Monday, March 18, 2013

The Election Of Pope Francis Opens The Door On Another Sordid Vatican Story

The election of Pope Francis has opened the door on the collusion of Catholic leadership with right wing dictatorships in Latin America.  It's a conveyor belt type story which has already over taken the Vatican press office, who look about as competent as Lucy and Ethel in the Chocolate factory.



"The Great Spirit, she does have her coyote face".  So said a Native American to me once at a ceremony.  The implication was that what seems on the surface a good thing sometimes leads to lessons and wisdom you never imagined.  Sometimes it brings with it more light on more things than a person really wants exposed. Sometimes a person is more or less forced to go well beyond what they originally intended.  Sometimes when the Spirit opens a door, instead of a tiled hallway there is a very fast moving conveyor belt that has no side stops.  I think in the election of Cardinal Bergogolio as Pope Francis, the Spirit has once again opened a door on to one of those fast moving, one direction only, conveyor belts. 

The behavior of the Roman Catholic Church in South America during the 70's and 80's is much more than a story of what the then Argentinian Jesuit Provincial and current Pope Francis may or may not have done.  It's way beyond that.  It's about a systematic implementation of a CIA strategy designed to keep American global corporate interests ascendant and the organized opposition to that ascendancy in check. In this geo political game, Pope Francis was a bit player, a loyal Jesuit soldier under the command of his clerical superiors in Argentina and Rome.  He isn't any longer.  He is on the throne, no longer a mostly disengaged member of the College of Cardinals and that fact has opened the door to that very fast moving conveyor belt.  The Vatican press office can try to stop that conveyor belt with denials, denunciations, and self righteous anger, but it isn't going to work any better now than the same strategy did at the beginning of the clerical abuse crisis.  For all the Vatican's efforts at minimizing that crisis and stopping the conveyor belt behind that door, the belt is still running. The Church can not get off it and the exit has not been reached.  

Pope Francis is faced with his first serious crisis and that crisis exists precisely because the Spirit influenced the Cardinal electors to choose a man from Argentina who was, minimally or not, entangled with the very same military junta who provided the training, along with the US School of the Americas,  for the Contras in Nicuragua.  The Contras were trained by the same SOA who also trained those who gunned down El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as well as six of Francis' fellow Jesuits,  and who were funded by CIA money filtered through the Vatican of JPII.  That very Vatican whose CDF was headed by one Joseph Ratzinger who was tasked with silencing liberation theology, and whose diplomatic corps, under one Angelo Sodano,  worked hand in glove with western intelligence agencies to promote agendas having exactly nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ.  My guess is if we want to know what the connection was between Ratzinger and Sodano we need not look much further than the Vatican's clandestine actions in South and Central America.

Pope Francis will not get off this conveyor belt until there is utter transparency concerning the Church's involvement with the CIA and other Latin right wing interests during this time frame.  It isn't just a matter of purging the Vatican of financial and sexual corruption.  It is a matter of purging the Vatican of the geo political games that fuel so much of that corruption.  Roman Catholicism can not go forward until it is purged of the arrogance of the curia and the bizarre thinking that Jesus wanted a Church for the political domination of the poor.  Francis can not establish a poor Church for the poor as long as clergy keep diplomatic secrets, because those secrets give others the leverage to manipulate both the Church and his papacy.

Pope Francis needs to open all the secret doors and windows and files and archives so that the Church can finally function in the light and not in shadows.  He himself needs to understand he is no longer shackled by the personal vows of silence and obedience, vows which must have come close to choking him on his own priestly collar.  We can not talk about a reformed Church while being continually dragged down by the worst secrets of the unreformed.  Confess the secrets, trust in the mercy of God, and sin no more.  Isn't that how the mantra goes? 


21 comments:

  1. Lots wrong with this post.
    The contras were a US funded para-military group in Nicaragua. The contras had nothing to do with the murder of Romero or the Jesuits in El Salvador. It is well-documented that the people responsible for the murder of Romero and the Jesuits were connected to the US supported Salvadoran military. There is absolutely no evidence of the Vatican funneling money to those responsible for the murders of Romero and the Jesuits. As far as Vatican connection to the contras in Nicaragua -- that seems to be more a function of the local bishop, Obando y Bravo being a really bad guy who was very much enamored with easy money from rightwingers in the US.

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  2. I'll make the correction about the Contras as they were more or less limited to Nicaragua, and Romero was gunned down in El Salvador---but also by right wing military members trained at SOA. The CIA agenda was not limited to Nicaragua and neither was the collusion of the Vatican.

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  3. Only time will tell if brother Jorge had a genuine epiphany regarding his collateral responsibility for the actions of the Junta. Actions will speak much louder than words or PR press releases. Perhaps the appointment of Bishop Morlino of Madison Wisconsin as Archbishop of Chicago will say what truly is written in blood on the walls of the former killing fields of Central and South America. Perhaps not. There are so many still alive to testify not against this Jesuit clerk, tool, but the loss of human dignity that a superpower and a religious fortress corporation can negate but only for a time, only for a time. And perhaps coyote messenger will play a part in that tale.

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  4. As a living witness to history, a very poor one at that, at the time everytime that mushmouth Reagan was talking about the Sandinistas and the Contras at this staged press conferences, I, sad to say did not have a clue what that fool was talking about in that I never truly focused on who was who and never understood which side was the good guys and which side the bad. In retrospect, I was not fooled by their rhetoric even if they kept shouting at me and America forever their quest for genocide as a bottomline tool of the local Plantation Owner's Fruit Company in charge locally in these banana republics which on the scale of things were not worth the effort or relavent in defeating the Soviet Union. Just training fields for the SOA.

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  5. This article will mean nothing to some :( - for them, accusations are fit only to be ignored. This is not the Catholicism I joined: it's become a Fundy cult, that couldn't care a damn for truth, honesty, integrity, or the like. The idea that a Pope should be of blameless character, and not a buddy of tyrants and murderers, means nothing to some - apparently only the evul librulz are whiney enough to think that a Pope ought to have a clean record.



    One of those invited to the Pope's installation is Robert Mugabe, whose government has starved thousands - he's turned Zimbabwe into a ruin, complete with astronomical inflation. He was also at JP2's funeral. Such is the zeal of the Vatican for Christian morality. I think we can expect business as usual, with a few cosmetic changes. He may well be stricter than BXVI - it would not surprise me if some people end up wanting him back. We shall see.

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  6. Have you read this? http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-jesuits-and-dirty-war

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  7. Michael, if Morlino gets Chicago I will eat my keyboard in a fit of rage.

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  8. And none of this includes CIA collusion with the drug cartels. Google Cardinal Trujillo and you will find out all kinds of interesting comings and goings.

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  9. Parasum, nobody was invited to the Installation, but on the other hand no one is turned away. Same is true for papal funerals. Sometimes strange things happen at these events. SInce they are seated in alphabetical order by the name of the country they represent, at JPII's funeral Iran's representative wound up seated next to Israel's representative and the two of them had quite the friendly conversation. Perhaps this same thing will happen again and this time more can come from it that just friendly conversation.

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  10. Your correction needs correction. Please examine some real history and don't paint with such a broad brush. The contras, a non-governmental military insurgency, were not trained at the SOA. There may have been a few remnants of Somaza's military connected to the contras who received some training at the SOA prior to the '79 Sandinista revolution -- but as a group, the contras could not have gotten trained at the SOA. There were clandestine CIA sponsored training camps in Honduras that were used.

    Regarding Pope Francis -- I think Jon Sobrino's assessment seems fair based on the evidence in the record -- Francis was no Romero (neither was Romero when he was Bergogolio's age in the 70s) He was not a prophet who bravely denounced a military dictatorship --but he was a collaborator with the military as many in the Church were. In fact there is some evidence that he quietly assisted targeted people to escape the horror in Argentina. Would I prefer a prophetic leader like Romero? -- sure. Had Francis been such prophet in Argentina in the 70s -- he likely would have suffered Romero's fate. I'll continue to consider the evidence offered that Francis was "entangled" with the bad guys in Argentina (I've seen nothing convincing so far) -- but in the mean time -- I'll be happy with a little courage in 2013 to take on today's ecclesial and political bad guys.

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  11. There are 2 important words -- "also not"-- missing after "but he..." and before "a collaborator with the military..."

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  12. There are many sources BronkVoter that seem to disagree with some of your thoughts as well. I think you are splitting hairs!

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  13. This story also ties to the looting of the Banco Ambrosiano with the involvement of the Vatican Bank in directing money to right wing, anti-left causes in Latin America. The money disappeared and Bishop Marcinkus was under an arrest warrant until the Vatican paid the Italian govt. 180 million $, money provided by Opus Dei. Not long after this Opus Dei was given the unprecedented stature of independent prelature and has risen to high levels of power and position since. Now go figure.

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  14. The legacy of JPII is pretty clearly on the side of support for right wing dictatorship and violent repression of populist movements for the rights of workers and indigenous peoples. His virulent anti-communism was vicious in trying to discredit liberation theology and Option for the Poor. Exhibit A- His replacement for Oscar Romero in El Salvador, Rivera, was a RW ally of the military and member of Opus Dei. Meanwhile Oscar Romero is still in the slow track for beatification. I guess he didn't rise to the saintly splendor of the founder of Opus Dei, and ally of Francisco Franco, Escriva de Balaguer who was on the fast track to canonization, and is now venerated as saint. I guess $186 million will buy a sainthood. Will Pope Francis do anything to change direction?

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  15. Yes Pace you are correct. One spring from Liberation Theology and other philosophies of liberation was a South America that seems much more democratic in its institutions, while in the US, we have a government not so democratic any more. It is apparent that more than 53% of the votes for the House of Representatives went to Democrats, yet we continue to have a Republican controlled House. There are many more examples. I do believe that the lack of keeping up with the whispers of the Holy Spirt in the churches, esp. the RCC, plays a big role of bad government in the US. The poorly governed churches are much to influential in politics. At least South Americans have come to view the Magisterium (magic`hysterium) with a jaundice eye.

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  16. I am almost sure that Father Lombardi (the head of Vatican Press today) will be one of the first to go... in few weeks. Bet on it.

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  17. JPII had a lot to do with both the Vatican Bank and some other interesting banking deals. His second day in office he took over the Vatican Bank and then ordered his own personal swimming pool for Castel Gondolfo. JPII's reign in many respects was a well ordered publicity campaign behind which a lot of other 'big boy' games were played. I personally wonder if Pope Francis is going to put the breaks on JPII's fast track to sainthood.

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  18. And I suspect Mr Greg Burke will be back at FOX.

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  19. It's pretty obvious the RCC and the right wing evangelicals have opted to swing this country way to the right and they don't care how they do it. Underscoring male authority plays big on the right.



    I have to agree with Bill Lyndsey that our so called centrist lay Catholic 'authorities' are actually well right of center even when they attempt to be even handed and 'balanced'.

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