Various arguments
support the hypothesis that Archbishop Óscar A. Romero of El Salvador died a martyr, killed by persecutors
who carried out his murder in hatred of the faith. In an earlier post, I posited that one could show Romero’s
martyrdom by crediting Romero as a “martyr of charity” along the lines of St.
Lawrence of Rome or St. Maximilian Kolbe; by recognizing that Romero was killed
because of his assassins’ aversion to the tenets of the Social Doctrine of the
Church; and as a violent rejection of Romero’s powerful final sermon on the
primacy of the Law of God. We also can
discern hatred of the faith from the National Security Doctrine (NSD) to which
Romero’s killers subscribed.
The subject is
somewhat dense but the argument can be aptly illustrated by reference to the
world of the popular “Matrix” movies. In
“The Matrix” universe, the façade of society is in fact a computer-generated
reality enforced by humanoid “Agents” who target for elimination freedom
fighters and computer viruses alike because both pose threats to “The
Matrix.” The Agents are computer
programs who actually have no feelings or emotions, but they are written to
identify—and swiftly eradicate—those seeking to escape the system and achieve
self-determination. Similarly, paramilitary
death squads answering to NSD may not have any professed feelings of antithesis
towards the Christian faith, but they were indoctrinated to automatically
identify proponents of the social doctrine of the church for assassination. Accordingly, enforcers of the NSD
consistently and predictably persecuted Christians. National Security Doctrine is, so to speak, an
“app” for hatred of the faith.
NSD was
developed in South America and pervaded such conflicts as the “Dirty War” in Argentina,
and the internal conflicts in places like Chile, Brazil, Guatemala and El
Salvador. The Brazilian General Umberto
Peregrino ticked off some of the principal components of NSD ideology to
include: (1) the belief that the society is mired in a “total war” that
permeates and underlies a particular society (even if, like in “The Matrix,”
the surface appearance seems peaceful or normal); (2) a conviction that the
military must take over the conduct of all national affairs until a solution is
reached (like the “Agents” in “The Matrix”); and (3) the requirement that there
be an “intransigent subordination of the basic activities of the nation to its
security” (ie, individual freedom comes second—if at all) [Bruneau, The Church in Brazil: The Politics of Religion, 59.] In its ultimate manifestation, NSD seeks to
supplant religion as the ultimate absolute truth. In the words of Gen. Golbery do Couto e Silva,
the father of Brazilian NSD:
To
be nationalist is to be always ready to give up any doctrine, any theory, any
ideology, feelings, passions, ideals and values, as soon as they appear [to be]
incompatible with the supreme loyalty, which is due to the nation above
everything else. Nationalism is, must
be, and cannot be other than an Absolute One in itself.
[Comblin, The Church and the National
Security State, 78.] In his book,
José Comblin states that National Security Doctrine offers a society that seems
on the surface to be compatible with Christian principles. Civil and military leaders co-opt religious
language and symbolism in support of the nationalist project. Additionally, they appeal to the religious
sentiments of the population and the church by offering to grant or restore
certain privileges to the church, such as the right to teach religion in public
schools, to censor publications that defy certain church teachings, and to
implement a moral code ostensibly based on Christian moral codes but which
actually serves the state’s desire to closely regulate private behavior. But the church recognizes the offer as a
manipulative ploy that would subordinate Christian faith to NSD. Comblin,
80-84. Moreover, the church is forced into
relatively unified and vigorous opposition, by brutalities and injustice of a
scale and severity that leave it no alternative but to oppose NSD.
Accordingly,
the Latin American bishops at Puebla denounced the manifestations of NSD
throughout the continent: “In many
instances the ideologies of National Security have helped to intensify the
totalitarian or authoritarian character of governments based on the use of
force, leading to the abuse of power and the violation of human rights. In some
instances they presume to justify their positions with a subjective profession
of Christian faith.” [Puebla (1979)
Doc. No. 49.] For his part, Archbishop
Romero condemned NSD as a new form of idolatry: “The omnipotence of these national security regimes, the total disrespect
they display towards individuals and their rights, the total lack of ethical
consideration shown in the means that are used to achieve their ends, turn
national security into an idol, which, like the god Molech, demands the daily
sacrifice of many victims in its name.” [4th Pastoral Letter, at p. 21.]
The scholarship
regarding the existence and nature of NSD is well established; the Church has
acknowledged it; and the extent to which NSD factored into the motives for
assassinating Archbishop Romero has figured prominently in the analysis of «odium fidei» (hatred of the faith) in
his beatification process. The uncontroverted
evidence—confirmed by a U.N. Truth Commission report, an OAS investigation, and
the findings of a U.S. federal court—is that the Romero assassination was
ordered by Maj. Roberto D’Aubuisson. In
El Salvador, no one has personified the ideology of NSD more than
D’Aubuisson. Like the Agents in “The
Matrix,” D’Aubuisson claimed that a secret underworld lay concealed beneath the
apparent reality, which could remain undetected even to those implicated in
it. “The
thing is, you can be a Communist without knowing you are a communist. You don’t
have to know you are a Communist,” he was quoted as saying.
D’Aubuisson picked up such ideas at international conferences put on by
NSD adherents in South America, including Chile and Argentina.
Also like the
Agents in “The Matrix,” D’Aubuisson targeted Christians for persecution. Among his most frequent targets, apart from openly
avowed Marxists (who were few and far between in El Salvador), were Christian
Democrats, Jesuits, and adherents of Liberation Theology—all of whom are
affiliated in some way with the Christian faith. Influenced by the Bolivian dictator Gen. Hugo
Banzer, D’Aubuisson’s White Warrior Union began a terror campaign in El
Salvador that dropped leaflets with the ominous slogan, “Be a Patriot, Kill a Priest.”
The terror syndicate issued its infamous “War Order No. 6,” demanding
that all Jesuits leave the country or face execution. Romero’s friend Rutilio Grande was the first
victim of the campaign.
Like the Agents
in “The Matrix,” D’Aubuisson believed that the reality of El Salvador was a
deceitful hologram concealing a “total war” that was unknown even to its
instigators, but obvious to him. NSD singled
out Christians as targets for elimination and provided the justification of a
necessary purge. In short, the NSD
ideology effectuated hatred of the faith.
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