Strange attack on the shepherd of a poor flock

Migrant workers in Mexico have a guardian angel. His name is Alejandro Solalinde. Rev. Solalinde runs a shelter for migrant workers, who have to run a deadly gauntlet of drug gangs and corrupt police. He has achieved considerable notoriety for his willingness to call out publicly the drug lords and corrupt cops.

The Rev. Alejandro Solalinde has become well known in Mexico after enduring death threats for publicly denouncing drug gangs and police who rob and kidnap Central American migrants crossing Mexico to reach the United States.

Solalinde is disobeying corrupt authorities and powerfully demonstrating the love of God for marginalized people. You might think he would be a hero in the Catholic Church. He is engaged in nonviolent struggle against violent people to protect poor farm workers that have to risk their lives to earn a living. He is even willing to risk his own life to show the strength of God's love. Given the murderous rampage by the drug cartels, death threats are promises rather than idle threats.

But Solalinde's diocese said he is simply being asked to start operating within the normal parish structure, and run his migrant shelter more like a church ministry and less like a lone activist's non-governmental organization.

Thou shall not offend the powerful. Thou shall not risk retaliation against the people and property of the Church. Thou shall not get involved in political controversies (unless you are a bishop and the controversy involves sex rather than violence). Thou shall not attract too much attention.

He also said the bishop had said he was grabbing too much attention; Solalinde has practically become the public face of Mexico's migrant protection movement.

Interesting doctrine. Not Christ-like, but interesting none the less.

The diocese is reassigning Solalinde to parish ministry. He is being given a new flock, kept out of the public eye, and under tight control by the bishop.

"I know how to fight against the drug cartels, and corrupt officials and police, I know how to fight all of them, but I can't fight the church," Solalinde said. "If the church asks me to do this, the church is going to achieve what all the other forces haven't, which is to get me to leave, to leave the flock defenseless so they do what they want with them."

The question becomes who do we serve. Are we guided by the Holy Spirit or religious bureaucracy? Do we speak truth to power or wait for religious authorities to decide which powers to follow without question?

The bishop argues that Solalinde serves the diocese and can only continue to serve migrant workers if he does it quietly, within the confines of the parish facilities, and also handles a mountain of administrative tasks.

It is interesting that liberation theology was deemed unfit because it advocated Marxism, political solutions to social justice, and violence against oppressive governments. Solalinde is not promoting Marxism, political ideology, or violence against anyone. He was only guilty of challenging the corrupt authority and making the Church a potential target of retribution. Maybe we should call that obedient theology. Obedience to religious authorities is the same as obedience to God according to this theology.

Obedient theology sounds like cowering to authority in the name of Christ. The Holy Spirit does not fraternize with the riffraff. The chain of command is Christ to the Holy Spirit to specially anointed church leaders then down to pastors, then lay leaders, and finally the washed and chosen. Disobedience to church authority will get you publicly rebuked and forced to complete re-education in the fine points of orthodox doctrine.

Jesus said obey God and did not obey the religious authorities of His day. He also spent his time among the marginalized. Obedient theology did not come from the Christ. It came from men with an inflated sense of their own importance in the eyes of God.