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There are many articles and book chapters that will talk about Archbishop Romero’s conversion. His conversion might be like Paul’s, that the scales fell off of his eyes. But I don’t think it’s fair to say it happened all at once, Pastor Oscar Romero and Bishop Oscar Romero had been hearing stories of those who were struggling and suffering for years. He had seen the struggles, the aggression of military against their own people, the rise of death squads, the taking land from the citizens to place it in the hands of the handful of oligarchs.
It was a slow process, from believing he could maintain the peace by not provoking anyone, by not sparking rebellion, by maintaining relationships with those in power he could change them. In 1977, when Oscar Romero was appointed Archbishop, when his friend Father Grande was killed, he learned the truth that Audre Lorde published that same year: “your silence will not protect you.”
For the funeral of Father Grande, Archbishop Romero declared that there would be only one mass in the diocese, and everyone would have to come to the cathedral. While this would be most difficult for the working poor, it was the land owners and the powerful who put up a fight, who complained, who didn’t want to be at mass with those people, they wanted another way to fulfill their obligations.
For Catholics, the mass, the Eucharist is central to their religious life, Romero wanted mass to not just be a re-calling of the life and teachings of Jesus, but a re-membering of the fullness and wholeness and holiness of the body of Christ, which, in El Salvador was broken by violence, oppression, injustice, poverty.
He got a lot of pushback, even from his own bishops, that the church shouldn’t not be political, shouldn’t get involved in politics, shouldn’t be so vocal, shouldn’t provoke.
It wasn’t about politics, it was about people.
“Nothing is so important to the church as human life, as the human person, above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed. Besides being human beings, they are also divine beings, since Jesus said that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God.”
The people are at the heart of God. And we are to be of things, of the thoughts, of the love of God. We are to love the life God loves.
To love the life that God gives, the vision of life that God has given us. And not loving the life of the world gives. Because when you love the life the world gives, you think you’re in charge, you think you have the power to control others, you think you’re the power, you think you can take at any expense.
“The ones who love the kind of life this world gives will lose the life they seek, but the ones who let go of their life in this world and follow my ways will find the life of the world to come that never fades away, full of beauty and harmony.”
Love the way of Christ, to walk the way of Christ. To love in the beauty and harmony of what God has and is creating, with all of God’s beloved people.
And here’s the thing that happened this week: I read stories and the history of El Salvador, I read sermons and watched videos. And I went from sad to more sad, to confused, to angry and maybe even afraid.
People disappearing, national guard rolling into communities, the disparity between the poor and the wealthy who are just a handful of people and they continue to take and take and take from those with so little to give. The arrest and execution of priests. It starts to sound a little… familiar.
From 1979-1992, when peace was brokered for the El Salvadorian Civil War, 75,000 people were killed, 80% of those killed were by government and military, uncounted are those who were disappeared, and more than 1 million were displaced internally and externally.
In February of 1980, Archbishop Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter to put an end to US military funding that was killing its own people. The US spent $1 billion dollars in military aid to the government of El Salvador between 1980 and 1990, sending weapons and training members of the El Salvador military members and leaders at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
And the bullet that killed Archbishop Romero, and the gun it came from, and the military leadership that called for his execution were US made, given, and taught at the School of the Americas.
It would be ancient history if we weren’t seeing the ongoing consequences of displacing a million people, creating refugees and government that never really learned how to care for its people.
And it isn’t just that the history of El Salvador is impacting our reality today, it’s that we’re seeing some of the same things.
This bill that was passed, has $1 trillion military budget. Which is while because the people I talk to are expanding a reduction in forces–the laying off or letting go of the people of the military. And we’ve seen the laying off of people in the VA. And we’re not at war. Some might say we are, within our own borders, so there is $170 allocated for ICE–and organization that has the permission to use children as bait, and to move through the world masked, unmarked, without giving names or credentials, like our own state-sanctioned brown shirts.
And we know the money comes from somewhere. From reductions in programs and assistance for those with disabilities, the elderly, the poor. Or, making the process so difficult and cumbersome that they just give up.
I’ve had a slide up on our announcements for a while now, “I propose all liturgies of confession add the phrase, “for sins done on our behalf, for our benefit, or with our tax dollars.”
And I am certain it was written in response to Gaza and the horrors that are continuing there. But let us not limit our understanding. The cruelty is growing, and the cruelty seems to be the point.
Oscar Romero wasn’t always so bold. He wasn’t always standing up to the powerful. He wanted to be a voice of reason and moderation. But when the unreasonable happens, when those who loving the life the world gives at the expense of others, then there is no place for silence. Your silence will not protect you. Or me.
We cannot remain silent out of fear of powerful. We cannot remain silent to preserve the institution of the church. Because our silence will not save us. Because then we would not be the church, the body of Christ at all.
“This is the mission entrusted to the church, a hard mission: to uproot sins from history, to uproot sins from the political order, to uproot sins from the economy, to uproot sins wherever they are.
for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin.
No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that.
You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.”