Posted on 01/01/2015 5:46:27 PM PST by ebb tide
With the latest crackdown in Cuba showing just how Havana has ‘read’ Obama’s policy shift towards the Castro dictatorship, this new Foreign Affairs article by Victor Gaetan giving some background to the Vatican’s involvement in the deal that was eventually struck makes timely reading.
Here’s an extract (my emphasis added):
In Cuba, in other words, the church is still strong. Havana’s Cardinal Archbishop Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino has followed a strategy of reconciliation on the island, avoiding confrontation with the state while winning more independence to carry out the Church’s religious mission. Under Ortega’s 35-year leadership, the Catholic Church, to which about 60 percent of all Cubans belong, has emerged as the only national institution that functions independent of the state.
Still, Ortega was never popular with regime opponents because of his determination to avoid confrontation. While Benedict was in Cuba, Ortega refused to arrange a meeting between the Pope and opposition leaders. Instead, devout Catholic opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Paya found Cuban security surrounding his house to prevent him from attending Benedict’s public Mass. Five months later, Paya was killed in a car accident suspected of being engineered by state agents. No investigation has ever been completed. Although Ortega presided over Paya’s funeral, his family says the cardinal did nothing to protect or promote the democracy movement Paya fostered. Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, the regime opponent’s daughter, wrote an eloquent critique of the U.S.–Cuba deal in The Washington Post. Many other dissidents are similarly disappointed with the news.
But Ortega likely isn’t losing sleep about this criticism. He has a different vision of Cuba’s future: A few days after Francis was elected, the Havana Archdiocese published a document containing 23 proposals produced by a group, Laboratorio Casa Cuba, comprised of “professors and researchers of diverse ideologies (Catholics, critical Marxists, republican–socialists, and anarchists).” It’s a Christian social–democratic program, with an anti-American cherry on top.
And that seems sort of fine with Pope Francis. Fancy that!
Ping
Francis is a very sui generis Pope. He embraces enthusiastically Marxist liberation theology. Francis strongly criticizes free enterprise while supporting Obama’s redistribution of wealth, a Marxist tenet that everywhere it have been imposed the result have been the general distribution of misery. He was the main artifice of Obama’s pact with the Cuban tortures to keep afloat the Cuban Stalinist tyranny.
Francis seems to enjoy mediating pacts with the devil.
The House of God
The Pact on hell, Francis/Castro/Obama
By Obie Usategui December 31, 2014 |
As you all may be well aware, as recently as December 17th, 2014, Marxist president Barack Obama, announced the U.S. would restore full relations with the communist island-nation of Cuba, including the opening of an embassy in that country.
Furthermore, we also learned that Pope Francis was much a part of this repulsive accord and, in fact, he [the Pope] had played a crucial role in brokering the landmark deal between the United States and Cuba.
Now, as far as I was concerned, this was more than I could handle. For Barack Obama, a renowned left-wing radical and/or career communist, your pick, the Cuban pact was sort of par-for-the course, ‘to-be-expected’, if you will. Vis-a-vis for Pope Francis, the head the largest Christian church in the world, with 1.2 billion followers, I thought, was simply appalling. I was infuriated to the point I was willing to break my historical vows of religious silence, albeit my running the ad nauseam risk of being chastised by the fanatical wing of my church for doing just that. But, honestly, I could not care less.
Cuban Pact: I could not, for the life of me, understand His Holiness key-man role in making it all possible.
In lieu of my upbringing, my teachings and my religious background, then, in the matter of the Cuban pact, I could not, for the life of me, understand His Holiness key-man role in making it all possible, since, as far as I was concerned, a pact with the devil himself, would probably have been less distasteful - more palatable perhaps. Maybe someone can explain.
Just please, spare me if you will, the tirades and diatribes designed to making all us belief that the Cuban pact and the lifting of the embargo, are meaningful strides in the improvement of Human Rights and religious freedom. Just, please spare me this inconsequential conclusion, if you will.
Unbeknownst to many Catholic brethren, back in the day, in 1998, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, and then soon-to-be Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, did accompany Pope John Paul II on his Cuban visit with communist dictator Fidel Castro. As a result of his trip, Bergoglio compiled a book named “Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro” and, while he, on the one hand, harshly criticized socialism and Castro’s atheist revolution for denying individuals their “transcendent dignity” and putting them solely at the service of the state, on the other hand, he did fervently denounce the U.S. embargo and the U.S.‘s isolationist policies towards Cuba, bellowing for the need of a dialogue with the Cuban dictator.
... I cannot understand, for the life of me, any mitigating circumstances, bar none, to back-up the surrealistic nature of this impractical objective, especially so, in consideration to the fact that the Castro scoundrels, have spent a lifetime, 55 years to be exact, promoting the precise opposite of what is being proposed by the church’s leadership.
Last but certainly not least, I started it all by preaching to you all, the canons of faith based on the church’s teachings regarding the righteous expectations as set forth by our mentor Jesus Christ, to wit, a path of virtuosity - ironically, one diametrically opposed to the Communist postulates implanted on the impoverished Communist Island of Cuba, by two of the world’s most renown assassins.
Again, in lieu of an irrefutable history of fifty-five years oppression, subjugation or otherwise utter disregard for the most basic freedoms deserved by all peoples of the world, I am left with no alternative but to respectfully ask the church leaders:
Why has not the church demanded from the Castro brothers in the last 55 years to stop the torturing, the killings, the raids on Human Rights, which paved the way for the U.S. embargo and the isolationist policy?
Why has not the church taken a leadership position, as well they should have, in defending the Cuban people from one of the cruelest dictatorships, ever?
Why has not the church, clamored with the same passion as they have in lifting the embargo and renewing relations with Cuba for the end of the continued “flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms” to Cubans?
Why has the church, and its leaders, remained silent during the past 55 years over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing the island who perished in the Florida Straits as their only alternative to living under the same Communist regime with whom the church has so avidly been proposing to renew relations with?
Why has not the church condemned the Castro brothers for their promoting atheism and their disdainful treatment of anyone of the Catholic faith over the past fifty-five years?
Why? Why? Why?
The whole article
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/68651
Francis proudly brags to be the Che GUEVARA of the Palestine people.
From “Dark REBELLION in the Church” - Jesuits, theology of liberation, Carmelites, Marianists and Socialists: the final complaint.” Ricardo de la Cierva. P. 11-13
“Your theology helps the transformation of Latin America more than millions of books on Marxism” Fidel Castro to Leonardo Boff and Frei Beto in the presence of the Spanish Bishop in Brazil, Pedro Casáldiga, C.M.F., who plays end the phrase in his book Nicaragua, combat and prophecy, Madrid, helped, 1986, p.134
The Pact Obama/Francis/Castro
With friends as Francis, the Cuban people don’t need enemies.
The fact is that for 56 years more than 150 nations have maintained free political and trade relations with Castro, tourists from around the world traveled to the island looking for fun, sex and American cars relics from the 1950’s . Nevertheless Cuba didn’t move an inch closer to Democracy. That policy of complicity with the tyrannical Cuban regime undermined the U.S. trade embargo and proved to be a complete failure since far from facilitating the return of freedom and democracy, their policy brought more oppression and misery for the Cuban enslaved people.
POPE FRANCIS ACCUSSED U.S. OF INHUMAN TREATMENT OF THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
Pope Francis has demonstrated his contempt for the American people. It is preposterous to accuse the most charitable and generous people in the world of inhuman treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrants that violated their borders and sovereignty. They are being treated ten times better that in their own country; otherwise, they were free to return to their own countries.
Pope Francis did not critique, much less did he demand from the Cuban regime a more humane treatment for the 12 million Cubans enslaved for 56 years under the boot of a brutal Stalinist regime in what is a huge prison island. Those 12 million Cubans would thank God one million times if they were given the opportunity to share with our brothers Latin Americans those “inhuman conditions” alleged by Pope Francis.
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