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Whose Heaven, Whose Earth?:

Thomas and Marjorie Melville. Pocket Books. 274p. 1973. Reviewed by Colin Feslier.

If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry
and relief to the persecuted
your light will shine in the darkness
and your shadows will become like noon.

—Isaiah 58: 9 — 10.

800 years after that was written, Jesus Christ preached his message of love. The poor were still bound to the yoke of slavery, oppressed, maligned and starved. 2000 years later, Christians who bother to look will see much the same situation in Africa, Asia, South America, and, yes even here in New Zealand.

For the first time in our 2000 year history however, we Christians are faced with an alternate philosophy which has proved extremely effective in freeing the oppressed not only does it "proclaim liberty to captives" but it creates the situation and the awareness in which the oppressed can free themselves. This is what Pope John XXIII spoke of when he said "who can deny that these movements, insofar as they conform to the dictates of right reason and are interpreters of the lawful aspirations of the human person, contain elements that are positive and deserving of approval?"

These people are Marxists, and it would seem that thoughtful co-operation with them is well in keeping with Church teaching.

Whose Heaven. Whose Earth? is the story of two people, a nun and a priest who attempted to put the teaching of Isaiah, Jesus and the Pope into practice and found themselves thwarted by the Church authorities in Guatemala.

It tells of their gradual alienation from the mainstream Church and of their transformation from Father Thomas Melville and Sister Marian Peter, priest and religious, conservative, rabidly anti-communist Catholics into Marjorie and Tom Melville, married, excommunicated and revolutionary Catholics, imprisoned for burning draft files in Cantonsville, USA.

Father Melville began his religious life as a seminarian in the Maryknoll seminary. He recalls that they had television installed so that they could watch Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Subcommittee. McCarthy, he recalls "became a big hero to most of us". Sent to Guatamela, he became the instigator of a "land reform" programme which involved the transportation of peasants to more fertile areas where the land would be farmed co-operatively. Finally he realised that his programme would basically change nothing only a few peasants would be allowed to move and the rest would remain as before enslaved on the big plantations. Worse still the project was being used by the government to convince the liberal factions of the US government that they were doing something to 'destroy poverty'.

Sister Marian was a teacher in a school for the daughters of the Guatamelan upper class. Gradually she became aware of the hypocrisy and self-deception this involved. Outside people were starving. Inside she taught the daughters of those who starved them to become the wives of those who would starve their children.

She too, tried reforms, she set up a free school for the children of the poor. Like Father Melville she realised that this was doing nothing more than treat the symptoms of this oppressive society and that some sort of assault on the system itself was needed. This point was made especially clear when the school authorities built a fence around the free school to prevent the "contamination" of the wealthy girls.

Eventually Tom and Marian met and dedicated themselves to building awareness of this need among their fellow clergy and religious. They also worked among Catholic university students, and it was through them that they came in contact with the Guatemalan Liberation Front, a guerrilla movement operating in the urban areas of Guatamela.

Sister Marion was the first of the pair to join the guerrillas, and she convinced Father Melville of its value. Their involvement was discovered at an early stage and they escaped through Mexico to the USA where they were imprisoned in 1968 for burning draft files.

They planned (indeed they may have done so) to return to Guatamela to continue their fight for a people's right to be human.

I have my doubts, however about the advisability of violent revolutionary activity at the time they employed these tactics. The peasants and workers' understanding of their situation was, and is now, at a low level. Any movement such as theirs, based around intellectuals, is doomed. Without the support of the, masses, no one can wage revolution and any attempt to do so leads to an intensifying of oppression so that any educational work accompanying the revolution becomes impossible. Hence, in the long run, it must be seen that their, actions favoured the status quo.

Nonetheless, this book stands as a powerful indictment of those Catholics who ignore the message of Christ and the Church in calling on people everywhere to fight for an end to injustice and exploitation in all its forms. It was the failure of these people to do this that drove Tom and Marjorie to the extreme actions they involved themselves in and it is these people, 'Christians' who support the status quo who ensure the persecution of Christianity in any country where our Marxists brothers and sisters lead the people to revolution.

"A Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in a state of mortal sin...."

Father Camilo Torres