Heroines of Faith - Part 3

DAILY BYTE

This week we’re looking at some recent heroines of faith. Yesterday we reflected on the life of Dorothy Day, who through her work as a journalist on a religious newspaper found a way to connect her faith with the social issues of her day and her particular concern for the needs and the plight of the poor. Today we look at another journalist we made a similar journey of awakening, but in a vastly different context.

PENNY LERNOUX (1940 – 1989)

In sharing Penny Lernoux’s story let me start by quoting Robert Ellsberg, who writes, “In the 1970’s Christians around the world became aware of two extraordinary and related stories unfolding in Latin America. One was about the spread of terror and repression wrought by brutal military dictatorships throughout the continent. The other story concerned the transformation of the Latin American church. Traditionally a conservative institution allied with the rich and powerful, the church was being renewed as a prophetic force, a champion of human rights and the cause of the poor. These stories converged in the imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom of countless Christians, guilty only of professing the gospel message of justice and peace.

One woman who helped to tell these stories was Penny Lernoux, an American journalist based in Latin America…. She had drifted away from the church, disillusioned in part by its conservatism and seeming irrelevance. In the early 1970’s, however, she came into contact with priests and missioners who were living out a different model of the church in solidarity with the poor. The encounter renewed her faith at the same time as it affected her mission as a journalist. As she later wrote,

‘It was through them that I became aware of and entered into another world – not that of the US Embassy or the upper classes, which comprise the confines of most American journalists, but the suffering and hopeful world of the slums and peasant villages. The experience changed my life, giving me new faith and a commitment as a writer to tell the truth of the poor to the best of my ability.’”

In her willingness to see in a new way, and in her courage to tell the truth of what she saw, she became a voice of the voiceless and a hero to many who depended on her to reveal the truth of what was happening to them. Her critique extended not only to the political systems in Latin America, but also to the hypocrisy evident in the institutional church. For this she faced opposition, disparagement and condemnation, yet remained resolute in her commitment to speak out in the name of truth, however uncomfortable that may have been for her.

She died on 8 October 1989, one month after being diagnosed with cancer. Two weeks before her death she wrote, “I feel like I’m walking down a new path. It’s not physical fear or fear of death, because the courageous poor in Latin America have taught me a theology of life that, through solidarity and our common struggle, transcends death. Rather, it is a sense of helplessness – that I who always wanted to be the champion of the poor am just as helpless – that I, too, must hold out my begging bowl; that I must learn – am learning – the ultimate powerlessness of Christ. It is a cleansing experience. So many things seem less important, or not at all.”

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord, open my eyes that I may truly see, and my mouth that I may truly speak, and let me be a faithful witness to your truth, whatever the cost of that may be. Amen.

FOCUS READING

John 8:32

Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free!”