Pope Francis Visits Chile and Peru: Sex Abuse, Politics and Opus Dei

This is the pope's sixth trip to the region with which he is most familiar. But this one is different. This is the first time he will face a populace aware of both his indifference, at best, to victims of sexual abuse and, at worse, his efforts to shield the perpetrators. In addition, there is a consistent pattern of issues, as well as an alliance of powerful elites from church and state, in both countries.

Pope Francis will face significant hostility when he visits Chile Jan. 15 - 18. Demonstrations have been planned to protest his response to clerical sex abuse.

There had been a near riot in Osorno when Pope Francis assigned Juan Barros Madrid as bishop in 2015. Victims of the sexual predator, Fr. Fernando Karadima, accused Barros of sometimes being present while Karadima abused them and then covering-up for the priest.

More than 1,300 Osorno Catholics, along with some 30 priests from the diocese and 51 of 120 members of Chile's Parliament, sent letters to Pope Francis urging him to rescind the appointment. The Laity of Osorno organization also sent innumerable letters with the same request “to the Apostolic Palace, the Vatican embassy, bishops, cardinals, friends of the pope and other Vatican officials. They did not receive an answer, although it was confirmed that the letters had been received.”

Pope Francis was asked to tape a personal message via video for Osorno Catholics. He told them, “The Church has lost (part of its) freedom by allowing politicians to put ideas in the heads (of Church members), by judging a bishop without any proof after 20 years in service. Think with your heads and don’t be carried away by any accusations made by lefties.”

In preparation for the pope’s visit, Juan Carlos Claret, a member of the Laity of Osorno, asked Chile’s interior minister and officials with the Chilean Bishops’ Conference and the Vatican to arrange a meeting between the pontiff and the group. His requests were denied.

Angry not only about the pope's appointment of Barros but also for calling them stupid, Orsorno Catholics said they will hold demonstrations in Santiago, the capital city where the pope will be staying. Claret broadened the scope of the demonstrations. “We have to define the message we want to convey. [T]he claim of Osorno can be more than just Karadima, because we have realized that what sustains Barros in Osorno is a crooked institution.”

Peter Saunders, one of only two survivors of clerical sex abuse on Pope Francis’ Child Protection Commission, said he will be joining the demonstrations in Chile. He and the other survivor, Marie Collins, both resigned from the commission. “I thought the pope was serious about kicking backsides and holding people to account. I believe the Church deserves better on this,” Saunders said.

Juan Carlos Cruz, together with two other victims of Karadima, James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo, also officially requested a meeting with Pope Francis while he is in Chile. They were denied.

“He has called the people of Osorno fools and lefties. And then he invents a trial where he says that Barros was innocent. [T]here has never been a trial in which he was exonerated,” Cruz noted. Rather than admitting his mistakes and asking forgiveness, with Pope Francis “it is the opposite. He comes to endorse the corruption and tremendous damage that the bishops and he have done precisely to Chile,” Cruz said.

According to Cruz, the Chilean disaffection with the Catholic Church can be attributed to the “the criminal behaviors” of Chilean prelates in addition to Barros: Francisco Javier Errázuriz, Ricardo Ezzati, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela. “They are all criminals. Ezzati and Errázuriz should be in jail. [Pope Francis] knowing of all these cases, has endorsed all this rottenness. I find that Errázuriz, Ezzati, the pope and several of the bishops have blood on their hands for people who have been abused and have committed suicide. I know such cases …. What is the use of his presence in the country?”

"The arrival of the Holy Father will have a special significance for our country since he was born in the neighboring Republic of Argentina, he is the first Latin American pope, and also lived and studied in Chile so he knows our reality very closely," said the Chilean Foreign Ministry. "The truth is that no one denies that he is a pope with a strong political vision and all his movements are interpreted thus in his land," the Chilean Foreign Ministry concluded.

Karadima and Politics

Fr. Fernando Karadina was a spiritual leader among Santiago’s most influential families. In April 2010, a criminal complaint was filed against him for sex abuse by four men who, as youngsters, had been subjected to Karadima’s sexual assaults. According to court testimony, Church officials, including Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, tried to shame accusers into dropping claims, refused to meet with them or failed to carry out formal investigations for years.

Errázuriz wrote in a public letter that he did nothing about reports of Karadima’s sex abuse because he thought the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations. In private, Errázuriz wrote a letter to Karadima telling him to explain his transfer out of the parish by lying.In another private letter, Errázuriz wrote to Fr. Diego Ossa instructing him how to cover-up his sexual abuse of Oscar Osbén.

A judge dismissed the criminal case against Karadima in November 2011 because the statute of limitations had expired but determined that the allegations were “truthful and reliable.” The Vatican “sanctioned” Karadima by ordering him to a life of “penitence and prayer,” yet he remains a priest in good standing. "Karadima lives as a prince along with the bishops who saw how he abused me and how he abused others and who today deny it,” noted Juan Carlos Cruz.

When Pope Francis appointed Errázuriz as one of his closest advisers a month after he became pontiff, Cruz called it “a shame and a disgrace.”

Pope Francis elevated Ricardo Ezzati, who succeeded Errázuriz as archbishop of Santiago, to cardinal a few months later. At the time, Ezzati “urged that those molested by priests don’t look at the past [but] look forward and trust the Church.” Ezzati made this comment at the dedication of a new church in the Chilean diocese “where the current bishop, Tomislav Koljatic, also covered up sexual abuse as he directly witnessed the abuse that Fr. Fernando Karadima perpetrated on his victims. Yet, he is still there with no consequences.”

Bishops Horacio Valenzuela and Andrés Arteaga also covered up for Karadima.

There are political issues which also make Karadima the “worst scandal” of the Chilean Catholic Church. Power is the “true point of the case. The abuses were not possible without a network of political, social and religious power working for 50 years,” political analyst Ascanio Cavallo stated.

Karadima’s legal defense team has familial and group ties to “Comando Rolando Matus,” a paramilitary organization. It played a key role in the destabilization of the country during Pres. Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected, leftist government before he was overthrown in a military coup by the Church-supported dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

According to James Hamilton, a claimant against Karadima, the priest protected and hid a defense attorney’s brother, Juan Luis Bulnes Cerda, who was wanted by the Chilean police after being sentenced for the assassination of an Allende supporter.

Other Karadima lawyers, Luis Arévalo and Luis Ortiz Quiroga, also worked for Colonia Dignidad, a remote commune where, “for over 30 years, countless boys were raped and forced to labor.” It was founded by Paul Schäfer, a convicted pedophile, who fled West Germany to Chile. “Schäfer brutally suppressed and controlled his followers, using means including brainwashing, draconian punishments and enforcing a vow of secrecy.” Pinochet “used the German commune as a torture camp, and hid weapons and poison gas on the premises.” Colonia Dignidad ended along with the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990.

Cardinal Errázuriz is an outspoken supporter of Pinochet who killed, tortured or imprisoned over 40,000 for political reasons. “When Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, on orders of a magistrate judge in Madrid investigating atrocities against Spanish citizens during the Chilean dictatorship, Errázuriz denounced the move. He later criticized human rights lawsuits in Chile against Pinochet and other officials of the former regime, saying, ‘Excessive justice could be detrimental to reconciliation and social peace.’"

Errázuriz is also an opponent of liberation theology as is Pope Francis. In 2015, students at the Catholic University of Santiago staged a demonstration against Cardinal Ezzati, over the dismissal of a prominent liberation theologian.

Other Chilean sexual predators in the news  

 Just before Pope Francis elevated Ezzati to cardinal, victims of Fr. Rimsky Rojas “accused Ezzati of obstruction of justice. One of Rojas' reported victims was a young man who disappeared after making the accusations and has never been found.”

Fr. Cristián Precht was condemned by the Vatican in 2012.  “The judicial vicar brought the results of the investigation to Ezzati … the cases of four abused children and at least 11 adults exposed.” The judicial vicar recommended a life of penance with a "perpetual prohibition to exercise the priesthood.” Ezzati reduced Precht’s suspension to only five years.

Fr. John O'Reilly “was once an influential figure in Chile as the local head of the Catholic Church’s ultra-conservative Legion of Christ order.” O’Reilly was sentenced to four years’ probation in 2014 for repeatedly molesting a girl from the time she was five. “The abuse took place from 2010 to 2012 at an exclusive school where O’Reilly was the spiritual advisor at the time.”

Consequences for the Church

The number of Catholics in Chile fell from 76% in 1970 to 64% in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. Catholics are now down to 58% as noted in a January 2017 article in U.S. News and World Reports.

“Polls show that 10 years ago, 44% of Chileans trusted the Catholic Church, whereas only 22% currently do,” explained Francisca Alessandri, a researcher at the Center of Public Policies. “The Catholic elite's power took a strong blow the past decade when several sex abuse cases by high profile priests came to light,” wrote Daniela Mohor, a freelance journalist based in Santiago in the same article.

"The Catholic Church and conservative organizations had many economic and political resources at their disposal, such as universities, think tanks, media ownership, and used them to promote a very conservative family and sexuality agenda," stated Merike Blofield, associate professor of political science and author of "The Politics of Moral Sin: Abortion and Divorce in Spain, Argentina and Chile." “But today, they no longer represent the opinion of most Chileans. The consolidation of democracy, economic growth, globalization, along with the decline of religion and the surge of politically active youth are key factors in the country's transition toward a more progressive society, experts say,” Blofield said.

Women and LGBTQ Human Rights

In 2015, Chile recognized civil unions for same-sex couples. “Marriage provides rights that civil unions do not, so there exists an institutional discrimination backed by the Chilean state,” stated Oscar Rementaría, official spokesperson for Homosexual Movement of Integration and Liberation (MOVILH).

Fifty six percent of Chileans said they are in favor of gay marriage.  Activist leader Ramón Gómez suggests that the cultural change “is closely related to the loss of credibility of religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church.”

Although, “out of the eight candidates running, Sebastián Piñera was one of only two candidates in the race opposed to marriage equality,” the conservative billionaire won the Dec. 17 presidential election.

Pinera graduated from an all-boys private Catholic high school and studied at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, receiving an undergraduate degree in Business and Administration. He was previously president from 2010 to 2014, the country’s only conservative president since the end of Pinochet’s rule in 1990.

This past August, Chile’s legislature voted to approve a bill lifting the country’s total ban on abortion and will allow abortion in three specific cases: a threat to the mother's life, an unviable fetus or rape. The bill was supported by 72 percent of Chileans.  The measure was “furiously resisted by the right … Some of Piñera's backers said they want to reverse that decision."

The Catholic bishops said the bill “offends the conscience and the common good of the citizens.” Pope Francis has called abortion a “grave sin,” a “horrendous crime," and - even to save the life of the mother - it’s “what the Mafia does – choose one life over another.”

In September, Cardinal Ezzati condemned both abortion and gay marriage. Referring to same-sex marriage, he said the Church teaches that spouses, “male and female, in transmitting human life, have a special participation in God’s own creative work.”

Pope Francis has referred to same-sex marriage as an “anthropological regression,” “disfiguring God’s plan for creation” that will “destroy the family.” The pope stated, “We must reaffirm the right of children to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”

In May, the Chilean Education Ministry “issued a directive urging schools nationwide to protect the sexual orientation and gender identity of student .... The country's Catholic schools association has promised to resist the measure. More broadly, the government is backing a bill that would give adults the right to change the official records of their gender, though the measure has stalled in Congress, facing challenges from the Roman Catholic Church  .... Catholic leaders argue that such moves undermine families and society.”

In 2016, Pope Francis said “We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God. Today, in schools they are teaching this to children – to children! – that everyone can choose their gender.” This is “the epoch of sin against God the Creator.” A year earlier, he compared transgender persons with nuclear weapons because both “do not recognize the order of creation.”

PERU

Pope Francis’ Jan. 18 – 21 visit to Peru will be more sanguine. Peru has had a less dramatic loss in the number of Catholics – from 95% in 1970 to 76% in 2014 - than Chile, although Peru has had two cases of sexual predators directly protected by Pope Francis.

Luis Fernando Figari

During his time in Chile and Peru, “I assume that Pope Francis will avoid [the victims of sex abuse] even if charity requires an encounter with those people betrayed by the Catholic Church," stated Peruvian journalist Pedro Salinas. “In view of the gravity of the cases in Chile and Peru, by Fernando Karadima and the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, Luis Fernando Figari, respectively, there arises the need for the head of the Catholic Church to have a space in his agenda to meet with those affected,” Salinas said.

“Here there are people who have suffered a lot, people who have committed suicide. The Church is so slow to recognize these things and expects people to die, get bored or commit suicide, and we have seen piles of such cases. That can not be and that the pope ignores that seems to me a terrible shame," declared Salinas, a former member of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae  (SCV) where he suffered various types of abuse.

Like Karadima in Chile, the case against Figari also “generated a strong media impact in Peruvian society.”

Figari founded the SCV in 1971 as a lay community in Peru opposed to liberation theology. The Sodalitium was granted the official status of a religious order but one whose members do not take religious vows. “Members include businessmen, writers and politicians from Lima’s upper classes.”

Figari stepped down as superior general in 2010 following allegations of abuse.

The Sodalitium asked the Vatican to investigate in 2011. Nothing was done until Salinas’ 2015 co-authored book, Half Monks, Half Soldiers, was published. “The book described Figari as a cult-like leader who raped and molested vulnerable boys and young men in the group. He also regularly committed physical and psychological abuse to exert control over his followers, the authors wrote.”

A Vatican commission was formed in November 2015 at the request of the SCV.

When Figari resigned in 2010, he went to live in an SCV house in Rome and immigration records show that he visited Peru regularly through late 2015.

In December 2016, during a private audience with Pope Francis, SCV leaders asked the pope to decree Figari’s “immediate separation from our community” and order him to leave the community’s house. Instead, the Vatican commission declined the SCV’s request to expel him outright because his crimes took place “in the very distant past,” as founder he was “the mediator of a charisma of divine origin” and cited his age and poor health. Therefore, no punishment was pronounced against him.

Figari's victims doubted the independence of the papal investigation – and SCV leaders charged that their request for expulsion was denied – because Cardinal Errázuriz, Figari’s “old friend,” interceded on his behalf with Pope Francis. Errázuriz had invited Figari to found a SCV chapter in Chile and had met with Figari in Rome where he still lives.

"Francis is not part of the solution, but of the problem. His 'zero tolerance' protocol is a farce, a lie the size of the cathedral of Guadalupe,” stated Salinas.

Bishop Gabino Miranda Melgarejo

Pope Francis sent a confidential letter to the bishops in Peru on May 24, 2013, dismissing Miranda, a bishop in Ayacucho, a poor Andean region. Although the pope had sufficient cause to remove Miranda, he did not inform the public or civil officials.

Diego Garcia Sayan, president of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, wrote in the Sept. 19, 2013, La Republica newspaper “what had been said in Church circles for at least a month,” that Miranda had been dismissed by the pope for accusations of sexually abusing children. “No official information [from the Church] is available,” however, it is “essential to confirm or disprove what is an open secret,” Sayan wrote. He called for “immediate action by the attorney general” if the allegations were true.

The next day, it was reported that the attorney general's office said that it was investigating Miranda and would announce its actions soon.

On Sept. 22, La Republica’s correspondent in Ayacucho noted that the archbishop of the archdiocese and president of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference, Salvador Piñeiro, had announced in August to other Peruvian hierarchs that Miranda was dismissed and laicized based on evidence and testimony of the victims and their families. The government prosecutor, Garry Chavez Valdivia, questioned why, having heard the case, the national Church hierarchy had not contacted the civil authority.

The same day, Lima Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani “minimized” the accusations of child sex abuse against Miranda and blamed the scandal on the media. Cipriani said the "organized campaign" began with Sayán’s Sept. 19 report in La República.

Cipriani met with Pope Francis on Sept. 24 “for more than an hour” but said that Miranda was not discussed.

Also on Sept. 24, the prosecutor Chavez told La Republica that he asked Archbishop Piñeiro, Cardinal Cipriani and the papal nuncio for copies of the records upon which the pope based his decision to remove Miranda. According to Chavez, Miranda had left the second week in August and his whereabouts were unknown.

The next month, Chavez said the documents delivered by Pineira "did not have enough elements or evidence” to prosecute Miranda. Pineira explained that he had no further details since “the trial of the former Ayacucho bishop was carried out secretly in the Holy See.” The Vatican never forwarded their records.

Peruvian Bishop Javier del Rio Alba said at the time that scandals involving Miranda and Bishop Guillermo Abanto Guzman were causing Catholics to leave the Church. (In July 2013, Abanto had been warned by a court to recognize his two-year-old daughter.)  "Those people who have weak faith are scandalized and lose faith in the Church. These sins are very serious … It was a very hard blow for the Church," said del Rio Alba.

A current case of sexual abuse also involves Archbishop Salvador Piñeiro and the Ayacucho archdiocese.

An 18-year-old girl who wishes to remain anonymous accused Fr. Félix Pariona of sexual abuse, including rape, when she was between 15 and 17 years old. She and her parents reported the crime to the archbishop in February 2017.  He promised in writing that he would take measures against the priest.

When nothing happened, the family reported Pariona to the Public Ministry of the Huamanga province. In response to a filed complaint, the Superior Prosecutor’s office of Ayacucho, the provincial capital, decided to expand the investigation on Sept. 11. The case was reopened by the Superior Prosecutor’s office of Ayacucho on Nov. 7. The girl's defense attorney said if the results are negative, he will make a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Archbishop Piñeiro issued a statement blaming La República for “confusing the Catholic community” and that Pariona was a victim of “defamation.”

Women and LGBTQ Human Rights

From the Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 Peru: Women’s Rights

Women and girls in Peru remain at high risk of gender-based violence. More than 700 women have been killed in Peru in “femicides” (the killing of a woman in certain contexts, including domestic violence and gender-based discrimination) between 2009 and August 2015, according to official statistics.

.... In August 2016, thousands demonstrated in Lima and other cities calling on authorities to do more to curb gender-based violence.

[Abortion] is illegal in Peru, even in cases of rape, with the only exception being danger to a mother’s life … In July 2014, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women asked Peru to decriminalize abortion when pregnancy was the result of rape and severe fetal impairment [but that has not yet happened].

Despite the [law approving therapeutic abortion], there are still serious obstacles to its implementation in public and private health services … In this sense, it is worrying that, despite being a right of women, hospitals and clinics are still reluctant to adequately inform patients, causing irreparable damage,” stated Fiorella Zárate, Lawyer, Center for the Promotion and Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights.

From the Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 Peru: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

In March 2015, Congress rejected a bill to recognize civil unions for same-sex couples. In September 2016, a Congressional supporter of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced that he would introduce a new legislative proposal to recognize same-sex civil unions ….

People in Peru are required to appear before a judge in order to revise the gender noted on their identification documents. In an August 2016 report, the human rights ombudsman noted that courts had rejected most of these requests, often applying inconsistent criteria.

“This staunchly conservative, Catholic nation is in the middle of a fight about its moral core,” wrote ex-pat, Maria Murriel, in January 2017. Murriel thinks that the women’s demonstration in August 2016 and “the driving efforts toward civil unions or gender equality in classrooms … signal a shift in the political and social climate of the country. The machismo that drives so much of our social norms is meeting its match.”

“There is hope for change. More Peruvian politicians are slowly coming out to support the LGBT community. The Civil Union bill was reintroduced into Congress in late November 2016 with strong backing from President Kuczynski [elected earlier that year.] Then in January 2017, the same president issued a decree prohibiting all forms of discrimination and hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Very slowly, Peru is evolving and getting ready to take her place in the pink limelight,” according to a November article about gay life in Peru.

All reproductive rights for women and equal rights for LGBTQ persons are opposed by the Catholic Church under the guidance of Pope Francis.

Regardless of his support for same-sex civil unions, Kuczynski “consecrated the country, his family and himself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary” at the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. “Participating in the event were important business and political leaders in the country.” This is the first time since the prayer breakfasts began 21 years ago that a president attended.

Regarding the pope’s visit to Peru, "This is going to mark a before and after, before agitation, then morality and tranquility, and that is why this visit is so important," Kuczynski said in an appearance with the cardinal archbishop of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani. "I am absolutely sure that this visit will be an immense success."

On Sept. 22, Kuczynski met with Pope Francis in the Vatican.

“In a Nov. 24 statement, Peru’s Department of Education announced that a 2009 version of the National Curriculum will be reimplemented in Peruvian schools. The former curriculum does not include the gender ideology concepts addressed in the 2016 version.” ("Gender ideology is a snarl word and straw man argument used in Catholicism, clerics or laypeople from other denominations or those unaffiliated with any religion to refer to transgenderism and gender identity/expression.")

The 2017 National Curriculum approved by the Department of Education in late 2016, was opposed by Peru’s bishops for including “concepts which do not proceed from the Constitution, but rather are taken from so-called gender ideology. Pope Francis has warned that gender ideology denies the difference and the natural reciprocity of man and woman,” the bishops stated.

Both countries share a strong presence of Opus Dei among the elite.

Opus Dei is, at the top, a secret society of international bankers, financiers, businessmen and their supporters. (Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei).Their goal is the same as other plutocrats – unbridled power – except they use the Catholic Church and its worldwide network of institutions to advance their right-wing politics. “What gives Opus Dei its importance is the influence it wields and also that it deploys its immense financial resources … Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world,” Javier Sainz Moreno, law professor at Madrid University, told Hutchison.

In his introduction Hutchison wrote: “While conducting research for this book, I quickly found myself wandering through a world of deceit and dissimulation, crowded with holy manipulators and regulated by unscrupulous interests.”

According to their website, Opus Dei has around 90,000 members; 98% are laypeople, 2% are priests. They are currently established in 66 countries, including Russia.

"Opus Dei’s free reign within the Catholic Church began after it helped install Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II."

"Of all the groups that were engaged in the U.S.-sponsored campaign against liberation theology, none has played a more significant role than Opus Dei." Liberation theology clergy and hierarchs had “called upon the church to ‘defend the rights of the oppressed’ and recognize a ‘preferential option for the poor’ in the struggle for social justice.”

In Chile, “Opus Dei elicited support from Chilean bishops for the overthrow of President Salvador Allende and worked closely with CIA-funded organizations such as the Fatherland and Liberty goon squads, which subsequently merged with DINA, the dreaded Chilean secret police. In 1971, the CIA began financing the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS), which has been described as an Opus Dei think tank. Its members include lawyers, free-market economists and executives from influential publications…After the coup, a number of IGS technocrats became cabinet members and advisers to the Pinochet junta.”

In The Empire of Opus Dei in Chile (2003) Maria Olivia Monckeberg provides details of “a silent expansion” of Opus Dei since the 1960s “by creating colleges and societies and acquiring properties.” The University of the Andes is “its main project” and Banco Santander “its best bank.”

After Pope Francis was elected, “Grupo Santander, owned by the Botin family (Opus Dei), began preparing training courses” for Vatican staff. The financial giant “will have a presence that is going to mean a new leading role of Santander in the Vatican,” wrote Vatican reporter, Andrea Gagliarducci.

Pope Francis appointed Mauricio Larrain, director of a Santander Bank Group and general director of Opus Dei’s ESE Business School at the University of the Andes, as a member of the Vatican Bank’s Board of Superintendence. (See “Santander tops consumer complaints in Brazil”)

Pope Francis also appointed Peter Sutherland as one of his financial advisers. Sutherland is managing director and chairman of Goldman Sachs International, former chairman of BP Oil, “world trade tsar,” and a member of the International Advisory Board of IESE, Opus Dei’s flagship business school.

Another financial adviser appointed by this pope, George Yeo, was Singapore’s Foreign Minister and Minister of Finance, a brigadier-general in the Singapore Armed Forces and is also a member of the International Advisory Board of IESE.

When Chilean Pres. Michelle Bachelet appointed Mario Fernández Baeza, a member of Opus Dei, as Interior Minister in 2016, Monckeberg decided to update the 2003 version of her book because, although the number of Chileans who profess to be Catholic has dropped significantly, “the weight of Opus Dei continues to increase” among “the elite and wealthy families.”

Monckeberg states that the Legion of Christ, “of Mexican origin and of recent incursion in the country…competes in notoriety and in the elite social group” with Opus Dei.

Peru is another country “where Opus Dei has a strong foothold,”  noted journalist Laura Grados in her investigative series on Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, the head of Opus Dei in Peru.

“In Latin America, Opus Dei was consolidated under the protection of Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina and Fujimori in Peru. In this last country, Cardinal Cipriani, a member of Opus Dei, was directly involved in the dirty business of Fujimori [president 1990 - 2000] and his lieutenant Vladimiro Montesinos, both convicted of corruption and other crimes,” wrote sociologist Marco Burgos

“In a landmark trial, Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for killings and ‘disappearances’ committed in 1991 and 1992 … Fujimori’s intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, three former army generals, and members of the Colina group, a government death squad, are also serving sentences ranging from 15 to 25 years for the 1991 assassination of 15 people and the ‘disappearances’ of six.”

This Christmas, Lima police “fired tear gas and clashed with thousands of protesters” demonstrating against Pres. Kuczynski’s Christmas eve pardon of Fujimori on health grounds. Protestors called for Kucynski to leave office because they saw the pardon as a reward to legislators who recently helped the president avoid impeachment. Kuczynski, a former Wall Street Banker, was accused of lying to cover up $5 million in payments received from disgraced Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.

The Archdiocese of Lima, under Cipriani’s leadership, became an investor in the stocks of one of the most controversial mining companies which sparked the mobilization of large-scale environmental social movement in the country … Cipriani’s “personal investments are tied with one of the country’s largest construction companies,” wrote Grados.

"Cardinal Cirpriani has always sided with businesses and the government in office,” said Director of Noticias SER, Javier Torres Seoane. ‘We have never heard him defending a community that is confronting a mine or a company for pollution. His voice is not on the side of indigenous peoples or farming communities.’ [Cipriani] has a record of condemning LGBT, women and environmental activists.”

Pope Francis appointed Cipriani as a member of his Council of the Economy.

Vatican Bank president, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, admitted in May 2016 that the bank held investments in fossil fuel companies.

Cipriani met with Pope Francis on Dec. 5 to discuss his trip to Peru. While the pope “will encounter a lively faith” in both countries, “Peru in particular maintains a staunchly Christian culture where traditional values on marriage and family issues specifically are widely upheld.”

Opus Dei is “devoted to promoting, as public policy, the Vatican's inflexibly traditionalist approach to women, sexuality and reproductive health. Opus Dei pursues the Vatican's agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical, and grassroots pursuits. Its constant effort to increase its presence in civil institutions of power is supported by growth in the organization as a whole. [T]heir work in the public sphere breaches the church-state division that is fundamental to modern democracy,” wrote Gordon Urquhart, author of  The Pope’s Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysterious and Powerful New Sects in the Church.

When the Irish government was “under intense pressure to introduce legislation that would allow for abortions when a woman's life is at risk” in 2013, the “secret ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei mobilized within the Irish professions to stop the republic reforming its abortion laws,” one of the country's most prominent doctors noted. John Crown, a leading cancer specialist and member of parliament, said he believed Opus Dei was "a major player" in “trying to exercise influence on the medical profession and politicians to prevent limited abortion.”

“Opus Dei has the money and the discipline to organize PR campaigns efficiently,” wrote Damian Thompson, editorial director of the Catholic Herald.

Opus Dei “is an organization that can turn out 100,000 people in St. Peter's Square to cheer the pope and his policies, and it has these people all over the world,'' said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center in Washington.

In March 2016, “Lima closed two of its main avenues to accommodate tens of thousands of demonstrators in the annual March for Life protest.” A rally was held “featuring live music and guest speakers including Lima archbishop Juan Cipriani.” “The size and scale of the annual march illustrates the influence of the Catholic Church in this deeply conservative country.”

In March 2017, “1.5 million Peruvians in 26 cities protested a new national school curriculum that seeks to impose ‘gender ideology’ on students.”

“Above all, Peru will greet the pope with ‘great joy, with a lot of noise, with the streets full,’ Cipriani said, adding that the pope ‘is going to have a great time.’”

 

(Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America.)

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"We don't look backwards, we look forward." —President Obama

6:01 PM - 25 Oct 2012

and on facebook at the same time in 2012. This was before the election...

Barack Obama
Like This Page · October 26, 2012 ·

"We don't look backwards, we look forward." —President Obama, wrapping up his 8-state, 48-hour trip in Cleveland yesterday. Catch up on the whole thing here: http://OFA.BO/FgeJtQ

I well recall Pelosi saying impeachment was off the table after the democratic house landslide in 2006. I was searching for times she said something like this and found some close things and then I went to her wikipedia page. I had the sense that a lot of it was written by right wingers. Here is the last part

Wealth Redistribution
On Oct. 18th, 2010, Pelosi spoke in front of the United Steelworkers' Union. She addressed jobs and the middle class in America. She spoke on the subject of income disparity concerning wages, equity and fairness. Pelosi railed against the wealthy and income inequality in America.

From The Blaze:

We’re talking about addressing the disparity in our country of income, where the wealthy people continue to get wealthier, and some other people are falling out of the middle class when we want to bring many more people into the middle class. But that disparity is not just about wages alone. That disparity is about ownership and equity. It’s all about fairness in our country.

This is a Marxist ideal of collectivism - a redistribution of wealth for all but the very elite. It goes beyond wages and directly addresses all ownership of land and assets. Communism in 'fairness' clothing. This won't create a broad middle class, it will create a broad lower class and a very elite class of the wealthy and powerful

Thom Hartmann recounted a trip years ago to DC and went into the basement of a powerful group and had a bunch of people on terminals. He was told that they were editing wikipedia pages.

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@DonMidwest
"to put the torture behind us is, inevitably, to put it in front of us."

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

I always promoted your articles on DK and there will be a more friendly audience at this site.

While this piece focuses on the Roman Catholic church, the engagement with the plutocrats of the world makes this an important pressure point to put pressure on the 1% who run the world.

Christianity and more generally, religion, is a point that publics can be generated to press for change.

I well recall the general terms, but not the details, or your earlier articles of financial corruption in the church. This is touched on in this article, but not the main focus.

I was going to go to Chile in the Peace Corps. I was a young radical just off a MA from Berkeley in Math and this was a way to avoid the draft. I organized an uprising in our training session because I found out that the Peace Corps presence in Chile was the largest in the world because they wanted to block the election of Allende. He was elected and the CIA helped the coup that murdered him and put in a dictator for the next 30 years or so. My language skills, in any language, especially foreign languages led to being kicked out of the Peace Corps.

Sorry to see who they elected president.

Chile has been through enough struggles that the protest of the Pope should go well.

Has Chile purchased new crowd control mechanisms?

The Anti-Protest Gear That Despots Love

A moving wall that rolls down the street and behind are water cannons which can also add chemicals and launch tear gas.

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@DonMidwest when it comes to the institution of the RCC and all its corruptions. MSM is now useless when it comes to the continuing sagas of protection of pedophilia by priests, the treatment of women and LGBTQ peoples all over the world. That Daily Kos cut off Betty is a testament to its being a site that cares little in reality about women's issues and protections for true human rights. It also illustrates the fact that DKos and its staff holds little value for well sourced writing. I am also glad she is here!

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Bollox Ref's picture

@Fishtroller 02

and barely agnostic, why would a seeming expert as the author above be banned at Orange Dead State?

I should note though that I was very glad that the awful toad known as John Nienstedt was removed from the archdiocese of St. Paul/Minn. Dreadful, unfeeling individual.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

@Bollox Ref Why was I banned from DKos? As a devout Catholic, I was sickened in 2004 by the US bishops attacks against John Kerry and in favor of the war criminal. So I decided to write a book about the alliance between the Church and the neocons i.e. the Religious Right. I was also sickened by the continuing sex abuse scandals, so by blogging, I continued to write about the deep corruption in the Catholic Church and the continuing alliance with the GOP. When Benedict was pope, some of my diaries received more than 200 "recs." But DKos followed the for-profit MSM in glorifying the current wolf in sheep's clothing. Although I wrote about the same corruption in the current pontificate as in the last, I was deemed "anti-Catholic" and banned.
While the "kossacks" turned against me for telling them there is no Santa Claus, Fishtroller and DonMidwest were about the only two who supported my work. I am deeply grateful for their support and it was Fishtroller who advised me of this (may the atheists and agnostics pardon the expression) blessed website.
Note to DonMidwest. That is a chilling account of how the Peace Corps was subverted for political purposes. Thanks for sharing.

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Betty Clermont

@Betty Clermont I don't know how much weight in the cosmos is given to pardons by atheists, so consider it a New Year's gift from me.... (just kidding.... please keep writing!)

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Betty Clermont I was just off a MA in Math from Berkeley and in the Peace Corps to avoid the draft. The training site was an old agricultural site in the area of the posh Palos Verdes in Southern California. I was from Long Beach so I could go home on several of the weekends.

We were a special group slated to work with Universities in Chile. All had MA and Ph.D.'s except for a couple of others like an excellent auto mechanic.

The training involved 7 hours per day of Spanish. The classes were run by UCLA with a professor and graduate students. With classes of around 5 people and an audio lingual rather than text approach, may have been 7, but in any case, they got around to people very quickly. It drove me nuts. I couldn't do it. Later I realized that I had 5 major language problems. Hearing and reciting the speech. Spelling. Syllables. Vocabulary ( used to joke to myself, give me an option of memorizing these words or death. My response would have been to just go ahead and shoot now). The other language issued I had was interrupted speech. They wanted us to speak smoothly but I could not at the time even do it in English.

With the small classes, there was no diagnosis of my speech problems. I had at the time a copy of Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar (which ended up in my trunk and went to Chile never to be seen again.) Chomsky's thesis was that language was like algebra. Get a few words and grammar rules and generate everything in the language. That was the dominant ideology in the audio lingual language approch and it drove me nuts. I couldn't do it.

To make matters worse, I had taken an entrance exam which I later found out included a non verbal IQ test. I recall being told that I was so smart that I must be faking it by not learning Spanish. It was not until decades later in the office of my son's psychologist that I read an article about language problems related to phoneme processing. There are 46 phonemes (sounds) and 26 letters in English and that probably was related to my language issues. I have never had a diagnosis for this because it didn't fall in the category of medical or psychological treatments and thus was not covered by insurance.

I have gone on too long but have to add one more thing that I had to deal with. To get a Ph D in Math at Arizona State, I had to pass 2 foreign language exams. Horrors. What I had to go through was to read the history of the development of the languages and Otto Jesperson's history of the English language which was the top book on the topic at the time. I had to spend hours and hours with the single volume Oxford Etymological dictionary. For me to congregate a verb, I had to read about the history of the language and create a wider frame to be able to hold facts.

In any case, my Spanish problems made the entire time of the 10 week training a trial.

There was extensive cross cultural work with a noted Anthropologist from UCLA. I enjoyed those sessions.

But the real insight came 2 weeks before the final 2 weeks in So. CA., which were later followed by 2 weeks in Mexico City to get the final Spanish language tune up to take the FSI language test which I failed, but at a level that a couple of others were allowed to go to Chile.

In those last 2 weeks in the US I went back to Berkeley to visit my girlfriend and other friends. On Telegraph avenue I met a man with a box of books that he had been trying to sell at Mo's books. I stated talking to him. Well, he was just back from resigning from Peace Corps in Chile. He had grown up in Latin America as his dad worked for Coca Cola and he had a perfect score of 5 on the FSI. He said rather than usual Peace Corps volunteers who could be sent out into the county who would take the first year just getting into the culture and not realizing what was going on, he knew too much so they gave him the job of a typist in Valdivia a southern city in Chili, heading to the South Pole and a region that had 7 ft of rainfall per year. His girl friend had also been sent to a regular job for the Peace Corps in Chile. He learned that there were more Peace Core volunteers in Chile at the time than any other county and the reason was that they were trying to keep the country from going to the left. This was the summer of 1967.

Well, as a Berkeley radical I came back to the training camp and for the last 2 weeks questioned people about what was going on in the Chile effort. They were not happy about my activities to organize within the training center.

Some of my friends from the training camp wrote to the head of the peace corps asking that I be reinstated. The head responded with the reasons I had been let go: 1. Lack of tack. 2. Inability to work within an organized structure. 3. Improper motivation in learning Spanish.

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@Bollox Ref There is a group working behind the scenes at DKos who curry favor with some in the administration. One of them is a female Episcopal priest named "Wee Mama". Despite her veneer of being a benign big hearted open liberal (with an atheist husband no less), she is easily rankled by challenges to religious ideas and claims. And for some reason she is a defender of the RCC and even with evidence of horrible treatment of women and continued preying on children and covering it up, she can't get herself to let go of her defensive feelings. Since she is a behind the scenes purge organizer, along with a staunch catholic member who can't abide any criticism of the church or religious ideas, there was a movement to push Betty off. You could see this coming as the comments under her diaries became more and more hostile. While I don't think Kos is particularly religious, he loves people who fawn over him and defend the site with vigor. People like Wee Mama are very valuable PR faces for DKos and so I think the administration made a choice. And it wasn't Betty.
That's just my two cents about the issue.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02 Chris Hedges book "The Death of the Liberal Class" was helpful to open my eyes about liberals.

A week after Obama's election to a second term in 2012, he wrote an article "Once Again -- Death Of The Liberal Class" which I immediately published on DK. They were none too happy about that.

Chris starts right off and I put at least the first two paragraphs in my post

The presidential election exposed the liberal class as a corpse. It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved into an instrument of personal vanity, burnishing the hollow morality of its adherents. Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves — the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. The liberal class clung desperately during the long nightmare of this political campaign to one or two issues, such as protecting a woman’s right to choose and gender equality, to justify its complicity in a monstrous evil. This moral fragmentation — using an isolated act of justice to define one’s self while ignoring the vast corporate assault on the nation and the ecosystem along with the pre-emptive violence of the imperial state — is moral and political capitulation. It fails to confront the evil we have become.

“The American Dream has run out of gas,” wrote the novelist J.G. Ballard. “The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now. …”

Liberals have assured us that after the election they will build a movement to hold the president accountable — although how or when or what this movement will look like they cannot say. They didn’t hold him accountable during his first term. They won’t during his second. They have played their appointed roles in the bankrupt political theater that passes for electoral politics. They have wrung their hands, sung like a Greek chorus about the evils of the perfidious opponent, assured us that there is no other viable option, and now they will exit the stage. They will carp and whine in the wings until they are trotted out again to assume their role in the next political propaganda campaign of disempowerment and fear. They will, in the meantime, become the butt of ridicule and derision by the very politicians they supported.

Once Again -- Death of the Liberal Class

As I recall the biggest zap I got at DK was when I published a diary about Obama's trip to Afghanistan. He flew in at night and left before dawn. He had to sneak in and out of the country. I pointed out that after years of war in Iraq we have not been able to secure the highway between the airport and Baghdad so our vaunted "security" promises were a fraud. I got something like 22 zaps and was put on notice for some time and my 5 star trusted user declined.

They did train me to tone down my language.

Which was was good in a way. It forced me to be aware of the context and how far I could push things.

So for a while some of the bigger jerks on DK were after me. I do still go there on occasion just to see what they are doing. They continue to be on the story: Russia, Russia, Russia without not noticing that it is a diversion from "the better" in "more and better democratic establishment"

Just this morning, the main stream, somewhat conservative law professor published, Jonathan Turley, a column in The Hill that the Russian hacking the election has not yet got traction. Sure there was corruption with the wealthy around Trump like the Curia that Betty writes about, but the election hack has yet to be proven.

Just this morning this came up

Ohio's move to purge inactive voters goes to court

Oh that reminds me that another area I got a push back was Fitrakis and Wasserman's work on election integrity that I posted on DK. Both were directly banned from further publishing on DK by Kos himself, the self elected political genius.

The election integrity is a criminal effort by the parties to maintain control. And now that the court system has already, or will be in the near future, totally corrupt, not clear that there will be the necessary improvements.

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@DonMidwest and follow the information that is out there about the whole Russia! Russia! nonsense, you realize that DKos has become a CiA mouthpiece, along with the Washington Post and probably the New York Times, and most likely poor Rachel Maddow, who is a shadow of what she started out to be.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

WaterLily's picture

@Fishtroller 02 @Fishtroller 02 Can't put my finger on the source right now. But it's not surprising in the least that his site licks their boots.

Betty, welcome. Good to see you. And you, too, DonMidwest!

(Edit: I hadn't read all the way through the comments to see yours, below, which corroborates).

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@WaterLily It's well documented. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb8E_2p3nDw

He didn't follow through because of 1- Howard Dean and 2- He didn't want to work in DC. And he is telling us that the CIA is a real liberal organization, except for well, yeah, they do have those little dirty ops things going on.....

Listen to this interview. It tells you a lot of how shallow and uninformed this man is.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02 Thanks so much, Fishtroller, for your explanation about "wee mama." I could never understand until now why I was banned without anyone providing even single quote from any of my diaries which was either "anti-Catholic" or untrue. The RCC under this pope's leadership is working globally not only against children but also against women's and LGBTQ human rights. The institution remains in alliance with right-wing politicos and activists including the Trump administration' attack's against justice for these groups, education, health, welfare etc. And the RCC remains dependent on continued funding from the global 1%.
More importantly, Dkos' persecution of Bernie supporters et al revealed a rot at the core of this once influential website.

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Betty Clermont

@Betty Clermont and I can promise you that Timaeus was also instrumental in assuring your banning. I am timed out until next October. The message I received was a laundry list of accusations and when I asked on the Help Desk for them to be evidenced, I got nothing. I had been commenting and arguing about this issue of trusting the CIA in terms of giving us truthful analysis of the Russian issue and that is what I think got me in trouble. Kos trained at the CIA. I also linked to a Caitlin Johnstone op-ed and she is considered poison on DKos. Why I wasn't banned is still a mystery to me. I have not signed an acknowledgment of their message which remains highlighted in yellow on the top or each page each time I visit the site. I want to remind myself of that nasty spirit of McCarthy-like oppression of thought and opinion that Daily Kos has become.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Wink's picture

be taken down, @DonMidwest , the same way the farm boys of Lexington and Concord survived to fight another day back in 1775: Hit and Run. As expected, this "revolution" going to get bloody. But moving walls won't bring it down.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Alligator Ed's picture

Opus Dei is, at the top, a secret society of international bankers, financiers, businessmen and their supporters. (Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei).Their goal is the same as other plutocrats – unbridled power – except they use the Catholic Church and its worldwide network of institutions to advance their right-wing politics. “What gives Opus Dei its importance is the influence it wields and also that it deploys its immense financial resources … Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world,” Javier Sainz Moreno, law professor at Madrid University, told Hutchison.

In his introduction Hutchison wrote: “While conducting research for this book, I quickly found myself wandering through a world of deceit and dissimulation, crowded with holy manipulators and regulated by unscrupulous interests.”

According to their website, Opus Dei has around 90,000 members; 98% are laypeople, 2% are priests. They are currently established in 66 countries, including Russia.

"Opus Dei’s free reign within the Catholic Church began after it helped install Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II."

The merger of church and plutocracy is tantamount to the merger of church and state in a globalistic duopoly. Not matter one's religion, this is a development to be opposed.

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@Alligator Ed Boyle was a scientist
Hobbs was a political scientist

well, actually both were both

From wikipedia

Robert William Boyle FRS[5] (25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish[6] natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. He is best known for Boyle's law,[7] which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.[8] Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his writings in theology.[9][10][11][12]

I am surprised that this mentions his work in theology. With a background in science, and living in a country with the separation of church and state, I would not have known this or looked for it. But the term "natural philosophy" at the start of the summary was a sufficient clue.

Again from wikipedia

Thomas Hobbes (/hɒbz/; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury,[a] was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy.[1][2] Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy.[3] In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.

Though on rational grounds a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law that leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.[4] His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.

Note that both are considered philosophers which is much broader than academic philosophy has been in the last hundred years or so. There has been little work on Boyle's religious writings or Hobbs's scientific writings.

From Bruno Latour, and others, I have realized that by the middle of the 1600's, especially after the 30 years war(1618 - 1648), people were up in arms against this crap. 1/3 of the population in Germany was killed. They wanted a control system. The three pillars were: the state, rationality (science) and secularism. As Bruno has pointed out, secularism has never worked and we see that today with the fundamentalists in their "Quest for Certainty" (title of a 1929 book by John Dewey)

Here is my point. Both men were in science and politics.

This is why I wrote this comment

And Bruno Latour, pointed out, that for both of them, the most important issue for both of them, by far the most important issue was religion.

The Enlightenment was thought to have crushed religion. Well, .....

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Alligator Ed's picture

@DonMidwest Your comment makes a lot of sense, about the combination of theology and political "science".

The Enlightenment was thought to have crushed religion.

Here is the crux. I will totally agree with the implications of your comment if we change the word "theology" to "morality and ethics". Religion inevitably gets organized hierarchically. Perhaps the Buddhists are the least hierarchical, or maybe the Hindus. Doesn't matter. Hierarchy is the structure of corporatism. Jettisoning morality from hierarchy, which Betty's essay reports in detail regarding the Catholic Church leaves a corporatized "religion".

Morality and ethics are culturally relative, varying society by society. But if M and E are sincerely practiced, then an equitable society can be possible. Of course, when theology is used to cloak the nonbenevolent acts of a state, then M and E are soon atrophied and become progressively more useless indirecting a humane society.

Whenever one says that a state rules by "God's Will", you are hearing the voice of tyranny.

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@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed From Bruno Latour

He uses the term "felicity conditions" from semiotics rather than the more loaded term "truth."

The title of the article is "do not freeze-frame"

Religion like scientific reference is a flow. If the flow is stopped in a freeze-frame, it has lost its felicity, or its truth.

The flow in scientific reference to obtain a fact involves an instrument, a reading, recorded, put into a file, and other things and eventually in a scientific paper. Notice all the mediators just mentioned. Truth comes from being able to retrace the flow. And the scientific literature and scientific institutions stand behind a fact.

One of his main points is to go beyond information transfer because scientific felicity conditions require mediators and transformations.

This starts at the fifth paragrapnh

And now to work. I don’t think it is possible to speak of religion without making clear the form of speech that is adjusted to its type of predication. Religion, at least in the tradition I am going to talk from, namely the Christian one, is a way of preaching, of predicating, of enunciating truth in a certain manner—this is why I have to mimic in writing the situation of an oration given from the pulpit. It is literally, technically, theologically, a form of news, of “good news,” what in Greek was called evangelios, what has been translated into English as “gospel.” Thus, I am not going to speak of religion in general, as if there existed some universal domain, topic, or problem called “religion” that could allow one to compare divinities, rituals, and beliefs from Papua New Guinea to Mecca, from Easter Island to Vatican City. A person of faith has only one religion, as a child has only one mother. There is no point of view from which one could compare different religions and still be talking in the religious fashion. As you see, my purpose is not to talk about religion, but to talk to you religiously, at least religiously enough so that we can begin to analyze the conditions of felicity of such a speech act, by demonstrating in vivo, tonight, in this room what sort of truth-condition this speech-act requests. Since the topic of this series implies “experience,” experience is what I want to generate

a couple of paragraphs later leaving out some points

There is nothing extravagant, spiritual, or mysterious in beginning to describe religious talk in this way. We are used to other, perfectly mundane forms of speech that are evaluated not by their correspondence with any state of affairs either, but by the quality of the interaction they generate from the way they are uttered. This experience—and experience is what we wish to share—is common in the domain of “love-talk” and, more largely, personal relations. “Do you love me?” is not assessed by the originality of the sentence—none are more banal, trivial, boring, rehashed—but rather by the transformation it manifests in the listener, as well as in the speaker. Information talk is one thing, transformation talk is another. When the latter is uttered, something happens. A slight displacement in the normal pace of things. A tiny shift in the passage of time. You have to decide, to get involved: maybe to commit yourselves irreversibly. We are not only undergoing an experience among others, but a change in the pulse and tempo of experience: kairos is the word the Greeks would have used to designate this new sense of urgency. Before going back to religious talk, in order to displace our usual ways of framing it, I wish to extract two features from the experience we all have—I hope—in uttering or listening to love-carrying sentences.

Note he is working from the experience. He wants to bring the experience right up front.

The first one is that such sentences are not judged by their content, their number of bytes, but by their performative abilities. They are mainly evaluated by only this question: do they produce the thing they talk about, namely lovers? (I am not so much interested here in love as “eros,” which often requires little talk, but in love as “agape`,” to use the traditional distinction.)In love injunction, attention is redirected not to the content of the message, but to the container itself, the person-making..........

after the long paragraph next comes

The second feature I wish to retain from the specific—and totally banal—performance of love talk is that it seems to be able to shift the way space is inhabited and time flows. Here, again, the experience is so widespread that we might overlook its decisive originality. Although it is so common, it is not often described, except in a few movies by Ingmar Bergman, or in some odd novels, because eros, Hollywood eros, usually occupies the stage so noisily that the subtle dynamic of agape` is rarely noticed. But we can share, I think, enough of the same experience to capitalize on it later for my analysis: what happens to you, would you say, when you are thus addressed by love-talk?

There is much more in this reasonably long article. I had included the final 2 paragraphs which
come back to flows and mentions mediators that were covered earlier. But there is more than enough to see if you are curious to read the article.

The first sentence of the article has the word'predication', and the first paragraph above ( fifth in the article) also has the word. I had to look it up.

“Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame” or How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate

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Alligator Ed's picture

@DonMidwest I clearly understand. Very elegant prose indeed. Yet, organized religions do not flow. They resist change. Latour's statement on this is simply wishful thinking. Religions ossify. Pick Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or whatever. The priests and shamans will insist on adherence to doctrine. My way or the highway (hell, purgatory, etc.).

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@Alligator Ed Hi Ed,

These are subtle subjects which I have been circling around for years.

Do religions change? Has modernity itself blocked off change?

Has economics become the new religion? (I am reading a short piece on this now)

I seem to be a broken record to go back to Bruno Latour. Here is part of an article published in French and translated a few years ago. It is behind a pay wall but I have a pdf which I could send you. It involves someone else I had never heard of, Charles Peguy who could be seen as a strange source of inspiration to Latour.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the paper. (Latour published a book in 1991 "We Have Never Been Modern") (Peguy was a wild man, ran his own literary review, volunteered for WWI, was very brave rushing into battle and died in the war)

For Péguy, what is the explanation for the gross, all-encompassing,
ineradicable defect embodied in the modern world? It all stems from
the way in which it provides neither a time nor a space in which it might
deploy that which it claims to be instituting. The modern world simply
does not provide a livable space-time (what Bergson always tries to say
demurely, Péguy is prepared to shout from the rooftops). It is against
the entire philosophical foundation of the ecosystem of the moderns that
Péguy trains his sights. So, yes, he did welcome war with Germany. But
he saw it as an event sure to lead to ruin, not to the glorious future
that so many others anticipated. The face of Germany represented for
him a portent of an apocalyptic destruction that would soon engulf the
whole world.

Was there any other philosopher who saw things in that way? Was there
any other philosopher who was prepared to sacrifice his temporal life in
order to drink this bitter cup to the dregs? All the other thinkers, all the
other militants—however critical, however disabused of hope, however
lucid they were—come across as cheerful optimists by comparison with
the alarm-bells sounded by Péguy: you, you the moderns, are leading
us into the abyss because you have neither the time nor the space to
house the people you are claiming to modernize. And yet, was Péguy’s
diagnosis awry? A century on, from our vantage point, would we say
otherwise? Do you really think that the ecosystem of the moderns has
become any more habitable in the intervening years?

Italics in the original

Title and start of article

Charles Péguy:
Time, Space, and le Monde Moderne

Bruno Latour
Foreword by Tim Howles

The soul of the present day is constructed from
the soul of the past. And so, if we have no past,
what hope do we have of constructing a future?
—Charles Péguy, Clio

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Alligator Ed's picture

@DonMidwest

The soul of the present day is constructed from
the soul of the past. And so, if we have no past,
what hope do we have of constructing a future?
—Charles Péguy, Clio
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Wink's picture

to church. And by most I mean over half. The Catholic church has been dying a slow death for decades, hasn't been a "Player" here in years. For a country that's s'posed to be a Christian nation I'm not sure there's Ever been a time since the mid 1700s where over half the population attended church. We're just not that into Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@Wink Do you recall that John Kerry is a Catholic (whatever that means) and there was a concerted effort by the conservative RC church to get out the vote against him?

Article in The Nation "An Army of Christians" with a $25 million dollar budget who are using the courts to take down the challenges to their world view. This includes LBGT and probably related to the abortion as well, but not explicit in the article. They are in the Supreme Court with the Masterpiece Cake shop case where the Denver baker is an "artist" and can deny wedding cakes to gays.

And the abortion issue is alive and well. Even here in OH with Kasich not as crazy as other Republicans, and a contender for a presidential candidate, he recently signed his fourteenth anti abortion bill

Us Moderns could be so smug that science and states would hold religion in check through secularism. But the outcome has become the religious entity, the secular state of the left. And the economy with support from religious background.

Each of these points requires a return to The Enlightenment (1600's) and tracing from there to the present in which we no longer have a stable earth as a background, and this has upended everything.

Almost 50 years ago I read a fascinating book "From the closed world to the infinite universe." Galileo, Newton, Leibniz moved us from the medieval frame to an infinite universe. Funny thing, no one has ever lived in an infinite universe, or even a 3 dimensional one.

Now we have to go back, from the infinite universe to the closed world.

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Wink's picture

@DonMidwest
bottom dollar that TPTB, the oligarchy, hell, the devil his self, is funding the Christian Right. I believe that Roe v. Wade is the center pole of the tent that shelters Left Wing issues, and is my #1 voting issue. Take out that pole and The Left collapses. The RW knows it's the kingpin issue of The Left as well, and is why they're so hell bent on destroying it. And doing a damn fine job! Kill abortion and they kill what's left of The Left.
It's been puzzling why the Womens Lib Movement hasn't been out in the streets over the last 10, 15 years screaming bloody murder that their right to sexual equality is being snuffed. Instead, barely a whimper. And slowly The Left fades away.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@Wink
an article today that women are going to change the political landscape

i sure hope so

and it has been decades since they should have been out on the street

hopefully, the sex scandals of abuse will bring this issue out more in the open

we have a culture that people who murder for the state - police, soldiers, presidents, and torture for the state, get off free, but sex is one of the ways that people are sometimes held accountable

and there is the corruption and who benefits from the legal system....

politics is a mess and politics is essential

and religion and political are connected in many strange dances

in any case, politics and in particular, negotiation MUST play an essential role in facing Gaia

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@Wink
Half the 600 years of the empire, the last 300 they were dying

The RC church is the oldest continuous institution and it has figured out ways to survive and it has the resources and still has a wide following and has legitimacy in some circles

I was surprised at the decline in RC in South America noted by Betty in her article.

I did a search on Catholic Church declining?

A RC publication I think

IS THE CATHOLIC CHURCH EXPERIENCING EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OR DECLINING?

The Vatican recently released information that says that the number of Catholics have increased at an exponential rate, even faster than the world population. The Catholic News Agency reports: “over the course of nine years, the number of Catholics worldwide has increased by 17.8 percent, compared to the global population, which increased by 17.3 percent.” It was likewise reported that from 2005-2014, the growth of the Catholic populace jumped from 1.12 billion to 1.27 billion. The African continent saw the greatest increase at 41 percent, while its population grew at 23.8 percent. Asia’s Catholic population grew at 20 percent versus a 9.6 percent population growth. The United States had 11.7 percent Catholic growth compared to 9.6 percent population growth. A Global Pew Report on the Catholic Population showed that Catholics have grown from an estimated 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion as of 2010.

Betty Clearmont does not believe the RC statistics. But there seems to be a lot of growth in Africa

Another article from 2016

IS THE RISE OF “NONES” ACTUALLY THE DECLINE OF CATHOLICS?

PPRI found that a fully a quarter of all Americans, and a whopping 39% of young adults, now say they have no religious affiliation, making the unaffiliated the largest “religious” group in a country long known for its high levels of religiosity.

And while the rise of the “nones” will continue to make headlines and shape culture for a long time to come, there is another largely unnoticed trend lurking in the numbers: just how much the growth in the nones has been fueled by the disaffiliation of Roman Catholics. According to PPRI:

From NYT journalist in Boston Globe Dec 2017 so almost 2016

Decline of the church tilts Ireland to the left

The sex scandals and other scandals

But economic and technological changes helped propel a shift in attitudes that accelerated with the unfolding of far-reaching abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.

Over a generation, Ireland transformed from a country where 67 percent of voters approved the constitutional abortion ban to one where, in 2015, 62 percent voted to legalize same-sex marriage.

Ireland moved to the left on other social issues, too. It decriminalized homosexuality in 1992, removed restrictions on the sale of contraception in 1993, and legalized divorce in 1996. The Irish voted twice, in 1992 and 2002, to permit abortion if the mother was deemed a suicide risk. In 2015, the country passed a gender identity law favored by transgender rights groups.

Priests once enjoyed great social and political power in Ireland, but the abuse scandal led to “the demise of the church,” the center-right prime minister, Leo Varadkar, 38, who is biracial and gay, said in an interview in September.

National Catholic Reporter

Well, I went looking to see about growth or decline and in a couple of places Catholics at 22% or 25% in the US. Whatever, it is a huge number. Did some surfing around this publication and found a writer that does good work

In 2017, politics influenced religion

This is about the take over of Catholic church by right wing forces. Not the gospel of the poor, or the climate, but straight out right wing stuff, including economics.

First, let's examine the role of religion in politics. The religious right has been the dominant face of religion, or at least of Christianity, in the public square since the 1980s when the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority organization brought the logic and the language of evangelical fundamentalism into political discourse. If in 1965 the most prominent Christian minister was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1985 it was Falwell. " ......

Last year it was Senate Candidate Roy Moore

Interesting point of lack of focus and power on the left through religion. Also I didn't realize that Moral Mondays did not support birth control.

The Christian left has no organized influence akin to that found on the right. Groups like Faith in Public Life, Sojourners or Network operate within the Beltway, amplifying arguments found in the secular left, and doing so in religious language. They do not have the kind of grassroots organization outside the Beltway that could influence an election. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good once aspired to that kind of role, but it seemed to have closed shop in 2017.

In North Carolina, an interfaith group of pastors started Moral Mondays, in which they lobbied at the state capitol on a range of social justice issues. They lobbied in favor of voting rights and against cuts in programs that assist the poor. Regrettably, they did not support restrictions on abortion, which undercut their moral stance in the eyes of many conservative and moderate fellow Christians.

A take over of the university, or at least part of it

Earlier this month, Roberts filed a follow-up story that looked at other wealthy Catholics and the groups they fund. Tim Busch, founder of the Napa Institute, is the most outrageous of the group: He gave a ton of money to Catholic University of America for its business school, which is now named after him and his wife. The school puts the "lazy" back into laissez-faire and recently held a lovefest for libertarian guru and climate change denier, Charles Koch. Sean Fieler funds a wide variety of conservative organizations as does Frank Hanna III. Hanna is a big fan of the Acton Institute, the rightwing activist organization led by Fr. Robert Sirico that is so far astray from Catholic social doctrine, it is a scandal.

I added the bold.

That is already more than I knew, not enough, but with around 20% of the population, just the RC church can be a major force in the US. Also they have extensive ties to education so they will be out to get more school funding. And Betty Clearmont has pointed out that Catholic charities have a shady side as well.

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Wink's picture

@DonMidwest
in NY state, but RC schools that once were full now struggle to survive, two schools downsizing to one; congregations doing the same, two churches downsizing to one. If there's exponential growth it ain't happening here in the northeast. Not that I care one way or the other. The Vatican is loaded - hundreds of Billions in its coffers. They'll be around awhile. But, let's just say they no longer hold the influence they did when the Kennedys ran Camelot. Since those days The Church has been in decline. At least here in the northeast corridor.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

While Trump won the South as expected, 60% of white non-Latino Catholics voted for him i.e. Trump won because he carried Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Cardinal Wuerl helped plan his inauguration prayer service at the National Cathedral and Dolan gave the first prayer at the inauguration. ”In a White House Rose Garden ceremony on May 4, Trump decried the “attacks against the Little Sisters of the Poor” before signing his executive order on “religious freedom.” Following the ceremony, Cardinal DiNardo said the executive order “begins the process of alleviating the serious burden of the HHS mandate.” He noted that Church agencies have experienced restriction on "religious freedom" in "adoption, education, health care and other social services.” Dominican Sister Donna Markham, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, also welcomed the order. Not only do Republicans support government funding of the Church’s social agencies and schools (the 2018 budget proposal “devotes $250 million to a new private-school choice program”) but they also block “simple legislative change that would identify the hidden predators and provide justice to victims” of child sex abuse. See WILL 2018 BE THE YEAR OF CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE DOMINANCE? "As a result of this dramatic expansion of Catholic hospitals and their market power, 2018 may be a pivotal year for new tests of “religious freedom” claims regarding the provision of health care and patient rights under both courts and an administration that are increasingly friendly to the claims of religious providers."http://religiondispatches.org/will-2018-be-the-year-of-catholic-health-c...

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Betty Clermont

@Betty Clermont Too many people are being fooled by the headlines about the RCC losing influence. That is only happening in the pews, and not in the seats of power.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin