Yesterday, “American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story,” a documentary produced by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was released in U.S. theaters. The film focuses on the life and tragic death of Okarche, Oklahoma native, Blessed Father Stanley Rother, who was martyred in 1981 during the Guatemalan Civil War. Narrated by actor Martin Sheen, the film will be shown in theaters again today (August 26) in English before playing in Spanish tomorrow (August 27).
A Heart that Outgrew the Heartland
According to the documentary, Rother was born into a farming family – in the middle of a dust storm – during the agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. His early life would be familiar to many: sibling disputes, school, chores, and family recreation. Faith was important to his family and permeated many aspects of daily life.
By all accounts, Rother was skilled at farming, even earning an award for his agricultural acumen. However, as a young man he discerned that he was called to help sow and tend a harvest of faith, so he entered the seminary.
Given his upbringing and previous academic focus, Rother was ill-prepared for theological studies and struggled to learn Latin. After years of hard work that yielded failed classes, he was asked to leave the seminary and return home. With the assistance of his diocese, however, Rother obtained a position in a seminary in far-off Maryland and was ordained to the priesthood in 1963.
For a time, Fr. Rother worked within Oklahoma, assisting parish priests and using his practical skills to improve and manage diocesan properties. However, as missionary work to Central America increased in the wake of Vatican II, Fr. Rother was assigned to serve in Santiago Atitlán in Guatemala where he quickly grew to love the people he came to call his “family.”
Faith Working through Love
The people of Santiago Atitlán were extremely poor. When Fr. Rother arrived, he encountered a city that was struggling to survive and that was frequently taken advantage of by wealthier Guatemalans. Life for the people of Santiago Atitlán was hard and short: child mortality was about 50% by the age of six, and the average life expectancy was in the forties. Education was minimal and some individuals were uneducated. Health care and spiritual formation were barely existent.
Fr. Rother approached the people’s challenges with practical aid rather than allowing himself to be distracted by the philosophical and theological debates that were common at the time. He used his agricultural skills to increase local harvests, worked to improve access to healthcare, and even fostered an infant until a suitable adoptive family was found for her.
Despite his previous struggles with Latin, Fr. Rother’s passionate desire to share his life with the people of Santiago Atitlán motivated him to learn Spanish and the local Mayan language of Tz’utujil. With this knowledge, he was able to teach about Christ in ways that the local people could understand and he assisted with the translation of the Bible into Tz’utujil so that the Tz’utujil people could access God’s word. In addition to the obvious spiritual blessing this was, it also empowered the people who no longer had to depend on what others told them but could learn about God with their own hearts and minds.
To further this, Fr. Rother began to train catechists who could assist him in bringing the Gospel to the underserved people. He also launched a radio station which connected the various villages around the city and offered valuable information and educational content in addition to catechetical programing.
In these ways, Fr. Rother’s faith was incarnated in his life, challenging modern ideologies which suggest that any aspect of life falls outside of the kingship of God, or that echo dualistic philosophies placing the spiritual above the physical. Like Jesus, Fr. Rother worked to meet the needs of his flock’s bodies and souls.
In fact, while watching the documentary, I was reminded of James 2:26, “Faith without works is dead,” and I was moved to wonder what value abstract theological debates and liturgical disputes have if they are not accompanied by a faith that motivates practical love for those most in need. Fr. Rother’s life pointed me towards an answer in another verse, “If I speak with the tongues of men or angels do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Communism is Not the Only Evil
Eventually, Fr. Rother’s work – like the work done by many others in the Catholic Church at the time – was perceived as threatening by those who had profited off the Tz’utujil people’s poverty and limited agency. In the context of the Guatemalan Civil War, this made Fr. Rother and his people government targets.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Guatemalan government, with the assistance of paramilitary groups, set out on a “scorched earth” campaign to root out “socialist” and “communist” rebellions. Many of those deemed “terrorists” were indigenous Guatemalans who were, through the work of people like Fr. Rother and others, beginning to gain a small amount of agency and economic security. As the war moved into the area surrounding Santiago Atitlán, life became increasingly terrifying for the Tz’utujil people. People were “disappeared” – taken by army or paramilitary forces to be tortured and killed. The bodies of more high-profile victims were often left mutilated on roadsides to spread terror among the local people. Many of the other “disappeared” were never found.
At the time, the Cold War was slowly approaching its unexpected end, but it still played an enormous role in world events. According to The Real News Network, though President Jimmy Carter had officially cut military aid to Guatemala in 1977 (due to gross abuses of human rights), this aid never actually ceased. U.S. assistance was increased when, in 1979, the success of the Sandinista Revolution in nearby Nicaragua stoked fear that the communist revolution would spread to Guatemala. President Ronald Reagan vowed to renew military assistance to Guatemala at the height of the Guatemalan army’s actions against the indigenous people they claimed to be terrorists – and the disappearances.
Thus, just as – prior to World War II – there was global support for fascist parties among those who feared communism more than dictatorship and antisemitism, the United States allied itself with Guatemala’s genocidal government due to its fear of communism. Thus, the background to Fr. Rother’s life story offers a cautionary tale, particularly as the old boogeyman of communism has been resurrected as a means of heightening fear and consolidating power: the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend – in fact, it may simply be a different evil.
A Story for Today
Fr. Rother’s story is – without question – a modern one, which lends it a unique relevance in the present moment. Intentionally or not, the documentary highlights this through interviews with living family members, friends, and colleagues. These interviews animate the suffering of the Guatemalan people and the martyrdom of Fr. Rother and several of his catechists, making it impossible for viewers to look away or distance themselves from the pain of their Christian brothers and sisters. Such connection with the suffering within the body of Christ is easily lost in the day-to-day grind of our lives, but it is lost at great cost.
At a time when immigrants from impoverished and violent nations are increasingly used as political pawns, it is easier to offer up our hermanos and hermanas as scapegoats rather than to feel the weight of their suffering and to walk alongside them as they seek to rebuild their fractured lives in a new land.
Though Fr. Rother died more than forty years ago, many continue to suffer the devastating effects of poverty and violence. In fact, we cannot forget that we are living in an age that Pope Francis once described as a World War III fought “piecemeal.” So many of the people that governments seek to bar and expel from their sovereign lands face similar threats of violence today when they are deported to their native countries. We cannot afford to turn a blind eye towards the suffering of these brothers and sisters. Doing so places them in great physical danger and us in spiritual peril.
Martyrdom
Fr. Rother never lost this connection despite the dehumanizing violence he witnessed. When he was informed that he and his assistant were assassination targets, Fr. Rother flew with the assistant to the United States, where he arranged for him to continue serving in the Catholic Church. Then, Fr. Rother gave up the safety afforded by his status as an American and returned to Santiago Atitlán, believing that “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.”
Knowing that he was putting his life at great risk, Fr. Rother told his catechists that, following his death, they should light the Easter candle and sing Easter songs, reminding them of the hope of resurrection. He relocated his bedroom farther into the mission compound to make it more difficult for captors to “disappear” him and he resumed his mission work while those around him continued to disappear. On July 28, 1981, Fr. Rother was executed by a group of intruders who held an adolescent catechist at gun point and forced him to bring them to the priest. To this day, the now grown catechist feels like Judas.
The documentary is striking in its refusal to sanitize Fr. Rother’s martyrdom. At one point, viewers are asked to consider what it must have been like for Fr. Rother to have the ability to choose to give his life to his people taken from him through assassination. Fr. Rother, it emphasizes, did not go back to Guatemala to die, but to live with his suffering brothers and sisters. In a world that seems set on violence, a life lived with that kind of sacrificial love is nothing short of miraculous.
In an interview at the beginning of the film, narrator Martin Sheen says that he hopes young people will find inspiration in the life and sacrifice of Fr. Rother. I share his hopes. We need Catholics – young and old – who are brave enough to stand for love and humble enough to know that they cannot love in a way that is sufficiently courageous by their own strength. That kind of love can only come from the God who first loved us.
Note: For more detail on Blessed Rother’s story, you can read this WPI article by Efran Menny.
Image: “Waiting for Santiago” (CC BY-ND 2.0) by majunznk
Ariane Sroubek is a writer, school psychologist and mother to two children here on earth. Prior to converting to Catholicism, she completed undergraduate studies in Bible and Theology at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. She then went on to obtain her doctorate in School and Child Clinical Psychology. Ariane’s writing is inspired by her faith, daily life experiences and education. She is currently writing a women's fiction novel and a middle-grade mystery series. Her non-fiction book, Raising Sunshine: A Guide to Parenting Through the Aftermath of Infant Death is available on Amazon. More of her work can be found at https://mysustaininggrace.com.
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