`Church must take sides,' says Bishop

DR SHEILA CASSIDY, the British doctor recently imprisoned and tortured in Chile, and Bishop Helmut Frenz, the Lutheran cofounder of the Chilean Peace Committee, now expelled, likened their conversions to that of St Paul at an emotive meeting this week.
Bishop Frenz told thegathering in Westminster Coeference Centre. "I started in Chile in 1964 as a naive, liberal humanitarian. I became a highly politicised Christian."
Drawing a parallel with his parents wilful ignorance of what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Germany, Bishop Frenz. said: "He who sees must change his position. That is the challenge for the Christian. "You must see a tortured body or meet the mother of a big family whose son has been tortured in prison since 1973. Then you forget if she is Left, Right or Communist. You forget to ask her what she would do it the Left took over."
Bishop Frenz speaking of the Peace Committee's work in Chile, said: "It was like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, to me, Chile is the man who fell among thieves. We could not help the poor or defend people from an upper-class position, we had to go to the sufferers and identify with them. We chose to see."
Defending himself against allegations that he or the Church had gone "Red" in Chile, Bishop Frenz said: "1 am not a Marxist. I am a Christian. I believe that the Christian Faith and the Marxist ideal cannot go together.
"This does not mean that I am against them or that we can't struggle side by side. In Chile we had to struggle for them because they too are the sons of God.
"We cannot be neutral be-: cause God is not neutral. He; took sides for humanity, and wherever humanity is at risk the Church must take sides. A Church which tries to be neutral is irresponsible."
The Bishop criticised the Churches in Europe for identifying too closely with the ruling powers and for not being more critical of governments over issues such as arms sales.
On the question of an economic boycott of Chile, Bishop Frenz said that economists in Europe were working to discover what happened to aid sent to Chile.
Dr Sheila Cassidy also told the meeting of her change of heart in Chile, "I went there looking for the easy life, when I set off on a cargo boat with my dog," she said.
She had lived with the rest of the Chilean middle class who were totally unaware of how the majority of poor Chileans lived. "If you want to lead a normal professional life in Chile you must shut your eyes," she said.
When she took the decision to work in a Church clinic in a shanty-town near Santiago and came face to face with the.misery and despair of the poor. "It was an experience like that of St Paul," she said.