Editorials
--Going _ ~ from Commonweal twenty.five years ago: "It may be foolhardy, but I am going to keep at my one-man crusade for relating theology to modem problems .... I am asking.., for...
...Reagan was given his doctorate, is the diocese of Bishop Eamon Casey, an outspoken critic of U.S...
...It must not deny the new benchmark of social equality that the revolution has established at least in principle...
...It cannot withdraw...
...Reagan's visit would stir some of the hoopla normal for such events, the extraordinary development was the depth and breadth of pre-visit opposition...
...Reagan, most of them focused on his foreign policy...
...John Cogley, "Theology for Everyone" June 12, 1959 As long as one refuses to take the Sandinistas' Marxist- Leninist convictions seriously, there is no explanation for many of their actions...
...Regimes that equally adhere to it have nonetheless gone to war with one another...
...But on this occasion the parliamentarians were responding to a remarkable ground swell of public opinion...
...They wondered whether the visit was motivated more by his reelection campaign than by any sudden interest in discovering his ancestral roots...
...Ireland's students' union, previously radical but much more moderate in recent years, also pledged to disrupt Mr...
...The death squads and what they repre- sent ideologically are not elements outside the government, against which the "forces of democracy," as the administra- tion has termed the recipients of U.S...
...Dick Spring, who is also deputy prime minister.The youth section of the prime minister's party, Young Fine Gael, also declared its opposition...
...firmly concludes that we do not have to keep an anti-Communist government in power, no matter what, in El Salvador, that the genuine forces of democracy will have the leverage they need to pursue a livable future...
...Whether President Duarte gets this or that much American aid may not be as significant as whether the U.S...
...Their doc- trine and experience still leave room for a degree of prag- matism, flexibility, invention...
...To ignore this is to look at history with one eye closed...
...policy in Central America and the Philippines, both of which he has visited...
...They are justification enough for making at least one framework for the 'evaluation of events in Nicaragua the unhappy history of Eastern Europe, the poor record of the Soviet model in producing even material well-being, the des- cent to the Gulag in Russia itself...
...support in El Salvador, are pitted...
...If the Sandinistas' admirers tend to treat the comandantes' Marxism-Leninism as peripheral, the Reagan administration does the same with the fiercely, even murderously~ anti-democratic convictions of the circles that still retain effective 15 June 1984:357 power in El Salvador...
...The tendency of the "people's church" to back the regime in a virtually unqualified fashion does not appear any more promising...
...It would be unwise to set itself frontally against Nicaraguan natic{nal feeling...
...This history, as well as the history of Sandino, the U.S...
...The problem for the church in Nicaragua is more complicated, however...
...Reagan's support for the governments of El Salvador and the Philippines and at his siting of new nuclear weapons in Western Europe...
...That cannot be done, it seems to me, until these truths are related to the other concerns, politi- cal, scientific, professional, artistic and moral, which engross US...
...It is worth remembering that Calvin Coolidge ordered the Marines into Nicaragua on the grounds of protecting it from the "Bol- shevism" of Mexico --the Mexico we now want to protect from the Communism of Nicaragua...
...Ironically, Galway, the city in which Mr...
...It has, however, offered openings for negotiating the in-stitutionalized guarantees that might allow the insurgent forces to compete for power in the normal political ways...
...office since the triumphant visit by John F. Kennedy in June 1963...
...He once stunned public opinion here by calling on the government to break off diplomatic relations with Washington if the U.S...
...Czes- law Milosz and Milan Kundera now become part of the litera- ture of Latin America, with Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez...
...The French Rev- olution ended in Napoleon, but it also established a new starting point for democratic struggles in Europe...
...Other forces, from nationalism to personal ambition, will play their parts in Managua as elsewhere...
...The larger of these, the Irish-Campaign against Reagan's Foreign Policy, was made up of leading trade unions, church groups, third-world groups, some political parties, and the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament...
...American Catholics would be wise not to leap to conclu- sions about the divisions within the Nicaraguan church...
...No one undergoes such a procedure unless the alternative is worse...
...From afar, the politics of the Nicaraguan bishops appear clumsy and lurching...
...interests in Latin America ["Central America: the Way Out," May 4], and therefore more flexibility in trying to encourage rather than to compel...
...This is also unprecedented...
...The academic world, for instance, was shaken by the extent and nature of opposition to the decision of the National Uni- versity of Ireland to confer an honorary degree of law on Mr...
...Among the groups affiliated to it were the Conference of Major Religious Superiors, representing all religious orders in Ire- land, which opposed the visit...
...In E1 Salvador, a newly elected moderate democrat heads a regime that remains, for now, immoderately anti-democratic...
...Far from representing a left-wing minority, as suggested by some politicians, this wave of protest came from a wide range of groups and individuals...
...Joe Duffy, wanted Mr...
...It shares the philosophy of the Sandinistas...
...T HE SITUATION IN El Salvador is somewhat the reverse of the one of Nicaragua...
...Numerous priests and sisters were active in the campaign...
...They are entrenched within the government, the military, and the ruling class...
...From the first, they expected to rely on Moscow for arms and aid --even to Moscow's embarrassment...
...Such opposition is rare in Irish politics where party mem- bers almost always follow the party line, particularly when in government...
...In that sense, the Nicaraguan revolution is larger than the Sandinista one...
...N ONE OF THIS is meant to suggest a condemnation of what has transpired in Nicaragua as all-embracing as the en- thusiasm of some Sandinista supporters...
...Two of the country's three teachers' unions, not known for radical politics, came out against the visit, one of them passing a unanimous motion to this effect at their anuual convention...
...they are at the heart of their concept of what a real revolution is about...
...It is facts like these that lead us to argue for a carefully limited view of what are truly vital U.S...
...it does not enjoy the national unity that the Sandinistas rallied against Somoza...
...In Nicaragua, a party with a totalita- rian outlook heads a regime that is not, for now, totalitarian...
...Marines, and Somoza, is now background against which Nicaragua must be viewed...
...It is possible to make too much of this...
...will devise a policy that frees itself from ultimate dependence on the Sal- vadoran military-oligarchical establishment...
...Instead of subdued excitement at the immi- nent honor, the ten- and eleven-year-olds expressed grave concern at Mr...
...These included the chairman of the Labor party, Senator Michael D.Higgins, an ardent critic of U.S...
...But their basic desire to assert the force of the church as an independent reality,' as long as political space remains for such assertion, is understandable...
...their specific objectives seem obscure...
...But this is an area where we frankly admit our uncertainty and lack of good informa- tion...
...Her column will appear in the next issue...
...Senior politicians and commentators were taken by surprise at the strength and nature of the protests against Mr...
...The two are far from working out their overlapping and con- flicting impulses...
...I am asking.., for latterday Summas which will bring the truths of faith alive for modem man...
...The Sandinista leaders have clearly differed among themselves...
...But the core beliefs of the Sandinista leadership cannot be ignored either...
...What Irish radio discovered in Ballyporeen was no hotbed of child radicals but rather the typical attitudes which domi- nated preparations for the visit, the first by a U. S.president in Abigail McCarthy has been traveling outside the coun- try...
...Reagan's visit...
...Today, theology, in order to make any impression, must begin by showing that religion is relevant to man's other concerns...
...Unfortunately, even as American illusions about the Sal- vadoran establishment are dissipated by better information, our knowledge of the guerrilla opposition remains hazy...
...Another group, the Reagan Reception Campaign, was made up largely of left-wing par- ties...
...In response to a mass petition of university graduates, a special meeting of convocation -- the democratic decision- making body which all graduates have the right to attend --was called to condemn the university's decision...
...Most embarrassing for the government was seeing parliamentary members of both the parties who make it up, Fine Gael and Labor, opposing its motion to invite the president to address a joint session and pledging to stay away from Mr...
...Reagan's talk...
...Reagan...
...Expecting these forces to elimi- nate repression and corruption and to become democratically accountable through the distribution of power is expecting a form of self-amputation...
...The union's leader, Mr...
...hostility...
...Although there was never any question that Mr...
...Their swift relega- tion of non-Sandinista forces to the margins of political life, the imposition of censorship, the organization of the country not in state but party structures, the indoctrination of young people --it is simply straining the evidence to adjudge all these and many other distressing developments as merely reactions to U.S...
...They are, for the comandantes, not regrettable but necessary aberrations...
...For it is not until a man is convinced that the teachings of the faith are relevant that he begins to worry about whether or not they are true...
...administraCommonweal: 358...
...The main thrust of the opposition was organized by two different campaigns...
...Americans, liberals as much as conservatives, are in the bad habit of assuming that history is all a pre-established progress toward constitutional democracy, separation of powers, and the two-party system...
...Marxism-Leninism undergoes striking local transformations...
...Seldom do beliefs determine everything --as Christians know very well...
...Report from Ireland GETTING THE IRISH UP THE OTHER SIDE OF REAGAN'S VISIT lUST THREE WEEKS before President Reagan was due to arrive in Ireland a popular radio program went to speak to the children of Ballyporeen, the village from where Mr...
...Reagan to be presented with a petition carrying at least 40,000 signa- tures, "one for every person killed in El Salvador...
...Reagan's great-grandfather emigrated in the late 1840s and where hectic preparations for the president's two-hour visit were underway...
...Only malign and unnatural interventions make the drama deviate from the existing script, and if they are quickly countered, everything will get back on track...
...Going _ ~ from Commonweal twenty.five years ago: "It may be foolhardy, but I am going to keep at my one-man crusade for relating theology to modem problems...
...In fact, history --and revolutions --are never so neat...
...In its anti-oligarchical radicalism and its legitimation of the needs of the poor, the Nicaraguan revolution has carved a kind of benchmark into Central American history...
...foreign policy, and the party leader, Mr...
...They rushed to embrace Soviet foreign policy on questions like Poland, Afghanistan, and Kampuchea at a time when the Carter administration was trying to over- come congressional opposition to Nicaraguan assistance...
...And yet it has real reason to fear penetration and absorption by Sandinista ideology and to resist being caught up in national mobilization...
...It will only be when the U.S...
Vol. 111 • June 1984 • No. 12
