CA Catholic Bishop and 48 priests see revolution as the only way to overcome underdevelopment.
Bogota, December 25, 1968–Forty- eight priests and the Bishop of Euenaventura, Msgr. Gerardo Valencia-Cano, issued a statement this month calling for “a revolution which will overthrow the ruling classes of our country, through whom our foreign dependence is maintained.”
The document was prepared by the second meeting of an association which has come to be known as “The Golconda Priest Group.” The first meeting was held at a finca named “Golconda” in Viot, Cundinamarca, in July, 1968, and was attended by fifty priests. The recent meeting was held in Buenaventura, December 9-13, 1968. Of the signers, 47 are Colombians, two are Argentines, and one is an Ecuadorian.
The 3,000-word statement is based primarily on the findings of the II General Conference of the Latin American piscopate (CELAM) held in Medellin, Colombia, August 26-September 6, 1968. The document quotes generously from the CELAM recommendations and may be considered as an effort directed at their implementation.
Reaction to the Golconda statement has been strongly negative from the Church and the Establishment. The chancellor of the Bogota curia, Msgr. Luis Carlos Ferreira, announced that the Golconda document is unworthy of pastors of the Church. He is quoted as saying that “No member of the Church may incite to revolution, since the mission of pastors is to announce peace and love for one’s neighbor, not to assume belligerent or explosive attitudes. It is not true that this country is dominated by a few privileged people who run things as they please. In everything expressed by this small group of persons who declare themselves to be rebels against the world there are contradictions with what the Pope has declared. They do not faithfully follow declarations of the Council.”(1)
The Document (Summary and Excerpts)
The Colombian Ruling Class Is the Tool of Foreign Interests and Is Responsible for the Nation’s Underdevelopment
“The tragic situation of underdevelopment which our country suffers,” say the priests, “is the historical product of the economic, political, cultural and social dependence on foreign centers of power, a dependence exercised through our ruling classes.” The privileges of this ruling class go back to the Colonial epoch. They were strengthened by the War of Independence, justified by the national constitution, and sanctified by the Roman Catholic Church “as if they were an unequivocal expression of the will of God.”
The priests label the present regime as repressive–“violence installed in power.” It is a regime of “exploitation and institutionalized violence” which “perpetuates hunger and misery, sickness on a massive scale, infant mortality, illiteracy and marginality, profound inequalities in income, tension between social classes, outbreaks of violence, and meager participation of the people in the development of the common good.”
A Revolution Is Necessary
The priests ask what must be done to liberate the Colombian people from their “real servitude and slavery.” The people cannot overcome their underdevelopment simply by working harder: the structures of society must be changed. The present situation characterized by (a) a lack of hoavy industry, and (b) industrial roduction which does not generate capital because it has no market in the centers of power – “is impossible to overcome without a true revolution which will produce the overthrow of the ruling classes classes of our country, through whom our foreign dependence is maintained.”
Revolution and Theology
Participation by the Church in the struggle for a just society is linked in the document of creation and to the theolegical bases of the Second Vatican Council and the II Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM). The priest reject “the old Antimony between the temporal and the eternal” and indicate that when men respond to concrete situations of their existence, they are responding to the revelation of God.
Evangelism, “the awakening of faith,” must deal directly with human aspirations and problems. Faith thus becomes a commitment to humanity. Thne priests must be committed to this world, the temporal world, and they must “collaborate in the political formation” of the Columbian people.
The Rejection of Capitalism
In a call to action, the document urges priests to “become more and more involved with the various forms of revolutionary action against imperialism and bourgeois neo-colonialism.
“Our conviction of the necessity of a profound and urgent change in the socio-economic and political structures of the country,” they say, “leads us to join, without any discrimination whatsoever, with all those who strive for that change.” They pledge their efforts to the making, of a socialist state in Colombia:
‘We energetically condemn neo-colonial capitalism because it is incapable of solving the acute problems of our people. We will work for the coming of a socialist organization of society which will eliminate all forms of exploitation and will conform to the idiosyncracies of the columbian people.
Condemnation of Political Parties and the Defense Budget
The Golconda document sees Colontia’s two political parties — Liberal and Conservative– as tools of oppressors:
We reject as a divisive tactic the existence of’ the so-called traditional oolitical parties which divide our peole into to great bands, directed, each one of them, by groups which are equally exploiters of the masses and equally sumissive to and colonized by foreign monopolies.
It condenms the funds designated for Colombia’s Defense Ministry in the following words:
We likewise reject the immense war budget allocated for the maintenance of forces which are not oriented to the defense of the national sovereignty, but to the violent repression of the popular vindicating struggles of workers, peasants and students, in defense of structures which interest the
minorities who unlawfully retain economic or political power.
Against Distribution of Surplus Food by Foreigners and
Charges for cclesiastical Sacraments
In an obvious reference to the Food for Peace Program of the United States, the document says:
We are not in accord with foreign organizations becoming distributors of excess agricultural products because,under the pretext of aid, they hide the exploitation which they exercise through the progressive deterioration of mutual exchange, clothing themselves with an aura of generosity and creating in the receivers the spirit of beggars.
The charging of payments by the Church for the administration of the sacraments is also criticized:
We believe that the present system of charges made for the sacraments and religious services is contrary to the spirit of poverty which CELAM calls for the Church to demonstrate . Its financial aspect prevents the gratitude of the grace conferred and signified by the sacrament from being seen.
