“‘What is the good of changing the structures without a change in the human heart?’ This is only a half-truth, for changing social and cultural structures is a way of changing the human heart. There is a mutual dependency, and reciprocal demands, between the human heart and its social milieu, based on a radical unity. It is no more ‘mechanistic’ to think that a structural change automatically makes for a new humanity, than to think that a ‘personal’ change guarantees social transformations. Both assumptions are unreal and naive.

But perhaps what most shocks the Christian seeking to take sides frankly and decisively with the poor and exploited, and to enter into involvement with the struggles of the proletariat, is the conflictual nature of praxis in this context. Politics today involves confrontation – and varying degrees of violence – among human groups, among social classes with opposing interests. Being an ‘artisan of peace’ not only does not dispense from presence in these conflicts, it demands that one take part in them, in order to pull them up by the roots.

There is no peace without justice. This is a hard, uncomfortable truth for those who prefer not to see these conflictual situations, or who, if they see them prefer palliatives to remedies. It is equally hard for those who, with all the good will in the world, confuse universal love with a fictitious harmony. But the gospel enjoins us to love our enemies…There is no way not to have enemies. What is important is not to exclude them from our love.

In Christian circles, of course, we are not very much accustomed to thinking in conflictual, concrete terms. Instead of antagonism we prefer…a spirit of conciliation. Instead of the provisional, we prefer our evasive ‘eternity.’ We have to learn to live peace, and think peace, in the midst of conflict.”

— Gustavo Gutiérrez, The power of the poor in history