The Transformation: Romero and the Preferential Option for the Poor
El Salvador: Oscar Romero and the Preferential Option for the Poor
Within this essay, I will attempt to describe the mentality which drove me to complete my International Summer Service Learning Program, and the ways by which my education on the historical and social background of El Salvador stretched and improved my initial thoughts so that I learned to continue this commitment. The framework of liberation theology proposed by Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez incorporates the idea of the preferential option for the poor as the way to bring the Kingdom of God to life not only in Heaven, but on Earth as well. This ideology as embodied in the person of Monsignor Oscar Romero and the Catholic Church served as a driving force for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FLMN), the guerrilla resistance movement during the civil war in the 1980's which eventually managed to negotiate the Salvadoran peace accords in 1992 and whose representative, Mauricio Funes, currently holds the presidency. This exposure to liberation theology and the role which the Church played in the empowerment of the Salvadoran poor enriched my understanding of my role in the global social structure as defined by my Catholic faith and my privilege of birth as a United States citizen. As well, my participation in Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez's class on Christian Spirituality and Transforming History this semester and trip to the protest at the School of the Americas the weekend of November 18th, continued my personal involvement with the issues that I interacted with over the summer.
The archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, served as a rallying icon against governmental repression in El Salvador's brutal civil war between the FMLN and the United States funded Salvadoran government forces. His Sunday homilies, preached from the Cathedral of San Salvador, were the most listened to radio program among the entire Salvadoran population. Through them, he announced the names of the tortured, murdered, and disappeared campesinos whose deaths the government denied, and called the Church to live out the Gospel in the name of the poor. He once proclaimed, “Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know that we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down to proclaim blessed the poor, blessed the thirsting for justice, blessed the suffering” (Romero 1988). Due to his political activism and oft too open condemnation of the government's activities, he was assassinated by governmental forces while offering Mass on March 24, 1980. His witness literally has permeated almost all aspects of El Salvador, especially those regarding the Church and the poor.
Oscar Romero embodied the concept of liberation theology founded by Fr. Gutierrez, which calls all people to live a commitment to the poor based in the person of Jesus Christ. This specifically Latin American spirituality is especially relevant to the economically unequal Latin American region, where a small portion of the population controls almost all of the social and political power. Romero and Gutierrez played a major role in convincing the Roman Catholic Church to switch its traditional alliances with the wealthy and powerful to stand with the poor against injustice, thus living out Gospel message portrayed in the Bible. Romero famously stated, “We who have a voice must speak for the voiceless”; In El Salvador, where the Church truly is the only vehicle which the poor have to express themselves, this quote takes on more significance. Liberation and change for the poor necessitates a link to those with power who can both stand in solidarity with them while bringing the voice of their struggle to those who will hear it and thus be pressured to effect lasting change.
The ways in which I saw this lived out in Mass, in the villages, and in Christian base communities in El Salvador shaped my understanding of myself and how, as a Catholic, I am called to live my life with respect to the preferential option for the poor. Fr. Gutierrez encompasses this quite well as he explains:
"The life of the poor is one of hunger and exploitation, inadequate health care and lack of suitable housing, difficulty in obtaining an education, inadequate wages and unemployment, struggles for their rights, and repression. But that is not all. Being poor is also a way of feeling, knowing, reasoning, making friends, loving, believing, suffering, celebrating, and praying. The poor constitute a world of their own. Commitment to the poor means entering, and in some cases remaining in, that universe with a much clearer awareness; it means being one of its inhabitants, looking upon it as a place of residence and not simply of work. It does not mean going into that world by the hour to bear witness to the gospel, but rather emerging from within it each morning in order to proclaim the good news to every human being" (Gutierrez 1984).
This call to solidarity and a commitment to integral human dignity stems directly from my experience in El Salvador in which I spoke with friends of Romero and friends of the Jesuits, the four churchwomen, and the thousands of people who were killed during the civil war. Interactions with those who were truly living out the Church's call to action for the poor raised awareness of my role in my knowledge of those first hand accounts of realities of injustice. My subsequent class with Fr. Gutierrez on the same topic which I experienced through the entire summer served to place this experience into an academic framework which enabled me to develop a philosophy of my position as an accompanier, or someone to walk with others along their paths of life, to live with and to share their sorrows and their joys.
El Salvador inspired my attendance at the protest of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which trained Latin American soldiers who perpetrated thousands of human rights abuses. During the vigil on Sunday morning, they intone the names of people who have been assassinated by trainees of this school. The first ten names which they mentioned were men, women, and priests from El Salvador whose friends I had met, and whose memorials I had visited. This reality solidified my recognition that I can not simply forget the stories which were shared with me during my eight weeks abroad. In order to truly honor them, I must allow that awareness to shape how I choose to commit myself to the poor and to bring the voice which my privilege of birth has given me to those who have no power to speak for themselves.
Within this essay, I will attempt to describe the mentality which drove me to complete my International Summer Service Learning Program, and the ways by which my education on the historical and social background of El Salvador stretched and improved my initial thoughts so that I learned to continue this commitment. The framework of liberation theology proposed by Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez incorporates the idea of the preferential option for the poor as the way to bring the Kingdom of God to life not only in Heaven, but on Earth as well. This ideology as embodied in the person of Monsignor Oscar Romero and the Catholic Church served as a driving force for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FLMN), the guerrilla resistance movement during the civil war in the 1980's which eventually managed to negotiate the Salvadoran peace accords in 1992 and whose representative, Mauricio Funes, currently holds the presidency. This exposure to liberation theology and the role which the Church played in the empowerment of the Salvadoran poor enriched my understanding of my role in the global social structure as defined by my Catholic faith and my privilege of birth as a United States citizen. As well, my participation in Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez's class on Christian Spirituality and Transforming History this semester and trip to the protest at the School of the Americas the weekend of November 18th, continued my personal involvement with the issues that I interacted with over the summer.
The archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, served as a rallying icon against governmental repression in El Salvador's brutal civil war between the FMLN and the United States funded Salvadoran government forces. His Sunday homilies, preached from the Cathedral of San Salvador, were the most listened to radio program among the entire Salvadoran population. Through them, he announced the names of the tortured, murdered, and disappeared campesinos whose deaths the government denied, and called the Church to live out the Gospel in the name of the poor. He once proclaimed, “Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know that we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down to proclaim blessed the poor, blessed the thirsting for justice, blessed the suffering” (Romero 1988). Due to his political activism and oft too open condemnation of the government's activities, he was assassinated by governmental forces while offering Mass on March 24, 1980. His witness literally has permeated almost all aspects of El Salvador, especially those regarding the Church and the poor.
Oscar Romero embodied the concept of liberation theology founded by Fr. Gutierrez, which calls all people to live a commitment to the poor based in the person of Jesus Christ. This specifically Latin American spirituality is especially relevant to the economically unequal Latin American region, where a small portion of the population controls almost all of the social and political power. Romero and Gutierrez played a major role in convincing the Roman Catholic Church to switch its traditional alliances with the wealthy and powerful to stand with the poor against injustice, thus living out Gospel message portrayed in the Bible. Romero famously stated, “We who have a voice must speak for the voiceless”; In El Salvador, where the Church truly is the only vehicle which the poor have to express themselves, this quote takes on more significance. Liberation and change for the poor necessitates a link to those with power who can both stand in solidarity with them while bringing the voice of their struggle to those who will hear it and thus be pressured to effect lasting change.
The ways in which I saw this lived out in Mass, in the villages, and in Christian base communities in El Salvador shaped my understanding of myself and how, as a Catholic, I am called to live my life with respect to the preferential option for the poor. Fr. Gutierrez encompasses this quite well as he explains:
"The life of the poor is one of hunger and exploitation, inadequate health care and lack of suitable housing, difficulty in obtaining an education, inadequate wages and unemployment, struggles for their rights, and repression. But that is not all. Being poor is also a way of feeling, knowing, reasoning, making friends, loving, believing, suffering, celebrating, and praying. The poor constitute a world of their own. Commitment to the poor means entering, and in some cases remaining in, that universe with a much clearer awareness; it means being one of its inhabitants, looking upon it as a place of residence and not simply of work. It does not mean going into that world by the hour to bear witness to the gospel, but rather emerging from within it each morning in order to proclaim the good news to every human being" (Gutierrez 1984).
This call to solidarity and a commitment to integral human dignity stems directly from my experience in El Salvador in which I spoke with friends of Romero and friends of the Jesuits, the four churchwomen, and the thousands of people who were killed during the civil war. Interactions with those who were truly living out the Church's call to action for the poor raised awareness of my role in my knowledge of those first hand accounts of realities of injustice. My subsequent class with Fr. Gutierrez on the same topic which I experienced through the entire summer served to place this experience into an academic framework which enabled me to develop a philosophy of my position as an accompanier, or someone to walk with others along their paths of life, to live with and to share their sorrows and their joys.
El Salvador inspired my attendance at the protest of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which trained Latin American soldiers who perpetrated thousands of human rights abuses. During the vigil on Sunday morning, they intone the names of people who have been assassinated by trainees of this school. The first ten names which they mentioned were men, women, and priests from El Salvador whose friends I had met, and whose memorials I had visited. This reality solidified my recognition that I can not simply forget the stories which were shared with me during my eight weeks abroad. In order to truly honor them, I must allow that awareness to shape how I choose to commit myself to the poor and to bring the voice which my privilege of birth has given me to those who have no power to speak for themselves.