Between God and Caesar
IN MAY 1979, POPE JOHN PAUL II INFORMED Archbishop Oscar Romero that he would like a private meeting. For a long time, the pope had been receiving distressing reports about the immensely popu-...
...The pope's message stressed the sacrilege of the killing (Romero was saying mass when he was shot), rather than the martyrdom of the man, and the Vatican denunciation of the crime made no reference to its motives...
...Citing mandates from Vatican II and Medellin, he wrote that "From the very beginning of my ministry in the archdiocese . . . I believed it a duty to take a posi- tive stand in defense of my Church and, from the Church, at the side of my oppressed and abused people...
...True democracy cannot exist in a Marxist atmosphere, and neither can Christianity," explained William Wilson, Reagan's representative at the Vatican, "So from different angles, we are both trying to arrive at the same end...
...And today the bishops are in the news again, promoted by the Reagan Administration as mediators in a dialogue between the Duarte government and the FMLN-FDR...
...Increasingly, the bishops' collective energies have turned away from the war to the question of their own authority over the laity...
...Archbishop Obando y Bravo has moved a number of priests out of their parishes and away from the base communities...
...The pope and most of the Central American bishops believe they have been chosen by God to make moral decisions for the laity...
...In fact, of the two bishops involved in arranging the peace talks, only Rivera y Damas enjoys even minimal confidence among the rebels, who regard the other, RosaChavez, as "an accomplice" to Army repression...
...Ironically, as the divisions among the bishops receded, it was clear that the Church's influence at the base level had shrunk...
...These had begun in October 1978 when Archbishop Emmanuele Gerada, the papal nuncio to Guatemala and El Salvador, and Guatemala's Cardinal Casariego had used their visit to the papal inauguration to lobby for Romero's removal...
...Only in April 1985 did the pope distance himself from Washington, after Reagan's false claim that his "peace plan," calling for Churchmediated negotiations between the Nicaraguan government and the contras, had papal endorsement...
...T HE OLD CONTENTIOUS DAYS OF CEDES seemed a long way off...
...Signs of the new Vatican activism also showed up in Canada...
...Within the next three months, 18 priests were expelled or exiled...
...helicopters, and an archbishop who accompanied base community members to the morgue to identify dead bodies...
...By 1985, the base communities in San Salvador had been seriously weakened by government violence...
...Romero's clergy, 60% of the nation's total, voted to support his measures and boycott all government functions in protest against the repression...
...Bishop Alvarez, the military vicar, preferred "to keep privileges with authorities, high-ranking military, and powerful persons...
...Ibid., p. 154...
...Carta pastoral colectiva de la conferencia episcopal de El Salvador (CEDES), August 6, 1985...
...But John Paul had a different role in mind for the bishops...
...Romero, together with other brother bishops," said the pope, "called for violence to cease and for reconciliation to be established...
...Meanwhile, CEDES General Secretary Delgado felt that the pope's call for "true democracy" meant supporting the government's offer of amnesty to guerrillas willing to participate in the elections...
...On January 1, 1981, 10 prominent Salvadorean Catholic organizations issued a statement endorsing the revolutionary movement as the "last means to obtain justice and peace...
...He sought common ground with his fellow bishops by enunciating goals like "peace," without addressing the concrete changes in society that a lasting peace would imply...
...In 1982 the bishops refused to defend three arrested priests, saying they "supported the popular Church which seeks to divide the Catholic flock...
...He wrote of the generalized persecution of the Church and the people, and of the ministry of renewal through the most extensive network of base communities in Central America...
...He compared Romero's experience with his own in Poland and stressed that unity among the bishops overrode all other considerations...
...R IVERA, WHO WAS ON THE DEFENSIVE from the start, could never hope to fill the tremendous vacuum in leadership, and the Right mounted its counter-attack swiftly...
...officials saw the move as offsetting the diplomatic advantage that had been gained by Cuba and Nicaragua...
...If the choice of the man most closely identified with Romero came as a surprise, it seems to have been designed to head off a total rupture in the Salvadorean Church...
...I do not object to being identified with the people who have taken up arms," he commented in May 1985 after the ceremony marking his elevation to Cardinal...
...26 The pope's approach to ecclesial questions has, in turn, met with U.S...
...7. Brockman, The Word Remains, p. 117...
...Achieving unity within CEDES seemed an impossible task...
...National Catholic Reporter, September 27, 1985...
...With Romero gone, the clergy was left vulnerable to government repression...
...Nine months after Romero's appointment, Baggio named the conservative Msgr...
...Archbishop Marcos McGrath has helped limit hardline endeavors in SEDAC, but the influence that he and the other Panamanian bishops can wield in the region's most tense areas is strictly limited...
...By the time of Puebla, the issue had become a dividing line between two sharply opposed political poles...
...At the same time, the Vatican Secretary of State ordered the papal nuncio in El Salvador to lobby moderate rebel sectors to break with the FMLN-FDR and take part in the voting...
...27 The pope and the Central American Bishops Secretariat (SEDAC) view the regional crisis, at least for the purposes of resolution, as an East-West conflict, and their lukewarm endorsement of the Contadora process has seemed in line with the attitude of the United States...
...he met secretly with the organizers of the mass demonstration of January 1980, which brought more than 200,000 people into the streets of San Salvador, and encouraged the base communities to take part...
...8 R IVERA EVIDENTLY HARBORED PERSONal doubts about the junta's ability to rein in the security forces, for he quietly lobbied against additional U.S...
...NDER THE PAPACY OF JOHN PAUL II, THE voices of those who would continue the preferential option for the poor, whether through the promotion of base communities or by other means, are being drowned out by the conservatives, who now have a mandate from Rome...
...When the six bishops met in the fall of 1979 to select a new CEDES president, the voting went to an unprecedented 12 rounds...
...In 1984, the Administration even put a U.S...
...Only the traditional Church is immune to the "ideologies" which have penetrated the base communities...
...According to Col...
...In February 1978, the Vatican went so far as trying to block the award of an honorary degree to Romero by the Jesuit Georgetown University, in recognition of his human rights work...
...A greater exchange of information, personnel and policy discussion is more evident than ever before...
...the hierarcy is not the Church...
...W HERE DOES THE CHURCH HIERARCHY stand in each Central American country...
...The Vatican has provided support for alternative lay movements promoted by Obando's office...
...Wilson cited the benefit to the United States of "access" to the "intelligence" produced by the worldwide network of papal representatives, who filed regular reports with the Vatican Secretary of State...
...2 9 And Rivera is hardly playing a full mediator's role...
...Rivera's archdiocese tried to recapture the initiative at the mass level...
...And he insisted that, "No ideological interest should try to exploit his sacrifice as pastor...
...During a visit to the United States, he told ABC-TV that military aid should be halted, and said he had papal backing to seek mediation between the government and the rebels...
...They blamed the latter on the work of "the so-called popular Church" which by "the appearance of a radical commitment to the poor [seeks] to instrumentalize the religious sense of the people in the service of particular political and ideological interests...
...THAT SUMMER, ROMERO WROTE TO BAGgio explaining that his removal would not solve the problems of a divided church...
...8. Ibid., p. 83...
...These "foreign" and "materialist" ideologies threaten the Church internally, and are the cause of conflict in the region...
...Before long, Aparicio was accusing the editor of Orientaci6n of being a communist...
...In June another priest died, as did 30 teachers...
...He has arranged the logistics of the meetings, but without touching their content...
...John Paul laid out his policy for the region prior to his visit in the spring of 1983...
...They have also endorsed the view of the Salvadorean crisis as an East-West issue, even though Rivera stresses its local roots...
...He has been critical of the security forces since he first took office, despite his strong backing for the Junta in power at the time...
...National Catholic News Service, February 11, 1984...
...The pope and his conservative allies have consistently sought to neutralize the meaning of Romero's life...
...ERTAINLY THE MOVE ENABLED THE United States to pursue its goals in Latin America more easily...
...It established a special base community office in 1983, and in November 1984, Rivera attended the First General Assembly of the base communities, attended by 350 national representatives and supported by the archdiocese...
...A year later he reconstituted an official human rights office under the name Tutela Legal...
...They seek a resolution of the conflict without a resolu- tion of its causes...
...Romero was a man the Vatican preferred to forget...
...In February 1978, close to a quarter of El Salvador's 1125 priests, brothers and nuns had signed a private letter criticizing the papal nuncio on a number of grounds: his public support of a "repressive and unjust government...
...7 The magazine also described efforts by Mariano Rumor, president of the Rome-based Christian Democratic World Union to enlist Vatican support for an international campaign to promote the Salvadorean Junta...
...The timing of Rivera's change of heart was crucial...
...By 1983 the paper's editorials were supporting the foreign policy of the Reagan Administration...
...Many of the region's bishops do not recognize the extent to which the conflicting notions of the Church have weakened it...
...As a group, the SEDAC bishops appear more worried about revolution, Marxism and challenges to their own authority than with the region's pervasive military buildup and the prospect of war...
...But the rest of the bishops have shunned the base communities and have done what they can to discredit the independent National Coordinating Committee of the Popular Church (CONIP), which was established after Romero's death...
...National Catholic News Service, January 11, 1984...
...the mass organizations in the cities and countryside, including the Christian base communities, were drawing closer to the rebels...
...Secretary of State Casaroli and Secretary for the Council for Public Affairs, Cardinal Silvestrini, both seemed receptive to Peter's argument that the Sandinista revolution had a strong Christian component...
...Revelo to be his auxiliary bishop...
...They do not reject the hierarchy in principle, but they do reject the hierarchy that in practice identifies its own survival with the survival of the traditional social order...
...Expresso (Italy) December 1980, cited in Carlos Fazio, "La coincidencia de acciones busqueja una political comdn del papa y Reagan," Proceso (Mexico City) no...
...Obando's financial support comes from many of the same sources-including Misereor, Adveniat, USAID and W.R...
...And so Rivera could argue, as he did in the spring of 1983, that the call for dialogue was intended to foster preliminary talks between the guerrillas and the government...
...military aid "unilaterally," since the rebels were receiving arms from the Soviet bloc: "Otherwise," he reasoned, "the war could not have lasted so long...
...Baggio candidly acknowledged that the move was made to "rein in" Romero...
...He believed that Romero, influenced by a "handful" of priests and nuns, was the cause of conflict in the Salvadorean church and within CEDES...
...He said mass in some of the 300 churches occupied by the mass organizations...
...Devine suggested that Romero work with Prudencio Llach, Salvadorean ambassador to the Holy See, and search for common ground...
...The Reagan Administration subsequently obstructed a full investigation of the Romero killing.' 2 After the murder, clergy and sisters from the archdiocese hung a banner over the entrance of the cathedral in San Salvador, warning the papal nuncio, the U.S...
...He has not tried to find common ground, or strike a compromise between the opposing forces...
...The pope's personal envoy to the funeral, Mexican Cardinal Ernesto Corripio, denied that there was any repression against the Church, or that Romero had any connection with the popular movement...
...These circumstances led the archbishop in the spring of 1977 to condition his relations with the government on "a restoration of trust"--meaning an end to the rep- ression...
...In February 1984 a pastoral letter called on Christians to press ahead with the option for the poor, condemn militarism and seek an "integral liberation," which would include liberation from unjust social structures...
...7 At the bishops' synod in Rome the month before his appointment, Revelo had charged that the 1,300 new rural catechists supported by Romero were "rapidly falling into the nets" of "the Communist Party and the extreme left Maoist groups...
...government to pressure the military into a negotiated settlement and criticized Washington for portraying the Salvadorean government as "centrist," an adjective which did "not concur with . . . reality...
...Central America policy in exchange for an Administration promise to press the Polish government toward liberalization...
...The key, the bishops found, was to call for principles like reconciliation-and even "dialogue," which they endorsed in July 1982-without specifying what these measures would mean in practical terms for the roots of the conflict or the relations between social classes...
...These groups, say the bishops, include "some priests and religious," and...
...Baggio agreed with Casariego, the nuncio and the other bishops that Romero was politicizing the Church.2 According to Romero's diary, which is extensively quoted by his biographer James Brockman, John Paul II told the archbishop during their meeting that he was considering his removal...
...Rivera's political leadership has been ambivalent...
...The conflict is symptomatic of the larger confrontation within the Central American Church: whose Church is it...
...In a 1983 pastoral letter, the Costa Rican bishops urged the poor to support President Monge's IMF austerity program, and suggested that the Church respond by giving the poor food parcels...
...Since Roosevelt, each U.S...
...Ambassador and Bishops Aparicio, Revelo, Alvarez and Barrera to stay away...
...Rivera believed this was the way for the Church to become neutral, in part because he understood the term "Church" to mean the six bishops, and in part because he felt that no theology other than liberation theology had any political dimension to it...
...All stress obedience to the bishops, a large measure of repentance and traditional devotions to the Virgin Mary...
...99-101 6. Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), p. 110...
...insensitivity to the suffering of the people...
...National Catholic Reporter, August 31, 1984...
...He has backed their offers to mediate the crises in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and chosen to overlook the basic conservatism that underlies their claim to be seeking a "value-free" peace...
...Latinamerica Press (Lima), March 25, 1985...
...His assumption was that the bishops could be "value free," unaffected by their own cultural and political biases...
...The Church is the people...
...He called on the U.S...
...It placed the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) in an awkward position, since it had based its opposition to military aid on Rivera's reticence...
...Though the murder must have shocked the bishops, they never acted as a group to demand an investigation...
...In his speech accepting an honorary degree from the University of Louvain in February 1985, Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino of El Salvador's Catholic University spoke at length about Romero's contemporary significance...
...Latinamerica Press (Lima), April 17, 1980...
...In Costa Rica, Archbishop Roman Arrieta of San Jos6 has been one of the most vocal defenders of Reagan policies, calling on Christians to "side with the Nicaraguan bishops, the true representatives of 44 REPORT ON THE AMERICASChrist," and charging Marxists with introducing class struggle into the Church...
...Business Week (August 27, 1984...
...5. Ibid., pp...
...OHN PAUL II'S VIEW OF CENTRAL AMERIca as a battleground between the forces of good and evil places him on common turf with President Reagan...
...The ties were strengthened considerably in 1983, when Washington elevated its Vatican representative to full ambassadorial status...
...The pope views these measures as the only path to peace in the region...
...They view themselves as the Church, and see the laity as foot soldiers for carrying out orders...
...John Paul's selection of Obando as the pre-eminent Central American cardinal was widely interpreted as a gesture of political as well as personal support...
...Guatemala's base church is like the child who never got a chance at life...
...The pope threw his hat into the ring by issuing a statement which mirrored the CEDES position...
...9. Ibid., p. 94...
...For a long time, the pope had been receiving distressing reports about the immensely popu- lar Salvadorean prelate...
...He wrote to the Salvadorean bishops on August 6, 1982, urging them to reject "ideologies of violence" and to seek reconciliation...
...approval...
...finally, he called on soldiers to disobey their orders and end the repression...
...The signatories included Caritas, the Conference of Religious Men and Women, the National Justice and Peace Commission, the Federation of Catholic Schools and the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council...
...Msgr...
...Today, the church's work is confined almost exclusively to traditional pastoral practice...
...He characterized Romero's worsening rela- tions with the nuncio as "an almost irreparable scandal...
...It murdered 12 priests, a nun and scores of lay leaders...
...military aid, at least tacitly...
...According to one unidentified cardinal in the Curia, Rome had passed over Rivera y Damas in 1977 because it did not want someone "who is going to oppose the government" in El Salvador...
...Christians in the base communities do not challenge the tenets of faith, but they do challenge the political alliances inherent (if generally denied) in the traditional exercise of the faith...
...San Miauel, 1985 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38might be some truth to the letter...
...Since the pope's visit, the local bishops' conferences have made the drive to bring the base communities into SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 43RVisions o the Kingdom Visions of the Kingdom line their highest priority...
...The Washington Post, August 14, 1984...
...Two weeks before the ceremony, the pope's apostolic delegate in Washington, D.C...
...Pressure from the U.S...
...Ibid., p. 203...
...Freddy Delgado, General SeSEPTEMBERIOCTOBER I 98541 41 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985Repor o the 4 Aome s Visions of the Kingdom cretary of CEDES, summed up the majority view in this way: "El Salvador has become a tiny geopolitical key that can open or close the doors to communism in Central America...
...Rather than spread the promise of liberation for the poor, they have chosen to safeguard the institutional structures, subordinating the quest for justice to the facade of unity...
...The Vatican was not alone in applying pressure on Romero...
...It was an uncomfortable signal to the Salvadorean clergy and nuns that the Vatican's plans for Central America had now brought it into an alliance that went far beyond specifically ecclesial concerns...
...Romero characterized the behavior of CEDES president Bishop Aparicio, who had received a large hacienda from former president Colonel Molina, as "arbitrary and disloyal, even compromising the autonomy of the Church before the government...
...The correlation of Church authority and politics is clearly visible in recent statements from SEDAC...
...The powerful Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio had warned of this situation...
...Though the Guatemalan bishops have spoken out against continued government terror, circumstances have prevented them from promoting any kind of modern lay initiative...
...And his letter to the Nicaraguan bishops, dated June 29, 1982, contained his clearest condemnation of the "popular Church"-those base communities which he sees as politically out of step with the conservative bishops...
...However, by March 1981, he was calling for a strengthening of the Junta as the best way of ending the repression...
...The roots of the present problems," he said, lay "in the highly unjust and therefore conflictive situation of the country and in the guidelines that the Church has given us from Vatican Council II and the Medellin and Puebla conferences...
...The day after Romero took office, 100 people were killed and 200 wounded when the Army opened fire on peaceful demonstrators protesting the manipulation of electoral results announced the day before...
...He officiated at their funerals and denounced Army atrocities to the foreign press...
...These groups include the "neo-catacomb movement," the charismatics, the City of God, the Cursillos Cristianos, Marriage Encounter groups and the Legion of Mary...
...In the end, the Right found it less costly to kill him than to have him alive...
...B UT IT IS IN THE SALVADOREAN CHURCH that the shift resulting from John Paul's papacy has been most clearly felt...
...The message of peace and reconciliation which the Bishops of Nicaragua and El Salvador are delivering is entirely consistent with the goals of the United States," the White House observed...
...Embassy and Central American papal nuncios, disdain and isolation from his fellow bishops, threats from the death squads and suspicious oversight from Rome: none of this could silence him...
...They speak of dialogue in terms that suggest an attitude rather than a concrete course of action, and depict the parties involved as a democratic and constitutional government on one side, and violent and ideologically driven Marxist guerrillas on the other...
...Msgr...
...The Nation (October 13, 1984...
...Diplomatic relations had been suspended since 1868, and Rome had actively sought to reopen them ever since its first serious forays into international diplomacy in the 1930s...
...Bishops Aparicio, Alvarez, Barrera and Revelo concluded that this had produced "an alarming crisis of faith...
...3. Cited in Berryman, Religious Roots, p. 127...
...The Administration has sought to exploit the mutuality of purpose to the maximum...
...4 John Paul was troubled by the divisions in CEDES and by the rebellion in the Church's ranks...
...The following year, the USCC altered its stance on the issue...
...By now Romero was in almost daily contact with the base communities...
...It criticized superpower interference in El Salvador, condemned abuses by the Left and the Right, and supported the March 1983 elections...
...National Catholic Reporter, March 20, 1981...
...president had kept a "personal envoy" at the Vatican...
...Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Averting Armegeddon, p. 127...
...R OMERO WAS ASSASSINATED IN MARCH 1980, because there was no other way to keep him from speaking out...
...The deep involvement of the clergy and sisters in El Salvador's conflict only proved to the pope how seriously out of hand the situation had grown...
...John Paul views the region's bishops as the main vehicle for peace...
...6 Though Romero arrived with conservative credentials, his beliefs were changing by the time of his appointment as archbishop, as a result of his increased exposure to the poor and the mounting level of government repression...
...That month, 108 priests (a third of the nation's total) and 118 sisters issued a statement declaring that many innocent lives could have been saved if all the bishops and the nuncio had spoken out against the government's "abuse of power...
...The pope laid out his arguments at Puebla: "The pastors [bishops], since they should give first consideration to unity, will shed every kind of political and partisan ideology that might condition their judgments and attitudes...
...For nearly three years, the Vatican left him in this uncertain position as it monitored his success in uniting CEDES and "extracting" the Church from conflict...
...23 A shared worldview, and overlapping-though distinct-goals in Central America have brought about what Business Week called "growing cooperation between the Reagan Administration and the Holy See . . . not only in strategies toward Poland and the Soviet bloc but also in Latin America...
...Several small rebel groups had turned to armed struggle as a means of overthrowing the military...
...The move made the United States the 108th nation to open formal ties with the Holy See...
...When presidential envoy Wilson became Ambassador Wilson, he saw it as a victory for both powers' pursuit of "peace and human freedom...
...The Salvadorean bishops were dramatically polarized, with a military vicar who blessed U.S...
...Unity with Rome and with brother bishops came first...
...132-133...
...He wrote to the new pope to introduce himself and des- cribe his pastoral environment...
...and failure to support Romero and Rivera...
...As someone close to the Christian Democrats, he is concerned at the specter of Marxism and unwilling to entertain the idea of a revolutionary government...
...urged Georgetown's president and the Jesuit superior general to withhold the award because of the "delicate" political situation in El Salvador...
...all other concerns, including the search for peace and justice, were secondary...
...Another priest-the sixth in 18 months-was murdered in August after he had supplied information about the repression to the archdiocesan newspaper Orientaci6n...
...VATICAN POLICY TOWARD CENTRAL AMerica under John Paul II aims to restore Church discipline by bringing the base communities back into line, breaking the ties between the clergy and the mass organizations, and removing uncomfortable symbols of conflict, such as the four priests in the Nicaraguan government...
...Nor did the Vatican ever issue such a call...
...Responding to pressure from the Vatican, he forbade any organization affiliated with the Church to dissent politically from the position of the bishops...
...The pastoral letter "Reconciliation and Peace," issued on August 6, 1985, shows how far the bishops have moved since the days of Romero...
...The Salvadorean bishops reiterate that their role is to keep the Church free of political influence, and condemn the manipulation of faith, especially by the "extreme Left" or groups associated with it...
...National Catholic News Service, May 3, 1983...
...Catholic Conference and Trocaire-the Irish Catholic development office...
...no candidate received more than three votes throughout...
...This goes entirely against the participatory concept of Vatican II...
...37Visions of the Kingdom Romero, whose diaries reflected his devotion to the Holy Father, must have wondered whether John Paul had understood his long letter in November 1978...
...Only El Salvador had an archbishop so militantly committed to walking with the poor...
...Under pressure from CELAM, Rome and the other REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40Rivera y Damas: on the defensive from the start bishops, Rivera reorganized his archdiocese, removing progressive priests from the archdiocesan offices of communications, CARITAS and Pastoral Action...
...Wilson made it clear that the United States was "very concerned" with liberation theology...
...Archbishop Romero was fond of saying, "I am not the Church...
...its office was subsequently raided, and the editor sacked...
...The Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1985...
...By early 1980 Washington was furious with the archbishop, the most insistent critic of its policy in El Salvador, and an unnamed "American Ambassador" visited Secretary of State Casaroli in Rome to urge the Vatican to do something...
...It is not simply a conflict about the role of the Christian in the larger political context, but the question of who has power within the Church...
...the four conservative bishops decried the "disrespectful" and "antievangelical" action of those who signed it.' T HE VATICAN HAD NEVER WANTED A MAN like Romero in the first place...
...These groups do not accept the doctrine of the Church, according to which the option for the poor is certainly preferential, but neither exclusive nor excluding...
...Only in the last year have the bishops been more forceful in their call for demilitarization and local social reform, though at the same time they share the Honduran government's anxiety about "Sandinista communism...
...National Catholic Reporter, February 17, 1984...
...Washington also sought leverage through these diplomatic channels over Catholic organizations which had adopted troublesome positions 42REPORT ON I HE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 42Taking the Church to the people: refugees in Santa Ana, El Salvador, 1982 on the Administration's Central America policy...
...At CELAM, L6pez Trujillo was able to help Obando by stopping much of the international funding destined for pro-Sandinista base community projects...
...Ambassador Frank Devine had called on him in late 1977 to register the State Department's concern at his criticisms of the Salvadorean government...
...In the 1960s, a majority of bishops shared the conviction that the Church was mandated by the Gospel to act as an advocate for the poor...
...His remarks signified that all the Salvadorean bishops now backed U.S...
...Early in the Reagan Administration, when Vatican Secretary of State Casaroli came to the White House, he told the press that his talks with Reagan "of course" included Central America-especially El Salvador...
...its overspill outside the Cathedral violated public assembly laws...
...At best, he is a "sophisticated messenger...
...Today, talk of Church advocacy for the oppressed increasingly seems a distant memory, whose very mention provokes charges of communism...
...He praised the support he had received from Bishop Rivera y Damas, but noted that the other bishops offered only "permanent rejection...
...In his homilies, he affirmed that the conditions existed for legitimate insurrection...
...Rivera y Damas was the only CEDES member to attend Romero's funeral...
...In 1981, Rivera withdrew archdiocesan affiliation from its human rights office, Socorro Juridico, and he began criticizing it for reporting only government human rights violations while ignoring abuses by the guerrillas...
...sympathy for the oligarchy and the military...
...WHEN ROMERO BECAME ARCHBISHOP IN 1977, Salvadorean society was rapidly being drawn into widespread rebellion...
...National Catholic Reporter, March 13, 1981...
...Rivera's close friendship with Jos6 Napole6n Duarte, then Junta member and now El Salvador's president, has not been impaired by Duarte's inability to control the security forces...
...Panama's seven bishops, who are also participants in SEDAC, offer the most liberal voice...
...a few joined the guerrillas...
...The Vatican, Wilson explained, "can interpret international events in a key way that is without politicization...
...A fifth, Obando himself, has moved to a more overtly aligned position...
...The "popular Church," he wrote to the Nicaraguan bishops in 1982, is "too easily infiltrated by strongly held ideological ideas linked with a certain radicalization, the class struggle and the acceptance of violence for the pursuit of determined ends...
...National Catholic News Service, March 1, 1982...
...Though SEDAC's statements speak of "longstanding and flagrant injustices," they devote more attention to condemning "the meddling of foreign powers"--always plurally stated but singularly understood as referring to the Soviet bloc...
...Others fell silent, but they rarely returned to the traditional Church...
...Said the White House in 1984, "The hierarchy of the Church in the region is rightly perceived as a non-partisan advocate of the people's rights...
...HE BISHOPS' IDENTIFICATION WITH THE X poor and the oppressed of Latin America has come full circle since Medellin...
...It is most unusual," he said, "for someone to put the people above all else, totally forgetting self and even relativizing the institutional Church he represented...
...In his November letter to the new pope, John Paul II, Romero discussed the divisions within CEDES...
...He declared that the authority to excommunicate the murderers lay with "the people of God" rather than the bishops...
...After Romero's death, Rivera y Damas was named as "interim" archbishop...
...Grace-which funded the campaign against liberation theology in the 1970s, as well as from newer sources such as the Knights of Columbus.28 Four of the ten bishops are openly hostile to the Sandinista regime and tacitly supportive of contra objec- tives...
...BETWEEN GOD AND CAESAR 1. Cited in James Brockman, The Word Remains: A Life of Oscar Romero (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982), p. 164...
...As far as the crisis in Central America was concerned, U.S...
...Latinamerica Press (Lima), April 25, 1985...
...Only Bishop Rub6n L6pez of Estelf continued to back the base communities, but even he toned down his support after the papal visit...
...military aid, telling Vice President Bush in a letter in early April that, "it will not solve our basic problem...
...4. Cited in Brockman, The Word Remains, pp...
...President Roosevelt had promised Cardinal Spellman that he would try to re-establish relations, but Protestant opposition and the outbreak of World War II stymied his plans...
...Romero soon remarked of his tenure, "It's been my lot to go around picking up bodies and victims of persecution...
...Craig Pyes, "Who Killed Archbishop Romero...
...In Nicaragua, the hierarchy never promoted the spread of base communities, and since 1980 it has actively sought to undermine the CEBs which were formed by the Capuchins, Maryknollers and other orNicaragua's new cardinal: $100,000 from Knights of Columbus ders...
...2. Ibid., pp...
...two more were arrested and tortured...
...These goals depend on first achieving a commitment to unity among the hierarchy: if the bishops are unified, they can then promote a "value-free" reconciliation...
...Roberto Santivafiez, former head of the Salvadorean intelligence agency (ANSESAL), the Romero killing was one of many approved by a secret military council which included Gen...
...he called upon President Carter not to send military aid...
...It was a bold move, and it lengthened the security forces' hit list...
...Archbishop Prospero Pefiados is considerably more liberal than his predecessor, but like Cardinal Casariego views the church primarily as a source of social stability...
...Several hundred of their lay leaders were dead...
...Though it continued to emphasize the need for a non-military solution, it did not oppose the level of military assistance approved for El Salvador in 1983...
...The Lucas Garcia regime (197882) stamped out a brief period of church cooperative organizing and human rights work...
...Air Force jet at the disposal of Pio Laghi, the papal representative to Washington, to allow him to consult with Reagan in California on foreign policy matters...
...These included the Canadian Bishops Conference, the U.S...
...Vides CasanovaSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 39RVisions o the AKingdom Visions of the Kingdom President Duarte's current defense minister...
...Among those who helped plan the murder was former Nicaraguan National Guard Colonel Ricardo Lau, chief of intelligence for the FDN contras...
...But Romero soon concluded that Llach, who was closely identified with the oligarchy, was "actively sabotaging his communications with Rome...
...384 (March 12, 1984...
...Within a year nearly half the archdiocesan priests had left...
...He risked his life, and also the forms and structures of the Church, out of love for his people.'"" The Salvadorean bishops have also "relativized" the Church, but in reverse...
...The first anniversary of his death brought no papal commemoration, and the date passed without mention by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano...
...Office of Public Liaison, "White House Digest: What Central American Bishops Say About Central America" (Washington, DC: The White House, mimeo, November 31, 1984), p. 14...
...The Reagan Administration has enjoyed the pope's broad support for its Central America policy...
...The funeral service was the only mass held that Sunday in the entire diocese...
...In December 1980, Rivera's homilies called for "an immediate and effective end to the repression and persecution...
...Radio Venceremos, July 3, 1984, cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, July 5, 1984...
...While acknowledging a "parallelism" of viewpoints, the Vatican's representative in Washington denied the charge, asserting that "This is not the way we conduct our relationship...
...Worse still, they wrote, "When the priests' senate, the vicars' commission, the vicariates, the pastors, the nuns, and the grass-roots ecclesial communities have taken to themselves an authority that is not theirs, reproving the bishops or the apostolic nuncio, instead of correcting them for such an SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1985 abuse, [Romero] has supported them in CEDES meetings and justified their stand...
...The momentum of the event, however, prevented a last-minute cancellation.' May 1979, the month of Romero's audience with the pope, saw 115 deaths from government terror...
...Though he claimed not to favor military aid as such, he now insisted that he would not condemn U.S...
...Now the pope had received a letter from four of the six members of the Salvadorean Bishops Conference (CEDES), charging that Romero's pastoral practice "incites to class struggle" and "manipulates the Bible...
...In Honduras, the bishops oversaw the training of some 6,000 base community leaders in the early 1970s, but became more conservative in the aftermath of CEB confrontations with the government over land reform...
...After the change of status, his staff grew more than threefold, adding several new political officers...
...indeed, he would see a compromise as by definition harmful to the government he supports...
...In February 1982, in the midst of congressional debate over Reagan's request for additional "emergency aid" to the Junta, Rivera's statements shifted again...
...2 This was precisely in line with the strategy pursued by Washington and the Salvadorean government...
...Rivera complied...
...This distorted perspective results in a 'reading' of the reality of injustice strongly conditioned by Marxist ideology...
...Some of the new personnel had direct experience in Latin American Church affairs, most notably in Chile in the 1960s and early 1970s...
...are inspired by the 'preferential option for the poor,' understood in a different manner from that which was so clearly expressed by Pope John Paul II and the Latin American bishops, meeting at Puebla...
...In accordance with Rome's instructions on unity among bishops, he has ended up signing his name to pastoral declarations which place obstacles in the way of further government-rebel talks...
...Rivera undertook to unify the Church from above, by strictly administrative means...
...In March, he buried his friend Father Rutilio Grande-murdered by government security forceswithout waiting for official authorization...
...he called Romero's popular homilies, which listed by name each week's toll of people disappeared by the Salvadorean security forces, "too concrete...
...Rosa Chavez, appointed as Rivera's auxiliary bishop in May 1982, also promoted the government's position as the Church's peace platform...
...Some observers ascribed Rivera's shift to increased pressure from the international Christian Democratic community-especially in the wake of a February 1981 meeting between Duarte and West German Christian Democratic Secretary General Heiner Geissel-as well as to new linkages between the Christian Democrats and the Vatican.'" The Italian magazine Expresso reported that El Salvador had received guarantees from Cardinals Casaroli and Baggio that the Vatican would collaborate with the peace efforts of "the current government...
...He denounced them as a dangerous "parallel authority" to the bishops, who posed a threat to the very survival of the Church by taking into their own hands the interpretation of Church doctrine...
...Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1983...
...Reagan's friend, Californian William Wilson, had been in Rome without diplomatic status since 1981...
...Romero had argued that there Romero's legacy: a demonstration by Christian displaced persons...
...They were particularly upset about the sympathetic hearing that Nicaragua's ambassador, Ricardo Peter, had won from many influential Vatican officials...
...Rivera is further hemmed in by the fact that none of his fellow bishops even supports the principle of a negotiated solution...
...When yet another priest was abducted in December 1980, Bishop Aparicio asked Rivera to keep the matter "confidential...
...In March 1981, in an unusual breach of protocol, the Canadian Minister of External Affairs condemned Vatican interference in the parliamentary debate over military aid to El Salvador, noting that, "The Vatican specifically repudiates what the Canadian Catholic Church tells us...
...At its most recent plenary meeting in November 1984, SEDAC issued a condemnation, in an abstract fashion, of foreign intervention, violence and militarism, corruption, family planning, expansion of evangelical sects, liberation theology and "ideological confusion...
...And Bishop Barrera, he wrote, "has never chosen a pastoral policy of serious evangelical commitment to his people...
...Its effort to portray the Vatican as an impartial observer of the crisis must have been particularly pleasing to John Paul...
...They claimed that priests were training guerrilla fighters and running a disinformation campaign against the government...
...115-120...
...When the pope paid an "unofficial" visit to Romero's tomb in 1983, he refused to accord him any special distinction...
...Any relationship of the Church with the government that tries to be faithful to these guidelines must be in large measure conflictive...
...In the FMLNcontrolled areas, only five priests and 150 lay pastoral agents remained.' 4 Of the 15,000 people who had been trained as base community lay leaders during the 1970s, many had joined the rebels-if they were still alive...
...only in El Salvador did the network of Christan base communities extend so far...
...More than 100 of the country's 800 priests were expelled...
...Romero used the symbols of his office to protest the escalating disappearances, arrests and murders of trade unionists, lay catechists and peasants...
...Many went into exile, others were reassigned to different parishes...
...Theologian Hans Kung has even charged that the pope made an agreement not to criticize U.S...
Vol. 19 • September 1985 • No. 5
