As border debate rages, immigrants' fears rise

sacbee ^ | 5-7-05

[TheCrusader]

"3. a corrupt Catholic church which sides with the first two. Alas, those priests who side with the poor are usually Marxist."

Somehow, the Catholic Church always seems to get dragged into everything by the ignorant and the hateful. Even though it was the Catholic Church which valiantly fought against world Communism and eventually made it fall through the courageous actions of Pope John Paul II in Poland, some ignorant s...heads will still try to blame them for communism.

It was Gorbachev himself who acknowledged publicly the role of John Paul II in the fall of Communism. "What has happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would not have been possible without the presence of this Pope, without the great role even political that he has played on the world scene" (quoted in La Stampa, March 3, 1992).

As for South America and a few rebellious marxist priests and bishops, Pope John Paul II personally traveled to Brazil and condemned liberation theology and those who led it. John Paul II and his chief doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI), spotted a religious movement outside of church control. They began a campaign to silence such leading liberation theologians as Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan writer in Brazil; Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian Jesuit; and Ernesto Cardenal, a Trappist monk and Nicaragua's minister of culture under the Sandinista government.

Pope John Paul II was adamant in demanding that Father Ernesto Cardenal leave his post as minister of culture in the then-Marxist-leaning Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He closed the door on "liberation theology" and the "popular church" that at times aligned itself with the Marxist revolution in the name of defending the poor.