The Church, Pope Francis, and Cuba

The Church, Pope Francis, and Cuba
[15-09-2015 22:39:00]
José Azel
Investigador, Universidad de Miami

(www.miscelaneasdecuba.net).- Eight hundred years ago, the Magna Carta
laid the foundations for individual freedoms, the rule of law and for
limits on the absolute power of the ruler.
King John of England, who signed this great document, believed that
since he governed by divine right, there were no limits on his
authority. But his need for money outweighed this principle and he
acceded to his barons' demand to sign the document limiting his powers,
in exchange for their help.

King John then appealed to Pope Innocent III who promptly declared the
Magna Carta to be "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and
unjust" and deemed the charter to be "null and void of all validity
forever." Thus from the beginning of the conflict between individual
rights and unlimited authority, the Church sided with authority. It is a
position that, with notable exceptions has, and continues to
characterize the conduct of Church-State affairs.

In 1929, the Holy See signed with Benito Mussolini's Fascist government
the Lateran Treaty which recognized the Vatican as an independent state.
In exchange for the Pope's public support, Mussolini also agreed to
provide the Church with financial backing.

In 1933, the Vatican's Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope
Pius XII) signed on behalf of Pope Pius XI, the Reich Concordat to
advance the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. The treaty
predictably gave moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime and constrained the
political activism of the German Catholic clergy which had been critical
of Nazism. Similarly, advancing the Church's interests in Cuba is the
explanation given for the Church's hierarchy coziness with the Castro
regime.

For most of us the Catholic Church is simply a religion, but the fact is
that it is also a state with its own international politico-economic
interests and views. It is hard to discern the defense of any moral or
religious principles in the above historic undertakings of the Church-State.

These doings of the Church, as a state in partnership with authoritarian
rule, are in sharp contrast with the Biblical rendition, where Christ
was persecuted for his political views by a tyrannical regime acting in
complicity with the leadership of His church. Cubans today are also
politically persecuted by a tyrannical regime. The question arises as to
whether the leadership of the Catholic Church will side with the people
or with the Castro regime.

Pope Francis probably, was not thinking of Magna Carta, the Lateran
Treaty or the Reich Concordat, when he warmly received General Raul
Castro in the Vatican earlier this spring, and he probably won't be
thinking about that foundational document for individual freedoms, the
rule of law and for limits on the absolute power of the ruler or how the
medieval Church spurned it when he travels to Cuba in September. But the
questions of the Vatican's support for authoritarianism and the Pope's
political ideology will be in the background of his visit nonetheless.

In political terms, Pope Francis is himself the head of an authoritarian
state -an oligarchical theocracy where only the aristocracy -the Princes
of the College of Cardinals- participate in the selection of the ruler.
Most religions do not follow a democratic structure, but the Catholic
Church is unique in that it is also a state recognized by international law.

Pope Francis may seem to be sailing against the winds of this structure
in some of his carefully publicized "iconoclasms," but clues he has left
as to his political and economic thought regarding Cuba show someone
very comfortable with certain status quos.

In 1998, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Monsignor Jorge Mario
Bergoglio, as the Pope was then known, authored a book titled:
"Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro." In my reading of the
Pope's complex Spanish prose, he favors socialism over capitalism
provided it incorporates theism. He does not take issue with Fidel
Castro's claim that "Karl Marx's doctrine is very close to the Sermon on
the Mount," and views the Cuban polity as in harmony with the Church's
social doctrine.

Following Church tradition he severely condemns U.S. economic sanctions,
but Pope Francis goes much further. He uses Cuba's inaccurate and
politically charged term "blockade" and echoes the Cuban government's
allegations about its condign evil. He then criticizes free markets,
noting that "neoliberal capitalism is a model that subordinates human
beings and conditions development to pure market forces…thus humanity
attends a cruel spectacle that crystalizes the enrichment of the few at
the expense of the impoverishment of the many." (Author's translation)

In his prologue to "Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro,"
Monsignor Bergoglio leaves no doubt that he sympathizes with the Cuban
dictatorship and that he is not a fan of liberal democracy or free
markets. He clearly believes in a very large, authoritarian role for the
state in social and economic affairs. Perhaps, as many of his
generation, the Pope's understanding of economics and governance was
perversely tainted by Argentina's Peronist trajectory and the country's
continued corrupt mixture of statism and crony capitalism.

His language in the prologue is reminiscent of the "Liberation Theology"
movement that developed in Latin America in the 1960's and became very
intertwined with Marxist ideology. Fathered by Peruvian priest Gustavo
Gutierrez, the liberation theology movement provided the intellectual
foundations that, with Cuban support, served to orchestrate "wars of
national liberation" throughout the continent. Its iconography portrayed
Jesus as a guerrilla with an AK 47 slung over his shoulder.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI censured Liberation Theology, but after
Pope Francis met with father Gutierrez in 2013 in "a strictly private
visit," L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's semi-official newspaper,
published an essay stating that with the election of the first pope from
Latin America Liberation Theology can no longer "remain in the shadows
to which it has been relegated for some years…"

The political ideology of the Argentinian Monsignor Bergoglio may not
have been of any transcendental significance. But as Pope Francis, he is
now the head of a state with defined international political and
economic interests. These state-interests and personal ideology will be
in full display in his upcoming visit to Cuba and the United States.

In "Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro," Pope Francis
speaks of a "shared solidarity" but, as with Pope Innocent III's
rejection of the Magna Carta, that solidarity appears to be with the
nondemocratic illegitimate authority in Cuba and not with the people.
This is a tragic echo of the Cuban wars for independence when the Church
sided with the Spanish Crown and not with the Cuban "mambises" fighting
for freedom. No wonder that when Cuba gained its independence, many
Cubans saw the Church as an enemy of the new nation.

In his September visit Pope Francis will have a chance to reverse this
history and unequivocally put the Church on the side of the people,
especially with the black and mulatto majority in the Island. If he does
not, history will judge him as unkindly as it has Innocent III. When the
Castros' tropical gulag finally fades into the past, Cubans will
remember that this Pope had a choice between freedom and
authoritarianism, just as his predecessor did eight hundred years ago,
and picked the wrong side.

Source: The Church, Pope Francis, and Cuba - Misceláneas de Cuba -
http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/Article/Index/55f881e43a682e0b9802a3f7#.VflTIvmqqko