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Proceso 1139
March 16, 2005
ISSN 0259-9864
Editorial: Faith and politics in Monsignor Romero
Politics: John Paul II and politics in Latin America
Economy: The economy in the light of Laborem Exercens
Faith and politics in Monsignor Romero
On March 24th of 1980, a killer bullet ended with the life
of a man whose quest was to defend the life of the poorest people of El
Salvador. To defend the poor, to denounce the repression the people had to be
subjected to when they demanded their right to have a life, to say that the
structural violence -the one that generates poverty, exclusion and
marginalization for most Salvadorans- was the main cause of other violent
situations was not taken too well by those who enjoyed the “benefits” of a
structural violence, and by those who –the security bodies, the military and the
death squads- had made out of the state’s terrorism and the private terrorism
the main instruments to guard their corrupted privileges.
During the years that went before his designation as Archbishop, Monsignor
Romero had stood out because he refused to contaminate faith with politics: he
had not only shown his preoccupation for the fact that some people were using
faith with political purposes, but also his disposition to face those who,
within the church, played along with that attitude. Those who, from their
powerful positions, placed their bets on Monsignor Romero did not go wrong here.
Nevertheless, they were wrong about other things. They thought that Monsignor
Romero was their ally, that is, somebody ready to defend and to share their
privileges and their wealth. They did not realize that the Archbishop was,
mainly, a man of the Church, faithful to this institution and faithful to its
traditions, its original documents, and to its line of work. They confused
tradition with traditionalism, understanding it as a passive act of acceptance
of one generation after another.
Monsignor Romero was not against the contamination of faith through politics
because he allegedly had sympathetic feelings for the members of the oligarchy
and the military institution, but because he was a man of the Church and he
thought that such attitude would go against the Church itself. And as a man of
the Church, it was clear to him that the greatest glory of God is that men live,
and, in such sense, he was concerned about the injustice in El Salvador at the
time. Monsignor Romero was close to Monsignor Luis Chavez y Gonzalez, and some
people would not believe that he was, neither those who watched him from their
powerful positions and saw him as an ally, nor those who watched him from the
opposition inside the Church and considered him a conservative bishop. All of
them had the wrong perception, although those who paid a higher price for their
mistake were the members of the oligarchy and the members of the army.
Once Monsignor Romero was named Archbishop, it was clearer than ever that he had
not been part of those sectors; it was clearer than ever that, for him, the
poverty, the injustice, and the marginalization of most of Salvadorans were
subjects that concerned him because of his position inside the Church. There
were those who, within the Church, shared this conviction with Monsignor Romero,
and they had taken a step forward: they were conscious that the poverty, and the
exclusion of the majorities could not come to an end without the organized
participation of those majorities, a participation that just had to have a
political character.
In other words, when Monsignor Romero became Archbishop of San Salvador, there
were those that within the Church had already assumed that faith had to be
“contaminated" with politics if it intended to be a faith able to illuminate the
specific problems of the Salvadorans. Not just any kind of politics, but
politics that move towards the line of an organized participation that can allow
the majorities to defend their fundamental human rights. Those who kept a
position of this kind created a true problem for Monsignor Romero, a problem
that would concern him throughout his three years as Archbishop of San Salvador.
This is not only about a theoretical or a doctrinal problem, but a practical
problem as well: priests, nuns, monks, catechists, and delegates that were
connected with the activities of the popular organizations were persecuted,
harassed, tortured and assassinated. Along with them, the organized farmers,
students and workers had to face the same destiny.
Actually, then, the Church has to do with politics. In the past it had been
involved with the politics of power; and during the first months of Monsignor
Romero as an Archbishop, it is involved with the non-conservative politics of
left wing. What position has to be taken before the challenge created by the
non-conservative politics of the left wing? What should be the relation between
faith and politics? Both of these questions and their answers allow to predict
an important evolution in Monsignor Romero, from the moment he became Archbishop
-on February 23rd of 1977- until he was murdered –on March 24th of 1980-. One of
the keys to interpret that evolution is to read it as a progressive acceptance
(problematic, indeed) of the idea that the solution for the structural problems
of the country -among them, the structural violence that generates poverty,
exclusion and marginalization- is not only a socioeconomic solution, but a
political solution as well.
In his three years as Archbishop of San Salvador, the conception that Monsignor
Romero had about the relations between faith and politics became more mature.
After constantly reflecting about it -sifted by the death experiences that
followed inside and outside the Church- he was convinced that poverty and
injustice could not end without a political component, that is, without the
organized participation of the popular sectors. It was perhaps his fidelity to
the Christian tradition what allowed him to accept the need of politics –a
concept of politics different from the one used by the State- to promote urgent
transformations for El Salvador. If before it had been his sense of fidelity
what made him be against any contamination between faith and politics, now it
was that same fidelity what forced him to realize the importance of politics so
that his faith and his demands would not fly away.
The demands of faith -justice, equality, hope, charity- claim certain political
mediations; these mediations demand a faith that would guide them, and protect
them from the danger of becoming a body: this one was the conviction that grew
stronger in Monsignor Romero during his three years of archiepiscopal teaching.
He not only had the honesty to accept it, but the courage to face all of the
consequences and the challenges that came along with it. This attitude drew him
closer the people, and he became their beloved shepherd, the most respected one
and the most venerated one. The most powerful ones, who used to consider him an
ally, now saw him as an enemy, as the person responsible for the worse
calamities that threatened their world of privileges, power, and ostentation.
His murder must be read as a the revenge of the powerful ones of El Salvador
against the man who defied them when he vindicated the dignity of the ones that
are powerless.
John Paul II and politics in Latin America
The entire world reflects about the death of John Paul II
in these days. He left his parishioners with the strong sensation of being
orphans. The Pope that broke several records, with his trips or with the fact
that he designated the highest number of bishops and cardinals, just to mention
a few, fulfilled his duties in the Catholic Church with kindness and firmness.
In his 26 years at the head of the Vatican, John Paul II was able to have a good
influence in the world. In the future, when all the fervor and the emotion of
the present moment of his departure drifts away, the historians will be able to
really evaluate his decisive influence. At the moment, what can be said is that
Latin America, the continent with the largest number of Catholics in the world,
became one of first flanks in the orbit of the Pope.
Among the multiple subjects in which a Pontiff must participate, politics is,
without a doubt, one of the most controversial ones. While the matters of faith
and morals are usually associated with transcendental aspects, politics,
however, stand out by its concrete and its earthy character, and its immediate
association with social interests in conflict. It is important to remember the
way in which many people have historically manipulated religion in order to keep
their political power intact, just to have an idea about this situation. In the
words of Silvio Ferrari, "the religious experience, whether it is
institutionally determined in the form of the church, or when it adopts the
characteristics of a sect, it is structured as a phenomenon that -at least as a
tendency- affects all the aspects of the human existence, and also affects the
aspects of the organizational life that are far from the scope of the interests
that are purely spiritual".
John Paul II was able to have an extremely positive attitude about how much it
is possible to achieve from the Church, in relation to the political structures.
His biographers indicate that he played a key role in the fall of the Soviet
block. Coming from the Communist side of Poland, which had been dominated by the
extinct Soviet Union, some people sustained that the immediate goal of the Pope
Wojtyla was to defeat Communism, and to restrain the "growing atheism of the
society". For that reason, he would have supported the dissidents of the
Communist regimes, specially Lech Walesa, that worker who led the movement
called Solidarity against the red dictatorship in Poland.
Lech Walesa declared that, without the help of the Pontiff, Communism would have
never come to an end, or at least not so soon and without bloodshed. In
opposition to the Communist elite that constituted the government in the Slavic
country, the deceased Pope openly sustained that the history of Poland cannot be
understood without Christ. "A year after pronouncing these words" -the leader of
the Solidarity union remembers- "we were able to organize ten million people in
strikes, protests and negotiations. We had tried to do that before, I tried, and
we could not make it. These are facts. Of course, Communism would have fallen,
but much later and in a bloody struggle. It was a gift that the sky sent us". In
a word, not until the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, it was possible to say
that anti-Communism constitutes a remarkable note of the work of Juan Pablo II.
The work of the Pope in Latin America
Since the beginning, unlike its predecessors, Karol Wojtyla made out of the
relation with Latin America a fundamental axis of his pastoral work. In 18
occasions he visited the countries of the subcontinent and took the message of
the Church. In this message, there are several topics connected with the society
and the historical organization of the power in this area.
In the first place, the Pope denounced the economic and the social
marginalization and the racist discrimination which the less fortunate people
have been historically subjected to in this region of the world. For that
reason, he requested to pardon the offenses suffered by the natives. "That the
conscience of the pain and the injustices inflicted to so many people is, in
this Fifth centenary –of the conquest of the American continent- the appropriate
occasion to humbly request forgiveness for the offenses and to create the
conditions of an individual, a familiar and a social life that can allow to find
an integral and a right way of development for all, but particularly for the
abandoned and for the poorest ones".
It is important to mention this element because it was the turn of the screw in
the history of the official Church in Latin America. It is not that this
institution had not been worried before about the inhuman situation in which the
weakest ones live Latin American, but in the circumstances of the critics made
by the Pope to the theology of liberation, it became clear once again that the
Church cannot leave on the side the cause for the most vulnerable ones.
On the other hand, some people sustain that Karol Wojtyla played an important
role in the fall of the bloodthirsty dictatorships in the region. "Just like he
criticized the Communist regimes, he also helped to precipitate the fall of
catholic dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, François
Duvalier in Haiti, or Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay". In other words, the Pope
condemned the lack of political freedom in these countries just like he did it
in his native Poland. He committed himself to help the weak ones in his
religious bet for Latin America.
This affection and this individual preoccupation of the Pope for the situation
of the weakest members of the society in the subcontinent took him, on the one
hand, to condemn the misery and the racism that suffered the great majority of
the inhabitants. In addition, he explained the role that the Church can play in
the transformation of the reality. He always knew the importance of the Catholic
Church in this continent. "It is not possible to forget -he said in 1990, during
a visit to Mexico-, in the wide panorama that offers Latin America, the
important role that the Catholic Church plays".
Due to this importance of the Latin American Church, with an amount of
parishioners that represent 44% of the Catholics worldwide, John Paul II
observed with a particular fervor this reality. To a considerable extent, the
reason of his tumultuous relation with the theology of liberation must be
interpreted from this perspective. Perhaps two of the elements that have to be
considered for this analysis are the excessively horizontal character -to the
eyes of the most clerical ones- that promote the relation between the faithful
ones and the hierarchy, and the dangerous proximity of its methods of political
reflection with the ones of Marxism.
The conflicts with the conservative hierarchy of the church of the continent
constitute, without a doubt, one of the fundamental characteristics of this
time. Those that advocated, somehow in the light of the 2nd Council of the
Vatican, a new relation between the authorities of the Church and the
parishioners and, at the same time, the need to make these authorities
understand both the socioeconomic and the political reality of the people, were
deprived of authority by the Pope. He defended the authority of the hierarchy
-in Latin America, mainly a conservative society in this time- before the
presence of the excited "revolutionaries".
It is not possible to forget that John Paul II always condemned the idea of
Communism. This discipline denied, in his opinion, the religious dimension of
the human beings. Thus, it would have not allowed the Latin American Church, the
most important Church of the world, to have a positive perspective of faith.
When the Pope disapproved the rules of the theology of liberation and punished,
from a ecclesiastic point of view, its main exponents, Latin America was a
political swarm in which the masses were fighting to obtain their freedom and to
surpass their marginalization. In this context, the catholic faith professed by
most of the inhabitants constituted sort of a fuel for the revolutionaries. The
Gospel became the main source of this fuel for those that denounced the
situation of social injustice in the region.
Because he lived the experience of the relation between the Church and Marxism
in his native Poland, John Paul II always worried about the way in which the
Latin American Communists used the somewhat ingenuous faith of the parishioners.
Because Karol Wojtyla knew that, once in a powerful position, the Marxist
themselves were going to attack the Church.
According to Leonardo Boff, he read "Latin America with that code and said: that
theology, that kind of Church, will work as a Trojan horse for the arrival of
Communism, and Communism is going to dissolve the Church ". Nevertheless, Boff
rejects that erroneous perception of the theology of liberation. "The theology
of liberation", in his opinion, "never had Marx, neither as a father, nor as a
godfather, but it was born listening to the screams of the ones oppressed by the
Christian faith, that is, most of the Latin American people, it organized the
resistance and the liberation against the perverse things that the people have
been historically subjected to".
An analysis of the doctrine of John Paul II in Latin America
As a first reflection on the situation of the Latin American Church after the
death of John Paul II, it is possible to underline the fact that everything has
returned to its "normal" stage. Those who continue reflecting through the key
aspects of the theology of liberation have lost ground. The explanation of this
reality has, without a doubt, multiple causes. Nevertheless, among those causes,
it is especially important to consider the influence of John Paul II. He managed
to disarticulate a movement that was, in his opinion, dangerous for the survival
of the Catholic faith and its capacity to influence the Latin American world.
However, at the same time, as many have noticed, the sentence of the Pope about
the relation between catholic faith and political propaganda did not prevent him
from demanding the end of the social injustice in the continent. This is how it
is possible to sustain that who "was subjected to the oppression of nazism,
wanted to prevent the influence of Marxism in the Church, but had enough vision
as to admit the needs of the less fortunate ones". For that reason, in his
numerous interventions on the situation of the Latin American parishioners, he
spoke about the unjust social and political structures that deny people their
right to have a decent existence as human beings.
He admitted, on the other hand, that it was necessary for the Church to denounce
the political oppression of the Latin American followers. Nevertheless, Leonardo
Boff, one of the Christians who experienced the offensive launched by the
Vatican to "straighten" the situation inside the Latin American church, declared
that the Pope ultimately made the Christians look like children. In his opinion,
the Pope had as an objective "to regulate the faith, (...) to make the
Christians look like children, because they were simply invited to subject
themselves, as passive individuals, to the official doctrines".
At this moment when the followers of the Church in the world are getting ready
to give their last good-bye to John Paul II, it is just a few who dare to
criticize the pastoral work of the Pope. On the one hand because, as the Latin
said, no one speaks about the bad side of the dead –de mortui nihil nisi bonum-;
and, on the other hand, on top of everything there is, the Pope underlined the
need to open the hearts to God and to trust in his infinite kindness.
The economy in the light of Laborem Exercens
Just a few days after the death of one of the most
memorable religious leaders in history, Pope John Paul II, it is important to
speak about several matters that marked the doctrine of the catholic Church in
reference to the economy, during the 26 years of his presence in the Vatican. It
is known that the social and the economic subjects have been always a priority
for the Church, especially for the traveling Pope. That is why, the accusations
he made against Socialism and to a predatory Capitalism were one of his most
acknowledged quests.
For that reason it would be a serious error to characterize the thought of the
Pope as something adhered to a certain economic system. It is necessary to
clarify that his doctrine is above "Communism as it is above Capitalism", beyond
the bureaucracy of the State of welfare, or beyond the mercantile profile of the
Latin American economies, and that it does not intend to be a third road between
the extreme Liberalism and the State’s planning.
In fact, as he himself wrote: "the Church does not present any specific model,
because these ones are only valid within certain contexts and concrete
historical situations. It can be in any other way because neither the world, nor
the needs of people are static, but they are in constant change". This thought
agrees in a certain way with the importance of the neutral role of the church
that Monsignor Romero always pleaded for in El Salvador: the Church cannot be
married neither with Communism nor with Capitalism.
As far as the economy of the market is concerned, the Pope realized that it had
positive as well as negative aspects. About the positive aspects, he spoke about
the exercise of the human freedom. John Paul II was the one who even introduced
in the catholic thought the term "the right to the economic initiative" and his
defense of the private property.
However, in spite of this, his doctrine cannot be compared to Liberalism. "The
individual property should never be a source of conflict, but something able to
provide a sense of well-being to the people. It is a part of the earth that
somebody, by means of his own effort, turns into its own for its own benefit.
But a possession must never be justified per se, and the wealth of some people
should not imply that there are others living in poverty or exploitation. On the
contrary, one must cooperate with the others so that all can dominate the
earth". The market economy also presents a considerable number of flaws since
the owners of the resources can be easily considered more important than the
workers. John Paul II was the one who pointed at these issues and vindicated the
privileged position of men before the presence of wealth.
John Paul II and the external debt
The external debt is without a doubt the main indicator of the existing
interdependence between the developed countries and less developed ones. It is
known that the reason that led the developing countries to welcome the offer of
abundant available capitals was the need to be able to invest them in
development projects. The decision of the third-world countries can be described
as imprudent and perhaps as a rushed decision, because although at the moment
they had financial benefits, they did not anticipate that in different
circumstances this loan could just have dripped out of their hands.
This phenomenon marked the economic thought of the Pope. He pleaded for the
total forgiveness of the external debt. And that is why in his encyclical
Centesimus Annus (written one hundred years after the Rerum Novarum), remembered
that Jesus came "to evangelize to the poor men". How not to underline the
preferential option of the Church for the poor and the marginalized ones? There
has to be a commitment with justice and peace in a world like this one, affected
by so many conflicts as well as by intolerable social and economic differences.
The Pope underlined the fact that the oppression that affects many nations,
especially the poorest ones, has to do with the external debt, which has
acquired such proportions that practically makes it impossible for these
countries to pay. He stated that it is not possible to reach a real line of
progress without the effective collaboration between the territories and the
people of all languages, races, nations, or religions. The offensive actions
that lead to domination have to be eliminated. "Those who only dedicate
themselves to accumulate earthy possessions (cf. TM. 6, 19), do not become rich
in the eyes of God” (Lc. 12, 21). He also pleaded for the creation of a new
culture of solidarity and international cooperation, in which all -specially the
wealthy countries and the private sector- play a responsible role in an economic
system to the service of all.
The encyclical Laborem exercens
The encyclical Laborem exercens is a document to understand from the perspective
of the Pope the existing social tensions between the businessmen and the
workers. He explains that the existence in our time of a conflict between labor
and capital is evident. It has been this conflict the one that the society
world-wide has mainly gone through, and the one that remains in the roots of the
national and international social tensions.
The Pope mentioned that work is that activity that men perform to control and to
transform nature. From an historical perspective, work has become one of the
mechanisms that has humanized men, since with it a person unfolds his or her
physical, intellectual and emotional capacities with the purpose of obtaining a
certain product. While working, men dominate nature and intend to satisfy their
needs.
In this process, the greatness and the dignity of working do not reside in the
action itself, but rather in who performs it: "The foundation to determine the
value of the human work is not the kind of activities that are performed, but
the fact that whoever does that job is a person". That is to say, that being men
the measurement of the work, only those activities that dignify men should be
performed.
His Sanctity admitted that in these times work assumes diverse forms and most of
them are unfair because they do not allow to exercise that capacity, when it
should allow the development of the individuals through their creativity, and
the improvement of both consciousness and freedom. On the contrary, the kinds of
jobs that are part of the present economic system are sustained on the base that
men is exclusively an instrument, that is, the worker is not fully acknowledged
as the human being that he is. The employers (the owners of the resources) see
in the workers an instrument necessary to reach a goal: profits.
The position of the Pope was the following: "Before the present reality, with a
structure deeply inserted in so many conflicts... it is necessary to remember a
principle taught by the Church. It is the principle of the priority of ‘work’
before the concept of ‘capital'. This principle specifically refers to the
process of production, in which ‘working’ is always an efficient and a primary
cause, while the concept of ‘capital' (the means of production) is only an
instrument of production". In this context, His Sanctity intended to underline
the fact that men should be the most important feature of the production
process, not the other way around.
In the present, from the perspective of the dominant economic theory -the
Neoclassic synthesis- men are understood in the context of the production
process; that is, as means of production, just one more instrument that serves a
purpose not determined by the worker, but by the capitalist. It is very common
to speak about "human capital". This term is more than a simple expression of
the present economic slang; within itself, this term involves the dehumanization
degree that the Capitalist economic system has reached because it does not admit
that historical aspect that allowed the humanization of a person: work.
With this, it is possible to notice a considerable similarity between this
approach and the Marxist economic theory. But the desire of His Sanctity is not
to exclusively disapprove of Capitalism, but to criticize the materialistic
vision that characterized at the time of the real Socialisms the materialistic
perspective of history. The Pope did not agree with a vision that describes
individuals exclusively as the product of the economic structures. "Under the
perspective of a Dialectic Materialism, men are understood and treated as what
is connected with the material aspects of the process, as sort of the ‘result’
of the predominant economic and productive relations at a certain time".
Before this situation, the desire of the Pope was not to propose an alternative
economic system built through a clear profile, but to try to overcome that
conflict that locks up men, the owners of the means of production and those that
offer their labor strength.
The efforts must be aimed to put to both the concepts of work and men the main
place that they should occupy in the economic process, that is why the Pope
indicated that men themselves have to become the beginning and the end of all
the economic activities. There is a connection between the concepts of work and
capital in the economic process, and work should be more important than capital.
The goal of working should be to dignify men, not to subject men to slavery.
The contrary is happening in El Salvador with the wishes of the Pope. In the
last years it has become evident to see how the employment levels are not
growing. It is frequent to see that in the country there are jobs that do not
respect the labor rights, such as the creation of unions, the right wages for
those who are working overtime, and the services of the social security system.
An example of this situation occurs in the maquilas, where people are exploited
so that they can fulfill a "production goal", established beforehand by the
owners. In addition, the working schedules are regulated in a way that allows
the company to keep a level of continuous productivity; in the end, these
actions have a negative influence in the health of the workers.
The death of the Pope is definitively the kind of news that create commotion and
pain for the elites that hold the highest levels of power in the country. They
have expressed their condolences in newspapers, posters, and the different
resources available because of the death of the Pope. But it would be far better
for them to sincerely understand and try to fulfill the desires that the Pope
always embraced for El Salvador and the world.
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