The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica
The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Author: Philip J Williams

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1989-02-22

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1349103888

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Unlike most recent studies of the Catholic Church in Latin America, Philip Williams' book sets out ot analyse the Church in two very dissimilar political contexts - Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Despite the obvious differences, Williams argues that in both cases the Church has responded to social change in a remarkably similar fashion. The efforts of progressive clergy to promote change in both countries has been largely blocked in both hierarchs, fearful that such change will threaten the Church's influence in society. Based on extensive first-hand research, this book is a welcome contribution to the current debate over Central America.

Politics and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua
Politics and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua

Author: John M. Kirk

Publisher: Gainesville, Fla : University Press of Florida

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780813011387

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Guerrilla-priests and liberation theology are not new phenomena in Nicaragua. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, Catholic Church leaders have played a major role in that country's politics. The result, John Kirk writes, is a polarized church, one with a progressive minority at loggerheads with the conservative hierarchy. Kirk sets each stage of the church-state debate in a historical continuum, then examines the forty-year period of Somocismo and the Sandinista period (1979-90) that followed. This social revolution - blending nationalism, Marxism, and Catholicism - dared to be different, he claims, and accordingly it paid the price. Kirk wrote this book following three trips to Nicaragua during the 1980s, when he witnessed firsthand the social polarization occurring at the time. But the involvement of the Catholic Church in Nicaraguan politics is not exceptional, he says: "Most - if not all - religions are also encumbered with socio-political concerns that go beyond the essentially 'religious.'"

The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica
The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Author: Philip J. Williams

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2010-11-23

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0822975424

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Unlike most recent studies of the Catholic Church in Latin America, Philip J. Williams analyzes the Church in two very dissimilar political contexts-Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Despite the obvious differences, Williams argues that in both cases the Church has responded to social change in remarkably similar fashion. The efforts of progressive clergy to promote change in both countries have been largely blocked by Church hierarchy, fearful that such change will threaten the Church's influence in society.

Risking a Somersault in the Air
Risking a Somersault in the Air

Author: Margaret Randall

Publisher: New Village Press

Published: 2022-05-24

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1613321848

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First revised edition of interviews with 14 prominent activists whose writings influenced the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution and help us understand present-day Nicaragua Margaret Randall presents a dynamic collection of personal interviews with Nicaragua's most important writer-revolutionaries who played major roles in the 1979 revolution and the subsequent reconstruction. This revised first edition includes a new preface and additional notes that frame the narrative in high relevance to the present day. The featured writer-activists speak of their work and practical tasks in constructing a new society. Among the writers included are Gioconda Belli, Tomás Borge, Omar Cabezas, Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Menéses, Julio Valle-Castillo, and Daisy Zamora. The work also features 50 evocative photographs from the era by Margaret Randall.

A Radical Faith
A Radical Faith

Author: Eileen Markey

Publisher: Bold Type Books

Published: 2016-11-08

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1568585748

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On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women-three of them Catholic nuns-were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background. In A Radical Faith, journalist Eileen Markey breathes life back into one of these women, Sister Maura Clarke. Who was this woman in the dirt? What led her to this vicious death so far from home? Maura was raised in a tight-knit Irish immigrant community in Queens, New York, during World War II. She became a missionary as a means to a life outside her small, orderly world and by the 1970s was organizing and marching for liberation alongside the poor of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Maura's story offers a window into the evolution of postwar Catholicism: from an inward-looking, protective institution in the 1950s to a community of people grappling with what it meant to live with purpose in a shockingly violent world. At its heart, A Radical Faith is an intimate portrait of one woman's spiritual and political transformation and her courageous devotion to justice.

The Gospel in Solentiname
The Gospel in Solentiname

Author: Ernesto Cardenal

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 653

ISBN-13: 172528006X

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In Solentiname, a remote archipelago in Lake Nicaragua, the people gathered each Sunday to reflect together on the Gospel reading. From recordings of their dialogue, this extraordinary document of faith in the midst of struggle was composed. First published in four volumes, The Gospel in Solentiname was immediately acclaimed as a classic of liberation theology—a radical reading of the good news of Jesus from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. (It was also banned by the Somoza dictatorship.) Forty years later The Gospel in Solentiname retains its freshness and power. Though times may have changed, the message of Jesus—as heard by these peasants—continues to challenge the rulers of our age and to inspire the poor with the hope of a different world.

Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution
Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution

Author: Margaret Randall

Publisher:

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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"The controversy within the Catholic Church over the concept of liberation theology raises the questions: is there room in Christian philosophy for a socialist society? And is there a place in a socialist society? Nicaragua's recent experience, says Margaret Randall, shows the answer to these questions to be "yes". The dominant role Christianity played in the Nicaraguan revolution both before and after the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza regime shows that the concrete goals shared by the two ideologies, Christianity and Marxism, outweigh their theoretical contradictions. The main part of Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution consists of long narratives by members of two Christian base communities with key roles in the Nicaraguan revolution. Solentiname is the retreat founded in the mid-sixties by Father Ernesto Cardenal -- now Nicaragua's minister of culture -- on a remote island in Lake Nicaragua. El Riguero is an urban community, founded in 1972 by father Uriel Molina in a Managua barrio. Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution features the voices of "ordinary" believers as well as those of well-known religious and political leaders" -- Back cover.

What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution
What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution

Author: Dan La Botz

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-09-07

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 9004291318

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This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN (‘the Sandinistas’), with politics principally shaped by Soviet and Cuban Communism, never had a commitment to genuine democracy either within the revolutionary movement or within society at large; that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that revolution was betrayed from the 1970s to the 1990s; and that the FSLN’s lack of rank-and-file democracy left all decision-making to the National Directorate and ultimately placed that power in the hands of Daniel Ortega. Pursuing his narrative into the present, La Botz shows that, once their would-be bureaucratic ruling class project was defeated, Ortega and the FSLN leadership turned to an alliance with the capitalist class.