It is too early to explore the justice of the Vatican criticism of Jon Sobrino’s theology. But such judgments also affect human lives. So it may be useful to set this event in the context of the relationship between the Basque born theologian and the El Salvador to which he has committed his working life.
I first met Jon Sobrino in November 1989. He had a speaking engagement in Bangkok, but with characteristic generosity had agreed to visit the Jesuit Refugee Service meeting at Chachoengsao. During the day the radio carried the story that six Jesuits had been murdered in Jon’s community and with them the cook and her daughter. Jon honoured his commitment and joined us for the evening.
Next day, still shocked, he returned to the Bangkok office, where he found that the Bangkok Post displayed photographs of one of the murdered Jesuits. "That is my typewriter", he said suddenly, "that is my bible". "That is my room". Through the simple details flowed the horror of their death and of his survival.
Four years later I spent six months in El Salvador in the same community as Jon Sobrino. In the army massacre at the UCA, he had lost his friend and mentor, Ignacio Ellacuria. His health was not good, and he was still deeply affected by the death of his companions. Despite that, he continued to teach, to write and to encourage the poor Catholic communities that sought a just social order. He seemed to have given his life and his work to the poor of El Salvador and to have identified with them. He became a voice for them.
El Salvador was then at the end of a conflict in which the Government army, with United States backing, had waged war against its people. One incident defines the conflict for me. I spent some time in a settlement formed by villagers, survivors of massacres, who had returned from exile. As the community prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its return, I had the task of gathering the names of those who had died in the conflict.
One elderly country woman stays in my memory. She had seven children; most of them had been catechists. All had been killed by government forces, some specially targeted, and others in indiscriminate assaults on their communities. As she mentioned Juan, the last of her children, she paused. Tears came to her eyes as she said, "I had such hope in him".
This was the reality of the Salvadorean poor from whose perspective Jon Sobrino reflected on the implications of Christian faith. As a theologian his concern was less to think systematically about the Gospel than to ask how we should respond to it. In that sense he was as much a spiritual writer as a theologian. Identifying himself, as he did, with the systematically oppressed poor he had then to spell out what Christian promises and the path through death to life entailed. To be decent and credible the account he gave had to be concrete and to give full weight to disappearances, torture, evictions and intimidation. It has also to give weight to the use of these things as a tool of Government. He argued against those who weakened the Gospel by reducing it to individual piety or to abstractions. His theological voice is focused and passionate.
Sobrino’s theology reflects his Jesuit tradition. This emphasises identification with the poor, powerless and humiliated Jesus, and distrust of wealth, status and celebrity. Jon Sobrino focuses on the social context of Jesus’ life and the radical path he chose in his ministry, using Salvadorean society as the matrix for the theological imagination. In such exigent places Christ’s divinity hides itself. People who live in more comfortable places want a more ceremonious theology.
No doubt the humiliation entailed in the judgment on Jon Sobrino’s theology will serve large ends. But for him, it simply takes to a deeper level his identification with the poor of El Salvador. From being a voice for them, he shares their voicelessness. He will bear it, as he has borne so much, with the bravery of an exemplary Catholic, priest, theologian, Jesuit and human being.