Pope Francis

[Jan Klimkowski]

Before it gets sanitised, I've grabbed the wiki entry for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the new Pope.

My eye is drawn to two entries:

Liberation theology

Bergoglio is an accomplished theologian who distanced himself from liberation theology early in his career. He is thought to be close to Comunione e Liberazione, a conservative lay movement.

On April 15, 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests, whom he, as superior of the Society of Jesus of Argentina in 1976, had asked to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. Bergoglio's spokesman has flatly denied the allegations. No evidence was presented linking the cardinal to this crime.[5]

Pope Francis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Jorge Bergoglio)


This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
His Eminence Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ
Cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires
See Buenos Aires
Appointed 3 June 1997 (Coadjutor)
Papacy began 28 February 1998
Predecessor Antonio Quarracino
Other posts

Cardinal-Priest of S. Roberto Bellarmino
Bishop of the Ordinariate for the Faithful of the Eastern Rites in Argentina

Orders
Ordination 13 December 1969
by Ramón José Castellano
Consecration 27 June 1992
by Antonio Quarracino
Created Cardinal 21 February 2001
Rank Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Birth name Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Born 17 December 1936 (age 76)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nationality Argentinian
Denomination Roman Catholic
Previous post

Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires (1992 - 1997)
Titular Bishop of Auca (1992 - 1997)

Coat of arms

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ (born December 17, 1936) is an Argentine cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He has served as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires since 1998. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2001.
Contents

1 Early life
2 Cardinal
3 Views
3.1 Liberation theology
3.2 Abortion and euthanasia
3.3 Homosexuality
3.4 Church and AIDS
3.5 Social justice
3.6 Relations with the Argentine government
4 Other functions of Cardinal Bergoglio
5 References

Early life

Jorge Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, one of the five children of an Italian railway worker and his wife. After studying at the seminary in Villa Devoto, he entered the Society of Jesus on March 11, 1958. Bergoglio obtained a licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo San José in San Miguel, and then taught literature and psychology at the Colegio de la Inmaculada in Santa Fe, and the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires. He was ordained to the priesthood on December 13, 1969, by Archbishop Ramón José Castellano. He attended the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel, a seminary in San Miguel. Bergoglio attained the position of novice master there and became professor of theology.

Impressed with his leadership skills, the Society of Jesus promoted Bergoglio and he served as provincial for Argentina from 1973 to 1979. He was transferred in 1980 to become the rector of the seminray in San Miguel where had had studied. He served in that capacity until 1986. He completed his doctoral dissertation in Germany and returned to his homeland to serve as confessor and spiritual director in Córdoba.
Styles of
Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Coat of arms of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.svg
Reference style His Eminence
Spoken style Your Eminence
Informal style Cardinal
See Buenos Aires

Bergoglio succeeded Cardinal Quarracino on February 28, 1998. He was concurrently named ordinary for Eastern Catholics in Argentina, who lacked their own prelate. Pope John Paul II summoned the newly named archbishop to the consistory of February 21, 2001 in Vatican City and elevated Bergoglio with the papal honors of a cardinal. He was named to the Cardinal-Priest of Saint Robert Bellarmino.
Cardinal
Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio greets President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, December, 2007.

As cardinal, Bergoglio was appointed to several administrative positions in the Roman Curia. He served on the Congregation of Clergy, Congregation of Divine Worship and Sacraments, Congregation of Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Congregation of Societies of Apostolic Life. Bergoglio became a member of the Commission on Latin American and the Family Council.

As Cardinal, Bergoglio became known for personal humility, doctrinal conservatism and a commitment to social justice. A simple lifestyle has contributed to his reputation for humility. He lives in a small apartment, rather than in the palatial bishop's residence. He gave up his chauffeured limousine in favor of public transportation, and he reportedly cooks his own meals.

Upon the death of Pope John Paul II, Bergoglio, considered papabile himself, participated in the 2005 papal conclave as a cardinal elector, the conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI. A widespread theory says that he was in a tight fight with Ratzinger until he himself adviced crying not to be voted.[1] Earlier, he had participated in the funeral of Pope John Paul II and acted as a regent alongside the College of Cardinals, governing the Holy See and the Roman Catholic Church during the interregnum sede vacante period. Cardinal Bergoglio remains eligible to participate in conclaves that begin before his 80th birthday on December 17, 2016.

During the 2005 Synod of Bishops, he was elected a member of the Post-Synodal council. Catholic journalist John L. Allen, Jr. reported that Bergoglio was a frontrunner in the 2005 Conclave. An unauthorized diary of uncertain authenticity released in September 2005[2] confirmed that Bergogolio was the runner-up and main challenger of Cardinal Ratzinger at that conclave. The purported diary of the anonymous cardinal claimed Bergoglio received 40 votes in the third ballot, but fell back to 26 at the fourth and decisive ballot.

On November 8, 2005, Bergoglio was elected President of the Argentine Episcopal Conference for a three-year term (20052008) by a large majority of the Argentine bishops, which according to reports confirms his local leadership and the international prestige earned by his alleged performance in the conclave. He was reelected on November 11, 2008.
Views
Liberation theology

Bergoglio is an accomplished theologian who distanced himself from liberation theology early in his career. He is thought to be close to Comunione e Liberazione, a conservative lay movement.
Abortion and euthanasia

Cardinal Bergoglio has invited his clergy and laity to oppose both abortion and euthanasia.[3]
Homosexuality

He has affirmed church teaching on homosexuality, though he teaches the importance of respecting individuals who are gay. He strongly opposed legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine Government to allow same-sex marriage. In a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires, he wrote: "Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God." He has also insisted that adoption by gays and lesbians is a form of discrimination against children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition".[4]
Church and AIDS
Main article: Roman Catholic Church and AIDS

His doctrinal orthodoxy emphasizes Christ's mandate to love: he is well remembered for his 2001 visit to a hospice, in which he washed and kissed the feet of twelve AIDS patients.
Social justice

He consistently preaches a message of compassion towards the poor, but somewho? observers would like him to place a greater emphasis on issues of social justice. Rather than articulating positions on matters of political economy, Bergoglio prefers to emphasize spirituality and holiness, believing that this will naturally lead to greater concern for the suffering of the poor. He has, however, voiced support for social programs, and publicly challenged free-market policies.
Relations with the Argentine government
See also: Dirty War

On April 15, 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests, whom he, as superior of the Society of Jesus of Argentina in 1976, had asked to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. Bergoglio's spokesman has flatly denied the allegations. No evidence was presented linking the cardinal to this crime.[5]
Other functions of Cardinal Bergoglio

Member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
Member of the Congregation for the Clergy.
Member of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
Member of the Pontifical Council for the Family

References

^ ¿Qué sucedió realmente durante el conclave del 2005. lastampa.it (Spanish)
^ (1)
^ Le cardinal Bergoglio invite à défendre la culture de la vie avec ardeur
^ Allen, Jr., John L. (March 3, 2013). "Papabile of the Day: The Men Who Could Be Pope". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
^ [1]

[Jan Klimkowski]

Hmmm - Comunione e Liberazione (CL) appears to be a conservative charismatic cult movement, associated with Popes Wojtyla, Ratzinger and now Bergoglio.

This is from wiki on CL's founder, Luigi Giussani:

In 1969 he (Giussani) returned to guide the former GS group, which had broken away from Azione Cattolica in the wake of the tumultuous student rebellions that swept Europe following the events of May 1968. Under the new name Communion and Liberation, the movement Giussani founded attracted university students and adults in addition to high school students. Members of the movement, which Giussani led from 1969 until his death in 2005, became influential not only in the Church but also in politics and business.

In 1983 he was given the title of Monsignor by Pope John Paul II. Giussani outlined his views on politics in a famous address[1] to an assembly of the Italian Christian Democratic party at Assago on February 6, 1987.

Giussani died in 2005. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, delivered the homily at his funeral.[2] Traces, the magazine of Communion and Liberation, published a retrospective issue on the life and work of Giussani in March 2005. He is interred in Milan's Cimitero Monumentale. Every day a large number of visitors come to pray before his tomb, and Mass is celebrated there daily.

[Jan Klimkowski]

More on CL.

Note the origin in the anti-leftist movements of the sixties, and their recent support for Berlusconi's neo-fascist corruption.

History

CL emerged out of Gioventù Studentesca during the late 1960s, a period of rapid change in Italian society and within the Catholic Church. Following Giussani's appointment to a chair in the theology department at Milan's Catholic University in 1965, GS had begun to drift away from Giussani's methods and was adopting social and political ideals popular among student movements in Italy at the time. By 1968, a significant number of GS members had left to join the secular revolutionary student movement, and many had become active Marxists. The group that became CL openly opposed these new revolutionary movements in the universities, in contrast to the increasing trend within the official Catholic youth and lay organizations to abandon their traditional antagonism toward secularism and Marxism. The contrast had become a deep division by the time of Azione Cattolica's revision of its official statutes in 1969 and its adoption of a new policy of "religious choice" (a withdrawal from the sphere of partisan politics and a shift in focus towards spirituality and social justice, ostensibly in response to the Second Vatican Council). The faction of former GS members who rejected both the leftist student movement and the new direction of the official Catholic organizations took the name Comunione e Liberazione (originally the title of a manifesto they had authored and distributed).

During the 1970s, Giussani took an increasing interest in CL, which had resumed many of the distinctive practices and methods of GS and was operating as an unofficial Catholic organization in Italy outside the traditional lay Catholic structures, tending to be viewed with suspicion by the church hierarchy. Nevertheless, during the 1974 Italian referendum on divorce it was CL rather than the official Catholic organizations that undertook the task of defending the Catholic Church's position to Italian society. Through its role in the referendum CL gained the sympathy and trust of many Italian bishops and of Pope Paul VI, who voiced his support of Giussani and CL at a Palm Sunday youth event in 1975. During this time CL acquired a reputation as an integralist organization and was the target of violence, culminating in 120 attacks on persons and CL offices in 1977, during leftist students riots[citation needed].
CL in Italian society

The public and political profile of Communion and Liberation increased markedly in Italy following a referendum in 1974 legalising divorce and another bitter referendum in 1981 legalising abortion. In 1975 a political wing was created for CL within Italy's Christian Democratic Party, called Il Movimento Popolare, in order to support political candidates favorable to CL's social views - which were succinctly summarised in the formula Più società, meno Stato ("More society, less state"). The Movimento Popolare exerted considerable influence on the Italian political scene during the 1980s and 1990s and successfully engineered the election of many of its representatives. The weekly newspaper "Il Sabato" was launched in 1978 to give expression to CL's vigorous opposition to communism and support for an increased role for the Catholic Church in Italian society. The paper's circulation rose to 300,000[citation needed]. A related organization, Compagnia delle Opere, was established in 1986 as a non-profit umbrella group promoting cooperation between businesses, assisting struggling enterprises and helping the unemployed to find work. An annual week-long cultural festival known as the "Meeting for friendship among peoples", held in Rimini, Italy in August, organized by CL beginning in 1980 has grown to be a major Italian cultural event, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Controversy and Politics

Meanwhile inside the Italian Church, the protracted feud between Communion and Liberation and Italy's more moderate and irenic lay movement Catholic Action continued throughout the 1980s. A majority of the Italian bishops, including the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, supported Catholic Action and sought to restrain CL's aggressively combative approach. But Pope John Paul II and his Vicar for Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, actively supported CL's movement into Italian politics.[4] During a private audience, Pope John Paul is reported to have reproved the president of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin, for his lack of enthusiasm for CL: "When you come to know them better", the cardinal replied, "you won't like them that much either."[5]

Tensions between CL and the Italian episcopate peaked when "Il Sabato" questioned the scientific methodology used by Bible experts in analysing the Dead Sea Scrolls (Martini is a renowned Biblical scholar). Many Italian bishops publicly voiced their displeasure with "Il Sabato", which had begun openly to question the orthodoxy of certain groups and individuals within the Italian church. In a gesture of deference to the church hierarchy Giussani declared in 1989 that Il Sabato was no longer an official organ of CL. The paper continued to publish without Giussani's official endorsement for a few more years, but folded in 1993.

By the mid 1990s CL's influence in Italian politics did not wane. The movement's activities underwent a change of direction in the wake of the Tangentopoli corruption scandals, in which some CL adherents were allegedly implicated but subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing. The Movimento Popolare ceased all its operations in 1993.

Since then, the movement has been highly supportive of Silvio Berlusconi, first under the umbrella of a small party called The United Christian Democrats, then (after 1998) directly within Forza Italia, later revamped into the People of Freedom. Roberto Formigoni, one of the group's most influential members, was elected Regional President of Lombardy in 1995 as the candidate of a right-wing coalition. He has been reelected three other times since then. In the 2010 Lombard regional election Formigoni was reelected for the fourth consecutive term.

The movement endorses a fiscally conservative and a socially conservative agenda on issues such as on stem cell research, end of life issues, same-sex unions, consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Groups that have grown out of the CL experience

The Fraternity of CL
Memores Domini
The Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St.Charles Borromeo
The priestly Fraternity of Studium Christi
Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption
The Fraternity of St Joseph
CLU, the college chapter of CL
GS, the high school chapter of CL
Today, GS is the name of the High School chapter of CL. There are several active communities in the US, including ones in Brooklyn, Staten Island, White Plains, Washington DC, Sacramento, Miami (FL), Boston, Chicago, St. Paul, Crosby, St. Cloud, Rochester (MN), Milwaukee, Steubenville, Evansville, Dayton, Greenville (SC), and Miami. GS is also active in Canada with communities established in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver. GS functions much like CL, holding weekly schools of community and twice-yearly regional vacations.

Ecclesial Carmelite Movement (Movimento Ecclesiale Carmelitano)

[Peter Lemkin]

He sounds really progressive [sarcasm]. So, repress the Liberation Theology, keep the CC conservative and even oppressive to many, let the scandals roll on - especially the Vatican Bank scandals.....nothing has changed....maybe even some Gladio action will be tolerated.

What did you expect, someone radical/revolutionary/pro-Peace and morality like Jesus?!

IMO, Its a corporation....only a religious one. Cardinals are the Board and its business and the usual pedophilia scandals as usual. Women and progressives/reformers can hope for no changes.

I hope I didn't offend any Catholics - I could easily criticize any organized religion.

NB

On April 15, 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests, whom he, as superior of the Society of Jesus of Argentina in 1976, had asked to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. Bergoglio's spokesman has flatly denied the allegations. No evidence was presented linking the cardinal to this crime.[5]

THAT is REALLY troubling!

[Jan Klimkowski]

Vatican Multinational.

How many banks does the Pope have?

[Magda Hassan]

What did you expect, someone radical/revolutionary/pro-Peace and morality like Jesus?!

He'd be dead in six weeks if he showed any signs of acting like that.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda - my emphasis in bold is especially for you...

Comunione e Liberazione sound particularly liberated...

:pope:

The pope's butler has been arrested by Vatican police on suspicion of leaking a large number of confidential letters addressed to Benedict XVI which have lifted the lid on alleged corruption and nepotism at the Holy See.

A Vatican spokesman declined to confirm the butler's arrest, which was widely reported by Italian media on Friday, stating only it had arrested a person discovered in illegal possession of "confidential documents".

Paolo Gabriele, 46, who has worked as Benedict's butler since 2006, was reportedly taken into custody after investigators found a mass of documents in the Vatican apartment he shares with his wife and three children.

The arrest comes a month after the Vatican gave an investigative team led by Cardinal Julian Herranz, a member of Opus dei, a full "pontifical mandate" to join Vatican police in rooting out the perpetrators of what has been dubbed Vatileaks.

Gabriele is a member of the 85-year-old pontiff's closest circle of helpers, assisting him in his papal apartment at the Vatican alongside four female members of the Italian religious movement Comunione e Liberazione who cook and clean.

The Rome-born butler is now in custody in the Vatican's cells.

[Magda Hassan]

Magda - my emphasis in bold is especially for you...

Comunione e Liberazione sound particularly liberated...

:pope:

The pope's butler has been arrested by Vatican police on suspicion of leaking a large number of confidential letters addressed to Benedict XVI which have lifted the lid on alleged corruption and nepotism at the Holy See.

A Vatican spokesman declined to confirm the butler's arrest, which was widely reported by Italian media on Friday, stating only it had arrested a person discovered in illegal possession of "confidential documents".

Paolo Gabriele, 46, who has worked as Benedict's butler since 2006, was reportedly taken into custody after investigators found a mass of documents in the Vatican apartment he shares with his wife and three children.

The arrest comes a month after the Vatican gave an investigative team led by Cardinal Julian Herranz, a member of Opus dei, a full "pontifical mandate" to join Vatican police in rooting out the perpetrators of what has been dubbed Vatileaks.

Gabriele is a member of the 85-year-old pontiff's closest circle of helpers, assisting him in his papal apartment at the Vatican alongside four female members of the Italian religious movement Comunione e Liberazione who cook and clean.

The Rome-born butler is now in custody in the Vatican's cells.

:banghead:

Well, at least there are knives in the kitchen to enforce some equality. If they have keys they might be able to let the butler out. Maybe they can smuggle him a file in the food they bring to him....

[Magda Hassan]

The sins of the Argentinian church

The Catholic church was complicit in dreadful crimes in Argentina. Now it has a chance to repent

• • Hugh O'Shaughnessy
    
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 January 2011 08.20 GMT
    

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Photograph: Natacha Pisarenko/AP

Benedict XVI gave us words of great comfort and encouragement in the message he delivered on Christmas Eve.
"God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways," the pope said. "He does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed. God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he begins afresh with us".
If these words comforted and encouraged me they will surely have done the same for leaders of the church in Argentina, among many others. To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentinian church contained many "lost sheep in the wilderness", men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal western-supported military dictatorship that seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years. Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.
As it happens, in the week before Christmas in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country's courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military. These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighbouring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons. Unsurprisingly there was dancing in the city's streets when the judge announced the sentences.
What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentinian hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church's collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment
One would have thought that the Argentinian bishops would have seized the opportunity to call for pardon for themselves and put on sackcloth and ashes as the sentences were announced in Córdoba but that has not so far happened.
But happily Their Eminences have just been given another chance to express contrition. Next month the convicted murderer Videla will be arraigned for his part in the killing of Enrique Angelelli, bishop of the Andean diocese of La Rioja and a supporter of the cause of poorer Argentinians. He was run off the highway by a hit squad of the Videla régime and killed on 4th August 1976 shortly after Videla's putsch.
Cardinal Bergoglio has plenty of time to be measured for a suit of sackcloth perhaps tailored in a suitable clerical grey to be worn when the church authorities are called into the witness box by the investigating judge in the Angelelli case. Ashes will be readily available if the records of the Argentinian bishops' many disingenuous and outrightly mendacious statements about Videla and Angelelli are burned.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...repentance

[Magda Hassan]

From Robert Parry: The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). "He recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate.

"The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.

El silencio- Horacio verbitsky

El silencio

Entender hoy los procesos políticos de los años 70 sin que la lente deformadora de la retrospectiva altere la realidad de las concepciones, estímulos y motivaciones de entonces, sin que el presente prepotente nos nuble el entendimiento y nos contamine la postal, es tarea difícil o tal vez imposible. Entender lo actuado por la iglesia en aquellos años de acción revolucionaria y reacción represiva, requiere paciencia, razón y tripas fuertes, en particular para aquellos que practican el culto católico. No es mi caso: he salido inmune de bautismos y catecismos, prácticas culturales que se sostienen desde lo social más allá del cumplimiento efectivo del dogma cristiano (Los niños deben ser bautizados, aun cuando desconozcan cuantos evangelios contiene el nuevo testamento o no puedan precisar un solo detalle de la buena nueva cristiana).
La Iglesia es una estructura política asociada al poder, y uno de los puntales de cualquier sistema de poder que se perpetúa es lograr hacerlo como algo de contenido naturalizado, no cuestionado ni variable, firme y absoluto. Cuando en los años 70 se hablaba de "cultura occidental y cristiana", se estaba dando a entender dos cosas: por un lado, la existencia de una cultura antagonista, "ateo-comunista", por usar una denominación dura y extrema. Por otro lado, se demostraba que capitalismo e iglesia constituían un núcleo cultural indisoluble, amenazado en su naturalidad, cuestionado en su noción de único-absoluto. Este mundo fue el que la dictadura militar vino a salvar. En realidad -como señala en un libro posterior Verbitsky y como marca Casullo también- iglesia y doctrina liberal se aliaron a principios del siglo XX, luego del alejamiento y crisis que la revolución francesa había supuesto durante el siglo XVIII. El motivo del reencuentro no fue otro que la irrupción del fantasma comunista y su posterior triunfo bolchevique.
La iglesia enfrentó el proceso revolucionario de los años 60 y 70 como a un hecho disolvente que la amenazaba profundamente: lo mismo entendió la burguesía nacional e internacional. Por eso no es nada extraño que liberalismo económico conjugara con cristianismo ferviente y nacionalismo simbólico en la mente de aquellos militares decididos al genocidio. Porque la iglesia era uno de los puntales ideológicos más fuertes en la lucha represiva. Y fue también parte protagonista, legitimadora en aquel entonces, y cómplice del silencio aun hoy. Razón, pasión y acción: para apuntalar los argumentos con nociones absolutistas que todo lo justificaban, para atizar el núcleo de fanatismo violento latente en la historia de nuestras fuerzas armadas y para brindar infraestructura y recursos humanos al proceso represivo. Todo esto es perceptible en el libro de Verbitsky: una obra breve que antecede a su tetralogía (Cristo vence, La violencia evangélica, Vigilia de Armas y Doble Juego), cuyo título tiene un doble significado: por un lado, es el nombre de una quinta ubicada en el delta, propiedad de la iglesia, que la marina utilizó como campo de concentración provisorio para esconder a los detenidos durante la visita de la comisión interamericana de derechos humanos de la OEA. Por otro lado, es una denuncia contra la complicidad deliberada de una cúpula eclesiástica que ya no puede ocultar sus manos manchadas de sangre.

Fuente: http://elmoscardonylapalabra.blogspot.co...itsky.html