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Commentary :: Civil & Human Rights

Liberation and Deceptions by the Church in Latin America

The beatifications of Pope Pius IX, an avowed anti-Semite, Pope Pius XII, who had collaborated with the Nazis and the Mussolini regime, and Cardinal Stepniak, who was close to the fascist regime in Croatia during the Second World War, are further typical expressions of the right-wing convictions of John Paul II.
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V. Liberation and Deceptions by the Church in Latin America

By Macha Jaramillo

Ratzinger may well have had Benedict XV in mind when he chose his name. Not because of the earlier pope’s diplomatic activities, but because he was, like Ratzinger himself, a bitter opponent of “modernity,” i.e., of rationalism, democracy and, above all, socialism.



The Vatican bells had barely stopped clanging when the Rev. John Thomas, president of the left-leaning United Church of Christ, was denouncing the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Though Thomas once served as his denomination's envoy to other Christians, he abandoned all pretense of the politesse that's expected at such ecumenical moments.


"Cardinal Ratzinger's long tenure in the Vatican has been marked by a theological tone that is rigid, conservative and confrontational," said Thomas, whose denomination will consider a resolution supporting same-sex marriage at its July convention.


The pope has lacked "the warm pastoral heart" that bishops need, Thomas charged, his "harsh treatment" of liberal theologians as head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog agency was "profoundly troubling" and his attitude toward non-Catholics has been "narrow," "constrained," "insensitive" and "demeaning."


In other words, this pope is no liberal Protestant.



The pope and South America
While John Paul II draped his interventions in Poland and Eastern Europe in the garb of “liberty” and “independence,” the reactionary essence of his political orientation was revealed openly in South America. There he sided with the ruling elites and disciplined so-called “liberation theologians” who had lined up with the oppressed in their struggles against right-wing military dictatorships.

In the course of his first visit to Nicaragua in 1983, John Paul II publicly reprimanded the priest Ernesto Cardenal who, together with two other priests, held ministerial posts in the Sandinista government. In 1995, during another visit to Nicaragua, the pope condemned the Iglesia Popular (People’s Church) and what he called the mistaken ecumenism “of Christians engaged in the revolutionary process.” At the same time, he elevated the right-wing archbishop and bitter opponent of the Sandinistas, Miguel Obando y Bravo, to the post of cardinal.

Numerous liberation theologians were sacked from their posts by John Paul II and replaced by conservative bishops or priests. Writes Franēois Houtard in Le Monde Diplomatique: “Grass roots church groups which had come into being in South America characterised by autonomy and the protection of the interests of the poor were isolated and even destroyed in some cases. Priests who sided with them were removed and forbidden access to community facilities, and occasionally new groups were set up under the same name...”

At the same time, supporters of right-wing dictatorships ascended to the highest offices of the Church. The papal nuncio to the Argentine military dictatorship, Pio Laghi, and the nuncio to the Chilean military dictatorship, Angelo Sodano, are today both cardinals.

Sodano had praised Pinochet’s despotic and murderous rule in Chile with the words: “Masterpieces can also have small errors. I would advise you not to dwell on the errors of the painting, but concentrate on the marvellous general impression.” When an arrest warrant for Pinochet was issued in 1998 while the former dictator was in London, the pope himself publicly supported the Chilean fascist general.

The beatifications of Pope Pius IX, an avowed anti-Semite, Pope Pius XII, who had collaborated with the Nazis and the Mussolini regime, and Cardinal Stepniak, who was close to the fascist regime in Croatia during the Second World War, are further typical expressions of the right-wing convictions of John Paul II.

Conservative Church policies

In his Church policies, John Paul II was, even from the standpoint of the extremely conservative doctrines of the Catholic Church, a reactionary. He set out to reverse the spirit, if not entirely the letter, of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

First, there is his cult of the Madonna and the saints. With 473 beatifications, he has created more than twice as many new saints as his predecessors over the preceding 400 years.

The encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which dictates sexual mores, rejects not only abortion, but also any form of contraception. Every sexual act not aimed at reproduction is considered to be immoral. Even condoms are condemned—a policy that is all the more socially destructive and inhumane given the devastating AIDS epidemic in Africa and many other parts of the world. In Germany, against strong resistance by bishops and Church members, the pope insisted that the Church withdraw from committees that advise pregnant women as part of the country’s framework for legal abortion.

The conservative personnel policy of the pope has also repeatedly led to conflicts. He sparked controversy by imposing conservative bishops on several dioceses, e.g., Wolfgang Haas in Chur, Joachim Meisner in Cologne, Hans Hermann Gröer in Vienna, and Kurt Krenn in St. Pölten. Critical theologians such as Leonardo Boff, Eugen Drewermann, Hans Küng and Tissa Balasuriya have been gagged with prohibitions banning them from publishing their works and preventing them from teaching.

The Swiss theologian Hans Küng, who was banned from teaching in the Church following an article in 1980 critical of the pope, describes the internal atmosphere of the Church and the role of John Paul II as follows: “[The pope is] the authority behind an inflationary number of beatifications, who, at the same time, with dictatorial power directs his inquisition against unpopular theologians, priests, monks and bishops; above all, believers distinguished by critical thinking and energetic reform are persecuted in inquisitorial fashion. Just as Pius XII persecuted the most important theologians of his time (Chenu, Congar, de Lubac, Rahner, Teilhard de Chardin), so too has John Paul II (and his grand inquisitor Ratzinger) persecuted Schillebeeckx, Balasuriya, Boff, Bulįnyi, Curran as well as Bishop Gaillot (Evreux) and Archbishop Hunthausen (Seattle). The consequence: a Church of surveillance, in which denunciation, fear and lack of liberty are widespread. The bishops regard themselves as Roman governors instead of the servants of churchgoers, the theologians write in a conformist manner—or not at all.”

While critical voices have been silenced, the fundamentalist and strictly hierarchically organized Opus Dei order has been able to extend its influence in the Church hierarchy. A number of its members have been appointed bishops and cardinals. The order now commands considerable influence in the Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church, and could play a significant role in the selection of the next pope.

Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by Josemaria Escrivį in Madrid. With a worldwide membership of 80,000 the order is relatively small. It flourished during Franco’s rule in fascist Spain, where Opus Dei representatives occupied up to 10 ministerial posts.

Escrivį, who was beatified by John Paul II in 2002, only 27 years after its death, once described Hitler as the “saviour of the Spanish Church.” The order is organized along the lines of a secret society, with its own code of conduct that extends from a vow of silence to frequent praying and self-castigation with a scourge and belt. It propagates a cult of masculinity and leadership, defining women as “inferior” and demanding their subordination and strict obedience.

In contrast to many of his predecessors, John Paul II pursued an open policy with regard to other religions. He was the first pope to visit a Protestant church (1983), a synagogue (1986) and a mosque (2001). Every year since 1986 a world prayer meeting has taken place at which different religions pray together. In 2000, the pope visited the Holocaust memorial in Israel and asked pardon for the sins committed by Christians in the course of Church history—without repudiating Pope Pius XII’s silence on the Holocaust.

These outward displays of tolerance, which arose in the first place from the need to strengthen religion as a pillar of a crisis-ridden bourgeois society, stand in stark contrast to the intolerance exhibited by John Paul II in his teachings. Just two years ago, the pope issued a ban prohibiting the taking of communion jointly with other denominations, and the statement “Dominus Jesus” supported by the pope denies that the reformist church is a church, while criticising other religions for their substantial defects.

Crisis of the Church
Notwithstanding his right-wing views, John Paul II was always deeply conscious that the Church can fulfil its function as a prop of the established order only if it postures as a protector of the oppressed. He wrote numerous texts on Catholic social doctrine in which he denounced capitalist excesses and social evils. On a journey to Cuba, he sharply criticised neo-liberalism and its effects.

This criticism was in no way directed against the capitalist order itself. Since socialism first emerged in the late nineteenth century as a significant force in the working class, the Catholic Church has attempted to counter its influence by articulating a social doctrine that, while condemning socialist revolution, makes limited criticisms of capitalism and speaks sympathetically about the plight of workers and poor people. John Paul II worked very much within that tradition. Thus, he rejected socialism in principle as an atheist doctrine in the Encyclical “Centesimus Annus.”

The clear position taken by the pope against the first and second Iraq wars must be seen in this connection. With its one-and-a-half-thousand-year-old tradition, the Catholic hierarchy thinks in longer time spans than bourgeois politicians fixated on the short term. The Vatican is aware that the ruthless conduct of the US in the Middle East threatens in the long-run to destabilise the entire capitalist world order—including the Catholic Church. Shortly before the outbreak of the second Iraq war, the pope received the Iraqi vice prime minister, Tariq Aziz, a Christian, and sent envoys to Washington and Baghdad in an attempt to prevent the war. He condemned it with the words: “The war of the strong against the weak has more than ever before revealed the deep divisions between rich and poor.”

John Paul II’s rhetoric of peace and social harmony, which contrasts starkly with his ideology and politics, together with his more than 100 trips abroad—undertaken with great care for their propagandistic value—have played a role in the expansion of the number of Catholics during his term. Membership of the Catholic Church is now given as over a billion, of which half live in South and North America.

These figures cannot, however, conceal the immense crisis in which the Church finds itself. The growth in Church membership has not kept pace with the overall growth of population. Church membership as a proportion of the population is growing only in areas where Catholics are a small minority, including Africa and parts of Asia. In proportionate terms, it is stagnant in Latin America and declining in Europe and North America. In Latin America it is widely noted that the Catholic Church is losing ground to various evangelical Protestant groups.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the media to virtually canonize John Paul II, the Church’s grip on broad masses of people continues to decline, and the Catholic clergy remains badly discredited, even among those who consider themselves Catholics. The loss of active and committed parishioners is reflected in a financial crisis facing the Church in the number of countries. In the US, Catholic schools are being closed down in some major cities, including Detroit.


This crisis has been intensified by the recent sexual abuse scandals involving priests and Church officials. It is now clear that John Paul II sought to conceal widespread sexual predations against children that occurred during his reign. His role in covering up these abuses in the American, Irish, Austrian and other Churches, and then downplaying their significance once they were disclosed, underscores the hypocrisy of the Vatican on questions of sexual mores. It stands in sharp contrast to the Church’s incessant moralizing when it comes to the normal sexual practices of ordinary people, and underscores that the primary concern of John Paul II and the Vatican as a whole was to defend the clerical caste and its power, authority and immunity from scrutiny.

John Paul II was a charismatic figure, who was able to somewhat offset the protracted decline in mass support for the Church and hold the institution together. His departure will intensify the internal and external pressures on this ancient, sclerotic and reactionary institution. The absurd lengths to which the media is going to use John Paul II’s death to promote the Church is itself a contradictory expression of the crisis of that institution, and the bourgeois order which it defends.

See the Apes Below
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