Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Mr. Blue's creator New York, N.Y. To the Editors: My recent piece in Commonweal ("Does Anyone Remember J. Blue?" November 4, 1988) churned up some interesting replies. People wrote...
...When I asked Green if Mr...
...Green works in New York City...
...Blue by Kathy Petersen Cecala ["Does Anyone Remember J. Blue...
...Blue really existed...
...JAMES D. McNAMARA Gutierrez fore 'n aft Palo Alto, Calif...
...the new edition employs inclusive language...
...Blue was actually Connolly-that unexpressed, mystical poet Connolly yearned to be, but somehow couldn't...
...But it never could be so understood, and the underlined words only strengthen a misunderstanding, namely that until the new edition Gutierrez's position was to be understood "primarily as a form of political ideology...
...He told me about Connolly's career as a Boston newspaperman who "went Hollywood": Connolly, a close friend of director Frank Capra, worked on many screenplays, including "State of the Union," "My Son John," and several early Tarzan episodes...
...But Gutierrez had specifically repudiated such a position in the concluding words of the first edition: "All the political theologies, the theologies of hope, or revolution, and of liberation, are not worth one act of genuine solidarity with exploited social classes...
...KATHYCECALA Buckley or Blue...
...He is simply an invention of the wealthy and privileged to justify their right to exist in a society that maintains that it has Christian values...
...First, we are told that "Gutierrez now (italics added) finds it necessary to emphasize caution against reductive and purely 'immanentist' understandings of praxis and liberation," and that "Though liberating praxis still 'endeavors to transform history,' this transformation is not reducible to changes in spcioeconomic structures...
...Like myself, Mr...
...But if one reads Gutierrez on his own terms, the charge becomes ridiculous...
...and each had a particular theory as to whether Mr...
...While McCann stresses elsewhere that the shift is one of emphasis rather than a brand new direction, the impression is left that in the earlier edition Gutierrez did advocate reductionist understanding, and felt that liberating praxis could be "reducible to changes in socioeconomic structures...
...I met him one evening for a drink and some fascinating conversation...
...And I felt that at last I had the answer to my query: Something I'd rather suspected all along...
...If one brings that mindset to his writings, one can doubtless find what one wants...
...Blue were real, he said, "Yes," but he felt that Mr...
...To the Editors: It may seem like nitpicking to take issue with Dennis McCann's basically supportive review of the fifteenth anniversary edition of Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation [November 4], but the review contains implications that need to be corrected, and the author makes two comments that do an injustice to Gutierrez's overall position...
...The notion that Gutierrez initially made Christianity nothing but a political tool is a notion that his critics have falsely imputed to him for years-from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to right-wing critics across the globe...
...Surely it is apparent to nearly all Commonweal readers that Buckley isn't real...
...Gutierrez is unequivocally clear in his first edition: Part of the gift of Christian hope, he states there, is that "it keeps us from any confusion of the kingdom with any one historical stage, from any idolatry toward unavoidably ambiguous human achievement, from any absolutizing of revolution...
...To the Editors: One can't help but be amused at the differing perspectives in the articles on Mr...
...But the most intriguing reply came from one of author Myles Connolly's nephews, a fellow by the name of Pete Green...
...People wrote to say they remembered him very well and lovingly...
...They are not worth one act of faith, love, and hope, committed-in one way or another-in active participation to liberate man from everything that dehumanizes him and prevents him from living according to the will of the Father" (p...
...Blue, on the other hand, is as real as we want him to be...
...No reduc-tionism, then or now...
...ROBERT McAFEE BROWN Professor Emeritus Pacific School of Religion...
...Las Cruces, N. Mex...
...Later McCann comments that while the clarifications of the new edition do not contradict Gutierrez's earlier statements, "the shifts of emphasis do seem to amount to a very large practical difference ,'' namely that Gutierrez is now' 'repudiating the attempt to identify the option for the poor with an ideology or specific political program...
...Buckley by Wilfrid Sheed ["William Buckley's Several Selves," November 4] and on Mr...
...Such inferences are incorrect...
...After gratuitously hoping that Gutierrez "means what he says," McCann concludes that "Gutierrez's liberation theology, therefore, can no longer (italics added) be understood primarily as a form of political theology...
...He also wrote several other books, but none quite matched the successor spiritual luminescence-of Mr...
Vol. 116 • January 1989 • No. 2
