Transfiguration Spirituality CHRIST DID NOT DIE FOR GOLD [page 2 of 2] For many of the indigenous of Latin America today, things still have
not changed--they live under terrible conditions of poverty and injustice. Many Latin Americans are still working for wages that would be considered
slave wages in Western Europe and the United States. We have the example of the maquiladoras today, where in Latin America
people are paid for a week's work what U.S. workers previously received
from the same company for an hour's work. (Thus Latin America workers are
paid an average of $.42 per hour and US workers $14.00 per hour.) One can see why General Motors and Ford recently reported a tremendous
increase in profits. General Motors has 300 plants in Latin America. These
profits were made off the backs of people who had to choose (while working)
whether to eat or to have a place to live. NAFTA and GATT are the means
of institutionalizing this maquiladora system and are billed as the wonder
of free trade. Unfortunately, free trade tends to give the advantage to
those who already have capital, not to the poor. It makes everything advantageous
to big business and squeezes out small businesses and farmers. NAFTA has already been passed, but it can be reformed. GATT can be reformed
before it is again approved. A September 18, 1993 editorial in America magazine warned about the effects
of these practices. They gave us the background on current U.S. Business
practices in Central America: "During the 1980's the U.S. Department
of Commerce and the U.S. Agency for International Development urged American
producers, especially of textiles and electronics, to shift offshore, "You
owe it to your shareholders," they argued. The procedure was this:
Buy fabric in Asia, have it sewn in Haiti (for 14 cents an hour in one notorious
instance) or the Dominican Republic or El Salvador, and sell the finished
produce in the United States or Europe." By abolishing tariffs and demanding that the poor countries pay their
huge interest payments on debts to the World Bank, the markets in the poor
countries have been flooded with imports and the smaller businesses, cooperatives,
and farms (ideal Christian alternatives), have been unable to compete with
big business and poverty has thus worsened in Central America. The responsibility of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is grave in contributing to this injustice. Their massive-scale projects in Latin America in the last fifty years have caused social upheavals that included enormous migrations to the major cities, where people have no work. And the sacrifices required of the people to begin to repay the enormous debts and interest payments owed to these institutions make life impossible for the poor.
Directly Wish to Kill Them" How can a person with GM stock (or with stock in another company that
is posting huge profits at the expense of the poor) receive dividends with
impunity, knowing that when these companies had their plants in the U.S.,
they paid an average of $14.00 an hour and are now paying $20.00 a week
or less? We at Casa Juan Diego recently came into some oil stock. We sold it immediately
for fear of participating in oppression, and the money will be used to help
those forced to immigrate because of non-living wages. The stockholders of these companies don't want to hurt Latin Americans,
nor force them to immigrate illegally to the United States, but they do
want to make money (profit). It is easy to forget that "Jesus did not
die for gold." Unfortunately for us, the sufferings of the poor and oppressed are not
so visible as in the days of Las Casas, but we are still required to know
where our money is coming from. We are not approaching this as a political issue, but as a religious
issue--a justice issue. As Las Casas pointed out in his denuciation of the murder of the Indians
and the destruction of their lands, the system had to be changed to so that
the poor are not used as animals, without respecting them as living creatures.
He wrote: "I am not saying that they directly wish to kill them, out of some hatred for them. I am saying that they desire to be wealthy and to abound in gold, which is their goal, by means of the toil and sweat of the afflicted, distressed Indians, using them as lifeless means and instruments, and that upon this follows, necessarily, the death of them all" (Gutierrez, p. 315).
Radically Different
How could one be so blinded by gold that one could not see that the workers are dying? How could people be so interested in profits and in maintaining an elevated lifestyle that they don't see or are willing to rationalize and minimize the effect of decisions on the suffering poor in Latin America? It appears to be a human weakness of many centuries. A clarity of vision is needed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (astoundingly, high on the bestseller
list in Publishers' Weekly), gives some badly needed guidelines for today's
Catholics, telling us that "Rich nations have grave moral responsibility"
toward poorer nations (2439). The section on "Justice and Solidarity
among Nations" sets clear moral imperatives for nations and financial
systems: "It is necessary to reform international economic and financial
institutions so that they will better promote equitable relationships with
less advanced countries" (2440). And "In place of abusive if not
usurial financial systems, iniquitous commerical relations among nations,
and the arms race, there must be substituted a common effort to mobilize
resources toward objectives of moral, cultural, and economic development,
'redefining the priorities and hierarchies of values'" (2438). The followers of the Nazarene are asked to redefine their priorities
and values to conform with the Gospel! The Catechism reminds us in the words
of St. John Chrysostom, one of the early Fathers of the Church, that "Not
to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and to deprive
them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs" (2446). And the Catechism reaffirms that "those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a preferential love on the part of the Church" (2448).
There needs to be an emergence of faith-based people who can emulate
Bartolomé de Las Casas in his reponse to injustice and the needs
of the poor. Maybe the Catechism of the Catholic Church can help this happen.
Christians of today need to participate in the same transformation as Bartolome
de las Casas in realizing that Christ did not die for gold--and neither
did he die for profits. It is humanly impossible to expect people to suffer the ignominy that comes with going counter to the economic trends that dominate our Western culture. But with God's grace and a commitment to the spiritual life, our minds and hearts can be conformed to Christ.
to Suffering? The images that cross our television sets almost daily of suffering people
from many parts of the world are overwhelming to any sensitive person and
are certainly overwhelming to many committed Christians. How can we respond
to men's and women's inhumanity to humankind? How did Las Casas respond?
Did he wring his hands in despair or become immobilized? How did Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker respond? She was a person
who all of her life was very sensitive to the needs of the poor and suffering
and looked to Christians to respond. Both of these people sometimes wondered about certain people who "go
by the name of Christian," as they oppressed the poor. But both responded
by living with the poor, seeing Christ in the poor and working and writing
tirelessly for justice. It is in following the example of people like Las Casas and Dorothy Day, both of whom prayed daily, meditating on the Lord Jesus Christ, that our whole being can be transfigured in order that we can truly see Christ in the poor (Matthew 25:31ff.) and with God's grace that we may one day be a part of the "just who will shine as the sun" (Matthew 13:45) when the Lord comes in His glory, being light and seeing light, "a blessed and sacred vision, that is the portion of the purified heart alone" (Fr. Alexei Smith, above). Pray for transfiguration in Casa Juan Diego.
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