ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with events surrounding the church through the end of March 1980. Prior to Vatican II, national churches in Latin America presented a uniformly traditional religious image, accompanied by sharply conservative social and political attitudes. Virtually everywhere, including El Salvador, the church was allied with wealth and power. The reaction in the Latin American church to the conciliar and Medellin documents is usually described as falling into one of two categories, whether the reference is to the "historical" church versus the "institutional" church or to the "prophetic" church versus the "sacramental" church. President Molina's decree of a limited agrarian reform in March 1976 received strong support from the church and Central American University (UCA). In this period the right began looking for scapegoats on which to blame Molina's lapse and found one in the church, which, they decided, was "inciting the people to revolt."
