text: The CELAM is just as bona-fide as the USCCB is.  The base Christian communities of liberation theology have been primarily the work of poor Christians, supplying in their own local communities for the absence of traditional parochial structures, and using their gatherings to reflect on the relationship between the word of God in Scripture and the necessary initiatives for the promotion of dignified human life in a context of poverty and oppression.  Their energies and courage over many years now stem from the awareness that the God of the Bible actively sides with the poor.  To the poor, the Word is a blessing; to the rest of us, it can be a challenge or a condemnation.  The choice is ours.  
  
  While the economic and educational level of North American Catholics might be quite different from that of our brothers and sisters to the south, we have much to learn from them about how to conduct ecclesial life in he context of diminishing traditional resources.