Aformer "church-in-silence" is babbling anew. After the silence of most of the 1960's, religious Cuba is speaking out. Many of us may not be ready for what we hear.

Our unreadiness flows from a variety of sources. One is that the United States policy of isolating Cuba not only isolates Cuba but also isolates us from it. Another source may be the traditional expectation that a church in a Communist country stands in unrelenting opposition to the government—or else retreats into the catacombs. Many Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews in Cuba have rejected (or are rejecting) the two traditional alternatives of sabotage or withdrawal to silence, even though both alternatives were tried, to one degree or another, for the bulk of the past decade.