More Sobrino

According to Sandro Magister [via Amy], they're not telling Sobrino he can't publish his writings; they're telling us it's appropriate to scrunch up our noses when we read his writings:

"The congregation’s sentence ends without inflicting any punishment on Sobrino. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because in effect, more than for the theologian under scrutiny, it is intended for his many readers and admirers: bishops, priests, laypeople. It’s these that the Vatican document wants to put on their guard."

And scrunch up my nose I certainly did when I heard him speak at the UCA in 2005. I've been very impressed with how respectful they have been towards Sobrino, especially his superiors. Noone's saying he's a bad person, he's just a bad theologian, and how could he not be when he's witnessed such horrors. It's taken its toll on the man.

He's really to be pitied. He struck me as a very nervous individual, when I tried to introduce myself to him in El Salvador. He was preoccupied with the Romero event, understandably, but he also seemed strained more than absentminded. He knew he was prey- he's held onto the knowledge all these years that he was the One Who Got Away. All his companions were killed. That has to have messed him up just a little bit. And in trying to make sense of their situation, he and other liberation theologians did not take the route modeled by Romero, which was to cling to the Cross. Rather, they have made Christ one of them.

They let go of the paradox in order to feel more scurely the answer they needed to hear, the answer that they were being killed for upholding. But to be Catholic, we must be willing to accept paradox. We must know that Christ is in both in our midst AND lifting us up from heaven. He's both down and up, here and there, God and Man. The El Salvadoran military forgot that this was true, and unfortunately so did the Jesuit soldiers for Christ. The Vatican, in its beneficence, is going to remind the Latin American people about the truth that will set them Free, after they've spent decades in the truth that hasn't.