I am not unaware of the fact that this term synonymous with "the Church which is born of the people" can be given an acceptable meaning. With it, one might signify that the Church emerges when a community of persons, especially persons disposed because of their small numbers, humility and poverty to the Christian adventure, opens itself to the Good News of Jesus Christ and begins to live it in a community of faith, love, hope, prayer, celebration and participation in the Christian mysteries, especially the Eucharist. You are aware, however, that the final document of the Third Latin American Episcopal Conference in Puebla declared this name Popular Church "unfortunate." It did so, after mature study and reflection among Bishops from all parts of the continent, because it realized that this denomination in general hides another and different reality. The "Popular Church," according to its most common definition and one which is seen in the writings of a certain theological current, means a Church which is born much more from the supposed values of one stratum of the population than from the free and gratuitious initiative of God. It means a Church which loses itself in the autonomy of the so-called bases, making no reference to legitimate Shepherds and Teachers, or at the very least superimposes the "rights" of the former over the authority and charisms which their faith makes visible in the latter. It means since the term "people" is easily given a markedly sociological and political content - a Church embodied ir. popular organizations, marked by ideologies, placed at the service of their demands, their programs and groups which really do not belong to the people. It is easily perceived and the Puebla document indicates it explicitly that the concept "Popular Church" has difficulty escaping infiltration by strongly ideological connotations along the lines of a certain political radicalization, of class struggle, of the acceptance of violence for the achievement of determinate ends, etc. When I myself in my speech inaugurating the Assembly at Puebla expressed serious reservations about the term "Church which is born of the people," I had in mind the dangers which I have just recounted. For that reason I now feel the duty, availing myself of your voices, to repeat the same clear and affectionate pastoral warning. It is a call to your faithful through you. A "Popular Church" opposed to the Church presided over by legitimate Pastors is from the point of view of the teachings of Our Lord and of the Apostles in the New Testament, and in the ancient and recent teaching of the solemn Magisterium of the Church as well a grave deviation from Christ's will and plan for our salvation. It is furthermore a beginning of cleavage and rupture of that unity which He left behind as the characteristic mark of the Church itself and which He wanted to entrust to precisely those whom "the Holy Spirit established to rule over the Church of God" (Heb. 20:20). I thus entrust to you, beloved brother bishops, the charge and task of making this fundamentally important call to your faithful, with patience and firmness. All of us have with us in Spirit the dramatic concept of my predecessor Paul VI when he wrote in his memorable apostolic exhortation Evangeli Nuntiandi that for the Church the most insidious dangers and the most deadly attacks are not those which come from without these can only strengthen it in its mission and in its labor rather those which come from within. but May you encourage all the children of the Church, at this historic moment for Nicaragus and for the Church in Nicaragua, to contribute to firmly maintaining the communion with her Shepherds, avoiding any and all seeds of cleavage and division. Above all, may this call reach the conscience of the priests, whether they be natives of the country, missionaries who for years have consecrated their lives to the pastoral ministry in that nation, or volunteers desirous of making a contribution to their Nicaraguan brothers at an hour of transcendental importance. May they know that if they truly wish to serve the people as priests, this people, hungry and thirsty for God and full of love for the Church, expects from them the announcement of the Gospel, the proclamation of the fatherhood of God, and the dispensation of the sacramental mysteries of salvation. It is not in a political role but in the priestly ministry that the people wish to keep them near. May this call reach the conscience of all who are religious, those born in Nicaragua or those who have come to the country from abroad. The people of Nicaragua wish to see them united with the bishops in an unbreakable ecclesial communion, bearing a message which does not parallel and even less is counterposed to that of legitimate Pastors, but rather in harmony and consistent with theirs. May this call reach all those who find themselves in the sincere service of the Church's mission in any capacity, especially if they occupy positions of particular responsibility such as those in the University, in centers of study and research, those in the media of social communication, etc. May they make themselves available to serve in accord with the equally generous and determined disposition of their bishops and of the overwhelming majority of the people, who desire the best for their country taking inspiration from the orientation which the Church provides. I exhort you finally, dear brothers, to persevere even in the midst of great difficulties with your tireless labor in order to ensure the Church's active presence in the historic moment through which Nicaragua is now living. Under your direction as solicitous Pastors, may God grant that the Catholic faithful of Nicaragua give constant, clear and convincing testimony of their love and capacity to serve their country, a service which is neither less important nor less efficacious than service to others. A testimony of clear-sightedness in the face of facts and situations, of full availability to serve the authentic cause of the people, of bravery in proposing, in every situation, the thinking and orientation what has often been called the path of the Church; even when that path is not in accord with other paths proposed. I desire, I expect and I ask you to do everything possible so that among you and your flock loyalty to Christ and to the Church, far from diminishing it, will confirm and enrich loyalty to one's country on earth. On this occasion I am pleased to offer you, as a fraternal pledge of abundant divine grace for your persons and your ministry, my cordial Apostolic Blessing, which I extend to all your faithful. The Vatican, June 29, 1982 Mr. HYDE. Mr. Belli, I appreciate your painful situation in exile from your own country, your homeland, and I understand why. Some day you and I will look up in the Good Book that line in Isaiah that says, "Beware of false shepherds who enter not through the gates but over the wall." We will commiserate on that. Mr. GEJDENSON. The activism of the church in Latin America has been something that has been much more visible over the last decade. Do any of you see a kind of retrenchment in the church, either because of discrimination or other directives, that there might be some reduction in level of church activity on behalf of the poor in Latin America? You might quickly comment on that. Reverend. HEHIR. My impression of both the church's mind of its own ministry, of the kind of support it received from the Holy See in that ministry and my contacts with people who visit here from the church in Latin America, all would lead me to think that what one has seen over the past 10 to 15 years will definitely continue in Latin America. I think people feel they are doing the work of the church and doing it well. There are mistakes made but you are asking for a general thrust, and I think the general thrust will be very similar to what we have seen. Mr. DEKKER. Speaking from the Protestant side, I think what will happen is that the interest and activity will continue but the euphoria that some people were living under during the time of the postearthquake, for example, will be disappearing and that much activity will be carried on under clandestine situations. Ms. GRIESGRABER. I would agree with Father Hehir that the general trend of religious activism would continue. I would note that probably we would see among the Pentecostalism as a phenomenon in the church that probably it will evolve from this individual theology toward one which encompasses social responsibility and therefore toward activism and thus loose some of the special benefit it gains from a certain protection received from certain governments. Mr. BELLI. A development we see in Latin America is the social concern of the church turning to the presentation of a partisan view, to an umbrella of what's really Marxism-Leninism in disguise. If you analyze the bulk of what is being presented today in Latin America under the heading of liberation theology, you really will find, that mostly in the practical field, it is Marxism-Leninism disguised as Christianity. The church has to make an option for the poor, they say and this option for the poor has to be very concrete. It should not be an abstract option. It means taking sides with the poor, which implies taking sides with a group that represents the poor and this party or groups who are representatives of the poor happens to be only the Marxist-Leninist movement. The falseness of this approach, the one-sidedness of this approach, becomes evident when you see the standards that they apply to violations of human rights. If they come from communist countries, they are treated in soft terms. If there are other regimes involved, violations are overemphasized. You will hardly find any criticism of violations of human rights in Cuba among the groups that advocate revolution. All this is a distortion of the gospel, a distortion of the teaching of the church. It is clearly against what the Holy Father stated in Pueblo, when he said that "Jesus Christ could not be reduced to the level of a political fighter: that the church could not reduce its mission to just preaching a worldly or secular kind of message or a political dimension." Yet this is what radical theologians are doing; they use rosy words to speak about the "option for the poor," but what is really going on is a conspiracy against the church. The church legitimately defends the rights of the poor but we cannot use the church to cover up what it is a Marxist-Leninist group inside the church. Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you very much. I think maybe the lesson for our country is if we lent our support not just to the church but to others seeking a change in the climate of injustice, intolerance and inequity that has existed throughout Latin America, as an alternative to the Marxists, maybe fewer people would turn to Marxism. Thank you. [Whereupon, at 5:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AS A VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1982 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C. The committee met in open markup session at 9:45 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Clement J. Zablocki (chairman of the committee) presiding. Chairman ZABLOCKI. We meet this morning to consider various bills and resolutions reported from the subcommittees to the full committee. Mr. Bonker, the gentleman from Washington, will please explain House Concurrent Resolution 433. Mr. BONKER. I will be happy to, Mr. Chairman. The Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations has attempted to take a more realistic approach to America's human rights policy. We have tried to avoid singling out various countries as human rights violators. We have conducted hearings on a regional basis, so that we can explore human rights conditions and U.S. policy in various areas around the world. One of our real achievements has been to look at human rights in this special manner. We did this in the last session of Congress in a series of hearings on the problem of disappearances as a human rights violation. As a result we were able to call worldwide attention to that human rights problem. We added language to the Foreign Assistance Act, sections 502(B) and 116, that placed disappearances with other categories that describe human rights violations. We also instructed our delegation to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva to set up a special working group to deal with the problem of disappearances. In this session of Congress, we conducted a series of hearings on the problem of religious persecution. I would like to note that we stayed away from the problem of trying to define religious freedom and religious intolerance, which are much broader in scope. By these hearings we identified another aspect of human rights violation, and religious persecution very much falls into that category. The subcommittee conducted nine hearings. We have looked at various problems of religious persecution, notably the church in Latin America and Asia, the Baha'is in Iran, the Falashas in Ethiopia, the Copts in Egypt, the Pentacostals and other Christians in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the Jews in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries. We have really tried to |