Is There A Balweg In Our Ecumenical Future?
The ecumenical significance of Balweg lies not only in the manner in which he poses very concretely the revolutionary option which he has taken but more in the manner in which he affirms that the taking of such an option is rooted in a deep religious faith and is considered by him as an expression in our time and context of the imperative of Divine justice. He asks very sharply what other options are really available, and workable, in our present context in order to give substance to the Christian’s avowed “preferential option for the poor,” and in order to give practical vent to the Christian commitment to justice and to service to the people. Balweg disavows the workability and ultimate justice of gradual measures, whether these are by means of persuasion, legislation, electoral processes, or even perhaps the decentralized non-revolutionary violent confrontations among conflicting interest groups. These will, in his view, only rivert back and become domesticated into the old system w
