August 30, 2000

Aguacate, the Honduran base built by the Reagan administration for the Nicaraguan contras in the early 1980s, faded from the limelight in 1988 when the contras and Sandinistas signed a cease-fire agreement. But in recent months church delegations, international journalists, and relatives of Honduras’s “disappeared” have been traveling the 130 miles from Tegucigalpa to inspect the now virtually abandoned base, guarded only by an eight-man squad from the Honduran army.

Since Congress and the Federal Communication Commission deregulated broadcasting in the early 1980s, control of radio and TV stations has moved steadily into a handful of multinational corporations. During that same period, ownership of newspapers shifted from families to media giants, so that now there is almost no local ownership of papers in major markets.

Number of wars in Europe in the past ten years: 4
Number of wars in Africa in the past ten years: 15
Number of European wars in which human rights violators can be prosecuted by an international court: 4
Number of African wars in which human rights violators can be prosecuted by an international court: 1

At the end of my first year at General Theological Seminary, in New York City, I spent eight weeks in clinical pastoral education at Bellevue Hospital. In case I thought that seminary was simply about mastering theology, General had arranged a summer’s worth of practical education in pastoral care.

Being an assistant chaplain in a teeming New York hospital for mental and physical illnesses was the most emotionally challenging experience of that year. God’s justice never seemed more confusing or the church more marginal.