Shorter Catholic Church: The Summer of Love is to Blame for Our Massive Pedophilia Problem

Disgusting, but typical.

Around Latin America

-One of the top officials of the Stroessner regime has died, and with him, hopes at getting answers for some victims' families have died as well. Alberto Cantero, who spent 10 years in prison for his role in "disappearances," passed away at the age of 75 this week, taking with him to the grave secrets of how victims of the 35-year-dictatorship were tortured and killed and where they are buried.

-In Argentina, former detention centers are facing disrepair as the Buenos Aires government has not paid for their upkeep. These centers, while no longer in use, still serve as powerful sites in retaining the memory of the horrors of the 7-year dictatorship that left upwards of 30,000 Argentines dead.

-The trial of former Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodriguez has begun in Costa Rica. Rodriguez is charged with corruption after he allegedly accepted bribes from a French telecommunications company while in office.

-PBS aired "Worse than War" tonight. In it, Daniel Goldhagen confronted former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who led the government during some of the most brutal massacres of Guatemala's decades-long civil war. You can see the Rios Montt footage from the documentary here.

-In Brazil, the poor continue to be disproportionately affected by last week's floods and landslides. The Rio state government has begun destroying favelas on lands deemed unsafe, dislocating hundreds of poor cariocas. The flood has also indefinitely shut down trips to the Christ Redeemer statue, as workers try to dig the railway and roads to Brazil's iconic statue out from all of the mud.

-Speaking of the favelas, I highly recommend this article, which details the relations between favela residents and the police who often occupy the favelas for long periods of time in the "war on drugs."

-In more bad news out of Brazil, the country is in shock after a 40-year-old worker confessed to the rape-murder of six teenage boys near Brasilia. The story comes in the wake of scandal within the Church after a Catholic priest was videotaped having sex with a 19-year-old former altar boy while others alleged they had also been abused by the priest.

-Finally, on a more lighthearted note, this is absolutely a battle I can support 100%:

The growing presence of alien spirits in the Brazilian caipirinha has led enthusiasts to attempt to "rescue" their national drink. The Save the Caipirinha campaign was launched last month with an online petition that has attracted 10,000 signatures from cachaca fans, chefs, and celebrities.

"We formally declare that we no longer wish to see our caipirinha being made with vodka or sake instead of cachaca," reads the campaign manifesto, the brainchild of the Cachaca Leblon brand. "We do not accept that this drink, which is famous and respected around the world, be disrespected in Brazil."

I couldn't agree more. When I first arrived in Brazil, "caipivodkas" were huge among young drinkers, and I was horrified. It wasn't just that it was flavorless alcohol with fruit in it; cachaca is so good as it is in Brazil that substituting it with vodka made about as much sense to me as substituting Brazilian beef with a hot pocket. I none-too-politely pointed out that I failed to understand why on earth I would consume a flavorless drink, much less one I could make in the United States, when they had such amazing cachacas that were unavailable to me in the United States. I'm glad to see the battle against caipivodkas (and caipi-sakis) gaining traction in Brazil, and will make it a point to consume many caipirinhas as a political statement next time I'm there.

More on the Catholic Church's Refusal to Acknowledge Where True Blame Lies

While a member's claims that criticisms of Pope Benedict XVI and the Church over were akin to anti-semitism are appalling, they shouldn't be surprising. After all: members of the church hierarchy have made even more outrageous claims with regards to sexual abuse within the church in the past few years, even stooping so low in 2007 as to blame...the victims.

No, seriously. I give you Bishop Bernardo Álvarez:

[Álvarez's] comments were that there are youngsters who want to be abused, and he compared that abuse to homosexuality, describing them both as prejudicial to society. He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it.

‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said.

The fact is, the Church leadership cannot and will not deal with this issue, doctrinally or otherwise. They will find ways to defend the hierarchy's actions and shift blame elsewhere, whether it be those criticizing the Church, or the victims themselves. That is not to indict all Catholics, or even all priests, bishops, or cardinals; indeed a very small number have been involved in this. While it seems this "small number" dominate the headlines and the policy of the Vatican, we can't lose sight of just how enormous the Catholic Church still is; to paint the entire institution as corrupt over a relative minority

At the same time, we should keep the pressure on the Church. Expecting a quick reaction is probably foolish - after all, this is the same institution that took 350 years to apologize to Galileo for condemning him, an institution whose apology for inaction during the Holocaust came 47 years after the end of the Second World War was remarkably quick for the Catholic Church. Indeed, the fact that these cases of sexual abuse in the Church have been going on for more than 3 decades indicates that it's not exactly the fastest moving institution. But that's exactly the reason why journalists and the population at large, and especially the Catholic population, must continue to pressure the Church over this issue. As appalling as the excuses and the blaming of the victims (and others) is, if we don't continue to push the issue, the Church will continue to simply brush the issue under the rug. And that's something that cannot be allowed to happen anymore.

Protecting the Unborn and the Molesters of the Postborn

It's a rare event that I bother to read Maureen Dowd, more the less that I'll actually agree with here. It happened in today's Op-Ed, Dowd comments on the pervasive crisis caused by the Church's global protection of pedophiliac priests, a practice that runs straight to the present Pope. I don't find this pope's actions, as an archbishop or as the doctrinal hammer in his days as cardinal, all that surprising. As Dowd says, news like this is shocking, but not surprising. As a colonial Latin Americanist, I can attest to the long history of the Church overlooking acts it morally condemns in order to protect its power- jurisdictional, political, economic. And, this Pope is well versed in the practice.

As Dowd notes,

The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.

American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn’t vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren’t yet born.

The observation is a prescient one this week. On Friday, for example, a priest from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe will give mass on the street outside of the Planned Parenthood of New Mexico clinic and administrative offices in Albuquerque. It's an annual event that caps off forty preceding days of harassment. As many as 500 people will show up for this mass. As it stands right now, the medical procedures Sheehan and his followers are protesting in Albuquerque are legal in the United States of America. Pedophilia isn't. And it isn't legal in Ireland, England, Germany, Italy, any country I know of in Latin America, etc. Yet, the church has maintained an institutional policy of protecting pedophiles, a policy it appears this Pope is intimately familiar with. It's the typical hypocrisy of the "pro-life" movement - concern for fetuses, and ambivalence at best for really existing women and kids.

Edited to correct the mass giver. I had heard the Archbishop would be there, but was wrong. He has come to other events/protests before.

Remembering and Investigating Oscar Romero's Death

This past week (March 24th to be precise) marked the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador. Right-wing death-squads connected directly to eventual president Roberto D'Aubuisson were responsible for the murder, though exactly who pulled the trigger and how the plan was executed remains murky.

While there were many moving tributes over the past week, there was also a somewhat-overlooked translated journalistic investigation into Romero's death. Many have claimed former Air Force Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia as the man responsible for the murder. Journalist Carlos Dada tracked down Saravia, as well as several other individuals connected to the assassination, and offered this intensive report investigating Romero's assassination, finding (among other things) that Saravia's claims to (relative) innocence (in that he didn't pull the trigger) may have some validity. It is a lengthy report, but well worth reading in its entirety due to its analysis and findings, the varying viewpoints on the murder, the conditions of appalling poverty and violence that Saravia (in hiding) and his neighbors live in, and the criminal networks that existed in right-wing death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s, squads that often had the tacit or explicit support of the United States. As we remember all that Romero did this week, it's also worth taking time to look at the broader terror-networks that impacted hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans.

Carnaval in Brazil 2010 (I) - Pre-Carnaval

Next week marks the official start of Carnaval, though informal street celebrations began this weekend in Rio, as well as in other parts of Brazil. As always, even the informal blocos (street parades and musical groups) had a "theme," and this year, they apparently were promoting keeping Rio clean (text is Portuguese only, though the pictures are universal).

While the official Carnaval events haven't begun yet, there are always controversies leading up to and during the celebration, and this year is no different. The government is gearing up to hand out 55 million free condoms to citizens throughout the country as part of its ongoing campaign to promote safe sex and combat the spread of AIDS. Though the Catholic Church has condemned the government in the past for this program, the Church has remained fairly quiet this year.

Additionally, judges have eliminated a ban on religious symbols during the events of Carnaval, ruling that the ban impinged upon free speech. Officials originally established the ban in 2007, believing it to be "imprudent" to have crosses and saints alongside the, shall we say, not-so-saintly clad women and men in the parades. This story is amusing not only because it features people being uptight about the religious implications of having scantily-clad individuals in the vicinity of crosses and saints (rather than being uptight about the scantily-clad individuals); there's also the fact that, well, Carnaval is (nominally) a religious event, celebrating debauchery and gluttony in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, which begins the religious season of Lent and the accompanying sacrifices many make in that season. So the fact that religious symbols had been banned from an ostensibly religious commemoration is more than a little amusing.

On a far more serious note, the Viradouro samba school (they of the banned Holocaust float a few years ago) is stirring up a much different kind of controversy by picking Julia Lira, a 7-year-old girl, to serve as its Queen of the Drum Corps (Rainha). As the article points out, the role is usually reserved for women in their early-20s due to the fact that the Rainhas are often among the most scantily-clad (and, subsequently, most famous) participants in Carnaval. The symbol of the Rainha has come to be equated with the sexuality and beauty that many associate with Carnaval. Thus, the selection of a Lira for a position that is usually associated with sex and nudity is causing quite a stir, and a judge is considering even blocking the girl's participation. While I agree with the girl's father (who is also president of the samba school) that anybody thinking sex when they look at a 7-year-old has a real problem, that doesn't stop some people from looking at 7-year-olds and "feeling excitment," as Lira's father puts it, and I think the concern over the fallout of viewing children as sexual objects in a country that has struggled with childhood prostitution is a legitimate concern. Ultimately, while it is completely in Viradouro's rights to pick who they want for their Rainha, it's pretty clear that they like to make controversial decisions. It's not that they couldn't have gotten some young model or starlet; it's that they deliberately chose not to do so. In the end, I think it will actually be disappointing if Lira walks as a Rainha; after all, there are real, negative effects that her participation in this particular role could have on cultural and social attitudes. I think it would be preferable if Lira waited until she actually was in her late-teens/early-twenties to serve as Rainha; she can still participate in the samba parades before then, in a less sexualized-role. We'll just have to wait until later this week, though, to see just what happens.

A Follow-Up on the Archbishop Who Excommunicated Doctors for Saving a Girl's Life

Back in March, the Catholic Church in Brazil made international news when Archbishop Jose Sobrinho excommunicated the mother of a girl and the doctors who performed an abortion on the 9-year-old girl who had been raped by her stepfather, a position the Vatican itself supported (with some internal dissent in Rome).

Well, while the Church will probably not be changing its stance anytime soon, Sobrinho won't have to worry about excommunicating anybody anymore - the Vatican has announced that Sobrinho is retiring. I don't have any high hope that the Vatican will apoint somebody more progressive to the post, but hey - even if the new archbishop shows a level of compassion slightly above Dick Cheney's, it will be a marked improvement.

Vatican Official Backtracks on Brazilian Girl's Abortion - "Insensitive, Incomprehensible, and Devoid of Mercy" Sounds About Right

In the wake of national and then international outrage over the Catholic Church's quickness to condemn and excommunicate those involved with a 9-year-old rape victim's abortion when her life was at risk, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that at least some in the Vatican are backtracking.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, criticized what he called a "hasty" public declaration of the excommunication of the girl's mother and the doctors who aborted the girl's twins.

The girl "in the first place should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side" he wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, March 15."

Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to protect her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the church should be expert witnesses and teachers," he said.

"Unfortunately, this is not what happened and it has impacted the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and devoid of mercy," he said.

Well, yeah - "Insensitive, incomprehensible, and devoid of mercy" pretty much sums it up. Fisichella went on to defend the Church's overall stance and teachings on abortion. Still, the fact that the head of the Church's Pontifical Academy for Life was critical of Archbishop Sobrinho's immediate and damning response, and the Church's defense of him, just goes to show how radical that stance was and is. At least somebody in the Vatican, for all of the problems I have with his own positions, had the decency to criticize the archbishop's and the Vatican's response to the situation with condemnation rather than with compassion.

(h/t The Latin Americanist).

...(Update) - Randy really gets to the crux of Fisichella's stance when he says, "the objection is to the public aspect of it." Absolutely. Fisichella is in no way interested in undoing or disagreeing with the Vatican's stance on abortion - he is, after all, a voluntary member of the Vatican community. But nobody in the Vatican is going to say, "well, our iron-fisted stance on abortion is probably wrong" - that's beyond the realm of even the most unreasonable expectations. So from an institution that we'll probably never see backtrack on the actual abortion issue in our lifetime, the acknowledgement that the public treatment of and response to the victim's circumstances, and the complete lack of compassion behind that public stance, is as good a concession as we're going to get from the Vatican. It's not much, but it's (slightly) better than nothing.

And for Its Second Act....MORE Anti-Woman Statements from the Vatican

Following up its damningly dogmatic view on abortion in Brazil, the Vatican this weekend published an article that claimed that the washing machine has done more for women's liberation in the 20th century than.....the contraceptive pill. And it published this yesterday...which was International Women's Day.


The gendered norms and completely regressive attitude of the Vatican towards women is manifest in this suggestion: that the value of good life is wrapped up in a symbol of repressive mid-1900s domesticity, and not in a medical option that gave women greater control of their own bodies and sexuality (not to mention the flawed gendered belief that only women did and/or do laundry.)


Still, it's nice of the Vatican to wrap up its contempt and objectification of women so simply for all to see.

Catholic Church's Unsurprising-but-Extreme Stance on Abortion Causes Outrage in Brazil

The Catholic Church in Brazil ended up making headlines this week with its dogmatic stance on abortion. A nine-year-old girl in Northeastern Brazil had been raped by her stepfather, and was pregnant with twins. Brazil does not allow abortion except in cases of rape or the danger of the mother's health, and this particular case fell under both of those categories, as doctors announced that the girl would die before she could give birth, simply because her uterus at 9 years of age simply could not foster twins. Thus, the girl underwent an abortion.

The Catholic Church, of course, came out on the wrong side of this issue once again, excommunicating the doctors who performed the abortion, as well as mother of the girl (but not the child-raping stepfather).

Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. "They took the life of an innocent," Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. " Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored."

Of course, far from standing down, the Vatican fully supported Sobrinho:

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for Bishops, told La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, that the case was sad, but that “the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated.”

Suffice to say, the issue is causing all kinds of outrage in Brazil, and let us be absolutely clear that, although there are many devout Catholics in Brazil, the overwhelming majority of the population side with the girl's family and the government on this one. Even Lula, a very ardent Catholic himself, was none-too-subtle in his views earlier this week, saying that he was bothered both "as a Christian and a Catholic" by the Archbishop's comments and stance and declaring that "I think, in this aspect, medicine is more correct than the bishop."

As I've commented before, the Church is quickly alienating any of its remaining support in its strongest bastion, Latin America. This is just adding to that, revealing a rigidity and intolerance that has been behind the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. One of the excommunicated doctors (who insists he will continue to attend mass) put the Church's idiocy best: "My sadness comes from the fact that the Church could choose the side of fraternity, but it chose the side of conflict. This isn't the Church that people like, that the people want. The people want a church of forgiveness, love, and compassion."

Thanks to its stance on issues like abortion and people like Sobrinho, people just aren't going to get that from Catholicism, and it's likely to continue its decline unless it makes some fundamental shifts.

...UPDATE - Having gotten around to the rest of the internets this afternoon, it appears that Scott and Randy have also gotten to this story (with Randy's including this particular bit of lunacy in Connecticut)

Legal Abortions in Mexico City

Last year in April, Mexico City's Legislative Assembly legalized abortion for the first trimester of a pregancy. (Mexico City has been governed by the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution since 1997). It was quickly challenged and criticized by the Catholic Church and the right-leaning National Action Party, but today, Mexico's Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law in Mexico City, with 8 judges supporting the legalization of abortion, to 3 against. You can read more about the story in English here. (According to the linked article from the New York Times, the decision was not yet official, but it is official now).

Right now, the ruling only applies to the Federal District (which encompasses most of Mexico City), but it does open up the possibility for similar laws in other states. It will be interesting to see how this plays out across the country, especially if there is a partisan divide in providing access to legal abortions in Mexico. I'm not particularly surprised by the Court's decision, but I am surprised by the lopsided support in favor of the law by the Supreme Court judges.

Rev. Christian von Wernich Sentenced in Argentina

Following up on this post, Argentine courts found Rev. Christian von Wernich guilty of conspiring with the military during Argentina's "Dirty War", and a tribunal has sentenced him to life in prison. There isn't much I have to add from my original post. It's just worth repeating that, even if this decision ends up being the first and last of its kind, it's good to see that not only a clergyman punished for his role in the repression, but to see that the Church and Argentine society have been forced to deal with the Church's role in the brutal repression of the dictatorship.

Holding the Catholic Church Responsible in Argentina

Twenty-four years after the end of Argentina's military dictatorship that killed perhaps as many as 30,000 people, at least one member of the Catholic Church is being held responsible. The trial of priest Christian von Wernick wrapped up last week (with a decision being made in the next few months). The fact that this trial was even brought forth is important, even if it could end up being the only one of its kind. Unlike in Brazil and Chile, where the Catholic Church initially supported the overthrow of the state but came to be a major campaigner for human rights (particularly in Brazil), the Church in Argentina was always far more approving of and participatory in the regime in Argentina, never coming out to condemn the absence of democracy or human rights violations. Nor have they ever really even apologized for their role in supporting the military regime in Argentina (again, in contrast to the Church in Chile and Brazil). Thus, the fact that even one priest has been brought to trial matters.

The charges against von Wernich are particularly insidious, even by military regime standards - "he extracted confessions to help the military root out perceived enemies, while at the same time offering comforting words and hope to family members searching for loved ones who had been kidnapped by the government". That he not only is charged with attending torture sessions, but then two-facedly and hypocritically consoling the families of the disappeared. His legal defense isn't exactly the strongest, either, as his lawyer claims that "The witnesses did not say that he tortured, kidnapped or murdered...Nobody said he participated in any act of torture," which of course dodges entirely the question of whether he was present at torture sessions. To my view, it doesn't matter if he wasn't personally involved in the attaching of electrodes to genitalia, violation with blunt objects, dunking under water, etc. - if he was even remotely tied to this, he should go to jail. Period.

Certainly, this trial may be the only one of its kind (as the article points out, many of the other priests whose involvement in torture has been documented have already escaped justice by dying). Yet the fact that it has forced the issue of the Church's involvement back into the public arena is important. With the likelihood of bringing any individuals from the Church to justice becoming increasingly difficult, making the Church uncomfortable and trying to force it to acknowledge its past (with the hope of preventing a repeat in the future) is one of the better things that could happen to the Catholic Church in Argentina