A Postscript to Friday's Blog

I realized that, yes, there was an implied question in today's earlier blog that I didn't answer, something to the effect, whether, with many of my friends, brothers & sisters, I was ready to take the Gospel seriously, to the point of possibly risking my life. In the early 1980's, with all that was happening in the world -- especially continuation of the Cold War and a still-escalating nuclear weapons "race" between the US of North America & the Soviet Union, wars in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua) -- asking and discerning whether one were willing to risk one's life was not so far-fetched a consideration for many in the Liberation Theology movement. Because it meant taking seriously the Gospel of Liberation, which is the Gospel for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the despised.

It also wasn't that far-fetched because many of us at least knew of people who had risked their lives -- and LOST their lives -- in the struggle for justice and peace, including a number of religious folks. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was obvious, but we also knew of Violetta Luizzo,Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was murdered in January 1965, and Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963. We knew as well of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who died of self-immolation to protest the corrupt Vietnamese government; several people in the US of North America took them as models and chose the same death in opposition to the War in Vietnam. More than that, though, we had begun to learn of priests in several Central American countries who had been targeted for assassination by their governments and who had subsequently been murdered. A popular right-wing slogan in El Salvador in the early 1980's was "Be a patriot: Kill a priest." And right-wing paramilitary members had done just that. The Wikipedia entry on Archbishop Oscar Romero has a list, although I am quite certain it is not comprehensive, that is, that more priests in El Salvador were assassinated than just those listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero . We knew that, in addition to priests, monks, deacons, nuns, church catechists (teachers) and others had been kidnapped, tortured, "disappeared," and murdered in throughout Latin America throughout the 20th century.

So, for many of us, trying to live a Gospel of Liberation meant taking these kinds of considerations seriously, something that was especially true for men & women in religious orders, particularly if the order was a missionary order, such as Maryknoll and the Columban Sisters and Fathers. It was also true for many US North American members of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits -- who could choose to be involved in ministry in places outside the US, such as Nepal, East Timor, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru. Even if we ourselves didn't have any intention of doing ministry in places that were dangerous, we still felt called to support those among our friends who did experience that call. We often knew, even during seminary, that they would say "yes" to that call from G-D.

As many of you know, my life took a different direction. Seeing my call as more in the direction of scholarship & academia, with the encouragement of my mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, and many friends, in the Fall of 1981, I began working toward my PhD in Systematic Theology. In the Spring of 1984, I took a leave of absence to discern my future direction, as I had, by that time, made one of the most questionable decisions of my entire life & had left the Catholic Church. There were many reasons behind that decision; it is now one of the decisions I most regret. But I won't write about that here; it's too long a story.

The result of my decision to leave the Church, however, led to my decision to withdraw from the PhD program. Instead, I finished my Masters degree, writing my thesis on the book that had led to my thorough-going critique of the Church, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Wonderful book, wonderful story, it shook the foundations of my world, for a few years at least. When the dust settled, I was living in Boston where I had moved in late August of 1987. Then, six Jesuit priests & their 2 women co-workers had been murdered by El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in November 1989. About 2 years later, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV+ & was retiring from pro-basketball. The murders of the Jesuits at the University & Johnson's announcement conspired to cause me to wonder just what my life-foundation was, in what I believed, & in what direction my life was heading. And I found myself heading back to and back into the Catholic Church -- another story too long for this blog.

A number of my colleagues from the GTU continued and continue to live the Gospel in ways that awe and humble me, and I am most grateful for their witness to Christ. I thank G-D for their witness; I thank G-D that, at least thus far, such a call has not come my way. I'm not good with pain, fear, or anxiety; I'm not sure I'd do really well in jail for more than a couple of days.

I am very, very aware of my privilege as a white-skinned US North American, while at the same time recognizing that, as I age, I'm falling closer & closer to that line that puts people over into poverty in this "richest country in the world." I'm also very aware that there is an element in the US right now that lives & acts politically on the very far right-wing edge; it is an element that would be happy to silence lots of us, including me -- a left-wing radical, a Feminist (still), a Catholic, a person of Jewish origin, & a lesbian, as well as someone who has never learned to be silent in the face of stupidity, offensiveness, & / or oppression. So far, the group(s) with these attitudes & politics have not come to power in the US of North American. I pray that they don't, especially in the face of an increasingly dire economic situation. If they do come to power, I could be among the people in a heap lot of trouble, not because I'm anybody important, but simply because of who I am -- radical, Feminist, Catholic, Jewish, lesbian, outspoken. And I always remember the warning of Sister Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you."

I pray that a call to live at such risk for the Gospel never comes to me but, if it does, I pray that I may take these friends and the martyrs of El Salvador as my models. In the meantime, to recall the words of Mother Jones, I / we need to "...pray for the dead, & fight like hell for the living."