Editorials
Contents Volume CXIII, Number 9 COMMORWeal 6...
...One way of looking at the problem is to start with done, the contras or the regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, the president...
...care...
...Last year's efforts to cut back last month in their ancient synagogue...
...c) whatever questionable things the Sandinistas have Why not...
...willingness to investigate and underline realities regardless of Yahel Yisrael el Adonai...
...In meetings and processions...
...Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing Edward R.F...
...that oppressors are the Nicaraguan government, the contras, and beclouds our very Scriptures...
...Furthermore, many Christians, rightly guard party," acting on behalf of the oppressed classes, eager to see the church take the side of the poor rather than of mobilizes society and destroys any independent centers of traditional oligarchies, have identified their hopes with the power which might reverse its rule or perpetuate a cause of the "people's church" in Nicaragua...
...Too few of them show an awareness hand, ideology is nothing...
...who had written the Romans that the Jews are "beloved of (Lutherans and Catholics make up 60 percent of the state's God, called by an irrevocable call...
...thousands of Americans who have traveled to Sandinista For Mr...
...The sufferings of the church in Chile, developments as merely reasonable responses to Nicaragua's Guatemala, Duvalier's Haiti, South Korea, South Africa, and besieged state, or in some cases as bureaucratic mistakes...
...Forrest D. Colburn gives a bleak report card on caprice of Christian prejudice...
...bank...
...That may not be the outcome in Getting the truth about Nicaragua should not be hard...
...Are the Sandinista block of Agrarian Policy, (University of California Press, $17.50, Commonweal: 260 156 pp...
...Isolated gestures will not suffice...
...But Movies: Tom O'Brien there are anguishing moral questions that link both situations...
...the continuing turmoil of revolution in The illusion of refuge: Nicaragua and Cuba...
...some of the Sandinistas have made - and possibly indignation...
...the streets of every major U.S...
...Church links are particularly strong...
...Yet, he had sought out this recon- proposed that welfare benefits to dependent children and their ciliation, and now, by the force of his personal presence, he families be cut by 30 percent...
...that necessity...
...In not only for denying political freedom but for failing to achieve this instance, it is a question of the truth about Nicaragua...
...Until now...
...likely to be controversial...
...government policy and risk imprisonRaymond A. Schroth 284 ment...
...10016...
...In Nicaragua, the bishops, and especially Cardinal Obando y Bravo, are Editor: Peter Steinfels girding the church for resistance to a state that they believe is following the path of Assistant Editors: David Toolan, Karen Sue Castro's...
...The brief interview with Sister Darlene The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy/ Nicgorski provides a glimpse of the process by which such a response, confronted Tolstoy's Diaries: Martin Green 282 with conditions of violent oppression, led one Christian to a much more political Sometimes a Shining Moment: engagement and, eventually, to defy U.S...
...Yearly subscriptions, whether the new course of the Cuban church weakens or strengthens its capacity for U.S., $28...
...The Nicaragua, but it is a reasonable fear, and it is a fear that would media have not been excluded...
...At the same time, all conviction that such things all flow naturally, like steps in a too few of their reports are marked by any effort to hear out geometry problem, from the original ideological sin...
...Contents Volume CXIII, Number 9 COMMORWeal 6 110189 Correspondence 258 Editorials 259 ;1 a M So Welfare in Minnesota: Nancy Amidei 261 A second coming: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...No doubt, then, "bourgeois" set of values...
...In Cuba, church leadership is Staff attempting a rapprochement with the Communist state after twenty-five years of alienation...
...it used to be thousands, and some say it still is...
...Smith, Patrick Jordan Production Editor: Anne Robertson Rapprochement or resistance...
...Reagan has always had a light touch with and elsewhere have done far worse, often with U.S...
...They teach us a lesson...
...The victims are the people of Nicaragua...
...The answer must be yes...
...material well-being as well...
...beloved received from our hearts, from our hands...
...Perhaps Sheehan is wrong...
...The report from Honduras describes the pressing need for immediate, direct reBooks sponses to dehumanizing poverty and abandonment, responses that are no less essential for being relatively conventional...
...The manifestly Then he went on TV and with elaborate computer graphics greater outrages against freedom and dignity in places like pictured the Sandinista drug dealers subverting Brazil...
...The United States is sponsoring a guerrilla war against Nicaragua's government, and the White House has high9 May 1986: 259 lighted the conflicts between Nicaragua's Catholic hierarchy committees to be viewed as friendly neighborhood associaand the Sandinista regime as part of the administration's cam- tions or as something more ominous...
...Reading many reports from religious activists, one gathers There is, consequently, no shortage of opinion and testimony, that the question of Sandinista ideology and intentions can be from the right and from the left, from strangers and from ignored because (a) there are priests in the government...
...Their first-hand testimony subvert or invade its neighbors, provide a beachhead for the of Nicaraguan suffering has made the costs of war real even Soviets, deal in drugs, and no doubt torture kittens...
...We are not in a position to say that one side's eliminate the historic "teaching of contempt," we must be abuses are worse than another's . . . They must all be con- straightforward in our repentance...
...Nicaragua must be a pices - have had an enormous and extremely valuable role in totalitarian state...
...What is to be con- precedented sum in foreign assistance and before the contra cluded from the repression of independent trade unions...
...We hope it provokes something their allegiance to it quite clear...
...Reagan and for many of his backers, the Sandinis- Nicaragua - a great proportion of them under religious austas' Marxist ideology is everything...
...Several months before, pendent Republican (IR...
...Are we to see these paign for contra funds...
...This proposed cut was so steep, was demonstrating before the world the respect Christians and its likely impact so harsh, that Archbishop John Roach, on must bear Jews - a respect necessarily wedded to, and born behalf of Minnesota's Catholic bishops, immediately issued a of, repentance...
...For those among us who believe that diplomatic trade-offs do exist which could protect the U.S.'s real interests and dampen the conflagration in Central America...
...in the last five years or so...
...But the fact including a good number of religious activists, have taken the that things are worse elsewhere is little consolation to those president's distortions as a license to "balance" the picture who are victims of a revolution-turned-authoritarian in with a set of counter-simplifications...
...Telephone: (212) MU the United States...
...of prejudice...
...In February, with a state deficit he had made remarks which seemed to diminish the strength of looming, twenty-five-year-old IR House member Joel Carlson Vatican II's Nostra Aetate...
...The majority party in the Minnesota Senate is the DemoThis was the first time a Roman pontiff had entered a Jewish cratic Farm Labor party (DFL...
...tianity...
...Single copy, $1.50...
...How remarkable Rabbi Toaff Sandinista economics - and reports widespread dissatisfac- and the Jews of Rome would welcome a pope to their temple...
...Welfareengage the truth, the whole truth...
...And for obvious reasons...
...The issue does not reflect any master plan...
...sympathetic, but not unmindful of the obstacles to genuine freedom of religion Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Baisky, which operate in Cuba and the skepticism that consequently lingers about the Patricia Mazzola Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor regime's real intentions...
...It is like most of the strife-ridden world...
...Ostracism...
...And little of it inspires Sandinistas have promoted literacy, schooling, and health confidence...
...it does not offer Steven Watrous 276 any exhaustive or systematic view of the region...
...It could be the truth about such an ideology have a distinguished history - distinguished any place or issue giving rise to sharply divergent claims...
...and it was an occasion of grace...
...revilement...
...Reading any of its harrowing passages compels one to ask 3-2042...
...Still, they largely paint white But what about personal experience...
...dollars by International Money ones...
...Cooperation or combat...
...But in fact all these sources show a country...
...His action in going there on state welfare aid in Minnesota (for those who don't qualify was as eloquent as his message...
...support...
...statement opposing the measure...
...Or a good many other nations have never been of equal concern to should they be seen as steps by which a self-declared "vanthe administration...
...b) the friends, much of it is contradictory...
...For in its messiness, Nicaragua is A BATTLE TAKES SHAPE like many of the issues religious activists confront...
...Special solidarity with those like Valladares...
...short of Mr...
...near obliteration...
...Let Israel hope in the Lord" how they may fit preconceptions or serve in the melees of (Psalm 131...
...The political engagement that so many A HONG the least loved, least sympathized with groups in Christians are now recognizing as part of living their faith our society are welfare mothers and, to a lesser but demands a new maturity...
...He was speaking to the world, for federal help) succeeded...
...Reagan's when American troops were not committed...
...foreign, $33...
...Canada, $30...
...against authoritarianism...
...From depredations accelerated, left many Nicaraguans, including the rfstrictions on opposition parties...
...262 The battle for Nicaragua: Edward R.F...
...Even in Commissioner for Human Services, Leonard Levine, wanted Rome, they have been made recurrently vulnerable to the to hold meetings in six sites around the state...
...It Yet, they have, and the pope in turn told Catholics what has apparently escaped the hearing of too many well- must be done: recognize that Judaism is intrinsic to Chrisintentioned travelers...
...He writes of "the disenchantment of the rural poor...
...rights in Nicaragua when it concludes that the abuses it cites by If we take the pope at his word, we must acknowledge the both Sandinistas and contras "cannot be justified by military anti-Jewishness that scars so much of Christian history...
...Sheehan 264 Cuba: the changing climate: Stanislas Maillard 268 IN MESSINESS, What can Arias deliver?: J.S...
...extradition...
...Reagan's excesses...
...It does, however, offer an Screen: Tom O'Brien 278 array of contrasting visions: the hopes of moderate social democracy in Costa Rica...
...The language is one spoken on not be relieved solely by an end to U.S...
...Undoubtedly, the where he paints black, and black where he paints white...
...Much is made of Sandinista breakdepend in important measure on some evaluation of the com- throughs in public welfare...
...Order or by check on a U.S...
...To explain the impact of the proposed cuts, Minnesota's persecution...
...It is like most of its Central American neighbors...
...Robert Jones 279 This issue also offers an array of contrasting responses on the part of Christians...
...The conditions of both Poetry: Rosemary Deen church and state are, of course, significantly different in Cuba and in Nicaragua...
...Thousands upon Nicaragua is by no means a totalitarian state, but it is led by a thousands of visitors have passed through that embattled land party which appears to suffer from a deep totalitarian drive...
...They simply do not confront the of how badly visitors to other revolutionary states in the past fact that evaluating specific deeds of the Managua regime may have served the truth...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must become a theology of assimilation - or collaboration...
...their continues to be present, despite reforms, in our liturgy...
...Regimes based on challenge of determining the truth...
...bashing has become such a politically and socially popular sport in recent years that few voices have been raised in the defense of welfare families...
...Even after the pope's addemned...
...city...
...It must practice terror, persecute the church, building opposition to contra aid...
...Can they - can we...
...Behold, how good and how pleasant legislative proposal to cut AFDC (Aid to Families with Deit is for brethren to dwell in unity...
...Pope John Paul II invoked pendent Children) benefits by 30 percent...
...Let us all hope in the Lord, knowing that such political propaganda...
...It demands a willingness to seek and not insignificant degree, their children...
...afford to recognize the WELFARE IN MINNESOTA Nicaraguan reality in its full and disturbing messiness...
...Reluctant to 9 May 1986: 261...
...POSTMASTER: It is not, however, the report from Cuba but the report from Nicaragua that is most Send address changes to Commonweal, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...the truth, but on Nicaragua he outdoes himself...
...We don't want to pretend that wide open questions dress, Cardinal Glemp could still remark in France that Polish don't exist about Nicaragua, particularly under the guise of anti-Semitism is but "a myth" created by enemies of his urging a real will to inquire...
...Against is published biweekly, except monthly All Hope, the Cuban poet Armando Valladares's account of his twenty-two-year Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by imprisonment in Fidel Castro's mini-gulag, is about to be published (by Knopf) in Commonweal Foundation, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...From the ban on outside the destitude, convinced they were worse off than before...
...But what have these population...
...The questions are not easy be paid in U.S...
...and they and their supporters more: serious reflection among Christian activists about the openly claim the "vanguard party" role...
...It was difficult These points range from the trivial (since when has Holy to imagine him topping his characterization of the contras as Orders become a guarantee of political wisdom or a vaccine freedom fighters comparable to America's Founding Fathers...
...undertake paths scarcely begun to "remove all forms But perhaps Colburn is wrong...
...When does a theology of reconciliation two-year rate: U.S., $49...
...If recent history is these words of Psalm 133 when he spoke to the Jews of Rome any guide, it should have passed...
...Canada, $53...
...10016...
...to the serious...
...But would the initiative be cast in a more ambiguous light if Publisher: Edward S. Skillin one categorized the Castro regime less in terms of "socialism" and "the revoluCommonweal, [ISSN 0010-33301 A Review of tion" and more simply in terms of a Latin dictatorship with hundreds of political Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, prisoners (at the very least...
...Fuerst 272 VERITAS A task that cannot wait: Edmund S. Nadolny 274 THIS ISSUE of Commonweal is about Central America - and its key Caribbean Testament in Tucson: neighbor, Cuba...
...But is it a realistic lesson for those Americans struggling to convince their fellow citizens that our government's support of Church & politics the contra war is a cruel folly...
...the depths of abject poverty in Honduras...
...BELOVED -OF COD' That "now" arrived in Minnesota this spring with a state Hineh mah tov...
...tion...
...They have frenonchalant attitude toward facts, we are convinced, springs quently brought a spirit of sacrifice and healing and creative less from any conscious attempt to deceive than from his deep generosity to the open sores of warfare...
...foreign, $59...
...Stanislas Maillard's Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, account of the Cuban church's search for a new, more fruitful modus vivendi is Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...intervention...
...Guatemala reveal the hypocrisy of selective White House Unfortunately, some opponents of the Reagan policies, indignation about Sandinista "totalitarianism...
...hope will only mature after many willing acts of change...
...and present "the true face of Judaism . . . at Perhaps Americas Watch is wrong in its latest report on human every level of outlook, teaching, and communication...
...In the House, it is the Indehouse of prayer since the apostolic era...
...The reports from Cuba and Nicaragua present dramatically different pictures of local churches responding to revolutionary regimes...
...Nicaragua dissidents, especially those whose anti-Somoza For many of the president's religious critics, on the other credentials are flawless...
...From the establishment of an ex- Post-Revolution Nicaraguan: State, Class, and the Dilemmas tensive political police apparatus...
...Sheehan's report will provoke disappointment as Marxism-Leninism...
...What does the cen- policies which, even when Nicaragua was receiving an unsorship of the media in Nicaragua imply...
...Little is made of the economic andantes' overall outlook and intentions...
...Frankly, they have fallen Nicaragua...
...If John Paul II's visit is to help the United States...
...Archbishop Roach's stateAs the pope noted in his address, it was the Apostle Paul ment was quickly endorsed by Lutheran leaders in the state...
Vol. 113 • May 1986 • No. 9
