While I was wondering how to work this article into my theory that a Vatican distanced from the people should take care before tossing a grenade upon the world’s stage, already bathed in high-octane suspicious emotions, I stopped to read an article a friend had recommended, Garrison Keillor’s “Pennies for my thoughts” in the September 20th edition of the Chicago Tribune, in which he says he would have given the pope some much-needed advice before innocently tossing that grenade, the quotation from an obscure Byzantine emperor from the 14th century to show that jihad as holy war was dead.

Don’t quote some old emperor’s thoughts about Muslims unless you’re willing to have people confuse his views with yours. You don’t tell a Muslim, ‘My neighbor used to be a Morman and he says it’s the weirdest religion since the Incas.’ He’ll give you the hairy eyeball and go off to the temple and start converting your deceased ancestors. If you’re the Holy Pontiff, you should watch what you say, with the infallibility factor and all. You toss out an idea and suddenly people are on their knees repeating word for word what you said. You’d think the pope has some peeps to tell him this.

That’s what I would have thought, also, Keillor, many decades past. Since then, my awakening to the difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be has convinced me that in some instances the pope cannot rely on the advice of the people around him, the old guard with ties to the former administration, and personal pet theories on what makes for holiness in the center of Christendom.

A new pope either brings a history of personal holiness, and a clear vision of what it means to follow Christ, no matter the new, prestigious address, or he will use his tiara, the flanks of the Papal Guard, and the adulation of everyone from his Secretary of State to the kitchen help, to form a protective moat around him, making him impregnable to the arrows of those beyond the walls.

This fiasco with the Muslims may be blessedly running out of steam if this morning’s report from Rome is correct. (Chicago Tribune, September 20, Tribune news service)

“President Mahmoud Ahmad has suggested that Pope Benedict XVI had satisfactorily ‘modified’ his remarks on Islam.” Apologies matter in modest homes and on the world stage.

If the optimistic view is correct, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Prudence may already have become the mantra around the Vatican. If so, a more humble, listening period may be ushered in, a blessing traveling up and down the back stairs to each member of the Curia.

When Catholics, lay or clergy, who are serving their people with great sacrifice, yet are thwarted in their efforts by their ecclesiastic superiors, every Catholic feels betrayed. Let’s look at Oscar Arnulfo Romero, for example, Archbishop and Martyr of San Salvador (1917 -1980) through the work of James R. Brockman, author of Romero: A Life.

When Romero was selected as archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, the groundwork for his martyrdom had already been laid at an assembly of Latin American bishops at Medellin, in Colombia.

They looked at their world, consisting of 300 million people, mostly Catholics, poor and oppressed. The bishops decided they must raise their voices against the injustices imposed by the secular oligarchy, and encouraged by too many of the hierarchy.

Romero was installed as archbishop in a simple ceremony in the church of San Jose de la Montana, for tensions between the governing officials and the members of the church calling for justice for the people, made a grand gathering at the Cathedral too dangerous.

Archbishop Luis Chavez y Gonzales was retiring at age seventy-five after thirty-eight years as archbishop of San Salvador, leaving to Romero a clergy dedicated to the poor, who favored Chavez Rivera, as their next archbishop.

Rome chose Romero, former auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, who often spoke piously about the poor, but followed a stringent conservatism, winning the support of businessmen, government and military leaders, society ladies, the papal nuncio and Vatican ambassador.

The future archbishop revealed his personal political bent in an interview for the February 10, 1977 , La Prensa Grafica of San Salvador: “We must keep to the center, watchfully, in the traditional way, but seeking justice.” Safe. Very safe.

Because of electoral fraud, General Romero, no relation to Oscar, was declared the governor of El Salvador, which initiated protest strikes across the land, and several thousand gathered in rallies in downtown San Salvador.

By the next day, Sunday, the crowd had swelled to 40,000 to 60,000 people. Father Alfonso Navarro offered the evening Mass. and most of the crowd dispersed, but the soldiers opened fire on the 2,000 who remained. They fled to El Rosario Church until about 4:00 p.m. when Bishop Rivera, Archbishop Chavez, and the Red Cross arrived.

Rivera told Romero he should not leave the city because no one could be sure when government troops would unite against the people again. Romero promised he would remain. Again, the troops fired upon the rioters. The government stated that eight citizens had been killed, others calculated forty to sixty, still others, one- hundred to three-hundred.

The bishops gathered together and composed a letter of protest, declaring that, “The church must show clearly that it is with those for whom no one else shows concern, that it cannot remain unmoved before those who have great tracts of land and those who have not even a minimum to farm for subsistence, between those who have access to culture, to recreation to an opulent life, and those who must struggle day to day in order to survive, who live in habitual unemployment and with a hunger that debases them to the direst level of undernourishment.” Romero said he would read the letter the following Sunday at Mass in the cathedral.

On Saturday, Father Rutilo Grande, with an old man and a boy of fifteen, set out from Aguilares to El Paisnal to offer an evening Mass. At mid-point, in the sugar cane fields, all three were shot to death at about 5:30 P.M.

Word was sent to San Salvador, twenty miles away. Romero ordered a complete investigation, talked with the people, then started out for Aguilares, where he arrived around 10:00 P.M. The three bodies lay on tables in the church, covered with sheets. Jesuits and other priests had gathered, besides the townspeople and compesinos, filling the church. Romero concelebrated Mass with over a dozen priests, and he and the Jesuit provincial both preached. At midnight, the archbishop returned to San Salvador.

The following morning, Romero read the bishops’ letter, and Bishop Rivera said, “ and he gave such a beautiful commentary that we sat listening to him (on the radio) during dinner and seeing how the wisdom of God was in him.”

(What peace there is in the hearts of the people when they trust those charged with their well-being, whether in the family, the church, the school, the place of employment, or offices of government.)

On Thursday morning, the nuncio, Archbishop Gerada, called Romero and asked him to come to the nuciature at 10:30. Romero couldn’t go at 10:30, and Gerada called him to hurry, as he was impatient to go to the seashore for rest.

Gerada gave Romero a fifteen- minute scolding, calling him irresponsible, imprudent, and inconsistent in his actions as bishop. The priest who had accompanied Romero, broke in and told the nuncio that the archbishop had acted only after much consultation with his priests.

Romero had invited the people to a single Mass on Sunday, and Gerada said the large attendance might erupt in a riot. Plans had been made to avoid that, the priest replied. Gerada said the government had forbidden large gatherings; Romero reminded him that a soccer game had been scheduled.

The next day, Romero called a group of priests and religious together, who agreed with him that it was necessary for the people to come together in a demonstration of unity. Seventy-one voted in favor of the single Mass, one against, and one abstained.

Sunday arrived, and one-hundred thousand people attended, many who had not been to church for a long time. After a month in office, Romero had won the trust of the people, but had lost that of the ruling class, and was at ever-greater odds with the nuncio.

He decided to go to Rome to appraise Pope Paul VI of the entire situation, who listened carefully, and then took both of Romero’s hands in his and said, “Courage! You are the one in charge!”

In a confidential letter to Cardinal Baggio, prefect of the Congregation for the Bishops, Romero wrote: “Above all, I am glad to see as a consequence of a sincere search for the gospel the luxuriant rebirth of the church’s pastoral life, and the confidence and the credibility the church has gained among the people.”

He continued, commenting on his differences with the nuncio: “With sadness I must manifest that in these circumstances, so painful and difficult for me, I have not had his support in my actions. Instead, at certain moments, I have felt his very hard pressure against my decisions. ..I have concluded that he lives at a great distance from the problems of our clergy and of humble people and that with him what has most weight are the reports of Cardinal Cassriego, of the politicians, of the diplomats, and of the moneyed class of the elegant neighborhoods.”

No matter how often I have read those words, the tears still come over the memory of this courageous saint, not yet canonized, who died a martyr, loved and venerated by the faithful, scorned by those dedicated to wealth and power, a shepherd who was never at a distance from his flock. On March 24, 1980, at about 6:30 P.M., as Archbishop Romero concluded Mass, two shots rang out, and he fell to the floor.

At the time of the murder of Father Raphael Palacios, Romero had said, “It would be sad, if in a country where murder is committed so horribly, we were not to find priests also among the victims. They are a testimony of a church incarnated in the problems of its people.”

The archbishop had preached to his people, had wept with them, walked with them. In death, he became one with the martyrs before him, and with those who continue to suffer in solidarity with those who cannot speak for themselves.

Pope Paul VI would say to us what he said to Romero: “Courage! You’re in charge!” In charge of our lives, as obligated as our leaders in Rome to walk humbly with the poor, to speak out against injustice, including unjust wars, and to preach the Gospel, if not in words, by our lives. to walk with Christ and his people, not living at a distance from their sorrows and worries, but connected through love.

It will be well if Pope Benedict XVI becomes more attentive to Muslims, but we hope he will also stop to walk with our married priests, with the laity in priestless parishes, with the countless women who feel so rejected by the church, they no longer attend Mass, with the hurting, divorced faithful, with those who are hungry for spiritual leadership in grand cathedrals and simple, wooden churches.

Christ walked with, not apart from his people, as he walks with us today. This is what we ask of our leaders, and what we ask of ourselves, that we may be as one, not living at a distance from one another.

God bless each of you in the week ahead.

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