EXCERPT:

“The murder of Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the invasion of Panama, the “war on drugs,” and changing East/West relations add urgent weight to our need to confront the U.S. strategy of “low-intensity conflict” (LIC).

The murder of six Jesuit priests and the escalating violence in El Salvador was a predictable outcome of U.S. LIC policies.

Throughout 1989, as the FMLN and the popular movements gained in strength, prospects for a negotiated settlement improved. This hopeful situation was ripe with danger because the increased strength of popular movements signaled the failure of U.S. LIC strategy in El Salvador. The alternative to meaningful negotiations and reforms was escalating violence. The U.S. and its ally, the right wing ARENA party, responded to the strength of the opposition by managing terror in an upward spiral.”

SOURCE

Excerpt from The Ratzinger Report:

As head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office for twenty-five years,
Ratzinger protected the Vatican’s authority against social movements inside and outside the Church. In the process, he allied closely with the Reagan Administration’s Catholic conservatives and neo-conservatives in their first term in power. He promoted militant right-wing movements in the church including Legionnaires for Christ, an integral part of the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina in the seventies, and the secretive and ascetic Opus Dei (made infamous in The Da Vinci Codes) which was closely associated with the Franco dictatorship in Spain. Ratzinger ensured the fast-tracking of Opus Dei’s founder, Escriva de Balaguer, to sainthood in 2002.

excerpt from Pope John Paul II, the Reagan years & Liberation Theology

“Bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador had pleaded fruitlessly with Carter to stop the US backing of repression - 6 weeks later, he was murdered in March 1980. Vatican commissions on JPII’s orders had visited Romero two times demanding that he explain his outspoken criticism of El Salvador s military rulers. After his murder, the pope appointed Fernando Saenz Lacalle as archbishop, a member of Opus Dei and a starch opponent of liberation theology. The appointment came as a slap in the face to hundreds of peasant church members and religious workers in Latin America. Progressive advancements were reversed and old inequalities were restored.

Reagan took office in Jan 1981. He retained Brz as a consultant on Poland. Brz said: “We involved the Pope directly and he did whatever was to be done to sustain an underground effort. So Solidarity wasn’t crushed.” Reagan, son of a working-class Irish Catholic father and protestant mother, had won the lion’s share of the Catholic vote. He was drawn to other Catholic working class types, like Bill Casey who became CIA Director. Like Reagan, they believed the Marxist-Leninist vision to be spiritually evil and had to be destroyed. Reagan openly forged ties with the Pope and Vatican. By spring 1981, Casey and others were dropping in at the residence of the pope’s nuncio Archbishop Pio Laghi for breakfast and consultation. And Laghi visited the White House by the ‘back door’ for secret meetings with Casey and later the President.

Around 1982, Casey met with the pope at the Vatican and showed him a photo (taken a spy satellite) of the Pope’s welcome when he visited Poland in 1979. The photo helped seal an informal secret alliance between the Holy See and the Reagan admin. Western agencies, notably the CIA, provided regular secret briefings on developments in the USSR, Poland, Chile, Argentina, China, on liberation theology, Middle East etc.

JPII & Liberation Theology
JPII’s intolerance of left leaning movements arose from the conservative traditions of the Polish church and his experience with the communist regime. Even as Archbishop of Krakow, he was one of 251 bishops who voted agasint the final draft of Gaudium et Spes, the document that sought to reform and modernise the church. (It was passed with 2331 votes in favour.) Any collective initiative for social justice was associated with Marxism and he became a natural ally with the US capitalist government.”

The Mixed Legacy of John Paul II:
Pope John Paul II leaves a mixed legacy for his flock. Conservatives in the Catholic Church hail him as a defender of the faith, while progressives criticise his `restorationist papacy’ that has taken the Church back to pre-Second Vatican Council days.

Liberation Theology Resources page

Wikipedia Entry On Liberation Theology

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