Option for the
Poor
Reprinted in National Service Committee Charis
Center USA January 1986
When in 1966, I had a conversion experience that made Christ come alive
for me for the first time, I soon afterwards joined the St Vincent de Paul
Society to work with poor people in a Belfast slum. I realized that conversion
to Jesus must result in turning to the poor, his Body, or it is not a true
conversion at all. This is not an optional extra but an imperative.
Three years later, as a library assistant, I got a bursary to go
overseas to Wales to study librarianship. I was lonely, homesick, struggling
with my bursary and worried about my future. One day at my private Bible study
I came across a text that struck me forcefully: “...if you pour yourself out for the
hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise is
the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.” (Is. 58:10) I came to
realize that turning to the needy is not only a gospel imperative, it is also
the way of true peace and happiness by forgetfulness of self. Most of our
miseries arise not because we find ourselves in an objectively miserable
situation but because we define both misery and joy in a false way – with
reference to ourselves.
You think you have problems!
My college room-mate from Nigeria gave me a newspaper photograph of a
starving Biafran child. I wrote under it: “So you think you have problems!” and stuck it on my wall. I have it to this day.
My problems paled into insignificance beside those of that child. I joined the
college branch of the International Voluntary Society to visit the old and
needy, and felt a lot better. I hope they did too!
As a Belfast Catholic whose compatriots were being pommelled by police
‘B Specials’ and militant Protestants opposed to power sharing, I had the
sympathy of many of the more militant student groups on the campus but I
refused to join them. I questioned their true motives. I noticed later that
they settled very happily into the bourgeois society that they had so bitterly
attacked at college, and that the rights of the oppressed were soon forgotten!.
I was to see a lot of this in the years that followed. It was often a case of
hatred of the “haves” not love of the “have-nots”.
A year later when I was considering joining a religious order, I was
delighted to receive a copy of the Peace Prayer of St Francis, which includes
the words “it is in giving that we receive...” I saw it as a perfect summary
and extension of the sentiments expressed in the Isaiah verse that I have
quoted. Sometime later I sold all my possessions and joined the English
Franciscans in London.
Warnings and Exhortations
As a seminarian, I worked with the old, the terminally sick and the
“down-and-outs”. I kept up my interest in the Third World by promoting Ujamaa
coffee and encouraging a visit to the Seminary by the Tanzanian Education
Minister. I studied the social teachings of the popes from Leo XIII’s Return Novarum (1891) to Paul VI’s Octogesima Adveniens (1971). The stress
was on the total liberation of mankind from all oppression. Christians were
warned of the dangers of atheistic materialism whether of the Marxist or
Capitalist variety. In the Puebla Conference documents (1979, No. 733).
Christians were exhorted to make an option in favour of the poor to help
liberate them. Christians (but not priests!) were called upon to get involved
in party politics, for as Cardinal Heenan of London pointed out once, by
keeping clear of politics (and journalism) because they were regarded as a
“dirty business”, Christians had left the way wide open for undesirable
elements. This had led to the uninterrupted ascent to power of many
unscrupulous dictators in so-called Christian countries, and had made possible
evil legislation, such as abortion.
As a student, I once believed that if we Christians took a active part
in the struggle for liberation of the poor (even with Marxists) instead of
sitting on the fence, we would be welcomed whole-heartedly by the new regimes.
I thought that if new regimes were anti-Christian, if they persecuted believers
and confiscated churches, the reason must be that Christians had not taken part
in the liberation process (e.g. Cuba and Mozambique). So I welcomed the close
support given by Christians to the struggle to overthrow the ruthless regime of
Somaza in Nicaragua. I initiated a letter of support from the English
Franciscans to our brother priests preparing for the Puebla Conference, as a
conservative backlash was expected.
Something went Wrong
Then in 1980 reports started coming out of Nicaragua. First there was a
refusal by certain priests to disassociate themselves from the Marxist Party.
This was a refusal to obey the hierarchy and the Pope. Then there were the
reports from Amnesty International, of which I was a member, of detentions
without trial, summary executions and other horrors. In some places the native
Indians had been liquidated because they did not co-operate with the new
regime. The Church also was persecuted for being faithful to Rome. I could not
believe all this at first. After all, the Church has been involved, rightly, in
opposing the ruthless regime of Somoza from the start. The Church should have been fêted, not harassed! What had gone
wrong?
I know now that I was a bit naive about Christian Marxist co-operation,
because Marxists do not countenance opposition from anyone once they get into
power. It is a case of “one man one vote” once only! Nicaragua had begun to
liquidate opponents. That was perfectly in harmony with the communist doctrine
that the end justifies the means. Lenin said you could not make an omelette
without smashing some eggs first. Where there is no God, anything goes! Like
many revolutions, the Nicaraguan one ended up eating its own children. As
recently as November 1984, the President of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference
criticized the government for imposing “new oppressions” and for seeing “man as
nothing more than an instrument of labour, one more soldier for their goal of
world domination”. Some Christians rightly deplore compulsory conscription in
South Africa, but in Nicaragua and Cuba this criticism is forbidden.
It is sad to see certain options for the poor producing such unfortunate
results. It is sad too that so many Christians, religious and clergy of all
denominations, are so blind to left-wing abuses. As Ralph Martin observed, if,
in the past, the Church was sometimes made a tool of the repressive right,
today it runs the risk in many countries of becoming a tool of a repressive and
anti- Christian left. The dead guerrilla leader Che Guevara, regarded as a “Christian-
Marxist”, is venerated by many almost as a saint! He chillingly advocated
“unbending hatred of the enemy” so as to be transformed “into an effective,
violent, selective and cold mechanism of death. That is how our soldiers must
be, for a people without hatred cannot win”!
The Call of the Gospel
But Christ did not preach hatred or come to destroy oppressors. He came,
rather, to convert them. He said it was useless to gain the whole world and
lose our souls in the process. As disciples he called a sell-out collaborator,
Matthew, as well as a fiery freedom-fighter, Simon the Zealot. Some time ago I
heard testimonies of two Belfast terrorists, one Catholic, one Protestant. They
had been converted by the Gospel from hate-filled killers to gentle, loving
human beings. Their stories brought tears to my eyes. The Gospel tells us not
to refuse a cup of water to our enemies, but to feed and water them, and
overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14 ff).
The word “reconciliation” is not found in Marxist terminology. The plea for this from the new Zimbabwe regime
surely owes more to the Gospel than to the Communist Manifesto! The miracle of
turning people savagely intent on violence into gentle creatures who love their
enemies has always been s glorious sign of Christ’s power working in the
Church.
I am not for one moment advocating that we should sit on the fence and
let injustice pass without comment. A Christian has to be concerned about
justice. Unfortunately justice has been spiritualized in many Bible
translations as “righteousness”, “uprightness” or “godliness”, concealing its
true demands. There are dangers in fighting for justice, but dangers are not a
reason for avoiding a serious demand. A Christian has to be prepared, like St.
Thomas More, to put his body where his mouth is! – that is the “cost” in Pentecost.
A Russian Christian once said that the Russian Revolution was the result of
Christians being so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly use!
This Russian “option for the poor” did achieve some justice for a time,
but at what cost! It has been verified that Lenin admitted on his deathbed that
his method of emancipating the poor had been tragically wrong: “I have been
mistaken,” he said. “It was necessary I suppose to liberate the multitude of
oppressed people; but our method has provoked other oppressions, frightful
massacres. You know that my most awful nightmare is to feel myself drowning in
an ocean of the blood of countless victims. To save our Russia what we needed
(but it is too late now) was ten Francises of Assisi, and we should have saved
Russia”.
Gospel Inspired Options
Briefly I would like to look at two options for the poor that are not
“pie in the sky when you die”. They are Gospel inspired and can be seen and
visited and examined to see if their claims are true. When so many Iron Curtain
countries are kicking over doctrinaire Marxism as obsolete, it is ironic how
many Christians see these theories as the only solution to the world’s
problems. Trotsky was more correct than he imagined when he said, of the
shortcomings of Marxist theory, “Life proved more complicated than theory ever
anticipated”!
First, the very famous and highly successful Mondragon Co-operative in
Spain. One writer said it is “a convincing example of what can be done if
Catholic social teaching is taken
seriously”. It has proved convincing enough to draw political analysts and
M.P.’s from all over the world, from east and west. Set up in 1956, by a Basque
priest, Father Arizmendi, it has been an “extraordinary and unparalleled social
and economic experiment which has transformed the region. It provides one of
the most exciting examples in the contemporary world of what can be done when
the classic conflict of capitalist society, between capital and labour has been
superseded” (The Guardian Newspaper, 1977). It is the largest producer of
consumer durables and machine tools in Spain with a combined turnover of R450
million a year. Workers are happy, top managers are young and highly motivated
even though pay differentials do not exceed a Ratio of 3 to 1. There has been
only one strike and productivity is higher than in other Spanish capitalist
industries.
Second, there is the El Paso-Juarez option for the poor which has been
thoroughly documented by Fr. René Laurentin in his book “Miracles in El Passo?” It is like reading the second chapter of
Acts in a Mexican setting! There is no preaching of class hatred, or any racial
discrimination but only constant prayer and intercession for civil servants who
oppress the poor. Affluent individuals are selling their possessions and
joining the life of community that has sprung up. The poor dump dwellers are
fed: they are rapidly building their own new homes; they are brining running
water and electricity to the barrios and finding their own dignity as sons of
God, destined for abundant life in this world and the next. Foreign ideologies
are studiously avoided. They wish to show that with God all things are possible
for those who are converted to God first and who dare to take the Gospel
promises seriously.
