The Preferential Option for the Poor (Roger Haight, S.J.)
Twenty-five years ago, the phrase “the preferential option for the poor “was nonexistent in the Church. Today, it is more than a major theme in the Church’s self-understanding. Many have claimed it describes the essence of the Gospel, the kernel of God’s salvation mediated through Jesus Christ, and the central mission of the Church (Clarke 1988). But there are those who seem to be threatened by this formula. It is not that the poor should cease to be the concern of the Church as they have been from the very beginning of the Christian movement. It is, rather, the partisan ring to the phrase; it has become slogan. Among the affluent, especially in capitalistic nations where Christianity flourishes, the preferential option for the poor always suggests some form of socialism and an activism among the poor that morally or materially undermines the wealth of individuals.
It would be impossible in a brief space to explain convincingly the rationale for the shift in Christian consciousness reflected in this formula. This phrase is like the tip of an iceberg, the visible and controversial statement that caps a massive, submerged Christian self awareness, a new consciousness and vision that is responsive to our present-day world. For the most part, then, I shall limit myself in this essay to a direct exegesis of the phrase itself, “the preferential option for the poor.” Only indirectly and tangentially will reference be made to some of the deeper developments that have occurred over the past two centuries to give birth to the movement represented by this phrase. I shall accomplish this direct analysis by responding to some fundamental and commonsense questions about the option for the poor. These questions, I think, will both clarify a great deal about the option for the poor and also raise still more questions. One sign that an idea is fruitful is that it continually raises new questions. The aim of this essay is not to break new theological ground. This is an essay in pastoral theology. My goal here is to communicate the meaning of the option for the poor. My remarks are not addressed to the poor, for in their faith they know intuitively what this option means. It is rather addressed to the “not so poor” in an effort to show that this slogan and principle should not be seen as dark and threatening, but as an exciting challenge that bestows on human freedom an exhilarating, creative, and humane responsibility.
WHERE DID THE PHRASE COME FROM?
Where the phrase comes from is not difficult to answer in general historical terms. As a framework for this brief history, I will characterize the emergence of the phrase as a journey from the center of the Church to the periphery, then from a point on the periphery back to the center and, finally, from the center to the whole Church. Although this generalization is quite abstract, it summarizes accurately what has happened in the Roman Catholic Church on this issue in the past thirty years.
First, beginning with the center, in 1965 the Second Vatican Council, in the document Gaudium et Spes, spoke on the role of the Church in the modern world, and made two important and potentially revolutionary demands. On the one hand, the universal Church should be open to the modern world, the actual world of secular affairs in which we live. The Church should understand itself in relation to that world. On the other hand, each local church should enter into its particular social and cultural context and become part of its indigenous life.
Then, second, in 1968, in the city of Medellin, in Colombia, the Latin American Bishops Conference met and proceeded to follow the instructions from the center. The documents from that synod described the massive poverty in that southern continent, characterized this poverty as “institutional violence,” and committed the church in Latin America in a special way to the amelioration of the lot of the poor, who comprise the majority of the people of Latin America (Hennelly 1990, 89-119). This was the historically public and symbolic beginning of the movement of liberation theology in Latin America.
Third, while the phrase “the preferential option for the poor” was not used in the Medellin documents, it sprang up almost immediately as a statement of what was needed by the church in Latin America and as a description of what actually had taken place at Medellin. Whether or not he first used the phrase, I associate it with Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest and theologian and acknowledged leader of the theology of liberation, whose whole theology finds its center in the response of the Gospel to the poor. Due to the writings of Gutierrez and many others, the liberation theology of Latin America soon spread during the 1970s to Asia and to certain parts of Africa. It also reached Europe and North America through translations and through church ministry directed to the poor. In the United States, a Black liberation theology developed at the same time as Latin American liberation theology, and feminist theology, in many respects, shares its basic formal logic.
Fourth, the phrase “the option for the poor” was debated on for ten years in Latin America, for it was controversial. It seemed to divide the Church not only between rich and poor, but also between traditionalists and progressive liberationists. The climax of the debate was the next highly politicized Latin American Bishops Conference held in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. That conference canonized the phrase, along with an option for youth, as the official and public commitment of the Church.
Fifth, a number of events signal the journey back to the center from the periphery of this “option for the poor.” In December 1984, John Paul II spoke to a group of cardinals and said: “I willingly take this opportunity to repeat and stress that the commitment to the poor constitutes a dominant motive of my pastoral action and the constant solicitude accompanying my daily service to the people of God: I have made and I do make that ‘option’ my own; I identify with it. And I feel that it could not be otherwise, since this is the everlasting message of the Gospel” (John Paul II 1985, 501). There are many other indications of papal approval of the phrase, such as his reconciliation with Leonardo Boff and the Brazilian bishops a number of years ago. But the most solid document of the endorsement of liberation theology and this aspect of it is the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 1986). Although it fudged the phrase a bit, calling it “a love of preference for the poor,” the congregation obviously endorsed the general thrust of the idea.
Sixth and lastly, an indication of how the phrase “the preferential option for the poor” has now come back again from the center to become operative in all churches, now not as a slogan but as a principle, can be seen in the church in the United States. In the highly publicized and extraordinary pastoral letter titled Economic Justice for All, the hierarchy of the church in the United States used the concept as a foundational Christian social ethical principle. The bishops culled the principle from the Scriptures and utilized it for grounding their general ethical norms and guiding their policy recommendations for the U.S. economy (U.S. Bishops 1986,42). Needless to say, the bishops held that the principle should guide the ministerial activity of the Church as well.
WHO ARE THE POOR?
At first sight, the question seems like an obvious one. We all know who the poor are. But it is not so easy, and ambiguity arises from several directions all at once. On the one hand, poverty is a relative condition; the wealthy in some societies and cultures appear poor by the standards of those in others. On the other hand, all human beings are victims of suffering in one form or another, and all stand naked and poor before God. Therefore, what could be a criterion for applying a preferential option for a segment of people when all stand in need of the universal love of God and the ministry of the Church? To begin, we should realize that we are dealing here with groups of people or classes of people. Therefore, by definition, the language is one of generalizations. The purpose of this discussion is not to define in exact fashion, who belongs to the group called “the poor,” but to give expression to the way one experiences God in relation to the masses of people who are materially poor.
The first meaning comes with the origin of the phrase—from Latin America. The poor referred to in Latin America are the peasants or rural poor, and the urban poor who crowd in and around the major cities. They are those who are not just materially poor in the sense of “struggling” and “making ends meet,” but in the universal sense of being destitute. Their actual day-to-day struggle is for survival, to continue to exist. And in Latin America, these people in a way simply are the people, for they are statistically the vast majority, and are highly visible.
From this historically defined meaning and referent of the term, a generalization follows. “The poor” refers most fundamentally to those groups or classes who lack the fundamental needs for human life, namely, food, clothing, shelter, and access to basic medical care. This is a solid sociobiological criterion or differentiation that cuts through every other social classification. The poor are those whose very lives are threatened by poverty. As Gustavo Gutierrez frequently puts it, poverty means death.
But there is another dimension to the definition of the poor that is crucial but less obvious. The groups and classes that are the poor are not in the situation they are because of fate. Of course, one could say it is the destiny of any individual to be born poor, but we are speaking here of the ongoing situation of groups of people. There are many different reasons for the continuing poverty of the poor, and they all come down to the fact that this situation is caused by human freedom, by human willing or the lack of it. It does not have to be this way. Since this is a social condition of socially definable groups, it is a function of social system which are designed by human beings. In short, the poverty of the poor is caused by other human beings, not individually but collectively.
Because of this, the poor are also always described in social, psychological, political, economic, and cultural terms beyond the physical or biological. They are the oppressed; they are the marginalized who do not participate in the power and decision making that determine their destiny. They are those who are left out, ignored, unattended, and bypassed. They are those who are often hated and despised, and very often the victims of violence. They are those who suffer in the hands of other human beings. The dramatic case of the blacks of South Africa illustrates all of these features about the poor. It may be that the ultimate dehumanization of poverty is not the physical and material deprivation, but the negation of people’s selfhood. The poor are considered worthless (Clarke 1988, 96).
WHO MAKES THE PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR THE POOR?
When the Church makes a preferential option for the poor, it may appear as being selective and divisive among its members, thus causing resentment. In fact the word preferential is in itself controversial. Many reject the validity of any preference by the Church, while others see preference as a watering down of the option. For advocates of the option for the poor, the word preferential is a pleonasm. It is redundant and only serves to weaken what should be simply an absolute option for the poor. It seems to have been added to placate the rich: “The Church loves you too, but the poor need the Church more.” My response to this question and solution to this issue is so simple it may appear as some sort of sleight-of-hand. As far as I can see, the option of the Church for the poor is the option of the whole Church, of every member of the Church. The Church is proposing that all make an option for the poor, not as an option against the rich but, precisely, and even especially, as an option of the rich for the poor.
This may need some clarification. First of all, it is very difficult to get a language that will convince people that the Church is not an institution of hierarchy and priests. But when the Church is conceived as it should be, as the people of God, as made up of groups who assemble and relate to God through Jesus of Nazareth, it will be seen that the option for the poor is much deeper than a decision of a leadership class relative to the members of a group. It is rather, the ideal of the group itself. Nor is the object of this option limited to poor Catholics or poor Christians. It is for the poor as such. Moreover, it is not an option based on an assumption that the poor are virtuous or morally worthy of such attention, but simply on the fact that they are poor. The option for the poor intends no discriminating moral judgment among peoples.
Is this option then an option against anyone? Yes and no. This is in one respect implicitly an option for justice in their regard, because the situation of the poor is intrinsically unjust as defined. As such, it is an option against injustice. Hence, in its primary aim, this option is not against anyone. What it intends to negate is the negative situation that is poverty. However, an option for Justice and for the overturning of injustice will go against the interests of those who either perpetuate the injustice or benefit by it. Therefore the option for the poor is against no one personally because the language unfolds on an objective social level. Social issues should not be immediately personalized. But concretely the working out of the option for the poor will undermine the material interests, although not necessarily the moral interests, of those who personally benefit from an unjust situation.
WHAT ARE THE GROUNDS FOR THIS OPTION FOR THE POOR?
This question could be the most crucial of all, for it relates to the query about how a phrase that is so historically recent has spread so far so fast and commands such authority. How can this option for the poor be so important when the Church appears to have been ignorant of it until a mere twenty-five years ago? The response to this question is essential because without some intelligibility in relation to the core of Christian faith, what is spoken by the Church will bear no inner authority.
There are a number of ways of explaining the inner logic of the option for the poor. For example, most simply and profoundly, the option is no more than a modern version on the social level of the Christian axiom that love of God entails love of neighbor, where the neighbor is someone different from ourselves, and one for whom we must make ourselves the neighbor. In order to appreciate the inner authority of this option, one must not view it as an entirely new phenomenon, but as a fitting interpretation in our day of something fundamental to the human condition and to Christian revelation. I will briefly outline three approaches to the inner meaning and authority of this principle: the ethical, the scriptural, and the theological.
First, relative to the ethical grounding of the preferential option for the poor, I suppose a recognition of human solidarity. As human beings, we are not simply a group of individuals; we are all in existence together as a race. This ontological oneness of humanity is passing in our era into a factual and empirical interdependence. We all influence each other within each society as well as within the global framework.
In this context, when one confronts the situation and lot of the poor, one cannot but have what Edward Schillebeeckx calls a negative experience of contrast (Schillebeeckx 1968,153-54). Such an experience, which I consider to be the basis of all ethics, is a kind of intuitive, reflex reaction that a certain negative situation should not be. A negative experience of contrast is an immediate response to a situation and a judgment that is wrong and even an outrage. This is a recognition that human beings should not be allowed to suffer so much so needlessly, and that the situation of the poor amounts to massive innocent suffering. But this reaction can only be had to the extent that one has a higher positive ideal of the way things should be. Without this, one would not be able to recognize the negative situation as negative. Also, a negative experience of contrast is always accompanied by a desire to resist the negativity, to negate the negation. And, finally, it should be noted that one can still have such a contrast experience even when one does not have the power to change things (McAuliffe 1990, 15-69).
In the dynamics of reaction to negativity and the desire for what is right and humane, one sees the groundwork for a basic moral sense. This fundamental experience underlies every concern for justice; if social justice were the stable condition of things, it would not be a human quest. It is only such an experience of blatant and manifest injustice that impels all human beings of good will to seek justice. The option for the poor is not at this level an exclusively Christian imperative; it is a universally compelling anthropological or human demand.
The scriptural grounding that is most frequently appealed to in justifying the option for the poor comes from the prophets in the Jewish writings and from what we know of the message and behavior of Jesus in the New Testament. The attention given in the prophetic writings to the poor and the helpless is dramatic. The prophets straightforwardly place concern for the poor, the deprived, the neglected, and the marginalized ahead of all other religious concerns, including worship of God. The same is true of Jesus, who in the New Testament is presented as the latter-day prophet. His teaching of the kingdom of God, the ethics of the kingdom contained in his beatitudes and parables and his actual behavior in so far as can be reconstructed by historians, display a primary concern for the poor and those marginalized by his religious society.
In weighing this scriptural evidence or data, it is crucial to realize that what is at stake here is not an argument from words. Modern intellectual culture rules out the possibility of biblical fundamentalism. What is in play here is the revelation of God. We do not know much about God because God is not immediately available to us. To conceive of God in a Christian way, one must take up the experiences, symbols, and language of the tradition and allow them to influence how we might experience God today. The prophets and principally the life and teachings of Jesus are witnesses upon whom Christians rely, not without interpretation, to shape their idea of God. Let me turn now to the theological grounding of the option for the poor. The core of Christian revelation about God is that God is gracious and benevolent toward God’s creatures. God’s love is egalitarian; God loves all and loves each wholly, thus grounding the infinite value of every single human being. More than this, God’s love for each is creative and restorative. God wills and intends the full realization of the potentialities of each person of whom, after all, God is the creator. God’s love as it were fills up what is lacking in each, God’s forgiveness reaches out to the sinner, and God’s concern reaches out to those who are deprived. Thus, despite the egalitarian nature of God’s universal love, God loves most those who are most in need. God is on the side of the poor because, with respect to their poverty and the damage it causes, they are most in need.
This point may be illustrated with an analogy or parable, since there is no other way to speak about God. Suppose a married couple has three children. The first is a girl and she is healthy, bright, beautiful, and well adjusted. The second is a boy and he develops into a very intelligent, handsome, and physically gifted young person who has it all together. The third is a girl but she is homely, weak, and slightly physically handicapped. Although very bright, left to herself, she may become withdrawn or aggressive. How will parental love be directed to this child? And what will this love seek to accomplish? The parable-analogy speaks for itself. Parental love, not to mention the love of sister and brother, can be creative of a whole and integral person. It can make up for what is not given by nature, and can draw out a self-esteem and a desire to live equal to that of anyone else. And this gift of more love, which is really not quite that, is a natural reaction of the parental relationship. This process could of course go sour, and one would then use the same scenario as a negative parable about collective human sin, but we speak not of the automatic mechanisms of nature, but of free relationships and their dynamics. The option for the poor is a dynamic relationship of love, even when this is very indirect.
Another side of this excess of love for one’s own, and of loving in a special way those who need one’s love because of their deprivation, is protectiveness. This protectiveness can flare up into a fierce anger when someone bullies another who is weak and defenseless. This is exactly the logic of the outrage of the prophets and their language of the anger of God at the way the poor and the weak were treated in Israel. God is depicted as having said: “When you attack the weak ones who are my favored, you attack me”. And inversely but positively: “Whatever you do for the least of my children you do for me”(Mt 25:40).
In sum, this is the theological logic of the option for the poor that maintains that God is on the side of the poor. The language of “taking sides” is blunt and perhaps misleading. But it has an intelligibility within the context of a personal God who loves human beings as persons who are God’s own children. God wills justice and hates injustice; but God wills more than justice. God wants and intends the full development, the realization of the whole human potential, of those who in fact are deprived of the possibility of realizing it. God’s love thus appears to increase the more human love is denied to human beings.
HOW IS GOD’S LOVE ACTUALIZED IN HISTORY?
When one asks how God’s love for the poor is actualized in history, one runs headlong into one of the deepest mysteries of human existence. If God loves the poor so much, why are they so poor? The question is a variation on the mystery of evil and innocent human suffering. In the end, there is no human answer to this mystery. But those who are so scandalized by the seeming impotence of God that they deny God’s existence must, in the end, accept the final meaninglessness of reality itself. One cannot buy a coherent universe or history at the price of surrendering God; on the contrary, one loses the only ground that could possibly sustain a hope for the ultimate coherence and meaning of existence.
But there is also a difference between a hope for final justice in an endtime without any grounds at all, and a hope that has some basis which points symbolically toward benign fulfillment. It is one thing to merely postulate and project into the void a God who is love and thus will save humankind in the end. It is another thing to point to signs that such a God acts even now for our salvation. Is there any indication that the words of Jesus “Blessed are you poor, for the kingdom of God is yours” (Lk. 6:20) have some symbolic referent even now in the world? Is God’s salvific love actually operative in history? If one had no tangible evidence at all for this, it would be hard to render intelligible the religious position that God loves anyone, much less that God bears a preferential love for the poor. Put plainly, the evidence runs in the other direction.
The response to this issue does not itself break out of the mystery with luminous clarity, especially to those who have come to reject God’s overt intervention in history. They cannot expect to experience God’s love operative in history outside of an experience of faith. If there are to be miracles on behalf of the poor, they will be worked by human agents. For God’s providence and covenantal love, as these are concretized in action, are always concealed infinite causes, specifically in the agency of human love. God works in history in the collective situations and events of human subjects, precisely through human subjects. Just as Jesus, a human being, was the primary agent of God’s love for the world, so too this mission of Jesus is carried forward by disciples, explicit or anonymous. Human beings are the coworkers of God’s kingdom when that kingdom is envisioned in its overt and historical form. And in the grand scheme of things, the final meaningfulness of human freedom demands that we contribute to the kingdom in the endtime (Segundo 1985, 123-25, 157). To think otherwise, that is, to think that God’s love will take care of the poor in history without any human mediation, could be naiveté or more likely, an evasion of Christian responsibility. Either case is a failure to understand the mission and message of Jesus at its very core.
WHAT DOES THE OPTION FOR THE POOR ON THE PART OF THE CHURCH CONSIST IN?
This question and the next cannot be answered satisfactorily without a great deal of discussion. The reason for this is that with them, we are beginning to come down to earth and to the practical meaning of this general axiom. What does it mean concretely? What are we supposed to do? What I will suggest is that one can say something generally here, but the final answer will depend on different situations and different people responding to them.
Let me begin with a general principle that concerns the issue of what an option for the poor might consist in for any given church. Such a general principle can be drawn from Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), which was Jesus’ response to the question of who the neighbor is that one should love. The parable, like many of Jesus’ parables, contains a couple of tricks and sudden reversals. One of them is that the neighbor turns out to be not the man on the side of the road who was beaten up, but the Samaritan who helped him. In other words, Jesus says, in response to the question who is my neighbor, that it is the wrong question to ask: “You are the neighbors of the others who are different from you; go out to them and make yourself neighbor to them.” This is the general principle that guides a response to the question of the concrete meaning of the option for the poor in any given church. The Church should go out to the poor according to the situation and the condition in which they are found. This will be different in different societies, cultures, and periods, and will unfold on different levels and in different kinds of activities in different circumstances.
One could divide the concrete unfolding of an option for the poor in the way the Church responds to issues “within” the Church and how it responds to social issues in the world “outside” the Church.
Relative to the internal life of the Church, it should reach out to the poor with its ministry. The need here can be recognized by a general consideration of the degree to which the wealthy classes have churches and ministers and the poor do not. In Latin America the option for the poor is a reversal of a longtime identification of the Church with government regimes and the social aristocracy—an identification that added up to the virtual neglect of the poor masses. This is probably a universal tendency. It seems obvious enough that an option for the poor would mean a transfer of pastoral and ministerial energy toward the poor, a putting of the social agencies of the Church at their disposal. Concretely, this involves rethinking the commitment of the official and financially supported ministers of the Church. Ideally, this allocation of ministerial personnel should be supported by the whole Church.
On the social level, the Church would become the spokesperson, the social ombudsman, operating with an explicit bias for the disadvantaged classes. For example, in Latin America, in opposition to the Church’s identification with the oligarchic elite class, a new identification with the poor implies a concern on the part of the Church for the social structures that keep the poor in bondage. A good example recently is the church in Brazil which stood up to business and industrial interests and the government, in speaking out for the rights of natives in the rain forests in the interior of the country. In the United States, I already mentioned the Catholic Church’s engagement in the politicoeconomic discussion of the nation. The Church issued a policy document dealing with poverty, unemployment, the welfare system, the agricultural system, and trade relationships with the Third World, guided by the principle of the option for the poor. People in all the parishes in the United States were asked to consider these positions, and Catholic agencies were asked to implement them in the measure that is possible.
In the end, it is difficult to answer the question of the concrete meaning of the option for the poor. This will depend on the specific church in an actual society, on what is needed, and on what is possible. And in every case it will be decided on the basis of practical prudential judgment, and not simply on a priori principles.
HOW DO INDIVIDUALS MAKE OR IMPLEMENT THE OPTION FOR THE POOR?
This is the hardest question of all because one cannot give a general response for the concrete behavior of individuals. I have been asked this question in very excruciating forms by college students who, having internalized the Christian imperative of the option for the poor, find themselves on the threshold of choosing a career filled with opportunities for self-advancement and achievement. What are they to do? Let me first give two general principles that may serve as premises for such a discussion, and then outline some of the options that are factually and historically available.
A first general principle is that there is a division of labor within society and within the Church, and that by and large, no profession or honorable way of life is intrinsically hostile to an option for the poor. To put the same principle the other way around, an option for the poor does not in itself dictate a specific career. It is possible to be motivated by and to exercise an option for the poor from within the whole field of various forms of work and stations in life. This seems to me important because of some rhetorical extremes in this area. Some professions of course are intrinsically hostile to an option for the poor; it is difficult, for example, to justify the drug trade on the basis of providing jobs and income for Peruvian and Bolivian peasants. A second principle is that as a Christian and a member of the Church, one should be supportive of all efforts on behalf of the poor insofar as one thinks them moral and effective. In other words, there should be a general solidarity among the many Christians who display an option for the poor in their activity even though there may be wide diversity in the way this is done. For example, it is difficult to respect Michael Novak’s hostility to liberation theology or the option for the poor. He is convinced it has taken wrong forms in Latin America and in some respects in the United States as well, because he is a firm believer in what he calls democratic capitalism. But in all that he writes, one finds no deep contrast experience, no scandal or reaction against the condition in which the poor in Latin America live. If even a hint of that were present, one would be inclined perhaps to read his arguments more carefully.
What are some of the many ways in which Christians might internalize and live out an option for the poor? Some Christians of course are among the poor and work in solidarity with each other in addressing their common problems. Other Christians, not born poor, become poor to work with and alongside the poor. This may be considered an extension of the traditional vocation of the missionary. Other Christians work for and on behalf of the poor less directly, from various positions of power and influence. For example, the Jesuit centers for social justice in various countries and cities throughout the world try to understand social issues, conscienticize people regarding them, and mobilize human energy to address them. Other Christians associate themselves with any one of the many issue-oriented and problem-specified agencies and organizations. There is no major social problem among the poor that does not have one organization or another addressing it, whether Church-sponsored, secular and private, or run by government.
But, finally, I believe that all should display in their private and public lives a concern for the poor. This a priori and intentional bias is intrinsically Christian and should operate as a tacit ethical principle governing Christian life. It should engender a reflex response that governs one’s thinking when any social issue arises. This last point is still very vague and will take on many forms, but it is simply a restatement of the basic principle that the Church has made an option for the poor. Members of the Church are those “who have internalized this concern in such a way that it governs their general behavior in the same measure Christian faith does. This bias for the poor is internal to a faith in God mediated by Jesus.
CONCLUSION
The preferential option for the poor, in imitation of God’s own option, is idealistic in its altruism. Is it mere romanticism to speak of such an option becoming operative in the Church at large? A realistic response to this question depends on where one looks and what one expects. There is no doubt that one finds an option for the poor already operative in the Church in various places and at different levels. Already, in many smaller communities, the sense of solidarity is such that the poor are not neglected or devalued. As the Church is conceived and organized in larger and more impersonal structures, one can probably expect that the conscious dedication of Church members to the plight of the poor will decline—that is, statistically. But even in larger Church settings, one always finds some people who give of themselves in varying degrees to the service of the poor. It would be utopian to think of the whole Church as actually dedicated to overcoming the conditions of poverty, but one can conceive of this ideal written into the very fabric of the public religious life of a community, including and especially its liturgical life. Then this ideal would be a constant appeal to Christian commitment. With enlightened leadership in the Church, one can hope that a renewed understanding of Jesus’ message and mission, and of the Church itself as the continuation of that mission, would generate the promotion of this ideal in all local Church communities.
Notes 1. Looking at the option for the poor theologically, one can say that it “renders the very mystery of salvation. As a basic soteriological and ecclesiological affirmation, it becomes a way of saying what God has done for us in Christ” (Clarke1988, 95). 2. The American bishops make the following categorical assertion: “As individuals and as a nation, therefore, we are called to make a fundamental ‘option for the poor’ ” (U.S. Bishops 1986, 42). 3. The meaning of poverty, the logic of the option for the poor, an explanation of why this is God’s option, and a justification of the partisan character of this option for a universally valid ethics are analyzed by P. McAuliffe (1990, 70-128). 4. The logic of a negative experience of contrast is developed by McAuliffe (1990,15- 69). 5. I put these words in quotation marks to show that they do not represent a hard distinction: They begin to lose their clarity over against each other upon analysis.
Works Cited Clarke. T. “Option for the Poor: A Reflection.” America 158 (January, 1988): 30. Hennelly, A. T., ed. “The Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops.” In Liberation Theology: A Documentary History. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990. John Paul II. “One Church, Many Cultures.” Origins 14 (January, 1985