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Liberation Theology and the Clergy
| Article
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14625 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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5 / 1988 |
719 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
Liberation theology has achieved a significant following among priests and laity. Certainly conditions in many Third World countries are deplorable. In many of them, a small group of the very rich, together with a military that practices terrorism and intimidation, lord over an impoverished people. Only the hard-hearted could support a continuation of the status quo in such conditions.
Jean-Paul Sartre identified himself with the dispossessed of the earth. However, we must remind ourselves that the dispossessed are human; they are not by nature better or worse than those who oppress them and might only return the compliment under reversed conditions. Furthermore, those who lead them may, if given the opportunity, only oppress them yet more efficiently.
We are sometimes told that revolutionary regimes introduce literacy. That is often exaggerated, and although literacy is a good, it can be a mixed good. When Prussia strove for universal literacy in the early nineteenth century, the purpose was to make state propaganda more effective. No one could accuse the Sandinistas, for instance, of failing to capitalize on this factor. Do arithmetic examples that ask how many imperialists can be killed by how many bullets really serve the purposes of education?
We are also told that revolutionary regimes establish economic justice and feed everyone. China under Mao and Ethiopia under the Dergue are obvious counterexamples. Both produced famines, athough we were told the opposite when Mao was at the height of his popularity with American academics. Certainly these nations have not compared in development with Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong,
... (1990 of 4316 Characters)
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