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richer countries are more powerful. They are willing to trade and to give aid, but almost exclusively on terms which serve their own "enlightened self-interest." Any other arrangement would be 'junrealistic" or "irresponsible." Typically this has meant exploiting the primary resources (ore, oil, coffee, etc.) of the hinterland countries, in order to provide the industry of the metropole with raw material, and at the same time dampening the growth of potentially competitive manufacturing. It has often meant alliances with repressive oligarchies or dictators who provide a "favorable climate of investment" through "political stability." So it is that Gutierrez remarks: "The term 'development' seems rather antiseptic, inaccurately applying to a tragic tense reality .... There will be true development for Latin America only through liberation from the domination by capitalist countries. That implies, of course, a showdown with their natural allies: our national oligarchies." (TS 1, 2; pp. 247, 249-59) LIBERATION AND CHRISTIANITY
This quotation might strike the sympathetic reader as a passionate defence of his people's well-being; it might even come through as an accurate analysis of events. But it sounds much more like politics than theology. To those who object to this mixing of the secular with the sacred, a group of us, William Ryan, Joseph Komonchak, Grant Maxwell and I, put forth the following argument ( Cf. "The Liberation of Men and Nations," Catholic Mind 64 (1971) pp. 13-28.) God created men to take charge of the earth. Human history is the story of men's response to the Creator's call: it is the story of men's attempts to develop, to create social space wherein there is scope for effective freedom. But the call has been answered only imperfectly. Men are selfish, narrow-minded, sinful. The social, economic, legal and political arrangements they have constructed in the course of history reflect not only their progress but their sinfulness. If there are arrangements which block some men's development towards freedom, at the heart of these arrangements is sin. In its fulness, Christ's salvific grace will be experienced only on the last day. But its liberating power must be effectively experienced now, in history.