[Vision2020] The Sad Persecution of Father Jon Sobrino

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings:

This is my radio commentary for next week.  Tom Hansen has made it
possible to listen or read all my commentaries at www.NickGier.com.

Wish I were there for the anti-war rally.

Nick Gier


THE SAD PERSECUTION OF FATHER JON SOBRINO

Most people believe that the Inquisition is now only an embarrassment in
the Catholic Church’s dark past.  Execution and torture, some of the
same techniques now revived by the Bush administration, are no longer
practiced, but the careers of sincere Catholic leaders are still being
ruined, and the psychological effects will linger for the rest of their
lives. 

Father Jon Sobrino, a leading liberation theologian in El Salvador, has
learned that he is being punished for “errors in his teaching and
writings.” It is said the church fathers are especially concerned that
Sobrino may not believe in Christ’s divinity. 

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, began
investigating Sobrino back in 2001. Ratzinger was head of the
Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which means, in plain
English, that he was the Grand Inquisitor in charge of rooting out
heretics. Ratzinger has always been a staunch opponent to liberation
theology, one that focuses on the economic problems of the poor, rather
than correct doctrine, the enforcement of which has always been the
Inquisitor’s job.

Fernando Saenz Lacalle, the Archbishop of San Salvador, was the one to
announce the charges against Sobrino.  A member of Opus Dei, the
reactionary Catholic group made famous by The Davinci Code, was once a
head priest for the Salvadoran military, which has been implicated in
the murder of nuns and priests, most notably Archbishop Oscar Romero,
who was assassinated in 1980.

At that time the Reagan administration fully supported the Salvadoran
military’s campaign against leftist insurgents.  UN Ambassador Jeanne
Kirkpatrick claimed that the Catholic sisters who were tortured and
killed were not really nuns, and Alexander Hague, Reagan's Secretary of
State, branded them as leftist sympathizers who got what they deserved. 

In the 1980s I was teaching a course on contemporary theology that
included a unit on liberation theology.  In addition to studying the
works of Sobrino, we also read the Brazilian Leonardo Boff and the
Columbian Gustavo Gutierrez.

All three of these thinkers were accused of being Marxists and of
supporting violent revolution. But American conservative John Richard
Neuhaus defended Gutierrez against this charge, and Boff, once banned
from teaching, declared that he was an orthodox Christian, although he
“thanked God for Marx's analysis of the mechanism of oppression.”

Looking back at the notes for that course, I am amazed at how little
progress liberation theology has made in the intervening years. 
Conservative Christians still claim that the Bible supports free market
economics, even though the early church practiced economic communism
(Acts 2:44-45). This was not just a temporary emergency policy because
200 years later the Christian theologian Tertullian explained "we hold
everything in common except our wives."

Free market reforms in Latin America, following Chile’s model, have had
limited success, and governments that have tried these policies have
been turned out of office. The Chilean Socialist Party that the Nixon
administration tried to crush is now back in power, and Michelle
Bachelet, whose father was killed by the U.S. backed Pinochet
dictatorship, is now the new Socialist Prime Minister.

Liberation theology is not just about economic oppression; it is also
about equal rights for women, people of color, gays, and lesbians.  It
is also about the right to be free from militarism and violent living
conditions, and the liberation of all life from pollution and the
effects of global warming.

The need for progressive religious leaders and political action on their
part is greater than ever. One good example is evangelical minister Jim
Wallis, founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, which just sponsored a
rally against the war in Iraq in Washington, D. C.  The National
Association of Evangelicals has also just passed a policy that supports
efforts to reduce global warming.

There are those who will say that neither liberals nor conservatives
should mix religion and politics. But in a free society we simply cannot
ban religious speech simply because it is part of a political campaign.
 Furthermore, people do not establish a state religion by simply
expressing their religious views.

A liberal democracy allows open discussion and debate, and religious
people do not have to check their values and beliefs at the door. All
ideas are tested in the arena of public justification, where reasoned
argument and judicial review are the norms. Furthermore,
anti-abortionists, for example, have every right to use the peaceful
tactics of civil disobedience, which worked so well for Mahatma Gandhi
and Martin Luther King.

The reason why Gandhi and King were not criticized for injecting
religion into politics is because their message was religiously and
culturally inclusive.  The Religious Right usually divides and excludes,
while Gandhi and King’s focus on basic human dignity and universal human
rights are embraced by nearly everyone.  That should not be surprising
because they were or have become the basis for secular laws. 

Finally, my research on the origins of religious violence has shown that
those religions that focus on practice rather than doctrine are much
less violent that those who insist on punishing people because of
trivial disputes about doctrine.