LIBERATION THEOLOGY SHACKLED

 

Newsmen don’t live by fact alone. Fact may be the backbone of a story that can be told with the cardinal “who,” “what,” “where,” “when” and “how.” But there is a latticework of nerve and sinew and flesh -- the “why” or “why not” of an event or issue -- that begs to be dissected and bared because such autopsy helps advance the cause of truth. Bringing into focus the shadowy forces and peripheral influences that shape history, stirring the slime that percolates beneath actuality, is the duty of honest journalism. But doing so invites accusations of muckraking, rabble-rousing and radicalism, labels that the “mainstream” journalists work hard not to earn. Such timidity, driven by tacit covenants with or pressure from the government -- not scruples -- often leads to selective coverage and results in partial or hasty inferences slanted to conform to the orthodoxy of the moment. In this climate of coerced “political correctness,” intemperate nationalism and religious fervor, this pusillanimity also tends to corrupt the newsman.

Working in Central America would offer me unusual opportunities to break some taboos (exposing U.S. criminal activities in the Isthmus) and defy the canons of sanctioned journalism (ignoring my editors’ injunction to lay off certain subjects) -- sometimes at great peril. I’d long resolved to serve no master; I would neither pay lip service to America’s propaganda, nor would I obey the conditions imposed by some of the papers for which I free-lanced. In time, emboldened by the acrimony that my renderings inspired, seduced by the effect they had on readers in Central America and the U.S., I would take on some of history’s more sinister sideshows. One was the incestuous relationship between the Church and political power structures, that grotesque symbiosis during which religion and politics intersect, merge and feed on each other. The other was the destabilizing consequences of U.S. military adventurism in the region. The perfidious war waged by the Vatican against Liberation Theology and the wasteland of death and destruction left by alumni of the U.S. Army School of the Americas would provide me with additional targets.

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In appointing arch-conservative Bishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle to succeed slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, Pope John Paul II, then on a whirlwind tour of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela, struck hard at the Theology of Liberation, the oxygen-rich doctrine that has redefined and, for the poor and voiceless, enlivened Roman Catholicism in Latin America in the past 50 years.

The roots of Liberation Theology are found in the prophetic tradition of evangelists and missionaries in early colonial Latin America -- clerics who questioned the Church’s elitism and denounced the way indigenous people and the poor were being treated. Antonio de Montesinos (1480-1540), Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), and Antonio Vieira (1608-1697), were some of the men who inspired the social and ecclesiastic dynamism that would later emerge in the pastoral ministry of Liberation Theology.

It was in the 1960s that a great breeze of renewal wafted through the churches. They began to take their social mission seriously. Lay persons went to work among the poor. Charismatic bishops and priests called for progress and innovation. The work of these dedicated Christians, mostly middle class, was sustained scripturally by the European theology of earthly realities, among them the integral humanism of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), the progressive evolutionism of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), and the social personalism of Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950).

The 1970s ushered a vigorous current of reformist thought that unmasked the true cause of underdevelopment, poverty, social alienation and widespread popular discontent: The Third World was being immolated so that the First World could continue to enjoy the fruits of its overabundance. More and more theologians became pastors, militant agents of inspiration for the grassroots life of the church. They took part in epistemological discussions in learned synods and congresses then returned to their parishes among the people where they immersed themselves in matters of ministry, trade unionism and community organization. Thus, Liberation Theology spread and codified Christian faith as it applies to the needs of the poor. As these developments took place, misgivings then open opposition began to animate those who feared that faith was becoming over-politicized and others who mistook the redemptive nature of Liberation Theology for Bolshevism.

Predictably, in a region bled dry by war, devoured by economic decay, and enfeebled by harsh austerity measures, Pope John Paul II’s choice came as a shock and resonated like thunder throughout Latin America, where dozens of activist bishops were being fired and replaced by pliant champions of Catholic doctrinal extremism.

According to the Rev. Joseph Mulligan, an American Jesuit I met in Nicaragua, these clerics “toe the line very carefully on issues of doctrine. They are ‘yes-men’ doing Rome’s bidding.” As a result, Mulligan said, the Church is “suffering a pulling back from the strong commitment to social justice that marked the past five decades.”

Now retired, Spanish-born Archbishop Saenz was a former Vatican liaison to the Salvadoran Armed Forces and a member of Opus Dei, the ultra-right-wing lay organization dedicated to promoting and enforcing Catholic dogma. His critics have accused him of cozying up to the ruling party, the plutocracy and the military. Their claims are not without merit: Saenz accepted over one million dollars from the Salvadoran government and the country’s richest families to resume erection of a cathedral left unfinished when Archbishop Romero proclaimed that it was “time to build the Church, not churches.” Much to the dismay of the Vatican, Romero had also long insisted that it is blasphemy to coddle men’s souls while ignoring their earthly needs.

 

It is easier to tolerate an idiot than a principled man.

 

In a plea for “compassion,” and in the name of “national reconciliation,” Saenz had asked the government to pardon two former national guardsmen convicted of raping and killing three American nuns, Ita Ford, Maura Clark and Dorothy Kazel, and of a social worker, Jean Donovan in 1980. The two soldiers served 19 years of their 30-year sentences. “Let us have mercy and pity for them. They have demonstrated their repentance,” the archbishop remarked without a trace of pity for their victims, who had confessed to killing the women on the orders of superiors who were never prosecuted. The victims' families, who filed suit against El Salvador’s former defense minister and the former director general of the National Guard, accusing them of covering up the killings, believe the women were attacked because officials suspected they sympathized with leftist guerrillas.

Short on resources and influence, but long on memory, the people of Central America were also mindful that former Salvadoran President Armando Calderon Sol was a member of the same political party that engineered Archbishop Romero’s assassination and masterminded -- under the command of death squad leader, CIA stooge and U.S. Army School of the Americas alumnus, Roberto d’Aubuisson -- the 1981 massacre of 900 men, women and children in the village of El Mozote. Nor will they ever forget that the Pope paid a courtesy call on Calderon, cavorted with barrel-chested colonels and generals bristling with medals, and granted audiences to high society women sporting low-cut dresses and dripping with diamonds -- instead of kneeling at the grave of six Jesuits slain in 1989 by a Salvadoran Army death squad.

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It was during a visit to Central America that Pope John Paul II first clashed with supporters of Liberation Theology. In Managua, Nicaragua, he publicly humiliated the Rev. Ernesto Cardenal, a noted writer, philosopher and social activist who would later be suspended from the priesthood. The Pontiff would “retire” scores of vocal Latin American liberal clerics. The headstrong or the unrepentant, among them Rev. Bertrand Aristide of Haiti and Rev. Fernando Cardenal (Ernesto’s brother), would also be unceremoniously defrocked.

Hastened by papal nepotism strongly biased in favor of diehard bishops, this dilution in the ranks of progressive clergy has gained new impetus in Latin America. Tragically, in the most Catholic domain on earth, the peaceful message of Jesus has been subverted by martial attitudes that view the faithful as the very enemies of the state. Astute and opportunistic, the Church continues to tap into the reactionary power base to maintain both doctrinal monopoly and political custody over the masses.

There is a precedent -- and a disquieting parallel. Nine hundred years ago, bloodhounds of orthodoxy sniffed out heretics and the carnage began. People who held unacceptable views were thrown in dungeons. There, they were tortured with inventive cruelty, then killed. They were accused of harboring heterodox opinions. They were forced to confess that they worshipped the devil (translation: they were freethinkers); engaged in heretical pursuits (they hungered for knowledge); and conspired against the established order (they spoke out against corruption and intellectual turpitude).

The Church’s obscene quest for supremacy, inspired and abetted by successive papal dynasties, was prelude to six “Crusades” during which hundreds of thousands of “infidels” -- Moslems and Jews were slaughtered. The same religious fervor later fanned nearly four centuries of inquisitorial frenzy that devoured Europe and sent another half a million innocent people to the stake while their possessions, confiscated as “evidence” fattened the Church’s bulging coffers.

Like Karl Marx, who scorned the proletariat, the Church has never fully expiated its contempt for the masses, its feigned homophobia or its misogyny. It steadfastly rejects the notion that people can govern their conscience without its guidance or control. Worse, it denies them the right to manage their political destinies by consigning their existence to the same Pharisaic elite that Jesus rebuked.

Few of Christianity’s rulers, however outwardly pious, have lived up to the principles of Jesus, the Jewish radical who preached compassion, pacifism and egalitarianism. Faced with a choice between Jesus’ ethic and political expediency, Pope John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI, opted for the latter. They came to Latin America and told the poor that poverty is good. They then urged the rich to reject materialism -- they might as well have sweet-talked hyenas into giving up a simmering carcass. In Mexico, donning silk and gilded vestments, Benedict -- who had looked the other way when anecdotal reports of sexual misconduct by some of his foot soldiers soon revealed a global pattern of priestly promiscuity -- called for a return to “traditional Christian values.” A day later, in Cuba, he praised democracy then flew back to his sumptuous lodgings in the Vatican, the richest and most autarchic empire on Earth. In casting out the good shepherds of Christianity from the fold, both John Paul II and his successor also surrendered the flock to the carnivores.