I want to take you on a little nostalgia trip, back to the
80s and 90s when I was part of the burgeoning punk scene in the New York/New
Jersey area.
This is a track by Puerto Rican political punks
Ricanstruction, a mainstay of the hardcore punk scene on the
Lower East Side.
When I started dedicating myself to becoming a theologian, I
remember recalling this video. It fascinated me that the young man with the
rattle can had no trouble equating Óscar Romero (the martyred archbishop),
Túpac Amaru (the murdered Native American leader), and Emiliano Zapata (the
Mexican revolutionary), declaring in the name of them all, ‘La Lucha Sigue’… ‘The
Struggle Continues’…
As I began to delve deeper into Latin American liberation theology,
I was equally fascinated by murals you see dotted around Central and South
America with images of both Che Guevara and Romero- devout Christian archbishop
and implacable revolutionary atheist- side by side.
I think there’s a lesson for us in that graffiti and those
images, a holy treatise that we need to remember, particularly on this day.
For as I write this, Archbishop Óscar Romero- martyred 24 March
1980 for his determined and increasingly vocal opposition to the government of
El Salvador’s reign of terror- has been officially canonized as a saint of the
Catholic Church.
Romero has exerted such an influence and inspiration over my
life, my work, and my personal spirituality that it might come as a surprise to
many that I’m feeling rather subdued today.
The reason for my ambivalence is two-fold.
The first, as most regular readers will know, has to do with
my enduring struggles with the Vatican power structure, which did very little
to support or defend Romero in his fight for justice when he and the persecuted
people of El Salvador needed it most.
Worse, that same Vatican power structure went on to variously
frustrate, delay, or outright oppose the cause of Romero’s canonization for
decades, maligning his memory and his character in the process.
The fact is, Romero was a saint at the moment of his death,
and the people of El Salvador, as well as millions of Catholics around the
world, recognized him as such. It has taken our bureaucratic, officious, autocratic
hierarchy nearly thirty years to recognize what any Salvadoran campensino could have told them the day
after Romero’s death.
But of course,
this was heart of Latin American liberation theology’s critique- that
theological reflection begins with the experience of the most poor and the most
oppressed.
A corollary is
when the Gospel writer has Christ say, ‘I thank you, Father, that you have
hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and revealed them to
infants (Matt. 11:35).
There are similar
echoes of this when Brazilian priest and theologian Frei Betto observed, ‘the
poor invaded the Church (and) Catholic priests and bishops began to be
converted to Christianity.’
My second
reason is related to the first; now that Romero is ensconced in the devotional structures
of the Church, I worry that his elevation might blunt the message that he gave.
The
greatness of Romero, I believe, is the fact that three weeks after this bookish,
conservative, status quo figure was
ordained archbishop, he unexpectedly and disturbingly felt that God showed him
the path he would need to take.
His good
friend Fr. Rutilio Grande- who had been denouncing the government’s
cruelty to the people- and two companions were murdered by the Salvadoran
military, which was carrying out a sustained campaign of terror in the
countryside. Romero went to the funeral and stared at both the bullet-ridden
body and at the faces of the parishioners. He later recounted:
When I looked at
Rutilio lying there dead I thought, 'If they have killed him for doing what he
did, then I too have to walk the same path.’
After this event, Romero was
tireless in his advocacy for the people, denouncing the government’s terror, appealing
to US President Carter to cut off aid to the Salvadoran government, even going
so far as, on
23 March 1980, to demand obedience from the soldiers at the expense of their military
commanders:
‘I’d
like to make an appeal in a special way to the men in the army: Brothers, each
one of you is one of us. We are the same people. The farmers and peasants that
you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear the words of the man
telling you to kill, think instead of the words of God, ‘Thou shalt not kill!’
No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the Law of God. In His Name
and in the name of our tormented people who have suffered so much, and whose
laments cry out to heaven: I implore you! I beg you! I order you! Stop the repression!’
The next day, he
was dead.
The people were
drawn to Romero’s words because, in a world that made it brutally clear to them
that their lives were of no value whatsoever, he constantly reminded them of
their value in the eyes of God and that God is a God of justice.
The greatness of
Romero is in the change of direction- at the prompting of the Spirit of God- he
was willing to make… yet ironically he has been elevated to a place of example
and inspiration by a Church that doesn’t change direction well at all.
If we wish to do
theological reflection with integrity, it is vital that Romero’s greatness not
be lost under a welter of gauzy, institutional sentimentality or rendered inoffensive,
divorced from the radical context from which it sprouted.
That depends on
the people of God who recognized his holiness from the beginning, not those who
noticed it far, far later…
… And the key to
that is in the graffiti of the video and in those murals of Romero and Che.
The poor, the
oppressed, the marginalized and the all those deemed ‘worthless’ by the forces
of capital and power across the globe continue to cry out for justice… the cry
of Romero… the cry of Jesus.
It is the duty of
the Church to stand with those who cry out for justice, for justice is the
heart of the Gospel…
‘The thief comes
only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have
it in full’ (John 10:10)…
This is the
intersection of Romero and Che, the Christian and the revolutionary. It is impossible
to evaluate the actions of Che without evaluating the actions of the
Latin American Church of his social context- ossified, reactionary,
anti-reform, privileged, elitist...
The Gospel of Christ- food for the poor, sight to the blind,
release to the prisoners, freedom for the captives, life for the lifeless, a
voice for the voiceless- was, is, and ever shall be revolutionary.
If the Church fails to preach and act out this radical
Gospel, the world will still cry out for it; the poor and the oppressed will
still demand justice.
If the Church stops up its ears, it is surrendering its
mission, and that mission will be picked up by those who will attempt it
without any understanding of the love of Christ. No one- least of all the
Church- should be surprised if that turns out to be a disaster...
But in that instance, I think the judgement of God rests
heavier on the Church. They knew Christ, and failed to emulate him; Che didn't, and set off to do it in his own power and wisdom...
Ironically, this is why I have a deep admiration for Che and
consider him an inspiration to me in the same manner as is Romero. For the
Gospel to have any integrity it must be revolutionary or it will be empty… and
for the revolution to have any integrity it must encompass Romero or it will be
in vain.
Che said, 'If you tremble with indignation at every
injustice then you are a comrade of mine’;
Romero said, ‘When the Church hears the cry of the oppressed
it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate
the misery from which the cry arises’;
Jesus said, 'Do you love me? Feed my sheep'.
The statements are all identical to me...
… And spray painting any or all of them on a wall would be an act
of devotion…
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