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Reviewed by:
  • When the Gospel Grows Feet: An Ecclesiology in Context by Thomas M. Kelly
  • John J. Mawhinney S.J.
When the Gospel Grows Feet: An Ecclesiology in Context. By Thomas M. Kelly. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013. 280 pp. $29.95.

An excellent book – and well written.

Thomas M. Kelly is associate professor of theology at Creighton University. His book is a thorough, insightful analysis of the experimental evangelization method developed during the 1970s by Rutilio Grande, S.J., in the very poor rural parish of Aguilares, El Salvador. The book’s title comes from a favorite saying of Rutilio, “The Gospel has to grow feet.”

Rutilio Grande sought to make real a Gospel that had been become too abstract, individualistic, and spiritualized. His vigorous fearlessness led to his martyrdom by a military-supported death squad in March 1977. Twenty days before his assassination, Rutilio’s close friend, Oscar Romero, took office as archbishop of San Salvador. Romero presided over Rutilio’s funeral Eucharist in his cathedral and [End Page 75] ordered that on the following Sunday only a single Eucharist may be celebrated in the entire archdiocese to protest the government’s violence against the poor. Three years afterwards, almost to the day, Romero too was martyred by a death-squad. Shortly following Romero’s assassination, a fierce twelve-year civil war formally broke out between guerillas and the elitist government. The United States supported the elites with massive military aid (some say averaging a million dollars a day for twelve years) and fought all efforts for a negotiated peace.

Chapters one to four provide essential background. The first two are précis of church-state relations and the theological undergirding of the Spanish “conquest” of Central America during the colonial period.

The next two chapters show how documents since Vatican II transformed a 1500-year-old body/soul dualism in Christian theology and enabled the church to develop social teachings that address unjust social structures that grip people’s daily lives. Kelly’s analysis of these teachings is rigorous but very progressive and somewhat rosy and one-sided, for all these documents include sentences that allow for a quite conservative analysis as well. Certainly in the last forty years we have seen the clock turned back both in the Vatican and in the U.S.

Chapters five through nine comprise the heart of the book. They are an excellent and thorough examination of Rutilio’s life, evangelizing experiment in Aguilares, martyrdom, and impact on Archbishop Oscar Romero. They offer profound insights into how Rutilio overcame his very traditional priestly training to create a new methodology for evangelization. This methodology incorporated modern structural justice analysis with recent Catholic social teachings and the latest methods of evangelization. Thereby Rutilio vigorously and courageously made manifest the violent, dehumanizing structural injustices confronting El Salvador’s poor. His success helped lead to a violent persecution of the poor so evangelized and caused his own martyrdom in March 1977.

Rutilio’s parish included his birth place, the tiny, wholly rural town El Paisnal. This reviewer did economic development work there for nine years and is thoroughly familiar with Rutilio’s life (but not his evangelization method). He also can attest first hand to the tremendous esteem the people had for Rutilio even fifteen years after his death. Kelly has done a magnificent job in presenting Rutilio.

However, Kelly’s final chapter on what Rutilio Grande could teach the North American (U.S.) church is weak. He gives only one example (detailed and well-done) of how Rutilio’s method of structural justice analysis may be employed in the U.S. church context to make real a gospel too often individualistic, spiritualized, abstract, and non-challenging. [End Page 76] The chapter needs more examples of concrete issues that structural justice analysis must raise if it is to be effective and challenging in the U.S. context.

Kelly’s book is suitable for use in seminaries, in pastoral and evangelizing workshops, and for the continuing formation of bishops and priests. It is suitable also for college students and bright twelfth-grade seniors.

John J. Mawhinney S.J.
St. Joseph’s University

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