{"id":2427,"date":"2015-05-13T15:02:46","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=2427"},"modified":"2015-05-26T16:21:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T20:21:52","slug":"salon-canonizes-oscar-romero-the-new-saint-of-communists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=2427","title":{"rendered":"Salon Canonizes Oscar Romero, the New Saint of Communists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Is<\/a>

Is this a crucifix or what?<\/p><\/div>\n

When trying to piece together history from very murky and politicized events, always consider the source.\u00a0 Why is it that we are only able to find blanket conclusions and sparse facts from the ‘c’atholic press on pre-sanctified ‘martyr’ Archbishop Oscar Romero, and if we want a bigger picture we must turn to leftist rags for their screeds<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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Pope Francis is soon to beatify the late Monse\u00f1or \u00d3scar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador who was assassinated in 1980 by a right-wing, pro-capitalist death squad. Unlike others whom Francis has already consecrated, the Blessed (and, sooner than later, Saint) Romero will be a holy figure whose killers still walk the earth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not only are they ‘right-wing’ they’re also ‘pro-capitalist.’\u00a0 Does anyone detect a surge in blatant Communist rhetoric in the press, the Leftist leaders, and our FrancisChurch this week?<\/p>\n

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If a saint is a sanctified man of God, what do we call the killers of a saint? Is theirs an especial evil? I\u2019m no theologian, but it seems that to kill a saint is in excess of mere man\u2019s law. The Catholic Catechism exhaustively extols the sanctity of saints, saying that Christ\u2019s \u201choliness shines in the saints<\/a>.\u201d How then do we describe a powerful organization that trains and gives sanction to the killers of saints? Even the Vatican\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0that Romero \u201cwas shot by a right-wing death squad,\u201d which, as \u00a0everyone who understands recent Salvadoran history knows, was trained in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s bad yes?\u00a0 Why would the United States train Romero’s killers?\u00a0 And, why is Salon suddenly so Holy?\u00a0 I thought they despised Catholics saints.<\/p>\n

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During the Cold War, the Georgia-based School of the Americas (now called\u00a0WHISC<\/a>) trained tens of thousands of Central American soldiers for right-wing governments and insurgencies in order to neutralize leftist influence in countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, and Romero\u2019s El Salvador, where civil wars in the 1970s and \u201980s pitted U.S.-trained rightists against socialists and leftists who opposed their countries being used as a plantation in service of a Washington-backed elite.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They were against, “a plantation in service of a Washington-backed elite?”\u00a0 Is Oscar Romero some saint of Communism?<\/p>\n

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A UN truth commission in 1993\u00a0would find<\/a>\u00a0that two-thirds of the right-wing soldiers in El Salvador\u2019s horrific civil war were U.S.-trained, many of them to operate the \u201cdeath squads\u201d that became a feature of Central America while Washington played with a heavy hand to direct the region\u2019s politics and economics.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Is it a surprise that a UN truth commission might call government soldiers on the right side of a civil war ‘death squads?’\u00a0 Do UN truth commissions work?<\/p>\n

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Bishop Romero was a thorn in the side of Washington, preaching liberation theology in defense of the poor and becoming known as the \u201cVoice of the Voiceless.\u201d Increasingly worried about Washington\u2019s meddling in El Salvador\u2019s burgeoning war between rightists and leftists, Romero wrote a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, calling out the United States\u2019 support for the murderous right-wing forces who \u201crepress the people and favor the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So he lobbied the anti-American Jimmy Carter to throw U.S. support to the Communists, I mean the poor, and cut off backing for the more conservative military regime, I mean the murderous right-wing oligarchy.\u00a0 That’s staying out of radical politics and preaching and Gospel, yes?<\/p>\n

Do you imagine using one’s pulpit and international prestige to decisively change the course of a radical Communist takeover of your country might draw a few enemies?\u00a0 The question is: how does that have anything to do with the Catholic faith?\u00a0 How is it even decent to fight for such causes?<\/p>\n

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Five weeks later, Romero was assassinated by a U.S.-trained death squad while delivering mass at a small hospital chapel. No smoking-gun evidence exists pinning the hit on Washington, but the assassination was the hallmark of U.S. strategy during that time. In a\u00a01984 report<\/a>\u00a0for The Progressive magazine, journalist Allan Nairn interviewed \u201cdozens of current and former Salvadoran officers, civilians, and official American sources\u201d and found \u201ca pattern of sustained US participation in building and managing the Salvadoran security apparatus that relies on Death Squad assassinations as its principle means of enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Did the U.S. train them to assassinate people or did they train them to shoot in a Cold War battle against totalitarians?\u00a0 Was the United States on the wrong side of the Cold War?<\/p>\n

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Ten years later, late Catholic priest William Callahan\u00a0spoke to the National Catholic Reporter<\/a>\u00a0after the UN Truth Commission report brought much more to light, concurring that \u201c[i]t is clear that from the earliest days the U.S. government knew exactly what was going on, especially through the Reagan era, and didn\u2019t care what it was as long as their policy objectives were being achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did the Carter White House order the hit? There\u2019s no way to know. But everyone knows where the killers\u2019 training came from. Everyone knows that they were U.S. military proxies. Even the Vatican\u2019s own news agency, in its\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0of Romero\u2019s upcoming canonization, named his killers as \u201ca right-wing death squad,\u201d (read: U.S.-trained death squad) and the National Catholic Reporter\u00a0points out<\/a>\u00a0that the alleged triggerman was a known graduate of the School of the Americas. The United Nations, meanwhile,\u00a0names two<\/a>\u00a0of the alleged assassin squad members as graduates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The UN and the National Catholic Reporter now: that’s double the Catholic credibility!\u00a0 The School of the Americas graduates shot a martyr!\u00a0 They hate Catholicism!\u00a0 They’re Evil!!<\/p>\n

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Washington\u2019s culpability in the assassination of Saint Romero doesn\u2019t necessarily depend on an explicit order to carry out the hit. The general directive is enough: These were Washington\u2019s guys doing what Washington needed in the region to maintain capitalist control. Romero is only one of the more than 75,000 who died in El Salvador during the period when the \u201cfragmentation of any opposition or dissident movement by means of arbitrary arrests, murders and selective and indiscriminate disappearances of leaders became common practice\u201d of Washington-backed soldiers, according to the UN Truth Commission\u2019s report. The report continues: \u201cOrganized terrorism, in the form of the so-called \u201cdeath squads\u201d, became the most aberrant manifestation of the escalation of violence\u2026The murder of Monsignor Romero exemplified the limitless, devastating power of these groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s that new ‘capitalist’ slur again.\u00a0 Doesn’t that just mean freedom to have a business, use your own money, and not come to the rotten government to beg for a living?\u00a0 So the murder of ‘Saint Romero’ is a sign of the ‘limitless devastation’ of ‘capitalist’ groups, yes?<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s doubtful that El Salvador would be \u201cone of the largest suppliers of clothing to the United States,<\/a>\u201d with untold thousands of wage slaves sewing our underwear for\u00a0a dollar an hour<\/a>\u00a0if the socialists and Saint Romero had been allowed to design their country how they saw fit. People don\u2019t tend to vote for wage slavery. As in places like\u00a0Haiti<\/a>, El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America and the Caribbean, corporate free trade zones tend to be imposed by Washington and compliant domestic governments at the behest of their corporate friends. The\u00a041 percent of Salvadorans living in poverty<\/a>\u00a0can be seen as victims, too, of the death squads\u2019 quashing of socialist resistance to Washington\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

El Salvador is not poor because the allies of Romero lost.\u00a0 Underwear is sewn for a dollar an hour because they won.\u00a0 His party rules the country today.\u00a0 A ‘socialist designed’ country, if you have any sense or recent historical memory, doesn’t improve things.\u00a0 First they sow murders and rebellions with the help of ‘Saint’ Romeros, then they install a permanent underclass like in Cuba for example.<\/p>\n

This piece of Socialist propaganda which attacks freedom, democracy, security, and prosperity, and the country that until recently was the United States; demonstrates the whole purpose behind making Romero so honored by the Church.\u00a0 It’s the same reason we seem to have Pope Francis now:<\/p>\n

To make Communism seem Catholic and to make its obstacles look wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Note to Salon’s Matthew Pulver:<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell Romero is only scheduled to be beatified, not canonized.\u00a0 Not that it matters much these days, but you guys need to brush up on your new Catholicism.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When trying to piece together history from very murky and politicized events, always consider the source.\u00a0 Why is it that we are only able to find blanket conclusions and sparse facts from the ‘c’atholic press on pre-sanctified ‘martyr’ Archbishop Oscar Romero, and if we want a bigger picture we must turn to leftist rags for …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[286,59,323,83,19,325,322,324],"class_list":["post-2427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-capitalism","tag-communism","tag-death-squads","tag-oscar-romero","tag-pope-francis","tag-saint","tag-salon","tag-school-of-the-americas"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2427"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2485,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions\/2485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}