FYI [HELP-Matrix Blog] Pope Francis and Liberation Theology ~By Samuel Gregg

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Subject: [HELP-Matrix Blog] Pope Francis and Liberation Theology ~By Samuel Gregg

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/349432/pope-francis-and-liberation-theology

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/349432  ~via @NRO ~Posted 5/28/2013
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By Samuel Gregg
May 28, 2013 9:48 AM

So is Pope Francis a closet liberation theologian, or someone with strong sympathies for the school of thought? It's a question that's been raised many times since Jorge Mario Bergoglio's election to the papacy in March. Most recently, the New York Times weighed in on the subject. While discussing the tone adopted by Bergoglio since becoming pope, the NYT article claimed that Francis has "an affinity for liberation theology." "Francis's speeches," the article argues, "draw clearly on the themes of liberation theology." It also suggested that "Francis studied with an Argentine Jesuit priest who was a proponent of liberation theology."

I'm afraid, however, that if one looks at Francis's pre-pontifical writings, a rather different picture emerges. Certainly Bergoglio is a man who has always been concerned about those in genuine material need. But orthodox Christianity didn't need to wait for liberation theology in order to articulate deep concern for the materially poor and to remind those with power and resources that they have concrete obligations to the less fortunate. From the very beginning, it was a message that pervaded the Gospels and the Church's subsequent life.

Indeed, in a preface to a 2005 book written by one of Latin America's most thoughtful Catholic figures, Guzmán Carriquiry Lecour, Una apuesta por America Latina (A Commitment to Latin America), for example, Bergoglio had this to say about liberation theology:

After the collapse of "real socialism," these currents of thought were plunged into confusion. Incapable of either radical reformulation or new creativity, they survived by inertia, even if there are still some today who, anachronistically, would like to propose it again.

That's not to suggest that Bergoglio is a fan of contemporary capitalism. Plainly, he's not. And to the extent Francis's words about the financial crisis can be read as a condemnation of crony capitalism, his critique is more than justified. But not many people would describe the words above as endorsing the thought of as outspoken a liberationist such as Leonardo Boff.
Interestingly, Bergoglio chose the same preface to go after "progresismo adolescente" (adolescent progressivism) and "laicismo militante" (militant secularism) which, he argued, often enlist state power to attempt to destroy the "sabiduría católica" (Catholic wisdom) of many people in developing nations.

On these grounds, I suspect he's not a fan of Western governments lecturing people in developing countries, especially with regard to sexual morality and sanctity-of-life questions. Such governments don't hesitate to use foreign aid (an increasingly discredited way of helping those in need, but I digress) as a means to try to force, neo-colonial style, these nations to become as hedonistic and anti-life as, say, modern-day Belgium.

But getting back to liberation theology, does Bergoglio reject holus-bolus everything about liberation theology? In the interview-book El Jesuita, Bergoglio says liberation theology had its pros and cons: the "pro" being its expression of what's called the "preferential option for the poor," the "con" being its "ideological deviations." Well, that's very close to the assessment expressed in the two "Instructions on Liberation Theology" published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1984 and 1986.

And who is the Argentine Jesuit that our NYT friends have in mind? In all probability (because there's really no other candidate), the reference is to Juan Carlos Scannone, S.J., who taught Bergoglio Greek and literature in the seminary.

The difficulty with the Times' claim, however, is that Scannone isn't much of a liberation theologian. In fact Scannone has written papers emphasizing where his thought differs from the liberationists. In a 2011 interview, for example, Scannone himself said: "Myself, I've never had anything to do with Marxism." Scannone specifies that the primary difference between his thought and that of the liberationists is, to use his words, his theology "has neither used Marxist methodology for analyzing reality nor categories taken from Marxism."

Instead, Scannone is best known in Argentina for developing what's called a teología del pueblo (theology of the people) — something, he says, that is viewed positively by Rome and which Bergoglio has praised on numerous occasions. It's a theology that takes seriously the popular spirituality and often deeply traditional piety of ordinary people — the kind of thing that's often the subject of much condescending commentary by your average German progressive theologian but which was also regarded by liberationists such as the late Juan Luis Segundo as a mass phenomenon incapable of fostering revolutionary change, making it an obstacle to "progress."

But the teología del pueblo, Scannone specifies, also draws considerable inspiration from Paul VI's 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi. In that sense, Scannone argues, the theology of the people represents "a journey of return between Latin America and Rome." Here it's worth noting that Evangelii Nuntiandi firmly rejected — over and over and over again — politicized concepts of Christian liberation and underscored that the Church "refuses to replace the proclamation of the kingdom by the proclamation of forms of human liberation."

Practically speaking, the teología del pueblo that's alive and well in Argentina tends to be translated into bottom-up and locally based approaches to poverty. It also rejects calls for class struggle and Sandinista-style revolution. And while adherents of teología del pueblo in Argentina certainly insist on a great deal of government intervention, they also firmly reject top-down paternalism — something no doubt reinforced by the populist and statist policies pursued by the Krichners that have wreaked havoc upon Argentina's economy over the past ten years.

But if you want to get a sense of where Francis may take the Catholic Church regarding social and economic issues, you needn't waste your energy toiling through texts like Boff's Church: Charism and Power. Instead, pick up a copy of the concluding document of the Fifth General Conference of the Consejo Episcopal Latino Americano held at Aparecida in 2007.

Alongside Honduras's Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the text's other major drafter was one Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. It's the document that Bergoglio gave to Cristina Krichner when she found herself (much to la Senora Presidente's obvious discomfort) in Rome visiting the very same man who she and her late husband had done their level-best to ignore while he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, but who now finds himself seated on Peter's Chair.

Somehow I doubt that Cristina has read it. But if she did, she — and others — would soon discover how little it says about liberation theology, and how much it speaks about Jesus Christ.

– Samuel Gregg is research director at the Acton Institute. He has authored many books, including The Modern Papacy and, most recently, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America can Avoid a European Future.
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HELP-Matrix Humane-Liberation-Party Blog ~ http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/ ~

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Posted By Blogger to HELP-Matrix Blog at 5/28/2013 11:37:00 AM

[HELP-Matrix Blog] Chris Hedges: Why I Am a Socialist ~via @truthdig ~Posted Dec. 29, 2008

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Venceremos! We Will Win! Educate to Liberate!
Peter S. Lopez AKA @Peta_de_Aztlan
Sacramento, California
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Subject: [HELP-Matrix Blog] Chris Hedges: Why I Am a Socialist ~via @truthdig ~Posted Dec. 29, 2008

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_why_i_am_a_socialist/ 

~Posted Dec. 29, 2008

By Chris Hedges

The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. "A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial," Orwell wrote, "that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud." Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist "Red" Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke's platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.

Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.

"By now the [commercial] revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water," Wendell Berry wrote in "The Unsettling of America." "Air remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution had imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat." 

The corporation is designed to make money without regard to human life, the social good or impact on the environment. Corporate laws impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make as much money as possible for shareholders, although many have moved on to fleece shareholders as well. In the 2003 documentary film "The Corporation" the management guru Peter Drucker says: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast."

A corporation that attempts to engage in social responsibility, that tries to pay workers a decent wage with benefits, that invests its profits to protect the environment and limit pollution, that gives consumers fair deals, can be sued by shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, says in the film: "The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. There isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed." Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface Corp., the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, calls the corporation a "present day instrument of destruction" because of its compulsion to "externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalize."

"The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction," Anderson says. 

In short, the film, based on Joel Bakan's book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power," asserts that the corporation exhibits many of the traits found in people clinically defined as psychopaths. 1   2   NEXT PAGE >>>

(Page 2)
Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare lists in the film psychopathic traits and ties them to the behavior of corporations: callous unconcern for the feelings for others; incapacity to maintain enduring relationships; reckless disregard for the safety of others; deceitfulness; repeated lying and conning others for profit; incapacity to experience guilt; failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior.

And yet, under the American legal system, corporations have the same legal rights as individuals. They give hundreds of millions of dollars to political candidates, fund the army of some 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals to write corporate-friendly legislation, drain taxpayer funds and abolish government oversight. They saturate the airwaves, the Internet, newsprint and magazines with advertisements promoting their brands as the friendly face of the corporation. They have high-priced legal teams, millions of employees, skilled public relations firms and thousands of elected officials to ward off public intrusions into their affairs or halt messy lawsuits. They hold a near monopoly on all electronic and printed sources of information. A few media giants—AOL-Time Warner, General Electric, Viacom, Disney and Rupert Murdoch's NewsGroup—control nearly everything we read, see and hear.

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in [a] few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones," Albert Einstein wrote in 1949 in the Monthly Review in explaining why he was a socialist. "The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

Labor and left-wing activists, especially university students and well-heeled liberals, have failed to unite. This division, which is often based on social rather than economic differences, has long stymied concerted action against ruling elites. It has fractured the American left and rendered it impotent.

"Large sections of the middle class are being gradually proletarianized; but the important point is that they do not, at any rate not in the first generation, adopt a proletarian outlook," Orwell wrote in 1937 during the last economic depression. "Here I am, for instance, with a bourgeois upbringing and a working-class income. Which class do I belong to? Economically I belong to the working class, but it is almost impossible for me to think of myself as anything but a member of the bourgeoisie. And supposing I had to take sides, whom should I side with, the upper class which is trying to squeeze me out of existence, or the working class whose manners are not my manners? It is probable that I, personally, in any important issue, would side with the working class. But what about the tens or hundreds of thousands of others who are in approximately the same position? And what about that far larger class, running into millions this time—the office-workers and black-coated employees of all kinds—whose traditions are less definite middle class but who would certainly not thank you if you called them proletarians? All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a working class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist party."

Coalitions of environmental, anti-nuclear, anti-capitalist, sustainable-agriculture and anti-globalization forces have coalesced in Europe to form and support socialist parties. This has yet to happen in the United States. The left never rallied in significant numbers behind Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. In picking the lesser of two evils, it threw its lot in with a Democratic Party that backs our imperial wars, empowers the national security state and does the bidding of corporations. 

If Barack Obama does not end the flagrant theft of taxpayer funds by corporate slugs and the disgraceful abandonment of our working class, especially as foreclosures and unemployment mount, many in the country will turn in desperation to the far right embodied by groups such as Christian radicals. The failure by the left to offer a democratic socialist alternative will mean there will be, in the eyes of many embittered and struggling working- and middle-class Americans, no alternative but a perverted Christian fascism. The inability to articulate a viable socialism has been our gravest mistake. It will ensure, if this does not soon change, a ruthless totalitarian capitalism.

The World As It Is:

Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress

A collection of Truthdig Columns
by Chris Hedges

Keep up with Chris Hedges' latest columns, interviews, tour dates and more at www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges.

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Posted By Blogger to HELP-Matrix Blog at 5/24/2013 08:39:00 AM

Kennedy Center changes Honors process after #Latino groups' outcry

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-latinos-kennedy-center-awards-20130516,0,4838862.story ~ 

 

Chita Rivera receives an ovation at the 2002 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony, with fellow winner James Earl Jones applauding and First Lady Laura Bush at far right. Rivera and Placido Domingo, in 2000, are the only Latino winners, out of more than 170 honorees since 1978. (Diana Walker / CBS)

Related photos »

• Photos: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times
• Kennedy Center Honors' selection process set for a review

By Mike Boehm

May 17, 2013, 6:50 a.m.

After saluting just two Latino performers in 35 years with its Kennedy Center Honors awards, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts says it has revised the selection process to be more inclusive.

The changes were announced Thursday in a news release that didn't mention that they were sparked by Latino groups' protests last year over the dearth of Latino honorees. Plácido Domingo in 2000 and Chita Rivera in 2002 have been the only ones, out of more than 170 winners since 1978.

The Kennedy Center did say in its announcement that it "is committed to bolstering both its track record on diversity and its relationship with the Hispanic community," and will impanel a new Latino Advisory Committee that will meet quarterly with those goals in mind.

PHOTOS: Kennedy Center Honors 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009

The changes don't go far enough, said Felix Sanchez, chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, which last September joined another Washington, D.C., organization,  National Hispanic  Leadership Agenda, in publicly complaining that the Kennedy Center Honors had ignored Latinos.

The main change is the creation of a six-member panel that will choose 10 to 20 finalists, somewhat circumscribing the authority of the small group that picks the winners. The final say will continue to rest with the Kennedy Center's president and board chair – Michael Kaiser and David M. Rubinstein – together with the awards show production team headed by George Stevens Jr. and his son, Michael.

The elder Stevens is the founder of the American Film Institute, co-chairman of the Presidents' Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and helped originate the Kennedy Center Honors. Winners are announced each September, with a December performance ceremony at the Kennedy Center that's taped for a later television broadcast on CBS.

The changes are an improvement, Sanchez said, but don't go far enough. Given the track record, he said, the group picking the winners should have been juggled, bringing in new producers with a proven record of inclusiveness.

"The 20 candidates or so will wind up in the hands of the same people who have made this decision in the past," he said. "You still have the same three white males who are going to make that decision. If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get pretty near the same outcome."

The Kennedy Center board's 14-member executive committee retains final approval of the picks -- Sanchez considers it a rubber stamp. Giselle Fernandez, a Mexican American television journalist, is the only Latino on the presidentially appointed Kennedy Center board, which has 35 members. She's on the executive committee and will serve on a new standing committee of the board tasked with overseeing the Kennedy Center Honors.

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

"I am proud to be involved with an organization as forward-thinking as the Kennedy Center and hope this review becomes a model for other organizations around the country," Fernandez said in the Kennedy Center's written announcement.

The Kennedy Center said its board conducted a seven-month review of the awards selection process, "with input from many members of the cultural community."

For the first time, the Kennedy Center Honors will invite suggestions from the public, via a newly established submission form on the Kennedy Center Honors Web page. In the past, initial suggestions had been left to former honorees and an Artist Committee of about 70 members. They'll continue to make suggestions, with the Artist Committee expanded  "to ensure the broadest representation of candidates." Artist Committee members will serve five-year terms.

The new six-member Special Honors Advisory Committee, whose members will serve three-year terms, will sift through all the suggestions and pick the finalists. It's made up of two former honorees (Rivera and Yo-Yo Ma), two artist committee members (Harolyn Blackwell and Damian Woetzel), and two members of the Kennedy Center board (Cappy McGarr and Elaine Wynn).

Sanchez said his group wasn't asked for input on changes to the selection process. He said he'd been hoping for a clear acknowledgement of past neglect of Latino performers, but is hopeful that new pressures for inclusiveness will improve the results, despite what he sees as an insufficient structural change.

ALSO:

Kennedy Center Honors selection process set for review

Kennedy Center Honors exclude Latinos, two advocacy groups say

Kennedy Center's Kaiser sorry for rude response to Latino demand

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Venceremos! We Will Win! Educate to Liberate!
Peter S. Lopez AKA @Peta_de_Aztlan
Sacramento, California
c/s

via Todo y Nada ~ VIDEO 4:01 ~ Cesar Chavez - Lost Interview

Gracias Carnal Todo y Nada ~ We go back a few years now online. It has been a long time since we have talked on the phone.
Great LINK!!!!

VIDEO 4:01 ~ Cesar Chavez - Lost Interview Series: http://youtu.be/REHiLryR1oE  ~via @Peta_de_Aztlan from FootageWorld @YouTube Channel ~ Uploaded on Oct 16, 2009

P.S. Get a Twitter Account and send it to me.

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Venceremos! We Will Win! Educate to Liberate!
Peter S. Lopez AKA @Peta_de_Aztlan
peta.aztlan@gmail.com
Sacramento, California
c/s

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Subject: [NetworkAztlan_News] Watch entire video before making ur ______

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=REHiLryR1oE#!

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