Spiritual Quote of the Day (Denise Levertov, on Martyrs Bearing Witness in 1980s El Salvador)

“The pain, the murders,

the hunger, the tortures,

all continued,

and continue still, and increase—

“yet the voices that tell us

our broken bodies are not after all

worthless rubbish, but hold

sparks of the God--

these voices

begin to give us our freedom.”-- British-born American poet and Roman Catholic convert Denise Levertov (1923–97), “El Salvador: Requiem and Invocation (A Libretto),” in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (2013)

In the later half of her illustrious career as a poet, Denise Levertov became increasingly involved with urgent issues such as nuclear arms, the Vietnam War and American policy towards Central America. In the case of the latter, she used her verses to underscore the horrendous impact of U.S. military aid to El Salvador—and how Roman Catholic priests and nuns bore witness to the plight of the poor.

Throughout the 1980s, as civil war raged between the government-supported military and a coalition of guerrilla groups known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the Reagan and Bush administrations extended the conflict through aid to the government, which they saw as a bulwark against Communism. 

During the height of the war, American financial and military aid averaged $1.5 million a day. All the while, Salvadoran military-sponsored death squads targeted proponents of political and economic reform.

Levertov’s poem commemorates the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, three American nuns and a lay sister murdered in the early 1980s. Three and a half decades after its composition—and 29 years after the end of the civil war—El Salvador continues to wrestle with the fallout from the conflict. 

This past week, Inocente Orlando Montano, a former colonel with the Salvadoran military, was accused of planning the murder of six priests in 1989. The massacre aimed to prevent peace talks. The martyrdom of the priests, as Levertov wrote, continued to remind the poor that they hold “sparks of the God.”

Quote of the Day (Al Haig, on How American Nuns Died in El Salvador)

“I’d like to suggest to you that some of the investigations would lead one to believe that perhaps the vehicle the nuns were riding in may have tried to run through a roadblock, or may have accidentally been perceived to have been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire, and then perhaps those who inflicted the casualties sought to cover it up. And this could have been at a very low level of both competence and motivation in the context of the issue itself. But the facts on this are not clear enough for anyone to draw a definitive conclusion.”—Secretary of State Alexander Haig, suggesting to Congress how four American women came to die in El Salvador, quoted in The State of the Language, edited by Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels (1990)

I love the above quote for its sheer unapologetic chutzpah. Against the obvious facts--that three American nuns and a female volunteer were raped and murdered on this date in 1980, with the connivance of Salvadoran security forces and associated right-wing death squads--Alexander Haig set up one smokescreen after another, like a good defense attorney telling a jury how someone else was responsible for a death but not that client of his caught holding the smoking gun and standing over the body.

Perhaps…may have…may have…may have…perhaps…could have been…not clear enough. Hard facts slip through your fingers when reading these sentences. But a seed was planted in the minds of the infinitely susceptible (there will always be such people, ripe for the picking), that the women--Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline sister, Dorothy Kazel, and a Maryknoll volunteer, Jean Donovan--had had it coming, that they even fired at guerrillas who merely shot back in self-defense. This, of course, despite the fact that forensic evidence showed the women suffered gunshot wounds to the head at close range.

Haig, a Roman Catholic himself with a brother for a priest, had no compunction about--let’s use the right word here--sliming others who had devoted themselves to God. This being still the Cold War, he was prepared to say anything, no matter how preposterous, if it meant attaching no blame to a regime that the then-new Reagan administration viewed as a counterweight to Marxist Nicaragua (not to mention Fidel Castro’s Cuba) in Latin America.

Haig had more laughable moments as White House chief of state under President Nixon, NATO chief under Jimmy Carter, and, of course, Secretary of State (the famous “I’m in control here,” after the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan, comes to mind). But I’d like to suggest--with none of the massive Orwellian doublespeak than this self-described “vicar” of foreign policy could summon--that none of these moments was more shameful than his aspersion on the character of Sisters Ford, Clarke and Kazel and Ms. Donovan.

Sister Peggy O’Neill, Peace Activist and Former St. Cecilia Teacher, Honored

Longtime readers of this blog know of my interest in all things involving my alma mater, St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, N.J. –now, sadly, closed for more than 20 years.

Over the next few weeks, before the next Super Bowl, football fans are likely to hear an awful lot about one person connected to the school: legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who got his start in his profession through an eight-year stint coaching at Saints.

As much as Lombardi accomplished (and he’s a far more fascinating—and complex—character than the vast lore surrounding him might suggest), students and faculty associated with Saints have done far more than this understandable focus on athletics might suggest. One person who deserves far more recognition for her unrelenting efforts is Sister Peggy O’Neill, who taught at the school while my older brothers were there in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

In the November 12, 2008 issue of The Catholic Advocate, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Newark, a news article mentioned that Sister Peggy had won the “Peacemaker Award” of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace Chapter in West Long Branch, N.J. The award came for her 21 years of work in El Salvador, honoring her specifically for her “contribution to peace making and work for justice.”

I meant to write about this honor before—first when the piece originally appeared, then on New Year’s Day—but was unable to locate the piece. Now that I have it in hand, it seems somehow just and fitting that this post appears on the 80th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., another religiously inspired person who sought to bring peace and social justice to the downtrodden of this world.

Sister Peggy went to El Salvador in 1987, when that country was in the middle of a 12-year civil war. Death squads roamed the land, with religious communities—including, in two notorious cases, four Maryknoll nuns in 1980 and six Jesuit priests nine years later—hardly exempted. The war left an estimated 75,000 dead and a country unable to advance economically or even establish ordinary levels of stability.

Working through Centro Arte por La Paz, Sister Peggy has moved to counter this desolation and sustain life. She has put into practice, day after day, what she taught for years in her classes: the necessity of doing the work of Christ through helping others. A moving account of her ministry and the still-scarred region in which she works is contained in the following blog post, written by a religion student visiting the area this past fall.

This past week, a college friend of mine, a cradle Catholic who is now, sadly, disaffected from the Church, told me of his interest in Quakers, especially their work for peace. “If Christianity isn’t about peace, I don’t know what else it is for,” he said.

Dr. King—who said shortly before his death that he’d like to be remembered as “a drum-major for peace”—would know what my friend means. So does Sister Peggy. Lord knows that I’ve spent more than a few moments on this blog criticizing the cheats, liars and users of our society, but it’s useful to be reminded by the work of Dr. King and Sister Peggy that the basic instinct of our nature is not toward the despicable but toward the idealistic.