Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 63 throughout the decade to reframe the uni- versity’s “principal mission as that of being the critical and creative conscience”9 of the country and by taking positions in favor of urgent reforms to address the marginalization of the country’s impoverished majorities. Óscar Romero emerged at the same moment as one of the Jesuit’s chief opponents among the Salvadoran bishops. He was then an auxiliary bishop in the San Salvador archdiocese and sec- retary of the bishops’ conference of El Salvador. Romero’s actions and statements from 1970 to 1976 betray a deep suspicion and even hostility toward Ellacuría’s interpretation of Medellín as a call for the church to become more involved in movements for social change. Reacting to the ferment following Vatican II, Romero was tradionalist in his approach to the role of the church in society. His approach has been called “quasi-corporatist,” and it finds support in certain statements in the documents of Medellín, side by side with affirmations of the preferential option for the poor.10 Accord- ing to this view, the church’s role is that of a unifying social institution, promoting what Medellín calls “socialization understood as a sociocultural process of personalization and communal growth” so that “all of the sectors of society, . . . [especially] the social-economic sphere, should, because of justice and brother­ hood, transcend antagonisms in order to become agents of national and continental development.”11 Romero’s commitment to this vision of the church as unifier and social glue, along with other more personal factors, rendered him deeply suspicious of theological and pastoral approaches involving prophetic denunciations of state-sponsored violence. Romero’s public state- ments and writings from this period as editor of 9 José María Gondra, SJ, “Discurso de la Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas en la firma del contrato con el BID,” Planteamiento universitario 1989, 12. 10 William T. Cavanaugh, “The Ecclesiologies of Medellín and the Lessons of the Base Communities,” Cross Currents (Spring 1994): 72. 11 Second Gen. Conference of Latin American Bishops, “Document on Justice,” 13. the diocesan newspaper Orientación consistently characterize such views as politically naive dis- tortions of Catholic teaching; such approaches, he suggested, were unduly influenced by com- munist ideas, and dangerously politicized the role of the church in Salvadoran society. In the tinderbox atmosphere of El Salvador, Romero’s accusations had real consequences. His very public attacks against clergy who were critical of the government helped to marginalize their voices and provided cover for repres- sive actions against those calling for change. In early 1972, for example, the Central Elections Council, which was known to be controlled by a pro-military faction, fraudulently declared Colonel Arturo Armando Molina winner of that year’s presidential election. Molina’s opponents had run on a platform promising desperately needed agrarian reforms. When the stolen elec- tion was exposed by a UCA investigation, many seminarians refused to sing at the liturgy for Molina’s inauguration. They charged that the church, by allowing this event to be celebrated in the cathedral in the presence of the papal nuncio, was giving wrongful legitimation to a fraudulent government. Romero rightly sus- pected that the seminarians had learned of the UCA’s investigation from their Jesuit ­ professors, and regarded their protest as a dangerous foray into politics. As one Jesuit, Father Juan Hernández Pico, recalled, Romero responded to the protest by making “the problem his per- sonal issue. The pope and his nuncio had been attacked, and the hierarchy of the church had been insulted. How could it be worse?”12 Romero then “started to actively support the expulsion of the Jesuits from the semi- nary,” saying that they “were the ones that were putting ideas into the seminarians’ heads and 12 Interview with Juan Hernández Pico, in María López Vigil, Óscar Romero: Memo- ries in Mosaic (Washington, DC: Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean, 2000), 51. Father Ignacio Ellacuría in the Jesuit residence at the University of Central America, San Salvador UCA Archives