I’ve lately been reading St.* Oscar Romero’s The Violence of Love. Romero didn’t actually write it as a whole book; it’s rather a compilation of pieces of his homilies and newspaper op-eds over the course of the three short years between his elevation to the post of Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 and his assassination.
I could say a lot about Romero, but I want to focus on a specific point about him: he was both a man with much power (as a Roman Catholic Archbishop in a traditionally Catholic country usually is) and he was a champion of the those with no power. He spoke out against those in his country who were committing so many abuses against the poor:
“This is why the Church has great conflicts… It says to sinful torturers: do not torture. You are sinning. You are doing wrong. You are establishing the reign of Hell on earth.”
“What marks the genuine church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses… so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws – out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and humanity.”
I don’t want to beat it to death – you get the idea. But these weren’t just platitudes Romero spoke from a lofty cushioned cathedra. For his three years as Archbishop, he was constantly getting death threats for what he was saying. People were bombing the radio stations he broadcast on, and his supporters were being murdered. In 1980 Romero himself was martyred while celebrating Mass, paying the ultimate price for calling out those who sought to oppress the Salvadoran people.
And that, I think, is what marks him as a singular man among men of power. And what motivated this powerful defender of the defenseless? The answer is what he returns to again and again in the book: the Gospels. Romero refers us to Jesus’s words: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” in Matthew 25, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, as well as the words of the prophet Jeremiah.
These writings have been universally held in esteem not just in the Christian world, but in the Western world in general for about 1700 years, which brings me (finally) to my titular point. For in contrast to all the awful things done by people in the name of Christianity, the powerful Western Church from the time of Constantine has again and again caused powerful figures to follow the Gospels and use their own power to denounce abusive authorities and rich people, even risking their own lives to do so. So many have done so that I’d do a great injustice to name only a few, but off the top of my head: St. John Chrysostom, Pope St. Gregory the Great, St Francis of Assisi, Bartolomé de las Casas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and yes, Oscar Romero, all drew their power from the Church and their inspiration in agitating for social justice from Jesus Christ.
This is why I say that Christianity is a “Progressive Trojan Horse”. The emperor Constantine set the precedent for the integration of Christianity as the religion of the West, and accepted on behalf of every Western leader to come the moving texts which praise the poor and disparage the rich and powerful. While the establishment of the Church has meant that the wars, atrocities, and lavish lifestyles of Western kings got “Jesus” bumper stickers slapped on them for centuries, it also guaranteed that the sinfulness of those acts was always and forever codified, and that those who sought to promote social justice and criticize those awful kings always had the ultimate trump card to draw: the words of God Himself. And that is why I say the establishment of Christianity, even if there is no God and no Resurrection**, is a singular event, and the greatest thing that ever happened to the world.
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*Technically not a recognized Roman Catholic saint. Yet.
**Although those of you who know me know that I do credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, etc… if that weren’t obvious from this post.