confrontation without compromising their commitment, support one another through hardship and threat, demand an account of the jailed, killed, and disappeared, and thank God that they are a part of this revelation of the power of God, of the power of the cross and resurrection...

...These people found the subject of this year's course --St...

...One of the wounded hostages reports that a prisoner dying in her arms said, "See, Sister, you don't matter either...

...I N THE FACE of this, and of open oppositio n to the liberation movement in the church itself, the pastoral agents take an amazing stance --that is, it seems amazing here, but it is well validated in the history of the church...

...The most astounding thing about the course is the students...

...This does not include Ayacucho, the province where the terrorists are centered, which is under martial law and controlled news coverage...

...CHRISTIAH LIBERTY & OBEDIEHCE IH PERU \,, ~, \ t The quiet strength of liberation theolo CHRISTINE GUDORF E ARLY THIS YEAR, after six weeks in Peru, I returned to the United States with some thoughts concerning the crisis of authority in the church...

...So long as development of persons is experienced as the work of God, who can stop it...

...The power of the popular liberation movement lies in the identification of God's love with the development of persons, just as, of course, St...

...The political situation in Peru is somewhat volatile...

...Because of a disruption in the offshore current and winds, the rain clouds, which normally pass over the desert- like coastal cities to drop their water in the agricultural areas of the Andes, reversed their paths...

...Nor has Gutidrrez's personal behavior been in question...

...The pastoral agents and lay catechists who spread this message are living with the reality of persecution...

...The church's popular movement, best recognized in the U.S...

...The investigation of Guti6rrez had not taken up theological issues, normally the stuff of heresy investigations...

...as a part of --the basis of -- liberation theology, was on trial in the person of Gustavo Guti6rrez, the Peruvian priest and theologian known as the father of liberation theology...

...The program has expanded 15 June 1984:365 into three two-week divisions, in which over 1800 students from all over Latin America enroll...

...The unsuccessful military crusade against the terrorists comes on top of the government's failure to deal with the economy...

...Blackouts have been a regular and terrifying fact of life in Peru for months, and electrical engineers privately concede that hitting the right towers could deprive most of the country of electrical power for an undetermined time...

...In such a situation the bishops inevitably mirror the unsettled state of the nation...