[Peace-discuss] Blum's lighthearted forecast for 2112

[Carl G. Estabrook]

The US campaign of international terrorism against Latin America from  
the Kennedy administration on "was in substantial measure a war  
against the church."  The ranks of those who held office in the church  
- priests and bishops (including the bishop of Rome) were conflicted  
on the matter, some identifying with the aggressor. On the other side  
were priests such as the Jesuit martyrs and Bishop Romero; there were  
many who thought like them, which was what so terrified the US  
government.

"There has been much debate about who deserves credit for the fall of  
the Berlin wall, but there is none about the responsibility for the  
brutal demolition" of Liberation Theology: it was the US government.

In fact, Liberation Theology survives and is reviving in Latin  
America: <http://ncronline.org/news/global/conference-looks-future-liberation-theology 
 >. And it is quietly being promoted by the current pope, whose public  
statements on the economy (the 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate and  
the 2011 statement Towards Reforming the International Financial and  
Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority) promote  
the "redistribution of wealth" (his phrase) in a manner far to the  
left of any American liberal politician. Pope Benedict's official  
bibliographer, the bishop of Regensburg (recently promoted cardinal),  
is a protege of Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian priest whose book A  
Theology of Liberation (1971) gave a name to a popular movement.


On Jan 14, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:

> This s somewhat late for a response, but my impression is that it  
> was the guys on the ground, the priests, especially in Central  
> America,  who carried forward the ideas of Liberation Theology,  
> helping the downtrodden, and it was the bishops, despite the  
> statements you allude to, who were in general opposed. The church  
> south of the border has in general upheld the reactionary status  
> quo. It was a pope who destroyed Liberation Theology.
>
> Hence, Blum is not all wrong on this issue.
>
> --mkb
>
> On Jan 3, 2012, at 7:32 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> The rest is indeed "less lighthearted," including the best short  
>> summary I've seen of Obama's typically mendacious "withdrawal" from  
>> Iraq. I read it on "AWARE On the Air" today.
>>
>> But even Homer nods, and at one point Blum simply repeats the  
>> typical liberal/village-atheist bromide about Christianity in Latin  
>> America:
>>
>> "Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin  
>> America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do  
>> battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just  
>> rewards in the afterlife."
>>
>> The reality was quite different. Here's a better account:
>>
>> "Apart from Cuba, the plague of state terror in the Western  
>> hemisphere was initiated [by the US} with the Brazilian coup in  
>> 1964, installing the first of a series of neo-Nazi National  
>> Security States and initiating a plague of repression without  
>> precedent in the hemisphere, always strongly backed by Washington,  
>> hence a particularly violent form of state-directed international  
>> terrorism. The campaign was in substantial measure a war against  
>> the Church. It was more than symbolic that it culminated in the  
>> assassination of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit  
>> priests, in November 1989, a few days after the fall of the Berlin  
>> wall. They were murdered by an elite Salvadoran battalion, fresh  
>> from renewed training at the John F. Kennedy Special Forces School  
>> in North Carolina. As was learned last November [2009], but  
>> apparently aroused no interest, the order for the assassination was  
>> signed by the chief of staff and his associates, all of them so  
>> closely connected to the Pentagon and the US Embassy that it  
>> becomes even harder to imagine that Washington was unaware of the  
>> plans of its model battalion. This elite force had already left a  
>> trail of blood of the usual victims through the hideous decade of  
>> the 1980s in El Salvador, which opened with the assassination of  
>> Archbishop Romero, 'the voice of the voiceless,' by much the same  
>> hands.
>> "The murder of the Jesuit priests was a crushing blow to liberation  
>> theology, the remarkable revival of Christianity initiated by Pope  
>> John XXIII at Vatican II, which he opened in 1962, an event that  
>> 'ushered in a new era in the history of the Catholic Church,' in  
>> the words of the distinguished theologian and historian of  
>> Christianity Hans Kueng. Inspired by Vatican II, Latin American  
>> Bishops adopted 'the preferential option for the poor,' renewing  
>> the radical pacifism of the Gospels ... In the post-Vatican II  
>> attempt to revive the Christianity of the pre-Constantine period,  
>> priests, nuns, and laypersons took the message of the Gospels to  
>> the poor and the persecuted, brought them together in 'base  
>> communities,' and encouraged them to take their fate into their own  
>> hands and to work together to overcome the misery of survival in  
>> brutal realms of US power.
>>
>> "The reaction to this grave heresy was not long in coming. The  
>> first salvo was Kennedy's military coup in Brazil in 1964,  
>> overthrowing a mildly social democratic government and instituting  
>> a reign of torture and violence. The campaign ended with the murder  
>> of the Jesuit intellectuals 20 years ago. There has been much  
>> debate about who deserves credit for the fall of the Berlin wall,  
>> but there is none about the responsibility for the brutal  
>> demolition of the attempt to revive the church of the Gospels.  
>> Washington's School of the Americas, famous for its training of  
>> Latin American killers, proudly announced as one of its 'talking  
>> points' that liberation theology was 'defeated with the assistance  
>> of the US army' -- given a helping hand, to be sure by the Vatican,  
>> using the gentler means of expulsion and suppression.
>>
>> "As you recall, last November [2009] was dedicated to celebration  
>> of the 20th anniversary of the liberation of Eastern Europe from  
>> Russian tyranny, a victory of the forces of 'love, tolerance,  
>> nonviolence, the human spirit and forgiveness,' as Vaclav Havel  
>> declared. Less attention -- in fact, virtually zero -- was devoted  
>> to the brutal assassination of his Salvadoran counterparts a few  
>> days after the Berlin wall fell. And I doubt that one could even  
>> find an allusion to what that brutal assassination signified: the  
>> end of a decade of vicious terror in Central America, and the final  
>> triumph of the 'return to barbarism in our time' that opened with  
>> the 1964 Brazilian coup, leaving many religious martyrs in its wake  
>> and ending the heresy initiated in Vatican II -- not exactly an era  
>> of 'love, tolerance, nonviolence, the human spirit and  
>> forgiveness.' We can wait until tomorrow to see how much attention  
>> will be given to the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the  
>> Voice of the Voiceless while he was reading mass, a few days after  
>> he wrote a letter to President Carter pleading with him -- in vain  
>> -- not send aid to the military junta, who 'know only how to  
>> repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadorean  
>> oligarchy' and will use the aid 'to destroy the people's  
>> organizations fighting to defend their fundamental human rights.'  
>> As happened. And we can learn a good bit from what we are unlikely  
>> to see tomorrow...
>>
>>
>> On Jan 3, 2012, at 6:37 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>
>>> From Bill Blum's report: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html.
>>>
>>> The rest is less lighthearted.
>>>
>>> --mkb
>>>
>>> Happy New Year. Here's what to look forward to...
>>
>

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