Gospel of the Penniless, Jobless, Marginalized and Despised

James Cone’s Gospel of the Penniless, Jobless, Marginalized and Despised

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_gospel_of_the_peniless_jobless_marginalized_and_despised_20120109/

Posted on Jan 9, 2012

By Chris Hedges

“The Cross and the Lynching Tree are separated by nearly two thousand years,” James Cone writes in his new book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “One is the universal symbol of the Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on the cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from the black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeing artists, have explored the symbolic connections. Yet, I believe this is the challenge we must face. What is at stake is the credibility and the promise of the Christian gospel and the hope that we may heal the wounds of racial violence that continue to divide our churches and our society.”

 

So begins James Cone, perhaps the most important contemporary theologian in America, who has spent a lifetime pointing out the hypocrisy and mendacity of the white church and white-dominated society while lifting up and exalting the voices of the oppressed. He writes out of his experience as an African-American growing up in segregated Arkansas and his close association with the Black Power movement. But what is more important is that he writes out of a deep religious conviction, one I share, that the true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call for liberation from forces of oppression and for a fierce and uncompromising condemnation of all who oppress.

Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, writes on behalf of all those whom the Salvadoran theologian and martyr Ignacio Ellacuría called “the crucified peoples of history.” He writes for the forgotten and abused, the marginalized and the despised. He writes for those who are penniless, jobless, landless and without political or social power. He writes for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who are transgender. He writes for undocumented farmworkers toiling in misery in the nation’s agricultural fields. He writes for Muslims who live under the terror of war and empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he writes for us. He understands that until white Americans can see the cross and the lynching tree together, “until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black-body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

“In the deepest sense, I’ve been writing this book all my life,” he said of “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” when we spoke recently. “I put my whole being into it. And did not hold anything back. I didn’t choose to write it. It chose me.

“I started reading about lynching, and reading about the historical situation of the crosses in Rome in the time of Jesus, and then my question was how did African-Americans survive and resist the lynching terror. How did they do it? [Nearly 5,000 African-American men, women and children were lynched in the United States between 1880 and 1940.] To live every day under the terror of death. I grew up in Arkansas. I know something about that. I watched my mother and father deal with that. But the moment I read about it, historically, I had to ask, how did they survive, how did they keep their sanity in the midst of that terror? And I discovered it was the cross. It was their faith in that cross, that if God was with Jesus, God must be with us, because we’re up on the cross too. And then the other question was, how could white Christians, who say they believe that Jesus died on the cross to save them, how could they then turn around and put blacks on crosses and crucify them just like the Romans crucified Jesus? That was an amazing paradox to me. Here African-Americans used faith to survive and resist, and fight, while whites used faith in order to terrorize black people. Two communities. Both Christian. Living in the same faith. Whites did lynchings on church grounds. How could they do it? That’s where [my] passion came from. That’s where the paradox came from. That’s where the wrestling came from.

“Many Christians embrace the conviction that Jesus died on the cross to redeem humankind from sin,” he said. “Taking our place, they say, Jesus suffered on the cross and gave his life as a ransom for many. The cross is the great symbol of the Christian narrative of salvation. Unfortunately, during the course of 2,000 years of Christian history, the symbol of salvation has been detached from the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings, the crucified people of history. The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the cost of discipleship, it has become a form of cheap grace, an easy way to salvation that doesn’t force us to confront the power of Christ’s message and mission.”

Cone’s chapter on Reinhold Niebuhr, the most important Christian social ethicist of the 20th century and a theologian whose work Cone teaches, exposes Niebuhr’s blindness to and tacit complicity in white oppression. Slavery, segregation and the terror of lynching have little or no place in the theological reflections of Niebuhr or any other white theologian. Niebuhr, as Cone points out, had little empathy for those subjugated by white colonialists. Niebuhr claimed that North America was a “virgin continent when the Anglo-Saxons came, with a few Indians in a primitive state of culture.” He saw America as being elected by God for the expansion of empire and, as Cone points out, “he wrote about Arabs of Palestine and people of color in the Third World in a similar manner, offering moral justification for colonialism.”

Cone reprints a radio dialogue between Niebuhr and writer James Baldwin that took place after the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four girls. Niebuhr, who spoke in the language of moderation that infuriated figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Baldwin, was disarmed by Baldwin’s eloquence and fire.

Baldwin said:

The only people in this country at the moment who believe either in Christianity or in the country are the most despised minority in it. … It is ironical … the people who were slaves here, the most beaten and despised people here … should be at this moment … the only hope this country has. It doesn’t have any other. None of the descendants of Europe seem to be able to do, or have taken it on themselves to do, what Negros are now trying to do. And this is not a chauvinistic or racial outlook. It probably has something to do with the nature of life itself. It forces you, in any extremity, any extreme, to discover what you really live by, whereas most Americans have been for so long, so safe and so sleepy, that they don’t any longer have any real sense of what they live by. I think they really think it may be Coca-Cola.

“If Niebuhr could ignore it, there must be something defective in that faith itself,” Cone said. “If it weren’t defective, then they wouldn’t put black people on crosses. Niebuhr wouldn’t have been silent about it. I look around and see the same thing happening today in the prison industrial complex. You can lynch people by more than just hanging them on the tree. You can incarcerate them. How long will this terror last? I’m Christian. Suffering gives rise to faith. It helps you deal with it. But at the same time, suffering contradicts the faith that it gave rise to. It is like Jacob wrestling with the angel. I can’t give up with the wrestling.”

Cone wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. But Barth, he admits, never moved him deeply. Cone found his inspiration in the black church, along with writers such as Baldwin, Albert Camus and Richard Wright, as well as the great blues artists of his youth. These artists and writers, not the white theologians, he said, gave him “a sense of awe.” He saw that “for most blacks it was the blues and religion that offered the chief weapons of resistance.” It was religion and the blues that “offered sources of hope that there was more to life than what one encountered daily in the white man’s world.” In the words of great poets and writers, in the verses of the great blues singers and in the thunderous services of the black church, not in the words of white theologians, Cone discovered those who were able to confront the bleak circumstances of their lives and yet defy fate and suffering to make the most of what little life had offered them. He had through these connections found his own voice, one that was powerfully expressed in his first work, the 1969 manifesto “Black Theology & Black Power.” Cone understood that “when people do not want to be themselves, but somebody else, that is utter despair.” And he knew that his faith “was the one thing white people could not control or take away.”

He quotes the bluesman Robert Johnson:

I got to keep movin’, I got to keep movin’,
Blues fallin’ down like hail
And the day keeps on worrin’ me,
There’s a hellhound on my trail.

“I wanted to go back to study literature and get a Ph.D. in that at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and do it with Nathan Scott [who was then teaching theology and literature at the University of Chicago],” he said. “But the freedom movement was too urgent. I said to myself, ‘You have a Ph.D., if you ain’t got nothing to say now, you ain’t never going to have anything to say.’ I’ve never taught a course on Barth.

“I like people who talk about the real, concrete world,” he said. “And unless I can feel it in my gut, in my being, I can’t say it. The poor help me to say it. The literary people help me to say it—Baldwin is my favorite. Martin King is the next. Malcolm is the third element of my trinity. The poets give me energy. Theologians talk about things removed, way out there. They talk to each other. They give each other degrees. The real world is not there. So that is why I turn to the poets. They talk to the people.

“Being Christian is like being black,” Cone said. “It’s a paradox. You grow up. You wonder why they treat you like that. And yet at the same time my mother and daddy told me ‘don’t hate like they hate. If you do, you will self-destruct. Hate only kills the hater, not the hated.’ It was their faith that gave them the resources to transcend the brutality and see the real beauty. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery how African-Americans, after two and half centuries of slavery, another century of lynching and Jim Crow segregation, still come out loving white people. Now, most white people don’t think I love them, but I do. They always feel strange when I say that. You see, the deeper the love, the more the passion, especially when the one you love hurt you. Your brothers and sisters, and yet they treat you like the enemy. The paradox is, is that in spite of all that, African-Americans are the only people who’ve never organized to take down this nation. We have fought. We have given our lives. No matter what they do to us, we still come out whole. Still searching for meaning. I think the resources for that are in the culture and in the religion that is associated with that. That faith and that culture, it was the blues of the spiritual; that faith and that culture gives African-Americans a sense that they are not what white people say they are.”

Cone sees the cross as “a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.” This idea, he points out, is absurd to the intellect, “yet profoundly real in the souls of black folk.” The crucified Christ, for those who are crucified themselves, manifests “God’s loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life—that transcendent presence in the lives of black Christians that empowered them to believe that ultimately, in God’s eschatological future, they would not be defeated by the ‘troubles of the world,’ no matter how great and painful their suffering.” Cone elucidates this paradox, what he calls “this absurd claim of faith,” by pointing out that to cling to this absurdity was possible only when one was shorn of power, when one was unable to be proud and mighty, when one understood that he was not called by God to rule over others. “The cross was God’s critique of power—white power—with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.”

“It’s like love,” he said. “It’s something you cannot articulate. It’s self-evident in its own living. And I’ve seen it among many black Christians who struggle, particularly in the civil rights movement. They know they’re going to die. They know they’re not going to win in the obvious way of winning. But they have to do what they gonna do because the reality that they encounter in that spiritual moment, that reality is more powerful than the opposition, than that which contradicts it. People respond to what empowers them inside. It makes them know they are somebody when the world treats them as nobody. When you can do that, when you can act out of that spirit, then you know there is a reality that is much bigger than you. And that’s, that’s what black religion bears witness to in all of its flaws. It bears witness to a reality that empowers people to do that which seems impossible. I grew up with that. I really don’t ever remember wishing I was white. I may have, but I really don’t remember. It’s because the reality of my own community was so strong, that that was more important than the material things I saw out there. Their [African-Americans’] music, their preaching, their loving, their dancing—everything was much more interesting.

“How do a people know that they are not what the world says they are when they have so few social, economic and political reasons in order to claim that humanity?” he asked. “So few political resources. So few economic, educational resources to articulate the humanity. How do they still claim, and be able to see something more than what the world says about them? I think it’s in that culture and it’s in the faith that is inseparable from that culture. That’s why I call the blues secular spirituals. They are a kind of resource, a cultural and mysterious resource that enables a people to express their humanity even though they don’t have many resources intellectually and otherwise to express it. Baldwin only finished high school. Wright only the ninth grade. But he still had his say. And B.B. King never got out of grade school. And Louis Armstrong hardly went to school at all. Now, I said to myself, if Louis could blow a trumpet like that, forget it, I’m gonna write theology the way Louis Armstrong blows that trumpet. I want to reach down for those resources that enable people to express themselves when the world says that you have nothing to say.

“People who resist create hope and love of humanity,” he said. “The civil rights was a mass movement, but a movement defined by love. You always have both sides. You have bad faith and good faith. I like to write about the good faith. I like to write about faith that resists. I like to write about faith that empowers. I like to write about faith that enables people to look another in the eye and tell ’em what you think. I remember growing up in Arkansas. There were a lot of masks. I wore a mask in Arkansas as a child, not in my own community but when I went down to the white people’s town. I knew what they could do to you. But I kept saying to myself, ‘One of these days I’m gonna say what I think to white people and make up for lost time,’ and so the last 40-something years that’s what I been doing. I write to encourage African-Americans to have that inner resource in order to have your say and to say it as clearly, as forcefully, and as truthfully as you can. Not all would be able to do that ’cause white people have a lot of power.

“Now white churches are empty Christ churches,” he said. “They ain’t the real thing. They just lovin’ each other. That’s all, that’s all that is: socializin’ with each other, that’s what they do most of the time. You seldom go to a church that has any diversity to it. Now how can that be Christian? God was in Christ reconciling the world unto God’s self. Well, it’s in white churches that God and Christ separated us from white people. That’s what they say. And I’m sayin’ as long as you are silent and say nothin’ about it, as Reinhold Niebuhr did, say nothin’, you are just as guilty as the one who hung him on the tree because you were silent just like Peter. Now if you are silent, you are guilty. If you are gonna worship somebody that was nailed to a tree, you must know that the life of a disciple of that person is not going to be easy. It will make you end up on that tree. And so in this sense, I just want to say that we have to take seriously the faith or else we will be the opposite of what it means.

“My momma and daddy did not have my opportunity, so when I write and speak, I try to write and speak for them,” he said. “They not here. They never had a chance to stand before white people and tell ’em what they think. I gotta do it somehow. I try to do that all over the world. I think of Lucy Cone and Charlie Cone, and of all the other Lucy Cones and Charlie Cones that’s out there who cannot speak. I think of them. I don’t think of myself, I think of them. It deepens my spirituality. It gives me something to hold on to, that I can feel and touch. It’s a very spiritual experience, because you are doin’ something for people you love who cannot and will never have a chance to speak in a context like this. So, why do I need to speak for myself? I need to speak for them. If you feel passion in my voice, you feel energy in this text, that’s because I was thinkin’ of Lucy and Charlie, my daddy, and my mama. And as long as I do that, I’ll stay on the right track.”

Judgment Day For Our Culture? Leonardo Boff

Judgment Day For Our Culture?

Leonardo Boff

Theologian

Earthcharter Commission

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The end of the year offers a chance to make an accounting of our human situation on this planet. What can we hope for and what way will history go? Those are worrisome questions, because the global landscape is somber. A crisis of structural magnitude lurks in the heart of the dominant economic-social system (Europe and United States), with repercussions for the rest of the world. The Bible has a recurrent theme in the prophetic tradition: judgment day is near. It is the day of revelation: the truth comes out, and our mistakes and sins are revealed as enemies of life. Great historians like Toynbee and von Ranke also speak of judgment of entire cultures. I believe we really are faced with a global judgment of our way of living on the Earth, and of the relationship we maintain with her.

Considering the situation at a deeper level, one that looks beyond the economic analysis prevailing with governments, businesses, world forums, and the media, we can see with ever more clarity the contradiction that exists between the logic of our modern culture, with its political economics, individualism and consumerism, and the logic of the natural processes of our living planet, the Earth. They are incompatible. The first is competitive, the latter, cooperative. The first is exclusive, the latter, inclusive. The first puts its principal value on the individual, the latter, on the good of all. The first gives centrality to merchandise, the latter, to life in all its forms. If we do not do something, this incompatibility could lead us to a very severe impasse.

This incompatibility is aggravated by the premises underlying our social process: that we can grow without limits, that the resources are inexhaustible and that material and individual prosperity bring us the happiness that we so desire. These premises are illusory: resources are limited and a finite Earth cannot sustain infinite development. Prosperity and individualism are not bringing us happiness, but great loneliness, depression, violence and suicide.

There are two problems that interact, and could cause upheavals in the future: global warming and human overpopulation. Global warming is a term that encompasses the impact our civilization has on nature, threatening the sustainability of life and the Earth. The result is the annual emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane, which is 23 times more destructive than the former. The accelerating thawing of the frozen soil of the Siberian tundra (the permafrost), will create in the coming decades the danger of an abrupt warming of 4 to 5 degrees centigrade, that could devastate great portions of life on Earth. The increase in human population causes more goods and natural services to be exploited, more energy used, and more greenhouse gasses to be expelled into the atmosphere.

The strategies for controlling this threatening situation are largely ignored by governments and decision-makers. Our deeply rooted individualism has precluded a consensus from being reached in UN gatherings. Each country sees only its own interests, and is blind to the collective interest and the planet as a whole. And this way we are recklessly approaching an abysm.

But the mother of all the above-mentioned distortions is our anthropocentrism, the conviction that we human beings are the center of everything, and that everything has been created for us alone, losing sight of our dependency on everything around us. That is the source of our destructiveness, that causes us to devastate nature to satisfy our desires.

Some humility and perspective is urgently needed. The universe is 13.7 billion years old; the Earth, 4.45 billion; life, 3.8 billion; human life, 5-7 million; and the homo sapiens, some 130-140,000 years. Consequently, we were born only “few minutes” ago, the fruit of all the previous history. And from sapiens we are going to demens, threatening our companions in the community of life.

We have reached the apex of the process of evolution, not to destroy, but to guard and care for this sacred legacy. Only then will judgment day reveal our true identity and our mission here on Earth.

 

Leonardo Boff
12-30-2011

No Grief is Necessary

Remembering the Montreal Massacre (with thanks to Brigid for the poem):  Dec 6, 2011

No Grief is Necessary

You grieve where no grief is necessary.
The wise-hearted mourn neither for the living
Nor for the dead.
You and I and all who have
Come to be here have always been
And will never cease to be.

Beyond birth and death are the spirit.
Death does not touch it,
Though the house of the spirit seems to die.

The end of birth is death;
The end of death is birth. As it is so ordained,
What is there to bring sorrow?

From a traditional Hindu story.

The Great Perversity by Leonardo Boff

The Great Perversity

Leonardo Boff

Theologian – Nov 25, 2011

Earthcharter Commission

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 To solve the economic-financial crises of Greece and Italy, by demand of the European Central Bank, governments have been formed that are composed purely of technocrats, without the participation of a single politician. They start from the illusion that it is all about an economic problem, that must be resolved through economics. But those who understand only economics, end up not even understanding economics. The crisis is not from having mishandled economics, but ethics and humanity. Both are closely related to politics. Therefore, the first lesson of basic Marxism is to understand that economics is not just mathematics and statistics, but a chapter of politics. A great part of Marx’s work is devoted to divorcing political economics from capital. When a crisis much like the present occurred in England, and a government of technocrats was created, Marx criticized it harshly, mocking it with irony, because he foresaw total failure, and that is what followed. The poison that created a crisis cannot be used to cure it.

People from the highest levels of finance have been called upon to lead the governments of both Greece and Italy. The banks and stock markets caused the present crisis, that has almost destroyed the whole economic system. These gentlemen are like fundamentalist Talibans: they believe in good faith in the dogma of free markets and the role of the stock markets. Where in the universe is it that greed is good, and that it is good to covet, are proclaimed as the ideal? How can one make a virtue out of a vice (and, let us also say it, from a sin)? They sat in New York’s Wall Street and in the City of London. They are not the foxes that guard the chickens, but those who devour them. With their manipulations they transferred great fortunes to a very few hands, and when the crisis exploded, they were helped out with thousands of millions of dollars taken from the workers and retirees. Barack Obama appeared weak, bowing more to them than to the civil society. They continued the party with the money they received, because the promised regulations of the financial markets became a dead letter. Millions are unemployed and in a precarious state, especially the young, who are filling the streets, indignant, rising against greed, social inequality and the cruelty of capital.

Can it be that people whose minds were formed by the catechism of purely neoliberal thinking are going to lead Greece and Italy out of this mess? What is happening is that an entire society is being sacrificed on the altar of the banks and the financial system.

Since the majority of those in the establishment do not think (they don’t need to think) we will attempt to understand the crisis through the light of two thinkers who, in the same year, 1944, in the United States, gave us an illuminating clue. The first was the Hungarian-Canadian philosopher and economist Karl Polanyi, with his classic work, The Great Transformation. What does it consist of? It consist of the dictatorship of economics. After the Second World War, that helped overcome the Great Depression of 1929, capitalism achieved a master stroke: it annulled politics, sent ethics into exile and imposed a dictatorship of economics. Since then, there has been only a society of market, rather than, as it was before, a society with market. Economics structures everything and turns everything into merchandise, ruled by cruel competition and shameless profiteering. This transformation has destroyed the social bonds, and widened the gap between rich and poor within each country, and at the international level.

The other is Max Horkheimer, a philosopher from the Frankfurt school, exiled in the United States, who wrote Eclipse of Reason (1947). There he sets forth the reasons for Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, that fundamentally consist of the following: reason no longer seeks truth and the meaning of things, but has been sequestered by the process of production and lowered to a mere instrumental function, «transformed into a simple tedious mechanism to register facts». He laments that «justice, equality, happiness, and tolerance, which for centuries have been deemed inherent in reason, have lost their intellectual roots». When a society eclipses reason, it becomes blind, loses the meaning of togetherness, and finds itself stuck in the swamp of individual or corporative interests. That is what we see in the present crisis. The most humanist Nobel laureates for economics, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have written repeatedly that the Wall Street players should be jailed, as thieves and bandits.

Today, in Greece and in Italy, The Great Transformation has acquired another name: The Great Perversity.

 

Gustavo Gutierrez and the preferential option for the poor

by John Dear SJ on Nov. 08, 2011

Gustavo Gutierrez

http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/gustavo-gutierrez-and-preferential-option-poor

“I hope my life tries to give testimony to the message of the Gospel, above all that God loves the world and loves those who are poorest within it.”

That’s the recent summation of his life by 83-year-old Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, founder of liberation theology and its central tenet, “the preferential option for the poor.” These days, Gutierrez works and writes at Notre Dame, where his colleague, my friend Fr. Daniel Groody, has just completed an excellent anthology of his work: Gustavo Gutierrez: Spiritual Writings (Orbis Books, 2011). Gutierrez reminds us of God’s preferential love for the poor and our own need to side with the poor and oppressed everywhere in their struggle for justice.

Gutierrez’s groundbreaking work, A Theology of Liberation, published in 1971, changed everything. It seemed to chart a whole new course for the church, not just for Latin America, but everywhere. Vatican II challenged scholars to renew their theology and biblical study. Gutierrez responded by examining our concept of God and the scriptures within the Latin American reality of extreme poverty and systemic injustice. That led to a renewed realization of Christ’s presence among the poor and oppressed, especially in their struggle to end poverty and oppression.

In his introduction, Groody reviews Gutierrez’s three bottom-line principles about life and

Pueblo Joven in Peru

death at the bottom. First, material poverty is never good but an evil to be opposed. “It is not simply an occasion for charity but a degrading force that denigrates human dignity and ought to be opposed and rejected.”

Second, poverty is not a result of fate or laziness, but is due to structural injustices that privilege some while marginalizing others. “Poverty is not inevitable; collectively the poor can organize and facilitate social change.”

mountain covered with dwellings

Third, poverty is a complex reality and is not limited to its economic dimension. To be poor is to be insignificant. Poverty means an early and unjust death.

An early and unjust death. I remember hearing Gutierrez say those words at a talk I attended at Maryknoll in 1984. The following year, while living in El Salvador, I remember Jon Sobrino using the same expression. Most people in history suffer “early and unjust deaths,” they said. When they wake up, they know that because of poverty, they may die before the day is over. That is the greatest injustice, they insist.

Gandhi put it this way: poverty is the greatest form of violence.

When Jesus said “Blessed are the poor,” Gutierrez points out, he does not say, “Blessed is

Gustavo Gutierrez

poverty.” For Gutierrez, “Standing in solidarity with the poor began to mean taking a stand against inhumane poverty.” Groody explains:

Gutierrez makes distinctions between material poverty, voluntary poverty and spiritual poverty. Real poverty means privation, or the lack of goods necessary to meet basic human needs. It means inadequate access to education, health care, public services, living wages, and discrimination because of culture, race or gender. Gutierrez reiterates that such poverty is evil; it is a subhuman condition in which the majority of humanity lives today, and it poses a major challenge to every Christian conscience and therefore to spirituality and theological reflection.Spiritual poverty is about a radical openness to the will of God, a radical faith in a providential God, and a radical trust in a loving God. It is also known as spiritual childhood, from which flows the renunciation of material goods. Relinquishing possessions comes from a desire to be more possessed by God alone and to love and serve God more completely.

Voluntary poverty is a conscious protest against injustice by choosing to live together with those who are materially poor. Its inspiration comes from the life of Jesus who entered into solidarity with the human condition in order to help human beings overcome the sin that enslaves and impoverishes them. Voluntary poverty affirms that Christ came to live as a poor person not because poverty itself has any intrinsic value but to criticize and challenge those people and systems that oppress the poor and compromise their God-given dignity. It involves more than detachment, because the point is not to love poverty but to love the poor.

The Christian sides with the world’s poor, Gutierrez teaches, consciously acknowledging the forces of greed, violence and death that crush them. The Christian sees Christ present in the poor and marginalized, and joins their struggle to end poverty.

“A spirituality of liberation will center on a conversion to the neighbor, the oppressed person, the exploited social class, the despised ethnic group, the dominated country,” Gutierrez writes. “Our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to the neighbor. To be converted is to commit oneself lucidly, realistically, and concretely to the process of the liberation of the poor and oppressed.”

Gutierrez writes:

Christians have not done enough in this area of conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history. They have not perceived clearly enough yet that to know God is to do justice. They have yet to tread the path that will lead them to seek effectively the peace of the Lord in the heart of social struggle.Reading his theological reflections, I was deeply moved by Gutierrez’s insistence on “the gratuitousness of God” as the basis for his liberation theology. Everything in life comes from the lavish, universal love of God, he insists. The best way to understand this gratuitous love of God is to see God’s love for the poor and oppressed and to make that same love central to our own lives.

“We have been made by love and for love,” Gutierrez writes. “Only by loving can we fulfill ourselves as persons; that is, [by responding] to the initiative taken by God’s love. God’s love for us is gratuitous; we do not merit it. It is a gift we receive before we exist, or, to be more accurate, a gift in view of which we have been created. Gratuitousness thus marks our lives so that we are led to love gratuitously and to want to be loved gratuitously.

“The preferential option for the poor is much more than a way of showing our concern about poverty and the establishment of justice. At its very heart, it contains a spiritual, mystical element, an experience of gratuitousness that gives it depth and fruitfulness. This is not to deny the social concern expressed in this solidarity, the rejection of injustice and oppression that it implies, but to see that in the last resort it is anchored in our faith in the God of Jesus Christ. It is therefore not surprising that this option has been adorned by the martyr’s witness of so many, as it has by the daily generous self-sacrifice of so many more who by coming close to the poor set foot on the path to holiness.

“Clearly the gratuitousness of God’s love challenges the patterns we have become used to,” Gutierrez writes. “The Bartimaeuses of this world have stopped being at the side of the road. They have jumped up and come to the Lord, their lifelong friend. Their presence may upset the old followers of Jesus, who spontaneously, and with the best reasons in the world, begin to defend their privileges.”

Those of us who are privileged First World North Americans may bristle at this theology that asks them to let go of their privileges, make that option for the poor and seek Christ in their struggle for justice. But Gutierrez assures us that this movement of the Spirit among us not only hastens God’s reign of justice and peace, beginning with those in extreme poverty, it leads to new blessings. This is good news. We, too, are being liberated!

“To make an option for the poor,” Gutierrez writes, “is to make an option for Jesus.” That ultimately is the spiritual basis for our solidarity with the poor. We opt to be with Jesus, to serve Jesus, to accompany Jesus among the world’s poor in the nonviolent struggle for justice.

Gutierrez reminds us that a key aspect of Christian life is to make a preferential option for the poor and oppressed. Reading him leads us to ask: How are we doing this today in our lives? How can the church more and more side with the poor? How can we support their struggle for justice and peace?

This week, newly released figures suggest that almost 50 million U.S. citizens live below the poverty line, which is set at $22,400 annually for a family of four. Globally, the United Nations put the number of poor people in the billions. And the number continues to grow. Certainly, one billion people on the planet live in extreme poverty, without adequate food, water, housing, healthcare, education, employment or dignity. Such poverty is not God’s will, and needs to be fought and resisted.

Many unsung faithful serve Christ in the poor through this liberating work, this war on poverty. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East to our own growing “Occupy Wall Street” movement, people are choosing to opt not for the corporations, or the war industry or big money, but for the struggling masses, our sisters and brothers who suffer needlessly under the weight of global injustice.

Gutierrez reminds us that the Gospel calls each of us to join this campaign of liberation, to do our part in the struggle for justice and peace. I recommend this collection of Gustavo Gutierrez’s work hoping it will encourage others to renew solidarity with Christ among the poor and carry on the campaign to abolish hunger and poverty.

The Earth Defends Herself by Leonardo Boff

 

The Earth Defends Herself By Slowing Down Growth

Leonardo Boff

Theologian

Earthcharter Commission

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The idea of a living Earth is widely accepted, and has been incorporated into the most recent manuals of ecology (cf.R. Barbault, Ecologia Geral, Vozes, Petrópolis 2011.) It was first proposed by Russian geochemist W.Vernadsky in the 1920′s, and was retaken with great depth in the 1970s by James Lovelock, and among us, by J. Lutzenberger, where she was called Gaia. This name tries to convey the fact that the Earth is a gigantic, self regulating, super-organism, that makes all beings interconnect and cooperate with each other. Nothing is omitted, because everything is an expression of the life of Gaia, including human societies, their cultural projects, and their forms of production and consumption. But by creating the conscious and free human being, Gaia has endangered herself. Human beings are called upon to live in harmony with her, but they can also break the bonds of belonging. She is tolerant, but when the rupture damages the whole, she teaches us bitter lessons. We can already feel them now.

 

All the world is lamenting the slow world growth, especially in the developed countries. Many reasons are given, but from a radical ecological perspective, it is a reaction of the Earth herself to excessive exploitation by the producing and consumerist system of the industrialized countries. The aggression against Earth’s systems has been carried too far, to the point that, as some scientists note, we have inaugurated a new ecological era: the anthropocene, where the human being, as a destructive geologic force, is accelerating the sixth mass extinction, that has been underway for millennia. Gaia is defending herself, undermining the conditions of the myth of all present-day societies, including the Brazilian: that of growth, the bigger the better, with unlimited consumption.

 

Already in 1972, the Club of Rome took note of the limits of growth, that the Earth can no longer sustain it. It takes a year and a half to restore what we extract from her in a year. Therefore, growth is hostile to life and hurts the resilience of Mother Earth. But we do not understand, nor do we want to recognize, the signs she gives. We want more and more growth, and consequently we want to consume recklessly. The «World Economic Perspectives» report of the International Monetary Fund, foresees a 4.3% rate of worldwide growth in 2012. This is to say, we will extract more wealth from the Earth, throwing her off balance, as is shown by global warming.

 

The «Systemic Evaluation of the Millennium» carried out between 2001 and 2005 by the U.N. to ascertain the degradation of the principal factors that sustain life, warned: either we change our ways, or we endanger the future of our civilization.

 

The 2008 economic-financial crisis, that has returned now in 2011, refutes the myth of growth. There is a generalized blindness, from which not even the 17 Nobel laureates for economics escape, as was seen in their recent meeting in Lindau Lake, South Germany. Except for Joseph Stiglitz, they all agreed that the structure of the present economy bears no responsibility for the present crisis (Page 12, Buenos Aires, 8/28/2011). Therefore, they simply propose continuing down the same path of growth, with some corrections, without realizing that they have become bad advisors.

 

It is important to recognize the dilemma inherent in finding a solution: there are regions of the planet that need to grow to meet the demands of the poor, obviously while caring for nature and avoiding incorporation into the consumerist culture. And other highly developed regions have to be solidarian with the poor, control their own growth, take only what is natural and renewable, restore that which they have devastated and return more of what they have taken, so that future generations may also live with dignity as part of the community of life.

 

The reduction of growth is a wise reaction on the part of the Earth. It sends us this message: «Forget the outrageous idea of growth, for it is like a cancer that will erode all the sources of life. Seek human development of those intangible goods that can grow without limit, such as love, caring, solidarity, compassion, artistic and spiritual creation.»

 

I do not think I am wrong in believing that there are ears attentive to this message, and that together we will make the longed-for journey.

 

 

 

Leonardo Boff

 

09-09-2011

 

Non-Mainstream-Media Notes on the Beatification of John Paul II

Non-Mainstream-Media Notes on the Beatification of John Paul II

Author: Betty Clermont

Posted by: Editor on July 25, 2011 1:00:00 AM

New Catholic Times:SF

By referencing the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in the early 1980′s, the documentary reminded me of how and why Karol Wojtyla became pope in the first place.

The only way one is permitted to write anything negative about the Super-Star pope in the mainstream media (Catholic and secular) is to begin with homage to the “saint” created by the self-same media. So, while I will have some good words to say about the real man at the end, if you want to read praise and admiration, I refer you to what must be by now the millions of flattering books, articles, films, etc.

Yes, journalists are now permitted to include some criticism that the late pope ignored the ecclesial torture of children around the globe but are not allowed to state that John Paul II, along with the worst of his prelates, covered-up, lied, laid the blame on others, protected and promoted his offending hierarchs and priests.

(As posted on www.streetprophets.com )

The inspiration for this blog is an excellent documentary about the IOR (Vatican Bank) produced by the Al Jazeera news network and broadcast on April 27, 2011. That Al Jazeera agreed to produce this video in the best tradition of investigatory journalism is another indictment of our own media – in this case as regards their reluctance to investigate the sordid financial activities of the Catholic Church. Yet even Al Jazeera held back from placing blame on John Paul II for overseeing what was/is one of the largest illegal financial empires in the world.

By referencing the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in the early 1980′s, the documentary reminded me of how and why Karol Wojtyla became pope in the first place.

(Most of this blog will be a synthesis of several chapters in my book, The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America, which contains copious endnotes. It seems that some younger readers doubt the veracity of the written word absent “links” to other websites. Sorry.) See The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America by Betty Clermont,Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2009, 352 pp by Charles Kostryk in cntsf 07/04/2011

Wojtyla was an unknown churchman in an unimportant country. When the archbishop of Krakow died in 1964, the Polish Communist Party refused to approve the first seven names (as was permitted under their law) put forth by the Church to fill the vacancy, waiting until Wojtyla’s name was proposed to give their approval. Why? Because Wojtyla was one of the Polish bishops least defiant of the government; his reputation was to go-along to get-along. His one act of resistance that we know of – calling for the construction of a church in the “workers’ paradise” of Nowa Huta – was cited ad nauseam by the media as an example of his bravery with predictable embellishments after he became pope.

Whether it was Wojtyla’s reputation of being flexible which warranted his being noticed, or his natural charisma or whatever, the man who – except for one pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a young priest – had never travelled further than Poland to Rome and back was thrust onto the world stage in 1968. Poland was an impoverished country suffering periodic food shortages. It was never revealed, however, where the funding came from which enabled Wojtyla to tour the Pacific basin and take several trips to the US where he was introduced to those who matter. Similar to the grooming which brought Ronald Reagan from B-list actor and huckster for GE to increasingly important political appearances, Wojtyla was also invited to speak at Opus Dei-affiliated institutions, centers and groups across Western Europe.

The CIA, which had worked in conjunction with rightwing elements in the Catholic Church against the “Reds” in postwar Europe, Vietnam and Latin America, had a file on Wojtyla. The CIA was concerned because Popes John XXIII and Paul VI had embraced ostpolitik, a movement to normalize relations with the Communist bloc, and the agency actively supported prelates who were staunchly anti-communist as candidates for the papacy.

Since the end of World War II, the Vatican Bank had been used as a pass-through for financing rightwing terrorism and dictators. Under the presidency of Bishop Paul Marcinkus in the 1970s, the IOR also formed a partnership with the Banco Ambrosiano creating shell companies in the Bahamas, Panama and other locales.

In 1978, whether by poisoning or being smothered with his own pillow, the assassination of Luciani Albino – Pope John Paul I – because he had announced his intention to clean out the Augean stable of Vatican finance is a widely-held belief. Since no autopsy was permitted and his successor never permitted exhumation of Albino’s remains to confirm cause of death, that belief remains. And what would be the point of eliminating a pontiff unless his murderers could be sure that his successor would go-along to get-along with those running the Vatican Bank?

I believe that Wojtyla was promised that if left alone, the IOR would funnel millions of dollars to Solidarity, which indeed happened. Perhaps it was the prospect of a free Poland which enticed Wojtyla to make his pact with the devil. So the election was rigged and Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II.

When Italian financial authorities began investigating the IOR/Banco Ambrosiano partnership the following year, blood first appeared on the new pope’s hands. At least three law enforcement officials were gunned down as was an investigative reporter. Numerous others involved in the investigation survived assassination attempts or were “suicided,” violence which would have been prevented if a pope had turned over information on the IOR accounts to the authorities. The murder of Roberto Calvi, “God’s Banker” and head of the Banco Ambrosiano, led to the ultimate collapse of the house of cards and the discovery of the loss of $1.2 billion of investors’ money.

As noted in the book, Vaticano SpA (Vatican Inc.) written by the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi based on documents later smuggled out of the IOR, illegal operations continued well into the 1990s under John Paul II’s leadership. The still-current investigations into Vatican money-laundering show that Benedict XVI’s supposedly new efforts towards financial transparency are as false as his predecessor’s claims to have reformed the IOR.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of children whose lives were destroyed by sex abuse and the growing number of recorded suicides among the victims, John Paul II’s partnership with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to crush the freedom movements in South, and especially Central, America should lead to judgement that he was a war criminal, not beatification. Immediately after Reagan’s election, John Paul II sent Archbishop Pio Laghi as his ambassador to Washington directly from Laghi’s assignment as nuncio and supporter of Argentina’s military junta.

John Paul II installed bishops throughout Latin America who were able to move monetary support and supplies through groups such as the Knights of Malta, Opus Dei and the CIA to the military dictators and their death squads/militias who slaughtered their own people. Some of these same prelates furnished the names of “troublesome” clergy and men and women in religious orders to the CIA for elimination.

Hailed as a champion of human rights, Wojtyla was interested only in the rights of Poles while working to deny them for those in other parts of the world. Acclaimed for his defense of religious freedom, John Paul II trashed the careers of anyone of importance within his own Church who disagreed with him.

Saluted for writing about the dignity of labor, Wojtyla’s longest lasting legacy will be the recent collapse of the world economy suffered entirely by the poor and working classes. We may never have an accurate accounting of how many have died of starvation, or how many premature deaths have resulted in this and other countries by lack of clean air and water, inadequate health care, the stress of un/under employment – all achievements of the neoconservatives who John Paul II helped put in power.

Laghi’s most important function was to scrutinize and appoint (in the pope’s name) US bishops who would support Republican oligarchs. When Laghi was called back to Rome in 1990, his appointees to the US episcopacy were left in charge of filling in new vacancies with like-minded hierarchs, a task now complete. Their crowning achievement was the presidency of George W. Bush, re-elected by a majority of Catholic voters, who finished the work begun under Reagan to shift the wealth of this country from the middle class to the elites who continue to show their appreciation via donations to the Catholic Church both here and in Rome.

That said, I do believe John Paul II died a saint, not the type beatified in opulent ceremonies but the kind we recognize as all good people. After the fall of the Soviet Union, his attention did turn away from anti-communist politics towards more pastoral matters although by that time it was too late to stop the neocon juggernaut he helped to create even if he wanted to. His appointees were already in positions of unassailable power although the pope did nothing to stop them. It was his personal struggle with debilitating illness which brought about compassion and empathy for and with all who suffer.

Few Americans are aware of Wojtyla’s mighty struggle, probably taking the last of whatever strength he had left, to stop the invasion of Iraq. His handlers just put him away, available no longer to the press which adored him and proclaimed in his name that indeed, Iraq was a “just war.”

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comment by Robert Blair Kaiser:

This blog by Betty Clermont should drive all readers of Catholic New Times to Amazon, where they can get Betty’s book, the Neo Catholics. There, she footnotes to a fare-thee-well all of these amazing indictments. They prove how corrupt the Vatican has been and (she adds without fear) how corrupt JPII had been as well.

The Martyrs of our Modern Church Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ

The Martyrs of our Modern Church

Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ

Next week, the 31^stanniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Romero will be marked by people around the world to whom he remains an inspiration – in his life and death – as they strive for justice. His country of El Salvador saw many other lives lost as members of the Church were targeted by the authorities as a result of their protestations against an oppressive regime. Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ, who worked with many of these martyrs, tells their stories and gives an insight into the Church teaching that lay behind their deep commitment to justice.

In recent decades, Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular have rediscovered what should always have been an essential dimension of faith and practice: the social dimension. This is an understanding that Christianity is not a purely individual and personal matter, nor is it, as the writer, Ernest Renan put it somewhat sarcastically, ‘a religion made for the interior consolation of a few chosen souls.’ As the great French theologian, Henri de Lubac stated so clearly, ‘Catholicism is essentially social. It is social in the deepest sense of the word, not merely in its applications in the field of natural institutions but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma.’[1]

This rediscovery is expressed in what is usually called the Social Teaching of the Church or Catholic Social Teaching. It was initiated formally over one hundred years ago with the publication in 1891 of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum. Before this, the corporal works of mercy were and had always been the principal way for a Christian to express love of neighbour. They remain essential and constitute the chief criterion by which, according to the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Last Judgement, the Lord will call each one of us to account. Rerum Novarum, however, recognised that in the modern world we have the knowledge and capability to build the type of society we want. The encyclical

Pope Leo XIII

therefore stated that love of neighbour ought to extend to action to remedy the wrongs of the new industrial society, tackling their causes and advocating changes in regimes themselves which would bring them to affirm among other things the dignity of human work, the right to a just wage and the right of the worker to form professional associations.

This was followed by nine social encyclicals from all but two of the succeeding popes. The latest of these is Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (2009), which calls for ‘integral human development’ and the need for a new world order to direct globalisation. These encyclicals can be considered as blueprints for building a society based on the principles of the Gospel. There are also two extremely important general Church declarations supporting them. First, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes,with its beautiful opening words: ‘The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.’[2] Secondly, the 1971 Synod of Bishops’ statement on Justice in the World, which proclaimed that: ‘Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel.’[3] Our religious faith must go hand in glove with our active promotion of justice.

Unfortunately this wealth of social teaching is either neglected by or even unknown to the majority of Catholics today. This is because, as a recent book puts it, ‘it remains outside the mainstream of ordinary parish life, is seldom referred to in the pulpit, almost never mentioned in the RCIA programmes for people becoming Catholics, and very unlikely ever to be taught as part of catechesis and formation programmes.’[4] In other words, it lives up to its description in a well-known collection: ‘our best kept secret’.

And this in spite of the fact that all of the documents mentioned above are not only deeply concerned with the Church’s Social Teaching but call on Catholics to study it and put it into practice as part of their faith. This charge was repeated by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales in their 1996 statement, The Common Good: ‘All members of the Catholic Church must accept their full share of responsibility for the welfare of society. We should regard the discharge of these responsibilities as no less important than fulfilling our religious duties and indeed as part of them.’[5]

One of the reasons for the urgency of this appeal is that there has never been so much injustice in the world as there is today. One UN Human Development Report after another stresses the fact that never has there been so much wealth in the world, yet never has it been so unequally divided. A 2002 report of the International Forum on Globalisation sums up the situation as follows: ‘In a world in which a few enjoy unimaginable wealth, two hundred million children under the age of five are under weight because of a lack of food. Some fourteen million children each year die from hunger related disease. A hundred million children are living or working on the streets… Eight hundred million people go to bed hungry each night.’[6]

Forty years ago in his great letter on ‘The Development of Peoples’, Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI described the ‘scandal of development’ as an ‘outrage against humanity’. Pope John Paul II spoke of pervading ‘structures of sin’, particularly characterised by ‘the all-consuming desire for profit and the thirst for power’ in all cultures. As the Antilles Bishops put it: ‘Any society in which a few control most of the wealth and the masses are left in want is a sinful society.’[7]

However, the call to Christians to express their faith by struggling for justice, when an

Fr. Octavio Ortiz Luna

increasing number of societies or regimes in the world are fundamentally unjust and oppressive, can seem like an invitation to persecution, if not martyrdom. Aware of this, John Paul II exhorted Catholics to acknowledge and pay special honour their modern martyrs of the 20^th century. What perhaps characterises someone as a ‘modern’ martyr is the nature of the truth to which they are called to give witness. As Karl Rahner has argued, the classical concept of martyrdom, which is fundamentally conditioned by an odium fidei (hatred of the faith), needs to be widened to include those who have been killed by an odium iustitiae (hatred of justice). He cites Archbishop Oscar Romero as an obvious example of this.

It was Father Pedro Arrupe who led the Society of Jesus, in its 32^nd General Congregation in 1975, to declare the promotion of justice to be an indispensible condition for the service of the faith and that this ‘should be a concern of our whole life and a dimension of all our apostolic endeavours’. At the same time he added:

It is necessary that our Congregation be truly conscious that the justice of the Gospel should be preached through the cross and from the cross. If we intend seriously to work for justice, the cross will immediately appear, frequently accompanied by bitter pain. For, although we be faithful to our priestly and religious charism and work prudently, we shall see those rise up against us who perpetuate injustice in today’s industrial society, who otherwise are sometimes considered very fine Christians and often are our benefactors or friends or even relatives, who accuse us of Marxism and subversion, eventually cease to be our friends, and consequently take away their former backing and financial assistance.

This prophetic remark has been amply fulfilled and is borne out by numerous examples. ‘This is a courageous decree: some Jesuits will have to die’, said João Burnier, a Brazilian Jesuit, speaking at the time about the Congregation’s Decree Four, which commits the Society to promote justice. Shortly afterwards he was punched and then shot in the presence of his bishop, Dom Pedro Casadaliga, as both men were interceding to release two women who had been arrested and tortured by the police. In anticipation of the anniversary of the death of Archbishop Romero, I would like to tell the stories of some other modern martyrs, people that have made a great impression on me.

Octavio Ortiz and four youths in El Despertar

At 6.00am on 20 January 1979, a heavy army vehicle crashed through the iron gates of the retreat centre, El Despertar in El Salvador, where Fr Octavio Ortiz and some 20 youths were asleep. They were attending a weekend leadership training course dedicated to Christian formation. When Fr Octavio went out to see what the noise was, the soldiers shot him and then ran their vehicle over his face. Some of the youths had escaped over a wall at the back of the centre, but the soldiers captured four, whom they also shot and ran over. Others were taken prisoner and questioned for 28 hours.

As this was happening, Archbishop Oscar Romero was preparing to leave for the meeting of Latin American bishops at Puebla in Mexico. Instead, he came immediately to El Despertar and was horrified by the condition of the corpses. The following day, a Sunday, he celebrated their funeral Mass in the Cathedral. He preached a powerful sermon in which, after expressing his condolences to the parents of Fr Ortiz and the four young men, he said: ‘I cannot omit the news about the event that brings us here today: the bloody and painful case of Octavio Ortiz Luna. Concerning this matter the Diocese states that the official statement published by the media is filled with lies from beginning to end… Thanks to God we are able to reconstruct the truth through the testimony of many survivors who were brought to the prison of the National Guard.’

Romero then presented this evidence in detail, making it quite clear that El Despertar was a centre dedicated to Christian formation and not to training guerrilleros;that 28 young men aged between 13 and 21 were attending a course of Christian Initiation for Young People and that the only arms they had were hymnals and guitars. He ended by drawing several conclusions:

First. Our Security Forces are incapable of recognising their errors but make things worse by falsifying the truth with slander…..Second. The purification of the corrupt system of our nation’s security is urgent… Third. Once again the evil and the danger of the Law of Public Order is proven… Fourth. Enough! We say this not with pessimism but with great optimism in the strength of our noble people…. Finally, I want to remind you that the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Father Octavio Cruz have incurred canonical excommunication, which in this case means excommunication from the Church.

Six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter

Ignacio Ellacuría, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Joaquín López y López, Juan Ramón Moreno and Amando López, all Jesuit priests, and their housekeeper, Elba Ramos with her 15-year-old daughter, Celina, were dragged out of their beds on the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana in El Salvador on the night of 16 November 1989. Soldiers from the crack Atlacatl Battalion, which had been trained in and was funded by the United States, made them lie on the ground and were then ordered to shoot them in cold blood by Lieutenant José Ricardo Espinosa, who had been a student of one of the priests at the Jesuit school, the Externado San José. They cut out the brains of Ignacio Ellacuría, Rector of the University, and spread them on the grass to demonstrate why they were killing him.

Why were they killing them? I tried to answer this in an article written at the time with the title, ‘My brave “subversive” friends’:

I knew each of them well and worked alongside them in El Salvador for three years. In the Catholic University, where they taught, they did their utmost to make students aware of their Christian duty to promote justice as part of their practice of the faith… But the peace they longed for was not peace at any price. They were one with Archbishop Oscar Romero who, shortly before his assassination in 1980, declared: ‘Let it be quite clear that if we are being asked to collaborate with a pseudo-peace, a false order, based on repression and fear, we must recall that the only order and the only peace that God wants is one based on truth and justice.’

The Jesuits made this choice once before in El Salvador when, in the late 1970s, they were told to leave the country within thirty days or be ready to face death at the hand of right-wing death squads. It was then that the slogan ‘Be a patriot, kill a priest’ was daubed on buildings all over the capital. The Jesuits decided to stay and, as a result, some were banished, others tortured and Rutilio Grande was assassinated as he was on his way to celebrate Mass. The six Jesuits who died on Thursday made the same choice, knowing full well the dangers they ran. Earlier this year the Catholic University was one of the principal partners in a national debate on peace which was sponsored by the Archbishop of San Salvador. After ten years of bitter civil war, which has cost the lives of more than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, women and children, the overwhelming conclusion was that the only hope for peace lay, not in military victory by either side, but in talks and negotiations. The UCA, and Father Ellacuría in particular, played a leading role in helping to promote these negotiations. Hopefully their deaths will now open the eyes of those who are supporting a brutal and corrupt regime and preventing serious negotiations from taking place… If the death of the six Jesuits achieves this goal, they will not have died in vain.

Shortly after the assassination, I was visited by three Scotland Yard detectives on their way to El Salvador to investigate the murder of the Jesuits at the request of El Salvador’s President Cristiani. They promised to get to the bottom of the crime and report back on their return. But it was the last I saw of them, and the colonel directly responsible for organising the assassination (Colonel Guillermo Benavides), though arrested and charged, was ‘confined’ in a luxury hotel near a beach and then released. The judge who tried him and found him guilty had to flee the country with his family after an assassination attempt in his own house. One of the better-known death squads threatened that they would ‘physically eliminate all persons, lay or religious, in or out of the government, who are involved in this case.’ The reason they gave was: ‘Never before in the history of El Salvador has a military man been brought to trial… No military man has been or should be subject to any law of the Republic.’

The assassinations of all these modern martyrs, my colleagues and friends, affected me deeply. I lived and worked in El Despertar for over 11 years. My room and office were next to the spot where the martyrs were shot and where we erected a small shrine in their memory. I passed it every time I entered or came out of my room and was deeply conscious I was treading on holy ground. Next week we will remember the most famous of modern martyrs, Archbishop Romero, but we remember too the lives of these priests, their companions, and all others who have given their lives in the pursuit of justice.

Fr Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ is former Provincial of the British Jesuits. He is now a member of the Jesuit community at Farm Street, Central London. He is the author of the recent, Just Faith: A Jesuit Striving for Social Justice (Way Books, 2010).

 

homily of Bishop Romero concerning the assassination of Fr. Octavio Ortiz Luna can be read at : http://www.romeroes.com/Monsenor-romero-su-pensamiento/homilias/homilias-1979/27-un-asesinato-que-nos-habla-de-resurreccion-en.html?tmpl=component&print=1&page=

 

Remembering the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador: Dean Brackley SJ

Remembering the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador: Twenty Years On

Dean Brackley SJ

Mural from the Chapel of the University of Central America, San Salvador

Twenty years ago today in El Salvador, six Jesuits, together with two women who were sharing their university residence, were murdered by the Salvadoran military. Dean Brackley SJ tells the story of the Jesuit martyrs, who will today be bestowed with El Salvador’s highest honour. What can we learn from these teachers who stood up against an unjust regime and remained firm in their commitment to serving the truth?

Sometimes, late in the game, justice is done and the truth served. Just two weeks ago, the President of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, announced that on 16 November his government would bestow its highest honour, the Order of José Matías Delgado, posthumously, on the six Jesuits who were murdered twenty years ago on that same date.

In the early hours of 16 November 1989, US-trained commandos of the Salvadoran armed forces entered the campus of the Jesuits’ university, the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), and brutally murdered the six Jesuits, together with two women who were sleeping in a parlour attached to their residence.  The Jesuits were: the university rector Ignacio Ellacuría, 59, an internationally known philosopher; Segundo Montes, 56, head of the Sociology Department and the UCA’s human rights institute; Ignacio Martín-Baró, 44, the pioneering social psychologist who headed the Psychology Department and the polling institute; theology professors Juan Ramón Moreno, 56, and Armando López, 53; and Joaquín López y López, 71, founding head of the Fe y Alegría network of schools for the poor.  Joaquín was the only native Salvadoran, the others having arrived long before from Spain as young seminarians.  Julia Elba Ramos, the wife of a caretaker at the UCA, and their daughter Celina, 16, were eliminated to ensure that there would be no witnesses.  Ironically, the women had sought refuge from the noise of gunfire near their cottage on the edge of the campus.  Julia Elba cooked for the Jesuit seminarians living near the UCA.

This was one crime in a long series that included the martyrdom of Rutilio Grande SJ in 1977,

Rutilio Grande sj

and those of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and the four US missionaries: Jean Donovan, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel and Maryknoll sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, in 1980.  They all mixed their blood with that of tens of thousands of lesser-known civilian victims of El Salvador’s civil war of 1981 to 1992, which moved the world with its extremes of cruelty and of heroic generosity.

The killings at the UCA took place during a major guerrilla offensive that began on Saturday 11 November 1989.  Ellacuría returned to El Salvador from Spain the following Monday.  A few hours after he arrived at the UCA, a commando unit of the Atlacatl Battalion searched the Jesuit residence.  It was reconnaissance.  Two days later the High Command of the armed forces gathered at their headquarters a kilometre away from the UCA.  In fear of losing the capital city, and perhaps the war, they decided to rocket the poor communities where the guerrillas were now entrenched and to act on a long hit list of civilians critical of the government and the armed forces.  Almost all on this death-list, including labour leaders, opposition politicians and some clergy, had gone into hiding once the offensive began.  The six Jesuits did not.

Even after the Monday search, Ellacuría prevailed on his brothers to remain at their UCA residence.  They had nothing to hide, they had done nothing wrong; nor were they members of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) guerrilla movement.  The accusations – that the UCA stored weapons and trained guerrillas – were patently false.  And, with the campus surrounded by soldiers protecting the military installations close by, any harm done to them would be blamed on the army.  It was a logical argument; yet, as frequently happens in wartime, unreason prevailed.  Shortly after the Wednesday night meeting of the High Command, the Atlacatl unit returned to the UCA to murder the Jesuits and the two women.  The soldiers simulated a military confrontation, leaving over 200 spent cartridges, to make it look like the Jesuits had fallen in combat.

Br. Robert Lentz icon of the UCA martyrs

With fighting raging around the capital, the military had hoped to pin the murders on the guerrillas.  When that quickly proved impossible, the Salvadoran and US governments collaborated in a cover-up to shield the Salvadoran High Command.  The government offered up nine soldiers who had participated in the operation.  Thanks to enormous international pressure, all but one, who fled, eventually went on trial.  Two were convicted in 1991 but were later released when the government pardoned itself (and the FMLN) for all war crimes.  To this day the top officers have never been formally accused, let alone held accountable.

So, President Mauricio Funes’s decision to bestow the highest state honour on the fallen Jesuits begins to right an historic wrong.  Funes was elected as the candidate of the FMLN, now a political party.  His election in March 2009, following twenty years of rule by the right-wing party ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance), wrested political power from the control of El Salvador’s all-powerful economic oligarchy for the first time.  The new centre-left government inherited a bankrupt state, an abysmal economic crisis and rampant violent crime.  While it seeks to carry out reforms, it can do little to put food on the table or generate jobs.  However, recognising the Jesuit martyrs is a powerful symbolic gesture that generates hope.  It cracks the thick wall of impunity that ARENA governments had erected to shield themselves and the armed forces from accountability for the deaths of legions of civilian victims of state terror during the war.  Funes said he considered honouring the fallen Jesuits as ‘a public act of amends, that is, of moral compensation, for the errors which the Salvadoran state committed in the past.’

As early as the 1990s, the UCA massacre became the crime that would not go away.  Thanks to international pressure, including a US Congressional Task Force, we learned who the real killers were.  Outraged US citizens, especially Catholics, pressured their government to cut off the military aid that was indispensable for the conduct of the war.  By then, it was becoming more difficult to justify the war as a defence against the international Communist threat.  The massacre at the UCA took place at exactly the time that Berliners began knocking down their famous iron curtain wall.  In El Salvador, the scandal generated by the murders helped to speed up the peace negotiations and later, by discrediting the Salvadoran military, to consolidate the peace.

Like many others, the UCA martyrs were killed for the way they lived, that is, for how they expressed their faith in love.  They stood for a new kind of university, a new kind of society, a ‘new’ church.  Together with their lay colleagues, they wrestled with the ambiguities of their university in a country where only a tiny minority finished elementary school and still fewer could meet the required academic standards to enter university and to pay the tuition fees.  The Jesuits and their colleagues concluded that they could not limit their mission to teaching and innocuous research.  Yes, they did steeply scale tuition charges according to students’ family income.  More importantly, they sought countless ways to unmask the lies that justified the pervasive injustice and the continuing violence, and they made constructive proposals for a just peace and a more humane social order.  As a university of Christian inspiration, they felt compelled to serve the truth in this way.  That is what got them killed.

For readers of a different time and place, we can translate the high standards the UCA set for itself as follows:  first, the chief subject of study has to be reality itself.  The ‘literature’ of various fields is a means to understanding reality, above all the core issues of life-and-death, justice, and grace versus sin.  Second, the university must practically engage with the suffering world it seeks to understand, to serve and to help transform.  Third, it should take a principled stand on the crucial moral issues of the day – not just abortion, we might say today, but also war, lying in public and torture.  To search for knowledge without this kind of commitment would not only unduly limit the university’s mission, it would reflect a failure to appreciate how bad things are, not only in places like Central America, but in places like the US and Europe as well.  It would mean failing to overcome the distorted standard discourse which we take for common sense.  It would mark a failure to address the prejudices and blind spots produced by our socialisation into the middle-class society to which most of us university people belong.  And this means it would amount to a lack of academic rigour.

The UCA martyrs also stood for a different kind of society.  Ellacuría, like the theologian Jon Sobrino who lived with him but was travelling at the time of the killings, was an eloquent advocate for what he called a ‘civilisation of work’ to replace ‘the prevailing civilisation of capital.’  With great prescience he foresaw that this would not be principally the work of governments but rather of civil society, whose different sectors have to organise and point the way to new social models, beyond both communist collectivism and capitalism.  In this, Ellacuría believed, ‘the poor with spirit’ would play a privileged role.

Finally, the UCA martyrs stood for a Church of the poor (in the words of Pope John XXIII) which would serve as a vanguard of this new society, modelling equitable social relations and solidarity; a prophetic Church like the one that Archbishop Romero symbolises, which gives credible witness to the fullness of life that God promises.

The UCA martyrs knew they were risking their lives.  But they understood that that was the price of being human in their time and place; that was the cost of following Christ.  Twenty years later we give thanks for them, and many like them who inspire us to live up to the challenge of our own time.

In announcing that he would bestow the country’s highest honours on the fallen Jesuits, El Salvador’s first president from the political left said that they had distinguished themselves for outstanding service in education, human rights, combating poverty and inequality, and in working for peace and democracy.  He added that he and many members of his Cabinet regard them as ‘eminent Salvadorans who rendered extraordinary service to the country.’

At the Presidential Palace today, 16 November, some of their relatives will join the Jesuits of El Salvador along with representatives of the poor communities that the martyred Jesuits served.  In their stead, those present will receive this historic public recognition.  It is fitting that campesinos, mothers and workers, representatives of the crucified peoples like Julia Elba and Celina, share in this tribute, which is all the more welcome for coming so late in the day.

Dean Brackley SJ is Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Catholic University in San Salvador

A Spirituality of Resistance By John Dear

A Spirituality of Resistance

By John Dear

(On February 28, 2011, John Dear gave this talk at the Eight Sabeel Conference in Bethlehem, Palestine.)

Fr. John Dear

Dear friends, thank you for all you do for peace and justice, for the God of peace and justice. I have been asked to speak about “a spirituality of resistance.” I define “spirituality” broadly as “a way of life,” your “sabeel,” which means there are many spiritualities. We are talking here about finding God as we resist empire, walking with Jesus as we resist empire, living in the Holy Spirit of faith, hope and love as we resist empire.

I thought I would share a little of my own journey of resistance, and then offer ten starting points for a spirituality of nonviolence and resistance to empire. These are just modest reflections which I hope will encourage you to unpack the spiritual dimension and roots of your own nonviolent resistance. In other words, what is your spirituality of nonviolence and resistance? How do you challenge empire, resist empire and remain faithful to the God of peace? Where is God in your journey out of empire, in your journey of resistance to empire? Who is the God you meet as you resist empire? What spiritual practices and resources do you use in your life journey of nonviolence and resistance?

My Journey of Nonviolent Resistance to Empire

Thirty years ago, when I was 21, I decided to try to follow Jesus, so I came here on a walking pilgrimage for several months. But the week I left in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and during that three month war, killed 60,000 people. It was all orchestrated by the Pentagon and from there, it was called “Operation Peace for Galilee.”

Toward the end of my stay, I spent time camping out illegally at the Sea of Galilee, visiting the Chapel of the Beatitudes, and pondering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time. I took those great commandments to heart: “hunger and thirst for justice, blessed are the peacemakers, love your enemies.” While I was pondering the Sermon on the Mount, I saw Israeli warplanes swoop down over the Sea of Galilee on their way to bomb people in Lebanon. That experience of war at the Sean of Galilee  changed my life. I’ve been trying to live out the Sermon on the Mount ever since as a call to faithfulness to the God of peace, resistance to empire and war, and an invitation
to welcome God’s reign of peace and nonviolence here and now.

Another turning point: In 1985, I went to El Salvador to work in a refugee camp at the height of the U.S.-backed war. I worked with the Jesuits at the University in San Salvador. There, the Jesuit theologian and university president, Ignacio Ellacuria said to us: “The purpose of the Jesuit University in El Salvador is promote the reign of God. But you can no longer be for the reign of God unless you are also publicly, actively against the anti-reign. You cannot claim to be for peace and justice unless you are publicly actively against war and injustice.” Their fearless, steadfast, outspoken nonviolent resistance to war challenged and inspired me.

Ellacuria and five other Jesuits were assassinated on November 16, 1989 by 28 soldiers, 19 of them trained in the U.S. at Fort Benning’s “School of Americas” in Georgia. Their martyrdom continues to inspire me to resist war and empire.

By now, I was organizing demonstrations against U.S. warmaking, speaking out, crossing the line, getting arrested at military bases all over the country. Then on December 7th, 1993, four of us walked onto the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, right through the middle of wargames, and hammered twice on an F-15 nuclear-capable fighter bomber in a “Plowshares disarmament action.” We were surrounded by soldiers and I said on behalf of the group, “We are unarmed, peaceful people; we mean you no harm; we’re just here to dismantle this weapon of death!” We hoped that everyone would come to their senses, that the soldiers would say, “What
were we thinking? Of course, go right ahead. Thank you!” As I told the judge, we were trying to fulfill Isaiah’s commandment to beat swords into plowshares, and Jesus’ commandment–”Love your enemies, don’t nuke them.” That’s the actual translation from the Greek!

For that action I faced 20 years in prison and was found guilty of two felony counts, and spent eight months in jail. So I’m an ex con, can’t vote and am regularly monitored and feel like I’ve been excommunicated by the empire.

Since then, I’ve been trying to walk in solidarity with the disenfranchised, to protest our wars and nuclear weapons. I’ve been arrested some 75 times for civil disobedience and been in many jails. For the past nine years, I’ve lived and worked as a pastor in New Mexico, one of the poorest states, but birthplace of the nuclear bomb. We have a nonviolent campaign aimed at Los Alamos National Laboratories, where every U.S. nuclear weapons begins, and continue to call for total nuclear disarmament.

Not long ago, I spent a year under strict Federal government probation after a protest against the Iraq war. I had to meet with a Federal government official every week, and ask permission to travel and leave the state. Last year, I tried to get into Gaza and joined 1400 others in the “Gaza Freedom March” from Cairo to Gaza. Mubarak stopped it, so we broke curfew and demonstrated every day in Tahrir square for ten days. In the process, I joined an eight day fast for the end of the siege of Gaza, led by Hedy Epstein, an 85 year old Jewish holocaust survivor.

A year and a half ago, fourteen of us walked onto the Creech Air Force base in Nevada, the headquarters of the U.S. drone weaponry, the unmanned fighter bombers used to bomb civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I fear they will soon be over the skies of Bethlehem. We were arrested, jailed in Las Vegas for the night, and stood trial last fall. The judge surprised us by saying he needed four months to think about his decision. Two weeks ago we were back in Las Vegas court, and of course, he found us guilty. I was expecting six months in prison, but gave us
time served. So I’m very happy to be here with you this morning!

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if today you had known the things that make for peace!”

We’ve been talking about empire, the American empire, the Israeli empire, the occupation, the wall, the settlements, the siege of Gaza, the apartheid, the abominable Obama veto recently in the U.N.—all of this in a world with 1 billion people starving to death, 30 wars, 730 U.S. military bases around the planet, 20,000 nuclear weapons, violence, torture, executions, economic collapse and destructive policies that have brought catastrophic climate change. We are up to our ears in empire! It’s the air we breathe. It’s normal. We’ve internalized it. And we’ve put our churches, our theology and our spirituality at the service of empire. So if we are going to talk about a spirituality of nonviolent resistance, we have to recognize first that most of us are caught up in a spirituality of war, a spirituality of occupation, a spirituality of empire.

This is an old story. In this false spirituality of empire and war, we believe violence saves us. War brings peace. Might makes right. Nuclear weapons are our only security. God blesses wars. We seek not forgiveness and reconciliation but victory and domination. The good news is not the love of enemies but the elimination of enemies so we can steal their land and natural resources for ourselves. Some of us think the empire is on our side, it gives us life, it is our god. In reality, empires bring good things to death.

In our spirituality of violence and empire, we reject Jesus’ call out of empire and the Sermon on the Mount as impractical. We take up the empire’s just war theory, launch crusades, bless the nuclear weapons at Los Alamos and enjoy the comforts of empire. The empire always tries to teach us about God and life, to instruct the churches on how to be church, to give us its theology and spirituality, to answer questions of sin or morality, telling us what is sinful or immoral, what issues to discuss, while saying nothing about the murder of a million Iraqis, or the occupation, as if these were not mortally sinful and immoral.

The empire wants the churches to be indifferent, passive and silent, or to be divided and fighting, if not to bless its wars, occupations and injustice. We’re told to have a private relationship with our imperial god, fulfill our Sunday obligations and go along silently with the mass murder of our sisters and brothers around the world. We are possessed by an imperial occupation of our hearts, our spirits, and our souls.

Martin Luther King

In the old days, they called this: “heresy,” “blasphemy,” and “idolatry.” We need to start using those big words again!

Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King and others are teaching us a new lesson: the great truth that violence doesn’t work. War doesn’t work.

Violence in response to violence always leads to further violence! As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.” “Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword,” Jesus said. You reap what you sow. The means are the ends. What goes around comes around. War cannot stop terrorism because war is terrorism. War only sows the seeds for future wars. War can never lead to lasting peace or true security or a better world or help us overcome evil or teach us how to be human—much less deepen the spiritual life.

If we want peace, we have to denounce the lie of war and empire and the false spirituality of war and empire and say: War and empire are not the will of God. War and empire are never blessed by God. War and empire are never justified. War and empire are the very definition of mortal sin, idolatry, the demonic, for they are anti-life, anti-democracy, anti-human, anti-God, anti-Christ. For Christians, peaceful means are the only way to a peaceful future and the God of peace.

Gandhi

So I want to offer ten starting points for a spirituality of resistance, for our life work challenging empire and remaining faithful to the God of love and peace. These are just modest points for your reflection, to help you ponder your own spirituality of resistance and the spiritual resources that sustain you for the lifelong struggle to make justice and peace.

First, a spirituality of resistance is a spirituality of nonviolence.

The night before he was killed, the mighty prophet of peace and justice, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The choice is no longer violence or nonviolence. It’s nonviolence or nonexistence.” I think that’s where we stand today–on the brink of global imperial destruction, called to become people of Gospel nonviolence.

But we do not challenge empire and the false spirituality of empire by the means of empire. We do it, King says, through active, creative, loving nonviolence. This comes from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:39: “Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil.” I urge us all to experiment with this teaching as our Palestinians brothers and sisters have done so well, to practice active nonviolence as the foundation for our spirituality of resistance to empire.

Gandhi and King said we can never reflect enough on this clumsy word “nonviolence.” It begins with the vision of a reconciled humanity, what Dr. King called “the beloved community,” the truth that all life is sacred, that we are all equal sisters and brothers, already reconciled, already united, already one. From this starting point of our common unity, we could never hurt or kill another human being, much less remain silent in the face of empire, war, occupation, starvation, nuclear weapons, injustice and violence.

So nonviolence is not a tactic or a strategy, and it’s certainly not passive. It’s a new way of life. We renounce violence and vow never to hurt anyone again. Then, we practice active, courageous love in pursuit of the truth of our common humanity for justice and peace. We resist empire, war and systemic injustice, while persistently reconciling with everyone and allowing God to disarm our hearts of the roots of empire within us. And no matter what, we uphold the bottom line of nonviolence: There is no cause, however noble, no matter what anyone says, for which we support the killing of a single human being.

From now on, we reach out to every human being near and far with unconditional, all-inclusive, all-encompassing, non-retaliatory, sacrificial, universal love. I’m talking about a spirituality of love as the motivation for our resistance to empire.

The world says there are only two options in the face of violence: you fight back or run away. Active nonviolence gives us a third option: creative, steadfast, peaceful resistance to injustice. It is not passive but infinitely creative as Dr. King, Gandhi and our Palestinian brothers and sisters demonstrate. We stand up and resist violence with creative love, trusting in God, willing to suffer, insisting on the truth of our common humanity until the scales fall from the eyes of our opponents and we are reconciled. Gandhi says it’s a life force, more powerful than all the weapons of the world combined, because it’s the way of God, and when we organize it, it becomes contagious and can disarm the world.

So nonviolence begins in our hearts and from there, we are nonviolent to our families and neighbors, and to opponents here and everywhere. We practice it personally, but organize it in grassroots movements for social change to transform the world, as Gandhi demonstrated in India’s revolution, as Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement showed, as the People Power movement showed in the Philippines, as Archbishop Tutu and the churches of South Africa showed against apartheid, as Egypt just showed us! Walter Wink says two thirds of the human race has been engaged in grassroots movements of nonviolent resistance in the last thirty years. Dr. King said this is the most exciting time to be alive in all of history because we are going to
be the people who finally become nonviolent.

Second, our spirituality of resistance is based in the nonviolent resistance of Jesus and in discipleship to Jesus, the nonviolent resister of empire.

Mahatma Gandhi said that Jesus was the most active nonviolent resister in history, and the only people who don’t know Jesus was nonviolent are Christians.

Jesus lived and taught active, public, creative nonviolent resistance to empire. He called everyone out of empire, out of occupation, and commanded us to love our neighbors and our enemies, to show compassion to everyone, to seek justice, to forgive everyone, to be reconciled, and to lay down your lives in love for humanity. He organizes the poor, heals them of empire and walks from Galilee to Jerusalem on a campaign of active nonviolence into the Temple, the symbol of imperial and religious oppression of the poor, the center of systemic injustice, and in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, turns over the tables of the money-changers. “This is a house of prayer,” he says. He doesn’t hurt anyone, kill anyone, or bomb anyone. But he does
engage in peaceful, nonviolent action; he is not passive. He is a nonviolent  revolutionary, a force to be reckoned with, a one man crime wave in the Roman empire. Of course, he is arrested and killed.

Back home, when I talk like this, people say, “That is so nice John, but sometimes you’ve just got to kill someone. War is justified!” If you think so, go to the Garden of Gethsemani. Here come the Roman soldiers, and what does St. Peter do? What’s Peter’s “spirituality of resistance”? He says to himself, “My job is to protect the holy One,” so he gets his sword to kill the soldiers, thinking that in all of salvation history, if violence is ever justified, if there ever was a just war, this is it.” But then the commandment comes down: “Put down the sword,” Jesus says. We are not allowed to kill. Friends, these are the last words of Jesus to the church, and it’s the first time they understand him and his nonviolence. What do they do? They run away.

Before Pilate, Jesus explains it all: “If my kingdom were of this world, my attendants would use violence, would be fighting to protect me from the Judeans; but it is not of this world, so they do not use violence.” Jesus dies on the cross, Gandhi says, in perfect nonviolence, saying, “The violence stops here in my body. You are all forgiven, but from now on, you are not allowed to kill.”

And just as the crucifixion of Jesus was completely legal, so was his resurrection totally illegal. The soldiers were sent to guard the tomb, and put the imperial seal on the tomb as if to say to Jesus, “We killed you and you’re dead, so we order you to stay dead.” Once again, Jesus engages in civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance! He breaks the law and the imperial seal and is out and about. And he says to us, “Peace be with you! Join my campaign, my sabeel, of nonviolent resistance to empire!” As people of resurrection, we know our survival is already guaranteed. We know life is stronger than death, love is stronger than hate, peace and compassion are stronger than empire and war, nonviolence is stronger than violence.

So our spirituality is an active discipleship to Jesus the nonviolent resister of empire.

Third, a spirituality of nonviolent resistance reclaims the nonviolence of God and claims our core identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

The empire creates fear, but Gandhi said in effect that a spirituality of resistance is based in fearlessness. He took a vow of fearlessness. How do we not live in fear, but live in nonviolent love? I propose we center our lives in the unconditional love that the God of love and peace has for each one of us.

When Jesus calls us out of empire and into justice and peace, he speaks of a God who is wildly in love with each one of us; a God who does not create empire, does not want empire, does not bless empire; a God who wants us as God’s children to live in the fullness of life.

Remember when Jesus was baptized. There he heard the voice say “You are my beloved Son.” He went into the desert, and was tempted by the empire, by violence, to reject his core identity. The voice says, “Oh yeah, if you are God’s beloved son, prove it! Do something!” But he refused to reject who he is, claimed his true identity as God’s beloved son, went forward on the mission to resist empire and was faithful until the moment of his death, still centered in his relationship with the God of peace. They said, “If you are the son of God, come down from there. . .” Because he remained true to that fundamental identity, he practiced perfect nonviolent resistance and love unto death.

There are two key texts which are crucial to this foundational identity for a spirituality of resistance. First, “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.” (Mt. 5:9)

The empire is always trying to tell us who we are. “You are nobody!” or “You are somebody if you buy this product.” In the U.S., the marines have a slogan which says, “If you want to be all you can be, join the marines,” and we should add, “and kill for the empire.” But Jesus tells us who we truly are. He says: “You are the beloved sons and daughters of the God of peace, not the sons and daughters of the empire or the culture of war and violence.” In a spirituality of resistance, we claim this core identity and remain faithful to it, so we go forth and make peace and resist empire and live in God’s love and welcome God’s reign of peace.

The other key text: “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. . .” (Mt. 5:43-48) Why should we do this? Jesus does not say, “love your enemies because it’s the right thing to do,” or “because it’s the moral thing to do,” or “because it’s the only practical political solution left.” He says “love our enemies because God lets the sun shine on the good and the bad and the rain fall on the just and the unjust.” God is a God of universal nonviolent love, and you are the sons and daughters of the God of universal nonviolent love, so you offer universal nonviolent love, which means you resist empire and love everyone.

Here in the boldest political statement in the entire Bible, he describes the nature of God, and announces that contrary to what the empire teaches about God, God is nonviolent and loving, a God of universal love. As God’s beloved sons and daughters, he says, you do the same.

That is why I define nonviolence as remembering who we are. Violence comes from forgetting who we are. And the social, economic and political implications of this teaching are astounding: if we are sons and daughters, then every human being is our sister and brother.

So I urge us to claim your core fundamental identities as the beloved sons and daughters of a God who makes peace and practices universal love, and to be faithful to who we are. If we do, then like Jesus, we will be able to go all the way in nonviolent resistance to empire.

We could also speak of St. Paul’s great image of being citizens of God’s reign of peace. We are no longer citizens of the American empire, or whatever empire but first and foremost citizens of God’s reign.

Fourth, a spirituality of nonviolent resistance means we are contemplatives of peace and nonviolence, people who spend time every day with the God of peace, who live in intimate relationship with the God of peace, to dwell in that fundamental identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

We resist empire, yes, but on the positive side, we live in relationship with the God of peace, and so we spend time every day with the God of peace in silent prayer, contemplation, and meditation. The Jesuits recommend thirty minutes of silent meditation a day. But the reason we don’t do this is because the violence within us come up. But that’s the point: in prayer, we allow the God of peace to disarm our hearts of the roots of empire and war within us.

There are many ways of prayer, meditation and spirituality, and many resources at our disposal from bible study to the sacraments, but I urge us to just be with God, to let God love you, to let God heal you, and to enjoy the peace of God.

And in that safe place with God, I invite you to let go of your inner imperial tendencies, your inner violence, anger, hatred, resentment, bitterness and desire for vengeance; all the roots of empire, war, and occupation within you, to give it to the God of peace; to grant clemency and amnesty and forgiveness to everyone who ever hurt you; to move from anger and violence to nonviolence and compassion for everyone; to welcome God’s gift of peace within you so that we can radiate personally the peace we seek politically, so that our very presence is disarming.

We’re talking about a new kind of dangerous holiness, a dangerous mysticism that threatens empire. This is what Gandhi and King achieved, and what our Palestinian brothers and sisters are doing.

The amazing thing is that as we spend time in intimate relationship with our beloved God, we discover that, contrary to what the empire tells us, God is not a god of empire and war, but the God of peace; not a god of injustice, but the God of justice; not a god of vengeance and retaliation, but the God of compassion and mercy; not a god of violence, but the God of nonviolence.

Gandhi said the more we can imagine the peace and nonviolence of God, the more we will worship the God of peace and nonviolence; then finally, we will become people of peace and nonviolence.

When we dwell in the peace of God, we listen to what God wants to say to us, and God always just wants to encourage us as any loving parent would. We see this in Dr. King’s “spirituality of resistance.” Martin Luther King had one dramatic experience of God in his whole life, in January 1956. It was late at night. He received a death threat on the phone, walked into his kitchen, put his head down on the table, and started to pray. In that moment, he gave up. But just then, he heard a voice say: “Speak for justice, speak for equality, speak for peace, and I promise, I will never leave you alone.” He spoke about that experience for the rest of his life, until the week he
died. He was encouraged by God to continue the struggle. That message is for all of us. That is what God wants to say to each one of us, if we will take time to listen.

I would like to speak on the power of intercessory prayer, the importance of praying daily for political transformation, the end of the occupation, the end of war, and the end of empire. I would like to speak too of the teaching to pray for our persecutors, which means, we must pray for the settlers, who make war and manage the empire. That is part of our work as well.

Fifth, a spirituality of nonviolent resistance begins with a practice of personal, mindful nonviolence toward ourselves and others.

We cannot live our personal lives as if we are little emperors running our own personal empires. We have to non-cooperate with the empire’s occupation of our lives and souls, which means first, to non-cooperate with violence toward ourselves. We have to be sure to be nonviolent to ourselves. I think the work of nonviolent resistance is difficult because we are all raised in violence and it can trigger the lingering violence within us and reopen our own past wounds, and we need to be aware of that. We need to look deeply within and try to look at the causes of
our violence and be gentle with ourselves and not beat ourselves up but try to cultivate interior nonviolence.

Remember, too, that Jesus advises us not to base our nonviolent resistance in anger, he says in the Sermon on the Mount. It doesn’t work or sustain us for the long haul; it just stirs up the embers of violence. Notice how he advocates two other emotions:

Desmond tutu

grief and joy. More of us within the empire need to start practicing grief in solidarity with our sisters and brothers. We must also cultivate joy. “Blessed are those persecuted for justice; rejoice and be glad.” In Luke, we read, “Leap for joy! Start dancing.” Look at Archbishop Tutu. He’s dancing through life, even though he’s been under death threat throughout his life. Dear friends, start dancing!

Also, as activists and resisters, we have to be especially nonviolent toward everyone we meet every day from now on for the rest of our lives. Contrary to the spirituality of empire and occupation, we love everyone as a sister and brother. We need to be attentive to our personal nonviolence, to be as loving and compassionate as we can. To the extent that we can do this, the days of occupation and empire are not only numbered, but a new world is being born.

From this spirit, we can create communities of love and nonviolent resistance, care for each other and sustain each other, help create new churches of nonviolent resistance to empire, and widen our circle of friends into that global beloved community.

Sixth, our Palestinian sisters and brothers are showing us that a spirituality of resistance is a way of life. For you, it’s daily life. Just living and breathing is an act of nonviolent resistance. I saw that in At Twani, where they struggle to get the children to school, face the poisoning of their sheep and the shooting of their dogs, and fear the settlers who terrorize them with machetes. You practice nonviolent resistance 24/7.

I like what the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay said, “I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death.” That’s what you’re doing. You also know that if you are going to spend your lives resisting death, you have to live life to the full, really live, be fully alive in the present moment. That’s what you are doing.

We in the West have to relearn this, to make nonviolent resistance our daily practice for the rest of our lives. That means, our spirituality of resistance has to be engaged; it is not passive, but praxis-oriented. It is about action.

Each of us needs to engage in concrete activity to resist war and injustice. We too need to live and breathe a spirituality of resistance and give our lives in resistance to empire.

Cesar Chavez

When I was with the labor organizer Cesar Chavez talking about spirituality, he said, “Tell everyone they have to engage in public action for peace and justice.” As Archbishop Romero said the day he was killed, “Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.”

So everyone needs to engage in some public action for justice and peace. One thing we all can do is stand in solidarity with our Palestinian sisters and brothers and all oppressed peoples. In particular, I hope we can all join Sabeel, support Sabeel, widen the Circle of friends of Sabeel, and even raise funds for Sabeel. Certainly in the U.S., we need to build a movement to protest the annual AIPAC meetings in Washington, D.C., work to cut all U.S. military aid to Israel and join the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Seventh, a spirituality of resistance is prophetic. Like Dr. King and Gandhi, we need to be people of prophetic nonviolent resistance. That means, we listen attentively to the voice of the God of peace, and then, say what the God of peace wants said. We speak the truth with love,
we call one another out of empire, and we call one another back to the God of peace and the life of peace.

So a spirituality of resistance breaks the silence, complicity and acceptance of empire and war. It denounces empire and the false spirituality of violence and announces justice and peace, which means saying publicly things like this: “In the name of the God of peace, come out of empire. Do not support empire. Do not work for empire. Resist empire. Help dismantle empire. And so, end the occupation, end the blockade on Gaza, tear down the wall, abolish apartheid, welcome the Jewish vision of shalom. End the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. End all current wars. Close all 730 U.S. military bases around the world. Close Los Alamos nuclear weapons labs and Dimona, as well as the Pentagon. Dismantle every nuclear weapon on the planet, and stop the weapons trade and the corporate greed which robs and kills the poor and poisons the earth. Feed every starving child and person on the planet today. House, heal and educate every person on the planet. And build new cultures of justice, inclusivity, nonviolence and peace, here and everywhere.” That’s what we need to say!

We hear such prophetic language in the Kairos Palestine statement, which I hope we will all read, study and act on.

Eighth, a spirituality of resistance means being visionaries of a new world of nonviolence.

As we resist empire and occupation, we also envision a new world of love and peace.
One of the casualties of empire, war and occupation is the loss of the imagination. Some people cannot even imagine an end to the occupation, or living peacefully as neighbors with Palestinians, much less a world without war, poverty or nuclear weapons.

But that is part of our life and our work–to help everyone reclaim the imagination for peace, for the coming of a new world of nonviolence. Everyone is blind; we have no vision. We have to help one another see God’s reign of peace at hand in our midst.

Abolitionist poster

Think of the Abolitionists. They came along and announced an astonishing, breathtaking new vision. They said, “We are announcing the abolition of slavery!” And they were told, “You’re crazy! There’s always been slavery.” “No,” they said, “A new world is coming, a new world without slavery, a new world of equality.” They lifted up a new vision of equality and gave their lives for it and helped others to see it.

Friends, we are their heirs! We are new Abolitionists. We’re saying, “We are announcing a new world without walls, occupation, apartheid, rubber bullets, and tear gas. We are announcing the abolition of war, poverty, racism, sexism, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction!” Lift up that vision of peace with justice and point people to a new world of nonviolence!

Ninth, a spirituality of resistance is a spirituality of the cross, of taking up the cross as nonviolent resistance to empire, of carrying the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire.

John Howard Yoder

John Howard Yoder, a great scripture scholar, once wrote that the cross is not having a flat tire or a difficult in-law. The cross is nonviolent resistance to empire and the culture of war. Jesus says, “Take up the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire and follow me.” That is what you are doing.

Now this is hard, and we don’t often speak of it. Martin Luther King, Jr. said we have to learn how to use suffering creatively. Instead of killing others, we are willing to undergo being killed in the struggle for justice and peace. Instead of inflicting violence on others, we accept suffering without even the desire to retaliate as we pursue justice with love for all people. King said, “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to accept suffering, and we will wear you down because unearned suffering love is always redemptive.” It always works. Gandhi defined nonviolent resistance as “conscious suffering in pursuit of truth.” You are doing this, and we are all beginning to learn to do this.

The Gospel says the way to resist empire is by walking the way of the cross. I propose we try to see ourselves accompanying Jesus as he carries the cross. We try to unite our suffering for justice and peace with his. If we can be one with Jesus as he carries the cross in nonviolent resistance, and with the crucified peoples of the world, then our suffering is transformed and we participate in God’s disarming, redemptive work, and the fall of empire is assured because the paschal mystery is the path to peace and justice.

Finally, a spirituality of resistance is a spirituality of hope and resurrection. Be hopeful; don’t lose heart. Stay hopeful. Cultivate hope, which means simply, keep doing hopeful things. Get ready for resurrection, practice resurrection!

How do we do this? Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk, gave some great

Thomas Merton

advice to a young peace activist in the 1960s. He said: “Do not place your hope in results. Do the good because it’s good,” Merton said. Place your hope not in results or success but in the God of peace. The outcome is in better hands than ours; it’s in God’s hands. That’s an ancient teaching. Instead of worrying about results, we give our lives for justice and peace. We love everyone, resist empire, and place our lives and our work in God’s hands, which means we acknowledge that this is God’s work.

So beware the push for immediate results, for success. That is the language of empire, of the Pentagon; that is not our way. We are servants of the God of peace, doing God’s will, letting God achieve the results, even as we give our lives in love for suffering humanity, for God’s reign of justice and peace. Our hope is in God. Jesus said let your lives bear good fruit, which is a very nonviolent image.

There’s an inverse proportionality: the more we are in charge and do it all, the less happens. The more we let go and risk and walk forward in faith and resist empire, the more happens. So take risks, trust God, and place your hope in God.

My friend the great historian Howard Zinn said that every major movement for social change in the U.S.-from the abolitionists, suffragists, labor and civil rights to the anti-war movement- -felt hopeless. From the beginning, through the middle, and right up to the very end, they were all hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. I found this very consoling. Then, all of a sudden, there was a breakthrough. How? The key, he said, was that people did not give up, even though there was no chance that change would come. Ordinary people continued to do small acts for peace and justice every day, and over time, those little things added up into something big. They never gave up-
and that made all the difference.

He said that historically, the one thing those in power fear the most is a movement that won’t go away. So our job is not to give up, not to go away, not to give in, not to lose heart, but to keep on pursuing a new world of peace, justice and nonviolence.

In his last months, Dr. King was falling into despair, as Gandhi did. King struggled for hope and started talking about it. A few weeks before he was killed, he defined it for the first time: “Hope is the final refusal to give up.” I think that’s very important; it’s at the heart of the spiritual life. And that’s us. We refuse to give up.

Remember: the Vietnam war ended, Nixon resigned, Somoza fled, People Power forced Marcos out of the Philippines, the Berlin wall fell, Communism fell, the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the war in El Salvador ended, apartheid ended, and Mandela was released from prison and became president. Eight five nonviolent revolutions have taken place in the last 25 years. Recently, Mubarak fled from Cairo! The occupation can end, nuclear weapons can be abolished, world hunger can end. The empire will fall. Indeed, the real question is whether it will fall violently or nonviolently; we are doing what we can to help it fall nonviolently so fewer people will be hurt.

So I urge you to keep your eyes on the risen Jesus, to cultivate what gives you hope, to do hopeful things, to lift up the vision of a new world of nonviolence, and to go forward in hope.

In that way, on this Sabeel of life, we will learn the things that make for peace, live out a spirituality of nonviolent resistance, challenge empire, be faithful to the God of peace, herald the coming of God’s reign of peace with justice, and become who we already are–the beloved sons and daughters of the God of peace, God’s blessed peacemakers. Amen.

*****

John Dear is a priest, peace activist and author of 25 books on peace and nonviolence, including A Persistent Peace (an autobiography), Put Down Your Sword, Living Peace, Jesus the Rebel, Peace Behind Bars, The Questions of Jesus, Transfiguration, You Will Be My Witnesses, and The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of  Nonviolence. He writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter at www.ncronline.org. He was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. For further information, visit: www.johndear.org.