Think about these questions as you watch Romero,  and jot down on this sheet some brief responses to them.  Print this sheet out, put your ID# at the top and hand it in either tonight after the movie, or (if you watch the copy on reserve some other time) turn it in under my office door by 10:00 on Thursday morning.
 

• Keep track in this movie of what Romero and Fr. Grandé and the poor of El Salvador are saying about God, the Bible, and especially about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as they affect the situation in El Salvador and serve to motivate those in the Church involved in the struggle for justice.  Note down some of the things Romero and the others say about these things.

• According to Romero’s first homily as archbishop, what is the role of the Church in the problems of civil society?  How is that message received by those in power?  Why do they receive it in the way they do?

• A crucial scene occurs about a half hour into the movie right after Fr. Grandé’s death.  Romero has proposed holding one centralized mass for Grandé and the two others murdered with him.  One of the bishops, who was also the military vicar (kind of like a chaplain to the armed forces), criticizes Romero’s proposal with these words:  “The Church’s job is to preach the Gospel.  This is going to be interpreted as a political statement.”  What is he wearing when he speaks these words and why is that ironic in light of what he says?

• What did Romero learn or see upon Fr. Grande’s death that he had not realized or seen previously?  Think of some of the things Grandé tells Romero about what’s really going on in El Salvador when the former crashes the party in honor of the latter.

        To understand this film and the events it depicts, you have to have some sense of what the sides are in El Salvador and who’s on which side.  It’s impossible in one page to explain fully the complexities of the situation in El Salvador, but what I’ll try to do here is give you enough background to understand the movie and begin to think about what it’s trying to say about Christian faith and what it requires in the social order.

        Since 1960, El Salvador (a Central American country about the size of Massachusetts) has been racked by a civil war between the poor majority and the elite ruling class.  Most of the wealth and land in the country is concentrated in the hands of relatively few people.  For decades, poor and middle class demands for reform have encountered often violent opposition from the rich oligarchy which controls the military and most of the country’s land and industry.  Popular uprisings have been met with severe repression.  During the 1960’s and 1970’s, the urban and rural poor began to organize for land reform, work, better wages, and respect for human rights.  The Catholic Church played a vital role as many priests and religious became vocal advocates for the poor.  This Catholic involvement in the struggles of the poor was often brutally suppressed, as Romero shows.  Thousands of Salvadorans (including priests and nuns) were murdered, jailed, or forced into exile by government forces or paramilitary death squads.  Leaders of the popular organizations formed an opposition party, the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR); but because of repression, the FDR could not function openly, and instead took up arms against the government.  The armed wing of the FDR is the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN).

        So you’ll see essentially two sides involved in conflict:  [1] the rich who control the wealth, the government, and the armed forces; and [2] the poor, some of whom have gone underground and taken up arms to wage guerrilla war against the government they charge with abuse of power and denial of human rights.  The United States government has historically been on the side of the government of El Salvador and throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s sent it millions of dollars of arms and economic aid.  The U.S. took the side it did out of concern that the guerrillas in El Salvador had ties to communist regimes.  Therefore, with the stated concern to prevent a communist takeover in El Salvador, the U.S. sought to bolster the strength of the Salvadoran government.  The side taken by the Catholic Church in this conflict has been much more complex.  Indeed, you’ll see that question debated in Romero.  Historically, the Catholic Church benefited greatly from close ties to the government.  The ruling elite provided the Church both protection and wealth.  You’ll see traces of that in Romero.  On the other hand, as said above, other elements of the Catholic Church vigorously spoke out against the government’s repression of the poor and saw in Christian belief a mandate to work for justice and take the side of the poor in the midst of their struggles (this is the so-called ‘preferential option for the poor’).  The conflict between the Church and the government was brought to a head by the events in Romero.  (By the way, there’s a scene in the movie where Romero receives a letter from the Salvadoran president.  The type is pretty small and hard to read, but the letter states, “There are no political prisoners.”)

         Towards the end of the movie, Fr. Azuna confesses his sins to Archbishop Romero.  One of the things Azuna says is that he is a proponent of the “theology of liberation.”  This phrase requires some explanation:     Liberation Theology is a movement within the Roman Catholic Christian faith that focuses on social change and the political deliverance of the poor and disadvantaged from oppression by social and governmental power structures. Much of the setting for liberation theology has been Latin America, and especially the areas of Brazil, Peru, and, above all, Central America (for example, in El Salvador), where Liberation Theology has sought to combine Christianity and Marxism since the 1970's, embracing many revolutionary ideals.  God is seen by liberation theology practitioners as active, always taking sides with the poor and oppressed against the oppressors, so that God does not work for equality for all.  This is the so-called preferential option for the poor.  Jesus is seen as the one who preached liberation for the poor (see Luke 4:16-21) and enacted it in his ministry.  You can get more information on liberation theology through the web site.

        Recent events in El Salvador are promising: the government and the FMLN signed a peace treaty in 1992.  Nevertheless, reports of repression and right-wing death squad activity continue, and an end to the violence is not yet at hand.  On May 13, 1995, Fernando Sáenz Lacalle was installed as the new archbishop of San Salvador.  Progressive forces in the Salvadoran Church consider this an unfortunate departure from the tradition of Oscar Romero; for Sáenz has vowed to remove the church from politics in order to attend to what he characterizes as more spiritual affairs.  For example, he’s promised not to comment on political issues in his homilies.  Attending his installation mass in the San Salvadoran cathedral were the president of El Salvador, government cabinet members, supreme court justices, and members of parliament.  In fact, Sáenz recently accepted an appointment as brigadier general of the Salvadoran armed forces (see essay by Wirpsa in the XP).  After you watch the movie, all of this should seem somewhat ironically familiar.  And so it goes....