In our time, solidarity has become a term increasingly used by people in relatively affluent parts of the world to express their sense of pity for, of sympathy with, of reaching out to, some oppressed or disadvantaged section of fellow human beings, invariably so submerged that they are unable to speak for themselves: the starving masses of Africa, the exploited poor of South America, the new underclass who live, surplus to requirements, redundant ciphers, without hope or dignity, in the decaying ghettos of our great western cities. Some such sentiment is the driving- force behind liberation theology—the conviction, justified by that unforgettable passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel, that if we are to find Christ in our world, it can only be in the dispossessed and wretched of the earth (when you did this to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me); together with the chilling corollary that when we ignore the poor, we are slighting the Saviour himself, telling the Son of God that his sufferings are no concern of ours.

It is no purpose of mine to disparage or belittle liberation theology, to fault the modem Church for its wholly admirable decision to identify with the poor, to choose Lazarus above Dives—this is, after all simply a copying of the Master, the imitation of Christ. If he chose to be bom powerless, it would be foolish and idolatrous for his followers to worship power. If he spoke so trenchantly about the risks of wealth, his Church, far from admiring, should feel a special compassion for those poor rich people so at risk of suffering the same catastrophe as the wealthy fool in the parable.