Traditionalist Trifecta

The 20th Century is being called "the Century of Martyrs".
The question is, who really deserves to be called a martyr?
Must a martyr be a victim for the faith, for politics, or for both?


Republican militiamen "executing Christ" at the
Cerro de los Ángeles, Getafe, Spain - 1936

Warning... This is going to be a very long post.

Pope Benedict and the hierarchy of the Spanish Church are not getting along too well with the Socialist government of Jose Luis Zapatero in Spain. The ill feelings are probably mutual.

After a first year of what were mostly positive reviews for B16, especially after the extraordinarily warm response to the release of his first encyclical, there are clear signs now that the honeymoon period is coming to an end. More mixed reactions started coming in after the Regensburg speech, and the Pope's visit to Brazil. Now more concerned reactions are being voiced around a pronounced, rightward lurch in Benedict's vision for the Church that was more recently seen in the issuance of the Motu Proprio freeing up the 1962 Missal, and the kerfluffle over the meaning of the word "subsists" in the Vatican II documents. The third indicator that he intends to move unambiguously towards advancing a traditionalist agenda, a move which actually preceded the other two, was the announcement of the intention to beatify hundreds of clerical martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

Once again, I rely heavily on Tom Ashbrook's On-Point radio program. Listen in either Windows Media or Realplayer format to this program from July 17th called The Spanish Civil War and the Vatican's Beatification of the 'Martyrs'. Almost 7,000 priests, nuns, and other religious were killed during the Spanish Civil war, mostly in the first few months of the conflict. A beatification ceremony for almost 500 of them is scheduled to take place on October 28th, 2007. Although no one claims that these murders were not a crime, this announcement is not without controversy. Strong emotions still run high in Spain over the Civil War and its repressive aftermath. There are still many survivors from the 1936-1939 conflict.

(To put things in perpective... Most estimates put the number of people killed during the three years of the Spanish Civil War in the range of 500,000 to 700,000. Within days of the Spanish military's Nationalist insurrection against the Republican government, much of the northern part of the country and the southern cities of Sevilla and Cordoba fell to the Nationalists. The Republicans retained control of Madrid, Barcelona, and other major cites, mostly in the Eastern (Catalan) and southern (Andalucian) parts of the country. In the towns in each zone, the early victors erupted in a brutal paroxsysm of violence and murder against their perceived class opponents. It is estimated that in the Republican (loyalist) zone, 75,000 people perished between the months of July and September of 1936. In the Nationalist zone, it is estimated at 75,000 to 100,000. In the Republican zone, the repression was brought under control and stopped after a few months. As for the Nationalists, the repression never really stopped until Franco died in 1975)

Partisans on both sides still argue about who was in the right and who was wrong. Political judgements and implications are seen in the Vatican announcement, and some see it as an impediment to national reconciliation. As the tagline for the On-Point program puts it:

The Spanish Civil War was Europe's grim curtain raiser on the horrors-to-come of World War II. It was Ernest Hemmingway's bloody backdrop to "For Whom the Bell Tolls".

The Soviets backed Spain's leftist government. Nazi Germany backed the rightwing backlash and dictator-in-waiting Francisco Franco.

So did the Roman Catholic Church.

Half a million or more Spaniards died. Now, Pope Benedict has moved to put hundreds of Spanish clergy killed in the war on the path to sainthood.

In Spain, that is still a hot political act.

"Los Nacionales"

Republican Civil War poster characterizes the Nationalists as military officers, Moroccan Army Regulars, fascist financiers, and bishops.

The Zapatero government that came to power shortly after the Madrid train bombings are the heirs to the side that lost the war. Tensions have been high recently between the Vatican and this government as this article explains the recent events and the history around it:

The Spanish Church opposes several reforms introduced by the leftist government in Madrid, most notably those liberalizing divorce, permitting gay marriage and stem cell research and making religious instruction in public schools optional. According to a recent survey by the Opina Institute, 82% of the Spanish population says it is Catholic, but only 42% are practicing. Most Spaniards in this group vote for the Partito Popular (PP, right-wing). However, 2/3 of Spaniards believe that the Church is far divorced from social realitities...

But in Spain, battles between Church and State may take on exaggerated proportions, given the sad history of the 20th century. Certain Spanish Catholics compare the attitude of the Zapatero government with the anarchist and anticlerical experiment which, according to the Church, nearly crushed the “soul” of Spain...

Historian Bartholomé Bennassar reminds us that the Spanish Civil War was a war of religion. Franco’s forces marched in a crusade in the name of Christ the King against “Marxists,” and carried out hundreds of summary executions of the “red vermin.” The Republicans were equally brutal and placed priests, nuns and bishops in front of the firing squad. 7,000 clerics lost their lives during the Spanish Civil War...

The Catholic Church was the pillar of Franco’s régime. Its backing permitted Franco to don a sort of moral mantle, marking his distance from Fascist and Nazi régimes. The Franco government encouraged the teaching of religion in schools, acceded to every demand of Reconquista Catholicism, and insisted on the right of nomination of candidates for bishop before their appointment by the Pope. But, thanks to internal changes within the Catholic Church of the 1960s and 1970s, Pope John XXIII’s Encyclical Pacem in Terris, the Vatican II Council (1962-1965), the teachings of Pope Paul VI on liberalism, the respect for the right of the press to go on strike, the Catholic Church, with the exception of a few ultra-Francoists and technocrat ministers with membership in Opus Dei, distanced itself from Franco...

El Caudillo, who had his hands full with the separatist Basque clergy, claimed that he was stabbed in the back. He detested Paul VI, who did not reply to his invitation to visit the country. Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancon (1907-1994), Archbishop of Toledo and Madrid and Primate of Spain, preached national conciliation, condemned Catholic triumphalism in the aftermath of the Civil War, demanded liberalization and protested repression...

In the conflict which is occurring now, thirty years later, between the Church and Spain’s socialist government, we should bear in mind the passions of yesterday and the widespread resentment, intolerance and violence which accompanied them. But this unhappy past must not justify an attitude of systematic opposition [to reform] uncoupled from the legacy of Cardinal Tarancon and the Vatican II Council. The way in which Benedict XVI will handle this crisis in the coming months will be an indication of the direction which he has chosen for his pontificate.

As I try to look behind the scenes here, I think I have a feeling for what's going on, in at least some respects. Benedict is very big on precision in speech, writing, and thought. Although he bemoans Europe's secularization and lack of appreciation for its roots, and although Opus Dei (who would most certainly be sympathetic to matters related to the Franco side) is very influential and powerful in the Vatican these days, I think there is a little bit more to this.

There has been a push in some circles over the last 25 years or so to have the late Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero beatified and to be declared a saint, along with many other Latin American marytrs who've been victims of repressive governments. Last May 9th, as he was on his way to Latin America, Benedict said of Romero:

"That the person himself merits beatification, I do not doubt," while adding that Romero was "certainly a great witness of the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who worked for peace and against the dictatorship." Then, recalling that the archbishop of San Salvador was assassinated during the consecration of the host while saying Mass, the Holy Father said Romero's was "an incredible death."

Still... Romero's beatification seems stalled. Going nowhere. Interesting parsing of words above, from Benedict regarding Romero... He wouldn't come right out and say that he personally considered him to be a saint or martyr for the faith. It seems that if any case needs to be advanced that might smack of leftism or liberalism in some way, it must be balanced (or even heavily outweighed) by causes from the right. Nowadays, one hardly ever hears of the case for Blessed John XXIII anymore, but much is heard about Pius XII. That has to happen first. Not much is heard about Oscar Romero and Central American martyrs anymore... The Spanish martyrs must come first.

Laurence Cunningham, in an article in America about martyrdom, had some interesting insights into Benedict's thoughts on what constitutes a martyr, which is considered restrictive by some:

In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI remarked that the essential functions of the church are three, for which he gives the Greek terms: leitourgia (worship), marturial/kerygma (witness/proclamation), and diakonia (service). He uses the word marturia (witness) in the original sense of the term-the public attestation of one's faith. It is used frequently in that sense in the New Testament, although the meaning "witness unto death," which is the way we often use the term today, also is found there. The Acts of the Apostles, for example, uses the term martyr (Greek martus) to describe St. Stephen.

In a letter written to the head of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints on April 24, 2006, the pope again brings up the designation martyr, but for a more technical reason. He does not wish the term "martyr" to be used so elastically as to attenuate its sense, common in the tradition, of one who dies because of hatred for the faith. He cites no example of a too generous use of the term, but he may well have had in mind the recent murder of an Italian priest in Istanbul at the hands of a young man, who killed the priest while shouting out "God is great" (Allahu akbar). The popular press described this priest as a martyr at the hands of a fanatical Muslim. In fact, he died at the hands of a mentally disturbed youth.

Benedict's letter insists that the congregation, when it considers causes brought before it, should have a precise sense of what constitutes a martyr in the technical sense of the term. The pope argues that, according to the ancient tradition of the church, a martyr is one who dies, either directly or indirectly, out of hatred for the faith-as the Latin has it, in odium fidei. The papal caution, expressed with the care one expects from a learned theologian, is simultaneously a gentle reminder to the congregation to be precise in its considerations and a reminder that the word "martyr" has both a loose and a precise meaning in church usage, which ponders the various senses of the term in the New Testament…

One of the absolutely new dimensions of the contemporary world is that many people who died for the faith have met their fate at the hands of people who themselves were baptized Catholics. The roll of those Central American martyrs-the victims of the death squads, the activist religious and priests, the bishops (think of Oscar Romero)-includes many who were killed by Catholics and, further, in some cases, by people who argued that what they did was in defense of "Catholic" civilization against the depredations of Communists and leftists. Some bien pensants of the contemporary right have offered that argument to slow down the beatification process of Oscar Romero, maintaining that his death was political and had nothing to do with religious belief. That line of argument seems tendentious, since, obviously, it could be turned against the cause of the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, who was murdered by state security forces in Poland in 1984 because of his presence among those who supported Solidarity in their struggles against the Communist state. Such debate is part of the contemporary discussion on martyrdom. It is clear, as Karl Rahner and others argued in a series of essays in the periodical Concilium a generation ago, that a more nuanced understanding of martyrdom was needed if for no other reason than the fact that many have died for the faith in so-called Christian countries.

The key to a better understanding of martyrdom might be found in the refined distinction that Benedict XVI makes between direct and indirect hatred of the faith. When the Rev. Pino Pugliesi was murdered by a Mafia-hired killer in Palermo in 1993 because of the priest's vociferous denunciation of corruption and crime in his poor parish, he was hailed by John Paul II as a martyr. It is clear that his murder was carried out to stop him from speaking against the crime syndicate. But a Sicilian Jesuit pointed out that what Father Pugliesi actually died for was his stout resistance to the burden put on the poor of his parish. It was for that reason, Bartolomeo Sorge, S j., wrote, that he died not directly in odium fidei but in odium caritatis-out of hatred for love. One can also safely say that he died as a violent protest, albeit indirectly, out of a hatred for the faith that impelled his love and solidarity for the poor...

A final point made in a series of books and essays by Jon Sobrino, S.J., is worth recalling. While we single out those who for conspicuous reasons are held up as martyrs,it is crucial that we not forget the countless number of unnamed persons who have been murdered by death squads, in gulags and through judicial malfeasance, who will never be raised to the altars. They died, like Jesus, amid thieves and insurrectionists, because of hatred. To that hatred we can add any number of prepositional phrases: hatred of faith, of love, of justice. They too are martyrs, and like the Holy Innocents whose designation was defended by Aquinas, deserve the name even if the title will not pass muster after official scrutiny.

Dying for "hatred of the faith" dispenses of the need for miracles. Do I think that the Spanish martyrs are going to be strong Catholic role models, models of heroic virtue for Spain and elsewhere? Do I think that Oscar Romero deserves to be canonized more than thay do? Can someone say, Jeff, how can you look at the murder of 7,000 religious and compare it to the murder of one? All I can say in response is to say that I believe that Romero was at least as much a victim of a "hatred of the faith" as they were, and also that Romero died in part for defending his flock from repression and violence and for being their advocate, while in the case of the Spanish clergy of the 1930s, they were largely perceived as being aligned with the powerful oppressors rather than with the oppressed and the poor. Neither has Romero been alone. Thousands have died for the same cause for which he died.



For those religious who were killed in Spain... Was it the fault of the cloistered nun that the landless day-laborers in Andalucia were treated by the owners of the large estates as if they were subhumans? Certainly not. Was it the fault of the individual, humble parish priest that the Spanish military chose to rise up against the Popular Front government? No, but in looking at these events from many years later, might it not give the Vatican pause that the side on which the clergy were aligned in 1937 used methods such as enlisting Hitler's Luftwaffe to undertake history's first large scale aerial bombing of an undefended civilian target when they obliterated the town of Guernica? What is the larger message being made, in addition to the message concerning martyrdom? Especially when the same consideration is not given towards thousands of Latin American victims of oppressive violence, both religious and lay workers, who happened to be on the opposite side of a nearly identical political divide?

I'm going to write a bit about what little I understand of the Spanish Civil War and about Spanish anticlericalism, and people can draw their own conclusions. Two of my frequent correspondents here are historians who've actually lived in Spain. If I'm way off in my analysis, I invite them to chime in and let me know.

Anticlericalism

The Spanish Civil war was one of the most dramatic and fascinating events in the history of the Twentieth Century. All of the great themes and currents of the times were coalesced onto one boiling cauldron - an epic battle between Democracy vs. Dictatorship, Communism vs. Fascism, Anarchism vs. Authoritarianism, and Catholicism vs. Anticlericalism.



Spain is known for outbursts of intense religious fervor, but also for some of the most intense anticlericalism that can be found anywhere. The causes of the anticlericalism are complex, but much of the root of it can apparently be traced back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain in the early 19th Century. Large scale ecclesiastical control of certain landholdings was lost, and in the view of some historians, the Church lost favor with the peasantry when it subsequently needed to rely more and more on the wealthy gentry to sustain the Church's institutions and activities. The real origin of the anticlericalism was the latifundist economic system, in which enormous landed estates are in the hands of a few oligarchs, and day-laborers are forced to work them in order to survive. A paramilitary force called the Guardia Civil, well recognizable in their tricorned patent-leather hats, were organized to protect the interests and property of the landowners, and to keep these day-laborers, barely surviving on starvation wages, in line. From the wiki article:

In the Iberian Peninsula, the Castilian Reconquista of Muslim territories provided the Christian kingdom with sudden extensions of land, which the kings ceded as rewards to nobility, mercenaries and military orders to exploit as latifundia, which had been first established as the commercial olive oil and grain latifundia of Roman Hispania Baetica. The gifts finished the traditional small private ownership of land, eliminating a social class that had also been typical of the Al-Andalus period. The possessions of the Church did not pass to private ownership until the desamortización, the "secularization" of church-owned latifundia, which proceeded in pulses through the 19th century. Big areas of Andalusia are still populated by an underclass of jornaleros, landless peasants who are hired by the latifundists as "day workers" for specific seasonal campaigns. The jornalero class has been fertile ground for socialism and anarchism.

This latifundist system was especially strong in Andalucia. In the northern parts of the country in places such as Galicia and Navarre, it was not quite as prevalent. In those areas, there were deeply conservative farmers who owned their own plots, and a small middle class. Anticlericalism was not as widespread in those areas either. In my view, this is most significant in analyzing what happened to the Spanish Republic, and why things broke during the Civil War the way that they did.

In 2007, the latifundist economic system still persists in one place today, ironically enough... In Latin America.

The Second Spanish Republic came to power in 1931, with the Spanish King stepping down, and a military dictatorship coming to an end. On the left, hopes were high that land reform and labor reform would soon take place. In an act of very poor judgement, however, the Republic undertook a series of anticlerical laws and policies that very likely sowed the seeds of its own destruction. They felt that in order to transform Spanish society and bring about lasting change, the Church's complete control over the educational system needed to be broken. Church priviliges were removed, clergy were banned from teaching, crucifixes were removed from schools, the Jesuit order was dissolved, and the top cardinal in the country was sent into exile. In addition, extreme elements on the left undertook violent actions in the burning of churches and convents. Ghoulishly, there were instances where the bodies of carmelite nuns were disinterred and displayed on street corners to prove to the pious that the bodies were not incorrupt. The Republican government took very few steps to bring these abuses under control. Class and religious animosities deepened and hardened, and within five years, all sides felt that the situation had gotten so out of control that war was not only imminent, but welcome. Rarely has class hatred ever manifested istelf as viciously as in Spain in 1936. In July, the generals acted.

The Civil War

I've read quite a few books about the Spanish Civil War, most of them quite openly sympathetic to the Republic. Both the Republican and Nationalist sides were combinations of disparate forces. The Republicans tended to be a mix of liberal Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Trotskyites, Libertarians, and Anarcho-Syndicalists. The Nationalists were a mix of conservative Catholic parties, military officers, fascists, monarchists, and Carlists (a traditionalist group longing for the restoration of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy). The Republicans had outside aid in the form of miltary advisors and equipment from the Soviet Union. They had limited manpower help in the form of the anti-fascist "International Brigades", volunteers from around the world. The Nationalists were supplied by the fascist powers, with direct military assistance from the Nazi "Condor Legion" and Italian troops.

Many authors have speculated on the reasons why the Republic lost the war, in spite of the fact that they had control of the the navy, the industrialized cities, and the ports. There is much that is made of the fact that France, the US, and England pursued a "Non-Intervention" policy that starved the Republic of equipment, the introduction of Soviet NKVD agents (the precursor to the KGB) that directed a purge of the Communist party's opponents within the Republic's forces, much like was being done in Russia, the squabbles between the Republican factions on whether to pursue revolution first or to win the war first, and the aid from Germany and Italy to the Nationalist cause. I could be entirely wrong, but it seems to me that the Soviet assistance to the Republic was at least as extensive as Germany's assistance to the Nationalists. The Italian forces were considered a joke by both sides. Their acronym, the CTV, was jokingly translated in Spanish to "Cuando Te Vas?" (When are you leaving?). The most effective troops on either side of the war were probably the Carlist Requetes from Navarre, on the Nationalist side.

I'm more inclined to think that the most significant reason why the Republic lost was because in a country that was at least nominally 90% Catholic, they recklessly pursued an anticlerical program that scared the heck out of what used to be called in political circles, the bourgeoisie. Small business men, conservative northern farmers, civil servants, schoolteachers, clerks and the like, had felt that the country had descended into chaos. This does not mean, however, that in my opinion, the Church covered itself in glory in this episode.

A collection of quotes below outline the dangers of letting economic injustice fester for far too long, and for class hatred to run rampant.


Convent of Trinitarian Nuns, burning in Madrid, 1931

The religious situation of a country is not constituted by the numerical sum of beliefs and believers, but by the creative effort of its spirit, the direction followed by its culture... All the convents in Madrid are not worth the life of one Republican.
-- Manuel Azana, Prime Minister of the Republic in 1931, on why he took no action to protect churches and convents.


We shall win. We have a faith, and ideal, and a discipline. Our foes have none of these.
-- General Francisco Franco, upon launching an insurrection against a democratically elected government.


Gil Robles, head of the Confederation of Rightist Autonomous Parties (CEDA)
and the Catholic Accion Popular

While anarchic forces, gun in hand, spread panic in government circles, the government tramples on defenseless beings like nuns…
When the social order is threatened, Catholics should unite to defend it and safeguard the principles of Christian civilization.... We will go united into the struggle, no matter what it costs.... We are faced with a social revolution. In the political panorama of Europe I can see only the formation of Marxist and anti-Marxist groups. This is what is happening in Germany and in Spain also. This is the great battle which we must fight this year...
We must reconquer Spain.... We must give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity. .. . It is necessary now to defeat socialism inexorably. We must found a new state, purge the fatherland of judaizing Freemasons.... We must proceed to a new state and this imposes duties and sacrifices. What does it matter if we have to shed blood! ... We need full power and that is what we demand.... To realize this ideal we are not going to waste time with archaic forms. Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it.
-- Gil Robles, head of CEDA

The Spanish people would rather die on its feet than live on its knees. And do not forget, and let no one forget, that if today it is our turn to resist fascist aggression, the struggle will not end in Spain. Today it's us; but if the Spanish people is allowed to be crushed, you will be next, all of Europe will have to face aggression and war.
-- Communist Dolores Ibárruri, "La Pasionara"


Sewers caused all our troubles. The masses in this country are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. But we, the decent people, made the mistake of giving them modern housing in the cities where we have our factories. We put sewers in these cities, sewers which extend right down to the workers' quarters. Not content with the work' of God, we thus interfere with His will. The result is that the slave stock increases. Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in their infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended us to have. Sewers are a luxury to be reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock.
-- Franco's propagandist, Captain Gonzalo de Aguilara


My dear fellow, it only stands to reason! A chap who squats down on his knees to clean your boots at a cafe or in the street is bound to be a Communist, so why not shoot him right away and be done with it? No need for a trial - his guilt is self-evident in his profession.
-- Franco's propagandist, Captain Gonzalo de Aguilara, on why it was a mistake on the part of the Nationalists not to shoot all of Spain's boot-blacks before the war

Muerte al los intelectuales! Viva la muerte! (Death to the intellectuals! Long live death!)

-- Spanish Foreign Legion General Millan Astray

Madrid sera la tumba del fascismo! No pasaran! (Madrid will be the tomb of fascism! They shall not pass!)

-- Republican slogan

We hated the bourgeoisie, they treated us like animals. They were our worst enemies. When we looked at them we thought we were looking at the devil himself. And they thought the same of us. There was a hatred between us - a hatred so great it couldn't have been greater. They were bourgeois, they didn't have to work to earn a living, they had comfortable lives. We knew we were workers and that we had to work - but we wanted them to pay us a decent wage and to treat us like human beings, with respect. There was only one way to achieve that - by fighting them ...
-- Anarcho-Syndicalist Juan Moreno


The bulk of the recruits were peasants from Galicia and Navarre, attracted to the Legion by the higher pay and the excellent food: fish and meat every day. They were men, he observed, without an ounce of political awareness - Men who had had it drummed into them by their priests that the reds were the devil incarnate who attacked the church and would rob them of their plots of land and their livestock. That made a big impact on them. I remember more than one saying that if he caught a red he'd cut his ears off as a trophy. They had the mentality of the small peasant - individualistic, egotistical, tied to their land and the church ...
-- Basque Republican Eugenio Calvo, describing the rightist troops in the Spanish Legionnaires


As the night sky softened with the first gray lights of dawn, the executions began. Sergeant Emilio Paton, the man who had dreamed of retiring to the shores of Galicia, was first. Then, one by one, his policemen followed. Angel Ramero, the town barber, and his brothers were next. Only one prisoner was missing: Lucia Blanca Ortiz, the lady pharmacist, who had been imprisoned for her work in Catholic Action. Her sex had won her the right to a private execution and burial place by the banks of the Guadalquivir. Before each burst of fire, Don Juan Navas, the parish priest, stepped to the edge of the pit and murmured a hasty absolution to his condemned parishioners. Soon the common trench was filled with forty bodies and Don Juan was alone with his captors. He closed his breviary, bowed his head in a rapid prayer and then stepped in his turn to the edge of the pit. He turned and raised his eyes to the firing squad before him. Behind him the early morning sky was now milk-white and the black cassock draping his erect figure stood out like a dark tree trunk against the lightening horizon. A voice called to him from the circle of poised figures.
"Don Juan," it said, "we are not killing you because of what you've done. You were always good for the town. We're killing you for what you stand for." The priest sighed. "My poor sons," he said, "blood shall beget blood. In a few days you too shall, perish here for your crimes." With a sad, and heavy gesture, he offered the last blessing of his life to these men gathered to kill him. Some of them, forgetting for an instant the mission that had brought them to the graveyard, made the sign of the cross along with him. Their shots rang out and Don Juan's body toppled into the pit.
-- The execution of rightists and Fr. Don Juan Navas in Palma del Rio, Andalucia. His prophecy was correct. Within days a Nationalist column captured Palma del Rio, and the executioners and over 300 other men were machine-gunned in the town’s bullring.