Since Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba in January 1998, factions of the island's Catholic Church have pushed for increased social justice and civil freedoms. A bold, eloquent cry for greater activism came from Catholic clergy of Cuba's eastern dioceses this summer in Santiago de Cuba. Here, translated from El Nuevo Herald, are excerpts from the clerics' document, Cuba: Its people and its Church on the eve of the Third Millennium.

All the expectations generated [by the papal visit] were echoed by, and incarnated in, a phrase that to many synthesized and materialized the pontiff's message: ``Cuba must open to the world; the world must open to Cuba.''

The phrase was accurate because it referred to the double blockade endured by the Cuban population: The internal blockade imposed by the communist system and the external blockade represented by the American trade embargo.

To those who stress only the importance of the former, Cuba's problem will be solved by an internal change leading to the evolution, transformation or dissolution of the present system.

To those who blame the external blockade for everything, the solution for the present and difficult state of the nation lies in a lifting of the blockade -- a decision that depends on a foreign government.

A dispassionate, objective look reveals that our problems are of such magnitude that they require internal and external decisions, personal and collective, from inside and outside Cuba. Another of the Holy Father's motivating ideas was that we Cubans should be the protagonists of our own history.

This exhortation to protagonism contains a double criticism: On one hand, it criticizes paternalism, which asks us to expect everything ``from above''; on the other, it criticizes immobility, which asks us to expect solutions ``from the outside,'' to wait with arms crossed while others ``pull the chestnuts out of the fire.''

The solution will come from inside and from within, from our people, from the hearts of our people, or it won't be a solution at all.

Now then, we might ask: What has prevented us, or prevents us, from holding in our hands the reins of our lives and our history? . . .

Cuban communists did not invent the totalitarian system. They simply adapted its Marxist-Leninist version and ``benefited'' from its lengthy record. When confronting the United States, the only door open to the Cuban government was a strategic alliance with the bloc opposite the Americans: the eastern bloc, led by the Soviet Union.

Assuming that totalitarianism emerged from a matrix of war and violence, its objective is the destruction and total reconstruction of society on the basis of ideological postulates, through mechanisms of organization and control that utilize the most modern devices created by science and technology. It propels historical forces toward one goal: The establishment of an absolute political power wielded by a single party that rules over ``a united people who never will be vanquished.''

We are, then, looking at absolute control over the spirits and bodies of people, a control that perhaps no monarch or government has ever had, along with a parallel ability to plan and control individuals and societies. . . .

Secondly, analyze the consequences on the human being of continued and prolonged exposure to the policies of a totalitarian system. We'll call it the ``syndrome of learned defenselessness'' or ``induced hopelessness.'' Thus, the propaganda generated by the regime is designed to convince us that change is impossible or that change will lead to chaos, i.e., there is no possible way out of the present situation.

The ideas, attitudes and situations that constitute a state of defenselessness work only if they are accepted by the people exposed to them. When the syndrome of defenselessness appears in human beings, it is reinforced by repeated ideas, attitudes and experiences.

Forty years ago, when the communist experience began in this country, the Church raised its voice and confronted the new reality. The challenge led to the dismantling of the Church, its means of action and its institutions. . . .

The short and intense period of confrontation was accompanied by a ``policy'' of involuntary and voluntary departures from the country. Some priests advised the faithful to leave Cuba; then, the priests themselves -- warned by their superiors, or of their own volition -- began to leave. However, there were exceptions. Those who stayed were allowed by the government to maintain the Church alive.

When the Church began to regain its strength and resume its task, it ran into a reality that was not only hostile but also dominated the entire spectrum of socio-economic, cultural and political life. As we know, in 1980 the Church began a process of internal renewal with the Ecclesial Reflection, which culminated in the National Ecclesial Encounter of Cuba. It was characterized by a search for our identity and historical and existential vocation, in the light of the Gospel and for the service of our people.

Through the ENEC's final document, all people of God and the bishops, as pastors of the Church, in view of the declining and critical situation in Cuba, proposed a ``national dialogue'' that -- allowing for the variety and competence of the parties, including the Cubans in exile -- could lead to bold, broad and effective ways to mobilize the moral and material forces of the nation. It was like giving each other a vote of confidence and then ``setting a course toward the future.''

Faced with the weighty choice of ``holding on to power or saving the nation,'' Cuban communists chose the former, reinforcing the totalitarian behavior of living a lie and retaining the paralyzing schemes of defenselessness, knowing full well that that road led nowhere.

At that point, the bishops -- after a long and reflective wait -- decided [in 1993] to publish their letter, Love Hopes for All Things. The reaction among many of the Cuban people represented a turn in the nation's recent history. A considerable portion of the people saw in the bishops' words their hopes, their distress, their problems. The paths to a possible solution were laid out in that wise and brave letter.

The government shut its ears to the clamor of the people, as prophetically voiced by the bishops. The Church continued its efforts to achieve a peaceful, negotiated way out of the situation that would exclude no one. To many, the toughest obstacle to achieving this task is not only the unwillingness of government to engage in dialogue but also the absence of an organized counterpart: a civilian society, social movements or political groups that can assume the role of counterparts, of legitimate interlocutors vis-a-vis the state.

The official line reinforces this thesis, stressing the weakness of the dissident movement and the fact that it is infiltrated by the state-security apparatus and that, besides, it depends for its survival on support from abroad.

The dissidents, who are eminently peaceful, get neither recognition nor firm support from the hierarchy, at least none we can perceive. The greatest effort to crack the Cuban reality was made by the Church, in the form of the Pope's visit to Cuba. The mobilization of the people, the impact the visit had on the nation were unprecedented . . . No one inside and outside Cuba denies the success of that papal visit. The question we have been asking since remains: What has come of it?

Improvisation and temporization have become an integral part of the ``body national'' and have ``infiltrated'' the Church. Without our realizing it, this daily rub leaves its mark. To a degree, this is inevitable in a situation such as ours: We live in a country without a future, where routine -- in its basest form -- becomes the horizon itself. Precisely because of this, the Church and its people must insist on a much-needed expansion of outlooks and search for objectives.

We must deal with the serious problem of paternalism that manifests itself in our relations with our bishops and lay people. It is the fear of excess that leads us to overprotect our people and to restrain their prophetic commitment. We must remember that, for a long time, many of us have felt like ``seminarians saying Mass,'' and that nothing agrees more with the maturation and the commitment of priests in a presbytery, or lay people in a community, than the feeling of responsibility for the decisions that are discussed and made in a group.

Sometimes people say: ``We musn't risk everything we have achieved so far.'' This statement is reminiscent of the story by Karel Capec in his book Apocrypha. Capec ponders about the thoughts of Lazarus, the Lord's friend, after emerging from the tomb. The experience of death was such that Lazarus becomes fearful of life and its risks. He leads a life of absolute fear, dodging any commitment that implies a risk.

We don't believe that anyone halfway intelligent could wish to return to 1961, a time of confrontation. But at the same time, we cannot dodge the commitment thrust upon us by our nation's situation. We cannot remain silent or with our arms crossed.

To those who oppress people, any action by the Church in favor of respect for human rights, justice and freedom will be interpreted as ``meddling in politics.'' . . . When the people suffer not ``some'' but much injustice or limitation, the Church's responsibility becomes incomparably greater.

One topic we cannot leave untouched is that of the exodus, which once again threatens to empty our communities and decimate our people. In the exodus we find the traditional individualistic answer that we Cubans have given to the nation's problems. The Church must have the courage to denounce this attitude, which reveals a lack of commitment to the fate of the people.

An essential element to escaping from induced defenselessness is personal commitment, the slow road of conversion and surrender. A Church unable to awaken that spirit of sacrifice, that martyr-like militancy, will never shine its light on the darkness of totalitarianism.

Dialogue has been an ever-recurring theme in the Church's past 20 years. . . . But there is a basic contradiction in the proclamation of a ``national dialogue'' as a way out of the present situation and the implicit placement of such a dialogue in the hands of a State that has rejected it repeatedly. In such a situation, an offer of dialogue becomes a trap from which we cannot escape because we have never been able to engage in [dialogue]. There comes a moment when we must ask ourselves about the conditions of possibility -- and the very necessity -- of initiating a dialogue that involves civil society at its various levels with a civil, not directly political, purpose.

John Paul II had the boldness to fulfill . . . his commitment to come to Cuba and deliver a message that, in his opinion, would allow this Church and this nation to grasp again the reins of their destiny. The people responded to the call of the Church, and she demonstrated an ability to convene the masses that she herself was unaware of.

We believe that the crux of the question is to identify the recipient of our message, the real interlocutor of the dialogue we propose: People as protagonists of their own destiny, people who can walk on their own two feet, who organize and are capable of fighting alongside others, in defense of others.

We have come together to find out how to achieve this. The silence of our Church in the face of the new repressive laws and the fate of the four dissidents who wrote The Homeland Belongs to All is, to say the least, worrisome.

Our message of commitment and hope, action and optimism, patient struggle and constant evolution, must grow out of our own commitment. . . . We are all responsible. Learned defenselessness can be overcome through person-to-person work, consciousness awareness and individual commitment.

We need to promote concrete actions; we need to teach people to think and be critical; we need to awaken creativity and generate participatory processes. Only then shall we escape fear and contribute the best of ourselves: the creation of a kingdom of truth, justice, peace, and love, as Jesus teaches.