Fr. Larry

Q) Who are the oppressed?
A) Those identifiable social groups who are used or manipulated by others for the sake of greed, self-gratification, power, or the need to control are the oppressed.

Q) Who are the oppressors?
A) Those leaders, groups, governments, or established authorities of any institution who use, manipulate, or control the well being of others, especially through the use of power or wealth, are the oppressors.

Q) What is the oppressed consciousness?
A) The oppressed often adopt the consciousness of the oppressor and even admire and envy their oppressor. The self-justifying point of view of the oppressor is thus internalized by the oppressed contributing to their own difficulty and suffering. It is true: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But, the opposite is equally true: “Powerlessness corrupts, and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.”

Q) What happens when oppression becomes unbearable?
A) When their suffering becomes unbearable the oppressed may, as happens at times, rise up and overthrow the oppressor, but this is nearly always done in order that they might themselves become the oppressor. As Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, “The problem with revolutions is that they change who holds the power but not how power is held.”

Q) What, then, is the goal?
A) The goal is not to overthrow the oppressors, but to liberate the whole world so that no one oppresses another.

Q) How is the world to be liberated?
A) The problem is essentially spiritual and, therefore, intractable to all efforts other than those which are essentially spiritual. Love and ahimsa are the gifts of the spiritual life which make possible the creation of a new and liberated humanity.

Q) Does this mean that only Christians can can bring about liberation?
A) No, of course not. Christians must, therefore, be willing to join with and work with men and women of wisdom and purity of heart whatever their distinctive spiritual practices as long as those spiritual practices are bent toward compassion, nonviolence, and the good of all. The ordinary saints and satyagrahas of every faith, as well as humanists committed to the principle of gemeinschaftsgefuhl (community feeling) will have a natural affinity and appreciation for one another in this work.

Q) What are the liberating practices of the Christian community?
A) Those practices of prayer, meditation, contemplation, devotion and “charity,” which lead to an awareness of communion, of at-one-ment, with the Mystery we call God, and in which Christians experience Christ as our peace, are, for the Christian, the means by which human consciousness may be transformed and the despair of oppression rendered null.

Q) Are these individual or communal practices?
A) Spiritual reality, mystical reality, is inherently paradoxical. We are both many and one. Christians see themselves as individual members of one body; therefore, while spirituality is intensely personal it is never purely individualistic.

Q) How far does this unity extend?
A) Since “God is above all, through all, and in all” (Ephesians 4:6), Christians will seek the flowering of that unity in peace, which itself has to do with what is complete and harmonious and results in respect for the dignity of every human being, reverence for all life, and a physically, economically, politically, culturally, emotionally, intellectually, environmentally, and “ecologically sustainable global civilization.”

Q) How are Christians and other spiritual persons to go about such work?
A) Love and non-violence must be a passion. Non-violence also calls for courage, for each votary “must be a messenger, a prophet, speaking truth and exposing lies.” But it is love that makes courage possible for one cannot be loving and afraid at the same time, and passion saves ahimsa from becoming a mere policy. “One with passion expresses it in every act” (Gandhi). The non-violence of the votary arises from having experienced the transcendent which brings peace and wisdom within. Violence is needed to protect what is external, love and non-violence protect one’s spirit, and make service to the anawim possible.

Q) Isn’t all this utopian?
A) Such a perspective assumes a disconnected duality of the “natural” and “spiritual” that is more illusory than real. It can only be good to do good everywhere and always — in life or death, on earth or in heaven. The worldly criteria of success measures nothing. However, even if we were to use the world’s criteria of success and failure, those of the Way believe it better to fail at love, and compassion, and liberation than to succeed in unkindness, malice, or oppression. There is only one possible way out of violence and oppression, and that is love and non-violence. Should we not pursue that possibility even if at times it sounds utopian or impossible? If the peace makers come to be known as the children of God, and the pure of heart come to see God, then ultimately love cannot be defeated.