Sanctity and Social Justice

“I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled!” Luke 12:49 RSV

 

I have pondered what the contribution of the Catholic Church- her teaching and most of all her people- is to the rejection of ‘structures of sin’ and the construction of structures of flourishing. That she has contributed is undeniable; the greater question is the nature of this contribution. Did the Catholic Church simply provide an ethical framework by which to justify ideals of social reform? In other words, was the articulation of ‘preferential option for the poor’ merely an articulation, an adoption of a secular innovation into the vernacular of the Church, an addition necessary to solidify the support of Catholics both in Latin America and abroad? I must confess, this is my perception of the portrayals of the role of the Catholic Church in the development of liberation theology: the Catholic Church (i.e. the Vatican) jumped on the bandwagon when it started to look bad to keep silent- or worse, to align with oppressive regimes. Bishops and priests, lay people, I myself, have committed these sins of omission, complicity, and explicit support of downright evil. However, I cannot rest easy with the implication that the liturgy, teaching, and sacraments flowing from the Catholic Church were nothing more than convenient vehicles for a message of social change. Rather, I am convinced that the purpose of these liturgies, teachings, and sacraments is to bring each person and all humanity into the heart of the Trinity. This is not ancillary to social reform. It is the end towards which social reform is directed. This means that the heroes of the faith are heroes of social justice and liberation because they were desperately in love with Christ. Icons of liberation and preferential option for the poor like St. Damien of Molokai, St. Mother Francis Cabrini, and St. Oscar Romero were not canonized[1] because of their contributions to social reform. They were canonized because Jesus changed their lives, and they let their lives be changed. I would like to take a brief examination of St. Oscar Romero as a modern saint closely linked to liberation theology as an illustration and test of this proposal.

 

 

Sanctity => Liberation

How did you read the title? As “sanctity leads to social justice”; or “out of sanctity flows social justice”? Perhaps “sanctity is greater than or equal to liberation”?

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What is the relationship of sanctity to liberation? Before we can answer, those terms bear some defining. Here I am speaking of sanctity as radical captivation in the love of Jesus Christ.[2] By ‘liberation’ I am referring to the overthrow and reformation of societal and structural injustice. To understand the relationship- which I venture to characterize as a hierarchy- of holiness and social reform, I offer the life, death, and legacy of Saint Óscar Romero.

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“When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought: if they killed him for doing what he did, then I too must walk the same path.”[2] On March 12, 1977, Rutilio Grande SJ, an old man, and a teenage boy were killed by Salvadoran security en route to Rutilio’s parish church. What prompted Rutilio’s murder? In his parish, Rutilio[3] had organized communidades eclesiales de base (CEB; Ecclesial base communities), which the Salvadoran government perceived as a threat.[4] Just weeks before, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Gadámez had been installed as archbishop of El Salvador, an appointment the wealthy families and government of El Salvador found quite agreeable. Rutilio’s death galvanized Romero, who leapt out of the pockets of Salvadoran powers to be the thorn in their side.

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Many years prior, in 1943, Romero wrote, “in recent days…the Lord has inspired in me a great desire for holiness. I’ve been thinking how far a soul can ascend if it lets itself be entirely possessed by God.”[4] The assassination of Rutilio, his friend, delivered Romero into the possession of the bleeding heart of God. Romero refused to attend any state sponsored meetings until (Rutilio) Grande’s death was investigated; there was no investigation, and Romero never attended state functions during his tenure as archbishop.[5] What was the aim of Romero’s boycott? Justice for his friend? Surely. But Romero’s sense of justice was rooted in a salvific vision: “The Christian must work to exclude sin and establish God’s reign” (July 16, 1977). The murders of Rotilio and so many others blatantly, egregiously violated the sovereignty of the love of God and thereby were unconscionable.  

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Over the next three years, Romero’s Sunday sermons were broadcast each week to the whole country. He named the missing, the tortured, and the murdered, publishing them in the weekly diocesan newspaper Orientación. In these messages, Romero emphasized the source of true liberation: “As Christians formed in the gospel you have the right to organize and, inspired by the gospel, to make concrete decisions. But be careful not to betray those evangelical, Christian, supernatural convictions in the company of those who seek other liberations that can be merely economic, temporal, political. Even though working for liberation along with those who hold other ideologies, Christians must cling to their original liberation” (June 19, 1977).[1] Archbishop Romero looked into the grinding poverty and sickening cruelty eviscerating his people and recognized an ailment no social reform could remedy but that he had experienced in his own heart: conversion, conviction, and captivation in the gaze of Jesus Christ. He would settle for no less than the sanctity of his people. “I believe that today more than ever in El Salvador we need to know Christ. Today needs Christians, and from Christianity will come humanity’s true liberators…The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in a merely human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God’s image, which is soiled in today’s humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful” (September 23, 1979).[1] In this light, the oppressed and the oppressor are equally in need of liberation. “The most profound social revolution is the serious, supernatural, interior reform of a Christian” (1973) [6].

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In February 1980, Romero wrote an open letter to US President Jimmy Carter, imploring cessation of US aid to the Revolutionary Government Junta (RGV) that perpetrated the disappearances, tortures, and murders plaguing El Salvador. A month later, on March 24, 1980, nearly three years to the day after taking Rotilio’s path, Archbishop Romero was shot while celebrating Mass. In 2015, Romero was canonized by Pope Francis as a martyr.[5]

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Why is Oscar Romero a saint? And why is Romero’s sanctity inextricable from his social impact? He speaks for himself: “The church does not want the liberation it preaches to be confused with liberations that are only political and temporal. The church does concern itself with earthly liberation – it feels pain for those who suffer, for the illiterate, for those without electricity, without a roof, without a home. But it knows that human misfortune is found not only there. It is inside, deeper, in the heart – in sin. While supporting all the people’s just claims, the church wants to lift those demands to a higher plane and free people from the chains that are sin, death, and hell. It wants to tell us to work to be truly free, with a freedom that begins in the heart: the freedom of God’s children – the freedom that makes us into God’s children by taking from us the chains of sin” (April 8, 1979).[1] Only the vigorous life of Jesus in Óscar Romero could delve so deep as sin in the human heart and arise without despair. For love of Christ’s physical Body in the people of El Salvador, for a love descending to the depths of souls, thereby encompassing crops and wages and guns and governments, for this love entirely un-abstract, Óscar Romero is Saint.

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Why is Óscar Romero significant for practitioners of liberation medicine? Because his message is for us too: “As long as one does not live a conversion in one’s heart, a teaching enlightened by faith to organize life according to the heart of God, all will be feeble, revolutionary, passing, violent” (March 14, 1977).[1] The most effective social movements in history were accomplished not as ends in themselves. Rather, these movements are successful insomuch as their aim is beyond the self, society, and structure. This aim is so encompassing, it requires a conformation of self, society, and structures to it. Only intimacy with God can provide such an aim. What is this great aim? The aim is the vision of the scalding goodness, piercing truth, and captivating beauty of I AM. Social justice is too little for Romero’s liberation theology; only Christ is sufficient.

 

References

[1] Romero Ó. The violence of love. Bruderhof Foundation; 2003. http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/violenceoflove.pdf

[2] Truth and memory. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=jJc83fZHD8EC&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false

[3] When the gospel grows feet. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=X1z8W55uwLkC&q=christian+base+communities#v=twopage&q&f=false

[4] Transfigured by justice. Thinking Faith: The Online Journal of the Jesuits in Britain. https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/transfigured-justice

[5] Catholic Ireland. https://web.archive.org/web/20050214204028/http://www.catholicireland.net/pages/index.php?nd=68&art=91

[6] O. A. Romero, La Más Profunda Revolución Social [The Most Profound Social Revolution], DIARIO DE ORIENTE, No. 30867 – p. 1, 28 August 1973.

 

Footnotes

[1] Canonization is the formal process by which the Catholic Church elevates a particular person as an example of extraordinary holiness. This process is extensive and requires rigorous investigations lasting years.

[2] Sanctity as I have defined it seems exclude anyone who does not accept or know Jesus. I dare not venture into a discussion of the economy of salvation in this regard. Nonetheless, I would like to offer an example of a type of sanctity that does not come from the Christian tradition: Mahondas Gandhi (better known as Mahatma Gandhi). Gandhi, though not Christian, expressed a profound intimacy with God and all-consuming thirst for God: “I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal [to see God face to face]…all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end” (Autobiography of M.K. Gandhi). This uncompromising pursuit of Truth (which Gandhi understood as the most important aspect of God) was in some way Gandhi’s road to holiness. His ceaseless self-examination in light of this Truth and his profound intimacy with God inclines me strongly to believe that Ghandi was indeed saintly.

[3] Rutilio read and adopted Paulo Freire’s methods of conscientization in his approach to seminarian formation and parish life.[3]

[4] The purpose of these communities was to facilitate profound encounter with Christ and discern the concrete consequences of this encounter in the lived reality of the parishioners. [3]

[5] Martyr comes from the Greek word meaning ‘witness’ and designates a person who gave their life for the Faith or, as in Romero’s case, whose life was taken because of It.