{"id":6742,"date":"2015-08-05T20:06:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T02:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=6742"},"modified":"2015-08-05T20:06:29","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T02:06:29","slug":"is-there-a-new-catholic-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2015\/08\/05\/is-there-a-new-catholic-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there a new Catholic Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nWORLD
\nWritten by Luciana Danquis
\nThursday, 30 July 2015 21:28
\n
\nAbout Pope Francis\u2019 visit to Latin America<\/strong>
\nBy mid-July, Pope Francis made his second tour of Latin American countries. This time he visited Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay. As in his previous tours, millions of the faithful flocked to hear his message.
\nAccording to some of them, the first Latin American Pope with his messages against poverty and exclusion seems to have changed the conservative Catholic Church. Many comrades, many young people who wish to fight for a word with no unevenness may regard Pope Francis and the Church as an alternative place where this battle can be fought. So we have to wonder, \u201cHas the Church ceased to be functional to the powerful? Has it become a solution to unevenness? Or is it only that the Pope has learned from the recent experience of the populist Latin American administrations (such as Nestor and Kristine Kirchner) in order to change his discourse so as to save the institutions that can guarantee the domination and the looting by imperialism in these latitudes?\u201d
\nRemembering his youthful militancy on the Peronist right, the new Pope has interpreted better than anybody else the crisis that the institutions are going through in this new century and has launched a policy to rescue the Church so that it can still play the old game, but adapted to the times underway. The analysis of the facts, leave alone the gestures and the sermons, turn him into one of the main instruments of those who keep the world under their control.
\nWhere do we come from?<\/strong>
\nFrancis took over in the midst of an unprecedented crisis of one of the most important institutions in the world: the Catholic Church, engulfing 1.2 billion faithful, 42% of whom live in Latin America. We were all surprised when, following the resignation of Benedict XVI, with the Church challenged due to cases of paedophilia, publicity of corruption and ultraconservative postures, a Latin American cardinal had to be elected.
\nIn consonance with the Black President of the USA, with the “Empowered” women occupying very high positions, such as Angela Merkel in Germany, with indigenous or working class persons in the governments, it looked like the Latin American Pope was introducing the Church into a new era where all those who had been historically neglected were beginning to arise to positions of power, creating great expectations among millions and millions of people that deep changes are about to benefit peoples.\u00a0 These expectations, however, never became anything but unfulfilled hopes.
\nAs soon as Francis took over, from these pages we pointed out, \u201cthe Argentine Jesuit is a conservative man, with a rich background in the defence of the most conservative positions of the Church, coincident in most essential of the positions adopted by his predecessor. And yet, precisely because he came from a Latin American country, he could create the sensation of \u201crenewal\u201d and of openness if compared to the Italian, European and American curia corroded by the economic crisis, corruption scandals and massive rape of children. For that reason and cause he was elected Pope. ”
\nWho was and who is Francis Bergoglio<\/strong>
\nWith the change of his name, characteristic of papal inauguration ceremony, it seems that many of the now staunch defenders of the Pope have altogether forgotten His Holiness\u2019 past and their own criticism. The very Kirshnerist administration seems to have forgotten their confrontations with Cardinal Bergoglio when the latter acted as the spokesman of theemployers and soybean business in conflicts such as the one in 2008 (1), or the militant opposition to marriage equality.
\nFrom this point of view, there has been a vicious operation to conceal the links between Bergoglio and the military dictatorship and his cooperation for the detention and torture inflicted on two of the slum priests, which \u201cmagically\u201d became testimonialsof how he helped victims of the dictatorship. The fact that during the years of his leadership of the Argentine Church neither [the former dictator] Videla nor any other military genocidal have ever been excommunicated testifies more of the former than of the latter.
\nCardinal Bergoglio was the conductor of one of the most backward churches in the world: the Argentine church, aligned with the worst elements of the right in that country, relentless militant against the women\u2019s right to choose their moment for their maternity. Could he have turned suddenly into his own opposite when he turned into Francis?
\nFrancis\u2019 main acts<\/strong>
\nSince it is not enough to \u201cconvict\u201d him for his past alone, it is necessary to stop and ponder his main actions since taking office. These actions are deeply political even if many would like to regard politics as separate from the Church.
\nDuring his first trip to Latin America, Francis visited Brazil just a few weeks of the eruption of the demonstrations known as \u201cthe June days\u201d. It was there when he surprised everybody with his message to the youth urging them to canalise the emerging movement through the ecclesiastic channels. At the same time he refused to stand for the legalisation of drugs, he defended the illegalisation of drugs something that actually benefits only the big drug dealers.
\nIn relation to one of the most algid processes in the world, the Syrian revolution, ever since he took over he has been claiming for \u201cpeace and reconciliation.\u201d There is no doubt that peace is a desirable thing, but within this context, what is the meaning of demanding simply peace? After being subjected to misery and the al-Assad dictatorship for over 40 years, this means asking the Syrian people tobe reconciled with the tyrant Bashar. Whom does this peace benefit?
\nThe same goes for the visit to Jerusalem in 2014, graphed in his photo with the leaders of the Jewish and the Muslim religions, which travelled around the world. It meant no solidarity with the massacred Palestinian people but to support the policy boosted by the entire imperialism: that of the two states. The Palestinian one and the Israeli one for it reaffirmed the decisions taken in 1974 by the United Nations and guaranteed by blood and fire by the Israeli army with full support from the political and military apparatus of the American imperialism and the remaining of the powers (2).
\nAs part of these policies we cannot omit the importance of Pope Francis, admitted everywhere, in the recent agreement between the USA and Cuba, which regardless of what the Castroist trends want to pretend, was useful to advance in the American colonisation of the island, and it is simultaneously a cruel demonstration that capitalism has been back on the Island for a long time now and that Cuba is a market that the USA are not willing to give up.
\nSo do all Francis\u2019 activities favour the poor or the ruling class and the powerful?
\nLatin America 2015<\/strong>
\nAs we can see by making a follow-up of the \u201cPope\u2019s visits\u201d, the places chosen are no coincidence at all. The first country visited in this latest tour, Ecuador, is going through a situation of crisis and mobilisations facing the attacks by the Correa administration where workers and indigenous population have begun to get organised to fight. In Bolivia, Evo Morales is not any better for his wear and tear and in Paraguay there is a process of organisation of the workers and some very important struggles.
\nAnd so, has Francis, \u201cthe Pope of the poor\u201d, visited these countries in order to boost their organisation and struggle against the adjustments imposed by the governments and the entrepreneurs? Did he stand up for the rights of the indigenous people against the multinationals that loot the natural resources? Unfortunately this did not happen.
\nIn spite of all his speeches against poverty, the main call was for \u201cdialogue\u201d and \u201cconciliation\u201d creating among millions of his followers the expectation that exclusion can be fought against hand in hand with the governments (who in turn represent the entrepreneurs). As for the original populations, even if he did beg forgiveness for \u201cprevious deeds\u201d of the Church emulating what had already been said by John Paul II in the past, he said nothing about the current poverty that natives have to support all over the world.
\nNeither is a secret his active policy to maintain the “governability” of Cristina Kirchner\u2019s administration, for he is the sponsor of the employers-trade unions\u2019 pact to allow the administration to advance with its economic attacks and reach the elections \u201cin peace.\u201d Nor is a secret his policy to unite the trade-union centrals in Argentina to support the forthcoming elected president [in October], never mind who he may be, in his task of making the attacks against the workers and in the delivery of our natural resources to the multinationals.
\nA \u201cnew\u201d form for an old Church<\/strong>
\nIt is undeniable that there has been nobody who has developed a policy to convince diverse sectors of the population and keep them \u201cunder his wing\u201d as Pope Francis. With the help of the media there has been a permanent attempt at proving that a change and an opening has taken place in the Church but without affecting its historic structures and positions. Doubtlessly, the new form of the Church must suit the purpose of stopping the diaspora of the faithful that has been going on while playing the same role as usual.
\nAt the same time we must not be misled to believe that it is a merely religious problem. The Church\u2019s fundamental role is on the political field, for everything done benefits the powerful while misguiding the oppressed of the world to boost the \u201cconciliation\u201d with their hangmen.
\nSurely, many extremely valuable comrades who long for a world without poverty, with no exploitation and no oppression may regard Francis as a reference. And yet, with absolute respect for their religious beliefs and their expectations we wish to tell them that, unfortunately, the facts evidence that the \u201cPope of the poor\u201d is nothing but a kinder expression of the old Church in the service of power.
\nIf things are to change at all it is still necessary to for the working class to get organised and seize the future in our hands.
\nNotes:
\n[1] – In 2008, the Cristina Kirchner administration boosted a project of an increase of taxes on export of cereals and derivatives. The large landowners were against that and with the aid of different parties boosted the \u201cemployers\u2019 pay-packet\u201d. The bill failed to pass in the Parliament.
\n[2] – In 1947, the UN passed the bill of the division of the historic Palestinian territory into two States. The Jewish sector (which only represented 30% of the inhabitants \u2013 most of whom were newcomers and resulted from the recent Jewish immigration boosted by Zionism and English imperialism) was given almost 60% of the land. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were evicted violently and, as years passed by, Israel seized an additional 20% of the territories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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