| Sobrino offers a bittersweet look
back
By NCR STAFF
In an Oct. 12 lecture at the
University of Notre Dame, Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino offered a bittersweet
analysis of developments in the decade since the murders of the six Jesuits,
their housekeeper and her daughter.
Sobrino is a well-known liberation theologian and a Salvadoran who
escaped death in the attack on the University of Central America because he was
teaching theology in Thailand at the time.
“The dominant impression today is that the majority of
churches, both pastors and faithful, are turning back to the past,”
Sobrino said. “This church no longer hears the voice of the poor
majorities, listening rather to that of its traditional public, those who go to
Mass.
“Notwithstanding a flood of words and documents -- many of
them good -- we have gone from a church of the poor, dedicated utopianly to
their defense and prophetically to the denunciation of their oppressors, to a
church that, pendulum-wise, would seek to get back to normality, to harmony
with the powers of this world,” Sobrino said.
Sobrino ended on a hopeful note, with a short quotation from his
friend Ignacio Ellacuria, one of the six Jesuits killed:
“All this blood of martyrs shed in El Salvador and in all
Latin America, far from plunging us into discouragement and despair, instills a
new spirit of struggle and new hope in our people. In this sense, even if we
are not a ‘new world’ or a ‘new continent,’ we are clearly
and verifiably ... a continent of hope.
“This is an extremely important symptom of a future society
in contrast with other continents that have no hope and have only fear,”
Ellacuria had written.
National Catholic Reporter, November 19,
1999
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