Martyr of the Amazon Study Questions

Anahi Valadez-Rangel

Frosh Seminar IDS1300

September 14, 2016

Martyr of the Amazon

1. Dorothy Mae Stang, known as Sister Mary Joachim, held the second Hallmarks of Notre Dame de Namur Learning Community, “We honor the dignity and sacredness of each person,” very close to her heart.  Even though being in Brazil involved a risk to her life, she remained loyal to her beliefs. As she spent more time in the jungle, “Dorothy grew even more convinced that her pastoral work involved helping the poor farmers to understand their rights and their dignity,” (Murphy 35).  Instead of just wanting to make a change in the religious part of a person’s life, she wanted to improve their lifestyle too. She wanted to give every person the rights they were entitled to but were denied by the wealthy oppressors.  On January 8, 1981, Sister Dorothy wrote to the Sisters in the United States, “…the death of a farm peasant murdered by a carefully planned plot to scare the poor into a more crushing oppression,’’ (Murphy 61).  She tried to bring attention to the fact that people were getting killed for wanting a better future.  No one seemed alarmed by the number of people who were being murdered but Sister Dorothy saw the families that were left behind and how that affected the community as a whole.   She saw corrupted the government in Brazil was and how it affected the individual, and she wanted to give the people the feeling of importance even if their current situation tried to prove that wrong.

2. Sister Dorothy had to focus on more than just the spiritual need of people.  If the people weren’t taken care of and weren’t able to provide for their families, then there would be no one to go to church.  She helped many of them to come together and have hope for the future generations when it came to an education and wellbeing.  The poor were being oppressed and controlled by the rich, especially since the majority weren’t aware of their rights.  Even when they did attempt to defend their rights, they would have their lives threatened by hired gunman.  Sister Dorothy might have helped a lot of people through her words and her education, but “they (the church) did not want to appear to be leaders, since it was the people’s struggle,” (Murphy 60).  She didn’t have to become a prominent leader to make a difference, all she had to do was give the people the power of knowledge for them to be able to defend their communities with a much stronger passion and dedication.

3. Everyone needs a purpose to be able to be happy. Whether that purpose is to help others or to pursue something that you love, and if those two happen to cross each other then more power to the person who can live doing what they love while improving the life’s of others.  Everyone has their version of happiness and what it involves to be content with one’s life depends on that person’s priorities.  Sister Dorothy was happy by helping those who were ignored by the world, the ones that are hidden because the reality is too harsh.  She might have gone through very difficult experiences while trying to help those who needed the support of the world but she was invincible.  She was “an American woman, dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, “stirring up” the rural farmers and claiming to be a Catholic nun, was enough to frighten even some of the pastoral workers,” (Murphy 67).  She wasn’t scare to do what was needed to improve the life of those around her.  Even though she must, “have felt the criticism after all her hard work… she nourished herself with her own deep prayer life,” (Murphy 104).  She did things differently than other religious people but she wanted to improve a person’s life overall not just the religious aspect of it, and that required putting maximum effort from her part.  She wouldn’t have risked her life if she wasn’t happy with what she was doing, if she was to stay away to stay safe, she would have survived but not lived.