Four Church Women of El Salvador, and a Condemnation of Sexual Violence

This is in memory of
Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke of Maryknoll
Jean Donovan
Sister Dorothy Kazel, Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland
(The icon is by Anthony Lewis and it's available from Trinity Stores at the link below)
Murdered Dec 2, 1980

And all the victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, male and female ... some of whom are my friends


Around the time of the Salvadoran civil war, these four women, and other Americans, served as missionaries in El Salvador. Dorothy, for example, taught Salvadorans how to read and write with a program known as CARITAS (caritas means charity in Latin), and empowered them to teach their fellow Salvadorans. The war started in 1977, and Dorothy found she couldn't leave. She worked with refugees, and with mothers who had lost their children. Dorothy said, "I could not leave Salvador, especially now ... I am committed to the persecuted Church here." She and her sisters found that they had to live out God's preferential option for the poor, no matter what it might cost.

On the night of December 2, Dorothy and Jean Donovan went to the airport to pick their fellow missioners up. Ita Ford and Maura Clarke were returning from a Maryknoll sisters in Nicaragua. Five members of the Salvadoran National Guard intercepted them outside of the airport. They were taken to an isolated spot, and were raped and shot at close range. Their naked bodies were found buried in a shallow grave the next morning.

Rape as a weapon of war is only one form of sexual violence. In male-female rape, most rapists are known to their victims. Sexual violence may arise in a married relationship, or in an ordinary dating relationship. It may arise in a casual sexual encounter, where ability to consent is impaired by drunkenness. These latter forms of sexual violence are more common than stranger rapes, and more common than rape in war. They are no less a violation of human dignity.

And men are raped very often in prison. Transgender inmates in male prisons are almost certain to be raped. And shame regarding perceived homosexuality may contribute to underreporting, and many human rights groups allege that prison officials tolerate it because it is used to keep the prison population in line. The rape is one violation of human dignity, and our shame and failure to confront it is another - the same goes for not confronting men raping women.

I previously mentioned on this blog that liberal Christians need a sense of sexual ethics. One facet of those ethics must be that we strongly condemn all forms of sexual violence. In fact, Christians of all stripes ought to condemn sexual violence. And yet, it seems we haven't spoken out enough. Andrew Greeley, writing in the Chicago Sun Times, asks why the Catholic Church has remained silent on the topic of violence against women, despite condemning all sorts of "sins of the flesh" and "sins against life."

Greeley also points out that too many men - including some clergy - need to boss women around to affirm their masculinity. Such men are cowards. Their attitude contributes to a culture which denigrates women, and makes it more acceptable to coerce them. If you are truly brave, you won't be threatened by a woman who is your equal.

Conservative Christians would have us restrict sex to married relationships. For some people, because of their personal and cultural beliefs, it is the right thing to do. It is a choice that liberals ought to respect. However, it will not end violence against women, and it will not end prison rape. Violence against women does not necessarily have to involve forced or coerced sexual intercourse. It can include things such as the actions of the legislature in South Dakota - they completely banned abortion in the state, without exception, and they were using women as a tool for political gain. To my mind, that is an act of violence no less than rape.

We also have to take a good, hard look at the ugly parts of our Scriptures. Some Christians accept their Scriptures as completely infallible - that every word and every passage is completely free from error. There's no easy way to say this - ths is a completely idiotic notion. Many others believe in Biblical inerrancy, which is a limited form in Biblical infallibility - the Bible is correct on issues of faith and practice. This can still be dangerous, because it can still allow rigid interpretations depending on which passages you define as issues of faith or practice. Let's look at the story of Lot, which I have previously mentioned on this blog.

Lot is the only righteous man in Sodom. Male angels come from God to visit him. All the men in Sodom gather outside his house and pound on his door. They want to have sex with the angels - to rape them. Lot refuses - the angels, as guests, are under his protection. He offers to let the city rape his two daughters, who are still virgins. The angels spirit Lot away, and God burns the city to ashes.

99.9% of us would say that God does not condemn violence against women. And yet, Lot put his daughters in grave danger, and faces no punishment. What is going on? If I were God, and I were into the use of fire, there is no way he would have escaped with less than second-degree burns. In fact, in Judges 19, the same thing happens to a Levite and his concubine, only this time, he lets the men of Bethlehem Judah gang-rape the concubine, who dies the next morning. He isn't punished either. And there are other verses in the Bible where rape is treated lightly.

The Bible is a narrative. It is a story about humankind's dynamic response to God. It is the result of a bunch of men (and I don't mean men in the universal sense) coming to know God more and more. It is imperfect, because those men were imperfect. I once heard a story where an Episcopal priest took a Bible, threw it on the ground and stamped his foot on it. He said, "This is just leather, paper, and ink. The word of God is in our hearts, and our minds, and our actions."

I'm not saying to disregard the whole Bible. I'm saying that if you blindly affirm everything in it, you allow others to fall back on it for less savory purposes. When Malcolm X confronted Elijah Muhammad over the latter's shameless infidelity, Muhammad fell back on Biblican figures like David to justify himself. X saw right through Muhammad's flimsy excuses, and eventually they broke their relationship.

If you believe, as I do, that the word of God is in our hearts and minds and actions, then join me in condeming all forms of sexual and relationship violence, and in praying for all victims of such violence, especially Ita, Maura, Jean and Dorothy, killed this day 26 years ago. And let us always oppose all aspects of culture that denigrate women or stand in the way of their equality. Let us in fact take a page from the relationships of same-sex couples, where egalitarianism is often more present.

Amen.


Link to the icon and a brief blurb at Trinity Stores
http://www.trinitystores.com/?detail=617&artist=11
http://www.trinitystores.com/main.php4?&detail=617&artist=11&more=1

Brief bio of Sr Dorothy Kazel
http://www.ursulinesisters.org/dorothy1.htm

Andrew Greeley's article in Chicago Sun Times
http://www.ncdsv.org/images/ChurchNotSpeakingUpforWomen.pdf