Pope condemns Latin American "autocrats"

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Pope Benedict XVI has criticised "authoritarian governments" in Latin America as he opened a major bishops' conference in the region. [...]

In his opening address to the two-week bishops' conference, the Pope attacked unnamed governments in Latin America that he said were "wedded to old-fashioned ideologies which do not correspond to the Christian vision of man and society".

He blamed both Marxism and capitalism for social problems in the region, and warned that the worsening gap between rich and poor was causing a loss of dignity through drugs, alcohol "and deceptive illusions of happiness".

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Well, unless I've missed his recent denunciations of the U.S., U.K., Italy, Germany, and other capitalist governments, permit me an educated guess that he is referring to Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia...

Religion in modern society plays an important role in keeping the oppressed people ignorant and impotent. This Pope seems more bent than most on proving that truth.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

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My mind suddenly went back 23 years to that blazing hot day in Rome when I had covered the story of the summoning to the Vatican of Leonardo Boff, one of the Brazilian founding fathers of Liberation Theology.

He met with the press in Saint Peter's Square, moments after he had been summarily sacked and told to recant, when he came before a one-man church tribunal consisting of the then head of the Holy Office, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The sentence, from which there was no appeal, was for having written a book considered subversive and dangerous to the faithful.

Boff was branded a dangerous Marxist, and his explanation why Christians should be politically and socially active and involved in bringing about real salvation from oppressors in this world rather than await possible salvation in the next, was rejected out of hand by the icy theological professor.

Ratzinger had been charged by his boss Pope John Paul II, who was only too familiar from his Polish experiences with the damage caused by Marxism, to root out potentially dangerous Marxists anywhere else in the Catholic world.

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Source.

And further:

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The pope also warned that the Marxist bogey has not entirely vanished.

Without naming names he expressed concern in the face of what he called "authoritarian forms of government wedded to certain ideologies that we thought had been superseded".

In other words, beware of Hugo Chavez!

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Religion in modern society plays an important role in keeping the oppressed people ignorant and impotent.

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It can also provide a mouthpeice through which discontent can be voiced.

It is important Keep in mind that while many Latin Americans are giving up on the Catholic Chrch, they are not giving up on religion. Evangelical churches are becoming very popular in central and South America. Hugo Chavez has tried to gain the support of these left wing born agains and I believe he has many Penticostals in his government.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Hugo Chavez has tried to gain the support of these left wing born agains and I believe he has many Penticostals in his government.

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Vatican calls verbal attack on Pope ‘terrorism'

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The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of “terrorism” for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labour unions, had launched “vile attacks” on Pope Benedict in front of an “excitable crowd”.

“This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church,” it said. “It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man.”

At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica — Rome's cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop — one of the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff's stand on a number of issues.

“The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved,” he said.

He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.

“I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for (Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet or (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco,” he said between musical acts at the open-air concert.

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old-fashioned ideologies which do not correspond to the Christian vision of man and society".

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Originally posted by Fidel:
I think the Vatican needs electoral reform. It's just not working.

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Pope: God wants all Latin Americans to live in poverty stricken quasi theocracies with laws against birth control and abortion. These Jansenist paradises will be ruled by tyranical generals who don't give a shit about the poor.

Latin Americans: BOOOOOOOOOOO! HISSSSSS!

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Can the Vatican's own Romeland Security Department be far behind?

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He blamed both Marxism and capitalism for social problems in the region, and warned that the worsening gap between rich and poor was causing a loss of dignity

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Right. But since Marxism has controlled maybe two countries, and capitalism twenty, which of these ideologies do you think is MOST to blame for the problems?

and, whatever one might say about Cuba, "the worsening gap between rich and poor" is not something which Marxism has contributed to on the island.

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Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement. [...]

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab. [...]

"The state used the Church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that ... so is the Pope taking back the Church's word?" said Dionito Jose de Souza a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state. [...]

Pope Benedict not only upset many Indians but also Catholic priests who have joined their struggle, said Sandro Tuxa, who heads the movement of northeastern tribes.

"We repudiate the Pope's comments," Tuxa said. "To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening. [...]

Even the Catholic Church's own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, known as Cimi, distanced itself from the Pope.

"The Pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible," Cimi advisor Father Paulo Suess told Reuters. "I too was upset."

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Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

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Get this man a spin doctor, Stat!
As right-wing as Pope John Paul 2 was, I don't think he would have said anything so stupid.
Does the Pope think he'll win hearts and minds when he spews this kind of intolerant Bullshit. It's the theological equivalent of Dubya's foreign Policy (if we make war on enough nations, America will have peace and security!)

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Benedict XVI also spoke of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, murdered in 1980 as he was celebrating Mass. Describing him as "a great witness of the faith," the Pope expressed his conviction that the late archbishop "merits beatification, although his memory must be liberated from the ideological deformations of those who have sought to appropriate it for political reasons."

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Originally posted by Fidel:
But Pope Ratzinger should know that Romero was becoming more and more political [...]

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Indeed. Rat-singer knows that very well. That's why he's so desperate to hijack Romero's name for his own filthy cause.

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Originally posted by unionist:

Liberation theologists championed the popular cause because of their experience in sharing weal and woe with the people. They did so in spite of, and not because of, their creed.

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:
While the heirarchy did not support them, and ultimately moved to silence them, the liberation theologians consistently maintained that their political formation was not only consistent with their faith, but was actually a gospel imperative.

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Originally posted by unionist:
Here we have Herr Ratzinger sullying the memory of Oscar Romero by trying to paint his assassination as the martyrdom of a Catholic, rather than an act of terror by the fascist regime against a powerful ally of the liberation struggle in El Salvador:

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Here again, I don't think one can credibly separate Romero's religion and his politics in this way. His attachment to the poor, and his increasing criticism of the government of the day arose precisely from his sense of obligation a their pastor, and a growing realization that the Jesus of the gospels aligned himself with the marginalized, not the mighty.

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:
Benedict's attempts to expunge Romero's martyrdom of its political implications is wrongheaded at best. But it is equally wrongheaded to expunge his martyrdom of its religious implications.

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Simple question:

Was Romero assassinated because of his political opposition to the military junta - or because he was a Catholic?

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Originally posted by unionist:

If so, then where are they now? Their faith in the people was incompatible with the dictates of the church. They may have had some personal faith, but it was certainly not Roman Catholicism in any accepted sense. There is no Roman Catholicism without the Church, and the Church crushed them.

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They are still there - a bit bloodied certainly, and often underground.

But your comment to which I was responding said that their political views were "despite" their faith. They themselves would say that their political views were an explicit consequence of their faith.

The fact that the institution rejected them is a separate question.

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Originally posted by unionist:

Simple question:

Was Romero assassinated because of his political opposition to the military junta - or because he was a Catholic?

I can't believe I'm asking this question.

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It isn't really a simple question.

Why was he coming to oppose the junta? Certainly Romero had been no political progressive prior to his elevation to the episcopate. Indeed, he had been selected by the Vatican as a "safe set of hands" to rein in the Liberation Theologians.

But as he grew into his role as archbishop and pastor, he saw how the actions of the junta affected his flock, and overtime, he began to be critical of the government.

So, the simplest answer is probably that he was martyred because he opposed the junta because he was living out his Catholic faith. More the former than the latter, arguably, because had he been an acquiescent archbishop, prepared to turn a blind eye, he wouldn't have been assassinated. But then, whatever Benny may say, he wouldn't have been much of a Catholic bishop either.

Last year it was fucking up an historic quote and turning it into a slur against Muslims. This year, he's on a slander crusade against the very social movements that would free Catholics from decades of fear, poverty and persecution under the old US-backed Fascistic regimes in South America.

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Pope condemns Latin American "autocrats"

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This is of course not only false, but is absolutely hilarious coming from the leader of an institution that's never held a free election in its 1600-year existence and spent over a thousand of those years suppressing and opposing the development of democracy, as well as socialism, in Europe (yet he claims to be the "leader" of over a billion people). Never mind autocrat. Can anyone spell "demigod?"

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Pope Benedict XVI has criticised "authoritarian governments" in Latin America as he opened a major bishops' conference in the region. [...]

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Is he referring to the freely elected left coalition governments in Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc., or the totalitarian US-backed regimes like Colombia or Peru?

Never mind. I know already.

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He blamed both Marxism and capitalism for social problems in the region, and warned that the worsening gap between rich and poor was causing a loss of dignity through drugs, alcohol "and deceptive illusions of happiness".

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Well, that’s hardly a problem caused by Marxism, considering Marxism is all about analyzing class divisions in society as the main cause of all these problems and addressing these via democratizing the economy. Capitalism, on the other hand, is all about creating these, and many other, rotten conditions.

Further, as others have pointed out, which are the economies experiencing the worst of these conditions? Is it the democratic left governments, inspired to varying degrees by the ideas expressed in Marxism and similar philosophies, which are trying to address these conditions, or those that reject those ideas in favour of loyalty to corporate capitalism and appeasing US corporate interests?

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the Pope attacked unnamed governments in Latin America that he said were "wedded to old-fashioned ideologies which do not correspond to the Christian vision of man and society".

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Interesting. I remember back in the old Catechism days learning that, at least in principle, the Christian vision of man and society was supposed to be where each person cared for their neighbour as they would for themselves and share a live with the notion that all people are equal and deserving of mutual respect. Sounds kind of Marxist to me.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is the perfect corporate power structure, complete with a capitalistic ruling oligarchy that has the proud legacy of perpetuating the Dark Ages, Mercantile Colonialism (the first great capitalistic economic era), mass murder and genocide (including against legions of rank & file Catholics), etc.

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The pope also warned that the Marxist bogey has not entirely vanished.

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No it hasn’t, and in fact is gaining popular support in a manner and to a depth not seen before. Why? Because it makes sense—common sense, and totalitarian freedom-hating dipsticks like Pope Bendend-dick don’t want to see it.

And this is nothing new. While papal leaders have been sucking up to various capitalistic interests forever by preaching blind obedience, complacency and servitude, millions of Catholics across the globe have been advocates for social justice, democracy and socialism.

Oscar Romero, as has been mentioned here, was one of many Liberation Theologists; then there’s the Catholic Workers' Movement , not to mention the Catholic Socialist Society, or the Irish Sinn Feinmovement, or many elements within the Jesuit, Dominican and Benedictine orders, etc., not to mention Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' socialist thinking is inspired by the Gospel.

Now, how much value people put on mixing Catholicism with socialism is not the issue here. The fact is lots of Catholics—maybe ever a majority—out there are doing it in various ways and to varying degrees, particularly in South America—and that just makes Benedict Arnold look like an even bigger idiot than before.

BTW, here’s an interesting piece claiming the late Pope Jean Paul II was somewhat of a closet Marxist, and merely played suck-hole to the US corporate dictatorship and its Republican puppets in order to fight Soviet capitalistic domination over his native Poland’s government and economy.

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ceti: It's these little sly changes in which propaganda is generated.

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I will never forget how Canada's own Globe and Mail changed the wording of Nelson Mandela's speech, upon his release after 28 years of imprisonment, on their front page coverage in a sly and nefarious manner. When Mandela said something honouring the South African churches "while other organizations of the people were silenced", the Globe and Mail saw fit to change the wording to "while other organizations were silent". It was a subtle and evil change, designed to trivialize the difficulties of resisting the torturing, violent Apartheid regime. The edited version gives no reason why other organizations might be quiet. Mandela's original words, on the other hand, are clear and chilling. The organizations were not "silent" for whatever unclear G&M reason ... they were silenced by the Apartheid regime. One thinks of Bishop Desmond Tutu, for example. The Globe's editing was, frankly, despicable. And the Globe and Mail issued no apology for this and has not done so to this day.

[ 17 May 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
... and merely played suck-hole to the US corporate dictatorship and its Republican puppets in order to fight Soviet capitalistic domination over his native Poland’s government and economy.

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The Vatican was part of the "ratline" of agencies and institutions which ferreted Nazi scientists and intelligence officers to the west, several hundred of whom were recruited by the CIA. All they had to do was ask for sanctuary from communism. The Church was complicit in helping war criminals avoid Soviet and Israeli justice. Jean Paul was merely the first Pope to visit Auschwitz since the Red Army liberated Poland from fascist occupation. I've never thought of Jean Paul II or very many high-ranking Vatican officials as red-hot socialists. Some were even said to have had connections with the mafia.

[ 17 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Was Romero assassinated because of his political opposition to the military junta - or because he was a Catholic?

I can't believe I'm asking this question

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Romero did not politically oppose the Salvadorean dictatorship.

He opposed in religiously. His critique of the dictatorship was expressed entirely in religious terms, drawn largely from the gospel.

[ 17 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
I think Oscar Romero gave hope to some desperately poor people in a bad situation. And he was murdered because of it.

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:

Absotively. But is there a point to splitting hairs over whether that hope was the secular hope of a fairer political system or the religious hope of God's grace when Romero himself would have found that distinction meaningless?

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I was just thinking of the Pope's warning to leftists not to lay political claim to Romero's sacrifice. I think that by martyring Romero for just hand-wringing and praying for the situation to get better by divine intervention, is to make Romero out to be more Catholic bishop acting by the power of God than through the spark of divinity within him. I think it was the divine spark in him which provided inspiration to write letters to Washington condemning their support of a Salvadoran death squad government. Romero had met with most of the Salvadoran government officials, socialized with the upper crust of Salvadoran society and was accepted as a useful tool of the ruling elite. But he began to see through them and despised their corruption and greed. Romero knew he would be crucified for speaking out against the injustices, the torture and murder of poor people and priests by U.S.-trained right-wing death squads paid bounties by rich land-owners and U.S.-backed military. I think it was a spiritual journey for Romero, a journey that led from his working class upbringing to seeking approval of materialists who needed him to prop up and help legitimize their power, and lastly, the ultimate test of his own faith. Perhaps as it was for Jesus, Romero could be considered our human connection with divinity but not a mythical person whose life story would be exaggerated and transformed into something else over time.

I think it is the Pope who should refrain from depoliticizing and sanitizing Romero's personal crusade to help an oppressed, beaten-down people in El Salvador. After Father Rutillo Grande was murdered, Romero began rebelling against the Salvadoran death squad government in his own ways. Besides writing letters to Washington, Romero handed out pastoral letters to his flock explaining to them exactly what their government was up to and how the oppressors had been using the clergy to influence and control the oppressed. Romero was preaching hope through religion, but he was also teaching desperately poor people about a different side of the their government. He was encouraging self-determination, and he encouraged honesty outside regular church masses. I think what he was saying and doing was a break from the Jesus of scripture who apparently said to turn the other cheek.

[ 19 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

It is equally revisionism to try and take the religious significance out of Romero's death.

And El Salvadorans and those who know in Latin American communities and elsewhere wouldn't do this. I think Benedict is way off the mark. Its odd to say but I believe even his predecessor had a better understanding of Liberation Theology.

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It was only AFTER 1968 that Dr. King became the kind of black leader our White American establishment loves-moderate, cooperative, and dead.

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My experience from living in the US in the 1980s is that since that time, there has been a concerted effort by Republican regimes, especially, and the corporate media, to blur and soften the history of the US civil rights movement from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the politics of Martin Luther King.

The general politics around the civil rights movement gave the US dictatorship/corporate cliques good reason to be nervous.

The pro-labour, social reform and democracy and anti-war sentiments in that movement, along with the Campus Free Speech Movement and Immigrant and migrant workers organizing, were helping erode the fears and intimidation of the McCartyite era, and there seemed to be little the authorities could do about it.

While the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were to varying degrees supportive of at least some of the civil rights movements’ demands (hence the Civil Rights Amendment in 1964), it’s clear the corporate bureaucracy and the elite agencies of the US government, like the FBI and the Pentagon, were spying, harassing and suppressing the civil rights movement, and related anti-war and free speech activists, as well as labour movement supporter..

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which was one of the first major US unions to oppose the Vietnam War (1965), was also one of the first to endorse both the civil rights and free speech movements (early sixties).

The union later tried to sue the US governmentafter many of its members were being harassed and followed by the FBI.

The United Auto Workers (who later denounced Nixon's secret escalation of the Vietnam War) were also strong Civil rights and free speech movement supporters and apparently faced similar persecution, as did a whole slew of other labour, human rights and democracy, peace and public interest organizations.

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"It is revisionism on the part of Benedict to try and take the political significance out of Romero's death.
It is equally revisionism to try and take the religious significance out of Romero's death."

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Never mind, with due respect, this goofy term "revisionism" (it actually means nothing).

Let's call it what it is: lying. One thing the Vatican has always been very admirable on is keeping good, accurate and detailed records--especially about its priests and missionaries.

I don't believe for a New York second that Pope Benedict Arnold doesn't know that Bishop Oscar Romero was a Liberation Theologist and social democratic advocate who opposed the Salvadoran regime, in similar dictatorships and the US government's support for them, on both political, economic and spiritual grounds.

What's going on here is a similar form of history denial and blurring in order to burry these courageous peoples' legacies in order to discourage those who they inspired (like many of the current leaders of Latin American center-left governments) and keep their legacies from inspiring others.

It's no secret that right-wing Vatican officials have a history of hanging priests, nuns, missionaries and teachers who speak out in support of their mostly oppressed working class parishioners out to dry at the hands of dictators and corporate cops.

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:

It is not at all uncommon for some secular leftists to try and remove all vestige of religion from the stories of religious progressives, from Romero to King to Douglas, as though their religious faith was in no way connected to their political actions.

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I'm not sure who wants to remove all vestige of religion from the stories of these individuals.

The religious beliefs of these individuals are of no interest or relevance to me. The extent to which they played a progressive role (along with people of other faiths and of no religious faith) is the only thing which is of interest to me. Whether they were driven to play such a progressive role because of religion or social circumstances or genes or an exotic disease is also quite beyond my scope of interest.

I, of course, am not a "secular" leftist - I am an atheist who despises religion for its obscurantist approach to reality and the divisions it sows among people of different sects.

But this thread is really about one person (and many others like him) who use the innocent religious feelings of the people as an instrument of blackmail and thuggery against human progress and morality.

[ 19 May 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

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It is not at all uncommon for some secular leftists to try and remove all vestige of religion from the stories of religious progressives, from Romero to King to Douglas, as though their religious faith was in no way connected to their political actions.

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Sorry, but I don't see where this is the case (certainly not from my perspective anyway). If you read those links I posted you will see that Romero's religious and spiritual views directly contributed to his socialistic political and economic thinking--as it has done for legions of socialists everywhere (as again the links in previous posts show).

That's why when Benedict Arnold condemns the left and center-left governments in South America for not having a "Christian vision" he is lying through his teeth because he knows many of those leftist leaders and activists are inspired by the Christian Social Gospel thinking.

What Benedict Arnold is actually meaning to say is he's upset with these governments because they don't have a capitalistic vision (or at least not enough of one) to suit him and the power elite he sucks up to that controls the church and its assets.

And yes, unionist, your contempt for religion is well known. That doesn't make it honest to pretend that Romero's religious views were irrelevant to his death, which is what you've essentially been arguing.

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Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called on Pope Benedict XVI to apologize to the indigenous people of Latin America for his comments on the evangelization of the region.

In a nationally broadcast speech at an event in Caracas, Chavez criticized the Pope's remarks and asked him to "offer an apology to the people of our America."

"How can the Pope say that the evangelization was not imposed," said Chavez. "Then why did our indigenous people have to flee to the jungles and the mountains?" he asked.

"What happened here was much worse than the holocaust in the Second World War, and no one can deny us that reality," said Chavez. "Not even his Holiness can come here to our land and deny the holocaust of the indigenous people."

Chavez referred to the work of the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de Las Casas, who denounced the genocide of the indigenous people in the 16th Century.

"Christ came to America much later. He didn't arrive with Columbus, the anti-Christ came with Columbus," stated Chavez, who went on to ask the Pope to apologize for his error.

"Just like the Catholic Church has recognized errors, as a descendant of those martyr Indians that died by the millions, I ask, with all respect, your Holiness, apologize, because here there was a real genocide," Chavez pleaded.

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