Subversives

In the New Directions collection, Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems, Ernesto Cardenal includes an “Epistle to Monsignor Casaldáliga (whom Mev Puleo interviewed in her book The Struggle is One, and from which I quoted…

Clarity

The original sin of the prevailing world system has first of all been colonial domination. This is the first sin; all the others in the system spring from it. The greater sins are those that…

Crosses, Values, Options

1. “Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety.  Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies:  the wider we open our hearts…

From Guatemala to Gaza

1. It was Ash Wednesday 1983.  In a darkened sanctuary with some lighted candles, an unfamiliar Catholic priest and several other people entered the sanctuary and sat in the front row.  The people wearing bandanas…

The Same Fate as the Palestinians

1. Archbishop Oscar Romero once stated, “Christ invites us not to fear persecution. Believe me, brothers and sisters, Anyone committed to the poor Must suffer the same fate as the poor. And in El Salvador…

Activist, What Do You See in the Night?/2

During a recent theological conversation with a friend in Louisville, I mentioned several thinkers and writers who had been very influential on me over these years. That exchange led to this concise collage…. 1. For…

Annie Boyd: Walking with the Salvadorans

In class we are currently reading Like Grains of Wheat: A Spirituality of Solidarity by Marie Dennis and Margaret Swedish. The authors interview scores of North Americans who had their eyes opened by their relationships with Central…

Gospel Subversive

Even when they call us mad, When they call us subversives and communists And all the epithets they put on us, We know that we only preach The subversive witness of the Beatitudes, Which have…