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From Richard Greeman's mailing list
Dear Friends,
Last week, as yet another mega-typhoon laid waste to the Philippines,
the leaders of 183 capitalist governments met in Lima, Peru to face the
imminent threat of climate catastrophe at a U.N. Climate Conference
called COP20. (Yawn.) In case you missed the headlines (they were
small), the world leaders agreed to nothing.[1]
Since the fiasco of the Helsinki Summit, it has become obvious that the
U.S. and the other governments, all of them dominated by mega-banking
and energy corporations, are quite simply unwilling to make actual
commitments to reduce carbon emissions. This year at Lima, with the
human race spinning at an ever more accelerated rate towards extinction,
the U.N. chose to invite Shell and other big energy corporations to
participate inside the conference, while keeping protesters (indigenous,
climate refugees, peasants, climate justice activists) miles away under
military guard in U.S.-style ‘free speech zones.’
Bishops: End Fossil Fuels Now!
The only voice within the Conference that dared to call for an end to
the use of fossil fuels was that of Catholic Bishops from every
continent. The Bishops also urged nations to keep the rise in global
temperatures below 1.5°C (rather than the proposed 2°C). Moreover, they
explicitly pointed to capitalism as the basic cause of impending global
catastrophe and called for a new economic order:
The main responsibility for this situation lies with the dominant global
economic system, which is a human creation. In viewing objectively the
destructive effects of a financial and economic order based on the
primacy of the market and profit, which has failed to put the human
being and the common good at the heart of the economy, one must
recognize the systemic failures of this order and the need for a new
financial and economic order. [2]
In other words: “System Change, Not Climate Change!” What more could one
ask for? This slogan happens to be the name of the minuscule, far-left,
ecosocialist coalition I am active in. The only difference is that the
Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members.
Unfortunately, the Bishops’ remarkable declaration was not reported in
any major media that I could find. And even Amy Goodman, who broadcasted
her progressive ‘War and Peace Report’ www.democracynow.org live from
Lima all boring week, failed to note it. However, it is not really a
surprise in the context of the rapid changes in Catholic attitudes in
the less than two years since the ascension to the Throne of Saint Peter
on Feb. 28, 2013, of Pope Francis, of whom more in a moment.
“While this is a first by some markers,” writes Jeff Spross of Climate
Progress, “the Bishops’ statement also continues a long tradition of
engagement with environmental issues and climate change by the Catholic
Church.” Pope Francis himself has made the religious case for combating
climate change, warning that “if we destroy Creation, Creation will
destroy us!” Francis has also singled out the destruction of the
rainforest as a “sin,” and is working on an official papal encyclical
tackling the environment and humanity’s relationship to it.[3]”
Catholicism and Communism
These radically anti-capitalist Catholic positions have got me
wondering: “Is Catholicism the new Communism?” “Rome the new Moscow?”
“The Church the new Comintern???” What a paradox! Growing up as a ‘red
diaper baby’ during the Cold War, Catholicism seemed to me synonymous
with militant anti-Communism (not to mention militant virginity). New
York’s powerful Cardinal Spellman was a virulent McCarthyite, and the
martyrdom of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary (persecuted first by both
fascist and then communist regimes) made folks forget the complicity of
Pope Pius XII with the Nazis – based on their common hatred of Communism.
Then, in 1958, things changed radically with the election of Pope John
XXIII. The Vatican Council proclaimed the Christian doctrine of ‘a
preferential option for the poor.’ Liberation Theology, which affirmed
the right to resist oppression, spread all over Latin America. I was
privileged to witness it in action in Nicaragua in 1984 during the
U.S.-sponsored Contra war. Indeed, my years of activism in the Latin
America solidarity movement had convinced me that Liberation Theology
Catholics were consistently more revolutionary than Leftist of all
stripes.[4] But sadly by the 80s my comrades among activist priests and
nuns were being side-tracked and persecuted by the new dispensation in
the Vatican after the election of fervently anti-Communist Polish Pope
in 1978.
Reaction and Disgrace
John-Paul II put the Church firmly back on the side of the privileged.
Then the 2005 election of former Hitler Youth Josef Ratzinger as Pope
Benedict XVI set the Church on an even more reactionary course, turning
back the clock on women and reproductive rights, offending Moslems,
trying to cover up major scandals over pedophile priests and Vatican
finances, and launching an inquisition of progressive U.S. nuns, accused
of feminism and meddling in social issues.
So severe was the disgrace to the Church’s reputation, that Benedict
took the unprecedented step of resigning more or less in disgrace in
Feb. 2013, but by then even the most loyal Catholics had given up on the
rigid, self-protective, seemingly immovable Church hierarchy. ‘New Pope?
I’ve Given Up Hope’ headlined Gary Wills in the N.Y. Times. In my own
analysis (‘Pope Quits: So What?’[5]) I contrasted the history of popular
movements inspired by Christianity’s radical social content and the
Church’s vast potential for good with the apparent death-grip of the
geriatric, reactionary hierarchy on the institution. But my conclusion
was nearly as despairing.
A Miracle?
I didn’t dare dream that a mere twenty months later Benedict’s
successor, Pope Francis, would have called a World Meeting of Popular
Movements and invited to the Vatican organizations of the marginalized
and excluded of all ethnic and religious origins -- landless campesinos,
urban workers from the informal sector, recyclers, struggling native
peoples, women demanding their rights, etc. (Oct. 2014) There, in the
presence of Bolivia’s radical President Evo Morales, Francis declared
that “ solidarity with the poor is the very grounding of the Gospels"
and that "Agrarian reform is not only a political need, but also a moral
one!" These sound like the words of a popular leader, reaching out to
his base.
“It was the direct involvement of Pope Francis that drove the event,”
according to Canadian delegate Judith Marshall reporting in Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal . Her amazing report is
definitely worth reading in full.[6] “As the newly installed head of a
major institution of the global establishment, Pope Francis has arguably
made the Papacy the most radical and consistent voice in pointing to the
profanity of global inequality and exclusion. He has also repeatedly
named the inordinate power of multinational corporations and finance
capital as key factors in reproducing global poverty and destruction of
the planet [...] The meeting was built on the strength of the Pope’s
long-standing connections with these key popular movement leaders in
Argentina.”
Who is Pope Francis?
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1936.
After working briefly as chemical technician and a night club bouncer,
he joined the progressive Jesuit order, became a priest during the
heyday of Liberation Theology and got involved in social movements.
As a bishop, Bergoglio had already developed an incessant but discreet
support for workers and their organizations. The anecdotes are without
number: solidarity with persecuted militants, support for campesino
organizations, protection for peddlers, promotion of “shanty town
priests”, accompanying factor workers who had reopened closed factories
and a forthright attitude of struggle against exploitation and
exclusion, traffic in persons, drug-trafficking and the consumer
culture. All of this, added to his legendary austerity and simple life
style, his constant interpolation against the self-satisfied life style
of the petty bourgeoisie, postmodern consumerist hedonism and “elite
progressivism”, had made him an uncomfortable figure, not only for the
reactionary right but also for the liberals of the centre.”[7]
Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first
from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope in over
1,000 years. These ‘firsts’ signify a major shift in the power
equilibrium within that vast Internationale of the global poor. The
Catholic (‘Universal’) Church is the only actually existing organized
world-party. Its vast wealth and influence are now in Francis’ hands.
Imagine, for example, that this Jesuit remains true to his Order’s
mission and devotes some of the billions salted away in the Vatican to
promoting Catholic education on a global scale, teaching billions of
poor children how to read, write, think for themselves in a world
organization that affirms the right to resist oppression. If the Church
truly stands for ‘System Change Not Climate Change,’ this it itself
would be a revolutionary development, and we have only just seen the
beginning.
How Did this ‘Miracle’ Happen?
How did such an openly radical priest manage to get elected? Francis’
absolute authority at the apex of the hierarchy is a major defeat for
the old power brokers who would rather see the living Church wither on
the vine than compromise, as witness their circling the wagons during
the pedophile priest scandals, their adamant refusal to allow priests to
marry or to give women a sacerdotal role of some sort in order to keep
the parishes alive, and their unwillingness to fund Catholic education
-- once the Church’s proud monopoly and major source of its ideological
influence. The Catholic hierarchy (like the military, the world of
finance, and the Communist nomenklatura) has long functioned as a closed
corporation, a state within a state, impenetrable, opaque, a law unto
itself, protected by its intimate ties with other corrupt hierarchies in
politics, the military, banking, law enforcement and the Mafia.
The Vatican bureaucracy sits on a pot of gold equal to the wealth of
many nations, and one can only imaging the silent struggles going on
right now behind the closed walls of the Curia over control of that
wealth as Francis and his allies conduct their purge of the apparatus.
These developments may take time.
Excluding Divine Intervention, what made this revolution within the
Church possible? The most obvious answer is that the Church had reached
a dead end. The faithful were leaving in droves, the priesthood was
dying out with few new recruits, especially among ‘Europeans,’ and the
laity were in despair. Another reason is the demographic shift among
practicing Catholics. There is also the solid organization and
discipline of the international Jesuit Order whose attempts to take over
the Church and influence in Latin America go back centuries. (Not for
nothing did members of the Communist International think of themselves
as ‘red Jesuits.’)
Breaking Through Parish Walls
To these material explanations I would like to add another, less
obvious: the Internet and social media. Whereas over the centuries, the
hierarchy has had a monopoly of communication, all of it top down.
Today, Catholic lay people are no longer isolated, voiceless and passive
before immense wealth and influence of the hierarchy. Just as
Guttenberg’s movable type helped catalyze the Protestant Reformation in
the 16th century by making the Bible accessible to the laity, so the
Internet in the 21st century may have catalyzed the unprecedented
resignation of arch-conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the Church’s
apparent new course under Francis.
As Internet guru Clay Shirky points out, “social tools don’t create
collective action, they merely remove the obstacles to it.”[8] Shirky
cites the example of the campaign among lay Catholics to end sex-abuse
of children by priests. It began in the 90s when victims started coming
forward and the scandals were exposed in newspapers like The Boston
Globe, but the Church hierarchy, led by Cardinal Law (himself guilty of
protecting pedophile priests by rotating them through new, unsuspecting
parishes), was able to squash the victims’ movement.
The instigators were denounced via press and pulpit and banned from
Church facilities, while lay groups were forbidden to organize outside
of their local parish. However ten years later, Cardinal Law was forced
to resign in disgrace after Internet tools had enabled victims to
aggregate their testimony, post it on line, spread information and
organize nationally and internationally. Meanwhile, the revolt against
the coddling of pedophile priests has caused the laity to openly
question reactionary dogmas like refusing Communion to divorced and LGBT
Catholics and maintaining the celibacy of priests.
The Internet did not cause this potentially momentous change, but social
media and its world-wide reach enabled the smoldering revolt of the
Catholic laity to overcome the institutional barriers that enabled the
hierarchy to isolate and dominate the rank-and-file movements for reform
and renewal. What is striking in today’s revolution within Roman
Catholicism is the intersection of ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ forms o
organization. For if horizontal internet networking has given the
Catholic laity a chance to come together and express itself, the capture
of a powerful vertically-structured Catholic ‘world-party’ by
progressive forces opens huge possibilities for human liberation and
perhaps a chance for the planet to avoid climate catastrophe.
Nuns Vindicated
Let us end this hopeful story with the news, released today, of another
victory for the progressive Catholic rank-and-file: a Vatican report
reversing Benedict XVI’s crude attempt to stifle the socially-engaged,
self-governing orders of U.S. nuns, accused of preaching ‘feminism’ and
advocating ‘social justice.’ Catholics across the country had been
stunned and outraged by the Vatican’s attempt to threaten the women who
have been the backbone of this church for centuries. Thousands of
faithful Catholics held more than 50 vigils across the country and more
than 57,000 people signed a petition organized by the Nun Justice
Project in support of the nuns. With these actions, Catholics made it
clear that they stand in solidarity with the sisters and their good
works among the poor and marginalized.[9] As of today, they are
vindicated.
The report concluded by citing Pope Francis’ call “to create still
broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the
church.”[10] Meanwhile, it also transpired today that Pope Francis
brokered the agreement between Obama and Raul Castro to resume
diplomatic relations after more than a half-century of U.S. sanctions
against Cuba, long condemned by the rest of Latin America. Also, it was
the Holy Father’s birthday. Mazeltov, Francis!
Best wishes to all, Richard
Dec. 18, 2014
[1] I exaggerate. The world leaders formally agreed that each country
will prepare its own voluntary goals in preparation for next years Paris
Climate Summit. The Lima conference was thus not a ‘failure’, but a
success (for the corporate agenda).
[2]
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30408022 “Global group of
Catholic bishops call for end to fossil fuels,” by Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News, Lima.
[3]
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/11/3602596/bishops-end-fossil-fuels/
[4] For example they supported the distribution of lands abandoned by
émigré landowners, while the Sandinistas refused to give legal titles to
poor peasant occupiers, thus undermining their own popularity during the
Contra war.
[5]
https://richardgreeman.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=228&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
[6] http://links.org.au/node/4172 “Challenging the globalization of
indifference: Pope Francis meets with popular movements” by Judith
Marshall, November 21, 2014.
[7] According to Juan GRABOIS, activist in the Movement of Excluded
Workers and as one of the national coordinators of the Confederation of
Popular Economy Workers in Argentina, quoted by Marshall, above.
[8] Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without
Organizations (2008)
[9]
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/12/will-the-vaticans-crackdown-on-nuns-work/the-vaticans-fear-tactics-will-not-work
[10]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/us/vatican-report-us-nuns.html?ref=todayspaper
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