Actions that are Morally Offensive

In their review of cinema, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops defines some movies as “morally offensive.” The definition doesn’t necessarily imply that the movie is explicitly pornographic or violent; the term implies that the content contains material that contradicts Catholic doctrine. A movie that includes a scene of Euthanasia might, for example, receive such a rating as did Million Dollar Baby, which won incidentally the 2004 Oscar for Best Picture. The review of a film by the Catholic Bishops may be complimentary, and in this example it was, but if the movie incorporates perhaps only a single scene that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops cannot accept following the guidelines of the Catholic faith, the film acquires the rating of morally offensive.

I don't have a problem with that, I find many things almost on a daily basis that are morally offensive and as far as movie ratings go, when I am checking for opinions on a movie I’ve seen or am considering, there are four or five review sites that I look at as I’m looking for opinions from several divergent points of view. I’m not going to reveal them except to say that the movie review from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of them.

The next question to explore then is what “Morally Offensive” means to Catholics. I’ve touched on this above: for something to be considered Morally Offensive to Catholics, it must violate one of the fundamental beliefs of the Church. There are several that might apply here but the most essential in this example, in my opinion, is the Church’s position on human life. Most are aware that the Church opposes abortion or infanticide at any point from conception to birth. It also opposes Euthanasia, most incidents of war, the existence of nuclear weapons and other events that I’m not going to discuss. What I will discuss are issues that seem particularly relevant right now to our survival as a species on the planet we all depend on for our existence and life.

I. The Biological Requirements for the Creation of Human Life

The one event that is most interesting is the Church’s position on contraception. I find this most interesting because this is an ontological belief. To logic and science an ontological belief is ideological or more precisely theoretical. If one believes the theory, one must accept all of its antecedents. One who is unsure may look to science for guidance. Unfortunately science is not conclusive here.

A geneticist might argue that immediately after conception the DNA sequence that will play any role in the characteristics of the embryo that develops during pregnancy is fixed. There may be difficulty in legally establishing that a multi-cell embryo is a human being and legally at least to define as such.

To say this is a complex issue with widely differing points of view is to some degree – depending on one’s core beliefs – an understatement.

A pregnancy can be intentionally aborted in many ways. The manner selected depends chiefly upon the gestational age of the embryo or fetus, which increases in size as it ages.[11] Specific procedures may also be selected due to legality, regional availability, and doctor-patient preference. Reasons for procuring induced abortions are typically characterized as either therapeutic or elective. An abortion is medically referred to as therapeutic when it is performed to:

• save the life of the pregnant woman;
• preserve the woman's physical or mental health;
• terminate pregnancy that would result in a child born with a congenital disorder that would be fatal or associated with significant morbidity; or
• Selectively reduce the number of fetuses to lessen health risks associated with multiple pregnancies.

An abortion is referred to as elective when it is performed at the request of the woman "for reasons other than maternal health or fetal disease."

It is elective abortion that is most controversial both legally and morally. In the United States the issue was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973 is a case known as Roe v. Wade.

The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion is determined by her current trimester of pregnancy:

• In the first trimester, the state cannot restrict a woman's right to an abortion in any way. The courted stated that this trimester begins at conception and ends at the "point at which the fetus becomes 'viable'".
• In the second trimester, the state may only regulate the abortion procedure "in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health" (defined in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton.
• In the third trimester, the state can choose to restrict or proscribe abortion as it sees fit when the fetus is viable ("except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother").

The Court rested these conclusions on a constitutional right to privacy emanating from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as substantive due process.

To again state the obvious to a certain degree: 

In disallowing many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the United States, Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today, about issues including whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the nation into pro-Roe (mostly pro-choice) and anti-Roe (mostly pro-life) camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides.

I will leave it to the reader to research the issue to a greater or lesser extent than I do here.

I find the Church’s position on contraception difficult to justify on both moral and practical grounds. According to biological science neither the sperm nor unfertilized egg contains sufficient Chromosomal material to be considered “human.” Both are Haploid.

The haploid number (n) is the number of chromosomes in a gamete of an individual, and this is distinct from the monoploid number (x) which is the number of unique chromosomes in a single complete set. Gametes (sperm, and ova) are haploid cells. The haploid gametes produced by (most) diploid organisms are monoploid, and these can combine to form a diploid zygote. For example, most animals are diploid and produce monoploid gametes.

During meiosis, germ cell precursors have their number of chromosomes halved by randomly "choosing" one homologue, resulting in haploid gametes. Because homologous chromosomes usually differ genetically, gametes usually differ genetically from one another.

All plants and many fungi and algae switch between a haploid and a diploid state (which may be polyploid), with one of the stages emphasized over the other. This is called alternation. Most fungi and algae are haploid during the principal stage of their life cycle.

Male bees, wasps, and ants are haploid organisms because of the way they develop from unfertilized, haploid egg cells.

In humans, the monoploid number (x) equals the haploid number (n), x = n = 23, but in some species (especially plants), these numbers differ. Common wheat has six sets of chromosomes in the somatic cells, derived from its three different ancestral species. The gametes of common wheat are considered as haploid since they contain half the genetic information of somatic cells, but are not monoploid as they still contain three complete sets of chromosomes (n = 3x).

Diploid (indicated by 2n=2x) cells have two homologous copies of each chromosome, usually one from the mother and one from the father. The exact number of chromosomes may be one or two different from the 2 number yet the cell may still be classified as diploid (although with aneuploidy). Nearly all mammals are diploid organisms (the viscacha rats Pipanacoctomys aureus and Tympanoctomys barrerae are the only known exceptions as of 2004), although all individuals have some small fraction of cells that display polyploidy. Human diploid cells have 46 chromosomes and human haploid gametes (egg and sperm) have 23 chromosomes.

Some of the confusion can perhaps be clarified if the following is understood:

In humans, the somatic cells that compose the body are diploid (containing two complete sets of chromosomes, one set derived from each parent), but sex cells (sperm and egg) are haploid.

One final and perhaps most important point is this: to understand human biology and reproduction, the key concept is Meiosis. When I was in the 10th grade is was taught in great detail in high school biology. I have no idea what is happening today in the United States and on that good night and good luck.

Thus if one accepts the validity of biological science, there can be no debate. Prevention of conception will prevent Human embryogenesis. Again I will leave it to the reader to continue this line of reasoning on their own.

On practical grounds, it would appear that the use of contraception would resolve the majority of the objections to abortion. If you fail to understand this I suggest that you reread what I have written directly above until you either agree or give up trying. One important potential of contraception would be placing some degree of control on human population growth. The convergence of carbon based technology and human population growth are placing constraints on the ability of the planet to sustain life forms. I have dealt with this elsewhere: The Politics of Reality Denial, Polar Bear Story, Globally Warm - After 2050, The Waters of Puget Sound, Nuclear Weapons and the United States and passim.

So to summarize what has been said to this point:

There are certain actions that the Catholic Church considers “Morally offensive.”

These include but are not necessarily limited to the core beliefs of the Church, most specifically those pertaining to human life.

Its position on Euthanasia, abortion and contraception are examples; one can find others without much difficulty.

The specific cases of abortion and contraception have been explored in some detail.

The next topic I will look at is the Church's involvement in political causes and political movements.

II. Political Contradictions - The Profound Inconsistency

The Catholic Church will maintain that its existence is a spiritual one and its role and activities in the secular world is non-existent. It must be stressed that this is the Church’s official position. That it ever deviates from this position is something that it has seldom if ever acknowledged. Because of this it is presently facing a crisis. There can be no doubt that it is a crisis that has always been present.

The church’s fundamental and deliberate separation from secular society — in terms of how it sees its mission, protects itself and interprets human misbehavior — explains much of its leaders’ response, or lack thereof, to the child sexual abuse crisis. Time and again they have sought to police their own ranks in their own ways, due largely to fears of persecution that are embedded in the very genesis of the Church, supported by much if its history and evoked by its signal symbol: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There are enemies of the faith, no question. And so there is a powerful impulse to protect it that can override all else — that can lead to Pope Benedict XVI’s edict in 2001, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and leading the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that exhorted bishops worldwide to aggressively report abuse cases directly to the Vatican but offered no comparable encouragement for them to report crimes to the police. There is also a decidedly nonsecular response to wrongdoing that paves the way for second and third chances — and serial abuse. In the secular world, the molestation of a child is labeled a crime, and a heartfelt apology for it doesn’t obviate jail time. In the Catholic Church, it is discussed as a sin, to be confessed and then, by the grace of God, forgiven. Penitence may well supplant punishment.

I will deal with this specific topic in greater detail in what follows. For now though, the point to be gleaned is that the Church maintains that it has no role in secular activities. To examine this claim I will look at two historical incidents. One is the series of events that led to and followed the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero on March 24 1980 in El Salvador and the response from the Vatican to this singular event and additionally to Liberation Theology; secondly I will discuss the actions of the Church and specifically Pope John Paul II in influencing (I would not say causing) the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

A trivia question for the 1980s might be was “Iran Contra” about El Salvador? It is difficult to insert “plot spoilers” in essays so I’ll just continue with the main theme of the article.

The case of Archbishop Romero is truly a tragic one. 95% of the population of El Salvador is Catholic and the country was in the midst of a civil war. The war was between “Left Wing” elements and a government and military financed, trained and supported by the United States. The government is best remembered perhaps for its “Death Squads” It is estimated that the U.S. supported Salvadoran military was responsible for kidnapping more than 30,000 people and the death of “nearly 70,000.” And this has never been resolved.

On a battlefield where the might of the military was driven by US weapons, training, and political support, Romero’s appeals included asking the US government to stop sending military aid to his country. According to Tom Gibb, BBC correspondent in El Salvador during the 1980’s civil war, “It was the largest counter-insurgency war against left-wing guerrillas [the US had been involved in] since Vietnam.” As people continued to disappear and be murdered and tortured, Romero used his position as a religious leader to call for justice in a public appeal to the men of the armed forces on March 23rd, 1980, saying: “Brothers, you came from your own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law.” Romero was shot through the heart by a professional assassin the next day while celebrating mass.

In life, Archbishop Romero practiced what is commonly known as Liberation Theology.

Although liberation theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Roman Catholic church in Latin America in the 1950s - 1960s. It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in that region. It achieved prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.

In addition:

Liberation theology proposes to fight poverty by addressing its source: sin. In so doing, it explores the relationship between Christian theology — especially Roman Catholic theology — and political activism, especially about social justice, poverty, and human rights. The principal methodological innovation is seeing theology from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed (socially, politically, etc.). For example Jon Sobrino, S.J., argues that the poor are a privileged channel of God's grace. Liberation theologians base their social action upon the Bible scriptures describing the mission of Jesus Christ, as bringing a sword (social unrest), e.g. Isaiah 61:1 (http://bibref.hebtools.com/?book=% — and not as bringing peace (social order). This Biblical interpretation is a call to action against poverty, and the sin engendering it, and as a call to arms, to affect Jesus Christ's mission of justice in this world. In practice, the theology includes the Marxist concept of class struggle, thus emphasizing the person's individual self-actualization as part of God's divine purpose for mankind.

An obvious question is how the Vatican viewed the importance of Liberation Theology. This is where the story gets interesting.

(It) evolved into many forms of action that get lumped into the idea of liberation theology, but basically means that the Church's primary mission had to somehow bring about change in Latin America." Until then, in most places, the Church had sided with the status quo--with the rich and powerful. From that time, the hierarchy was undermined because there was conflict between bishops who favored social action and those who were essentially apologists for the upper classes and for the military regimes. According to Suro, John Paul II's condemnation of liberation theology was, "'There will be no double magisterium. There will be no double hierarchy.'" The Pope saw liberation theology, first of all, as a challenge to Church hierarchy. He instinctively reacted against the participatory democracy inside the base communities where priests and congregations mingled freely. Secondly, the Pope distrusted the openness to difference and discussion within these communities.

It may be a surprise to some that Pope John Paul II had critics both within the Catholic community which was permeated into a wider audience as well.

John Paul II's most egregious sin was committed in Latin America. There, during the 1960s, Catholics married Marx's paean to the working class with Jesus radical notion that the meek shall inherit the Earth. With the advent of this liberation theology, the Latin American faithful sighed in relief: the Roman Catholic hierarchy—which had aligned itself with the ruling class in the New World since the time of Columbus—would finally fuse the light of heaven with the struggle of Earth. Now the Church would join the oppressed rather than merely bathe their wounds with the promise of salvation in the afterlife. The Latin American gentry, understandably, became furious and called upon the United States for funds and troops—the infamous contras and death squads. Soon came the murders of priests, nuns, brothers, parishioners, even bishops—any Catholic who dared question social inequity. But rather than reprimand these right-wing governments and their henchmen, John Paul II choked the life out of liberation theology. He removed priests and bishops who bravely stood against the marauding forces. In one famous incident, he reprimanded Nicaraguan priest Ernesto Cardenal on national television for his support of the Sandinistas over the Reagan backed contras and scolded into silence a crowd of parishioners who shouted, "¡Queremos la paz!" ("We want peace!")

There are a number of other sources on this which the reader can explore on their own. See for example, Archbishop Oscar Romero: a modern martyr; Did Archbishop Oscar Romero Rise After All?;The Struggle for Justice is a Struggle for Life El Salvador’s quest for peace; Ten Reasons Why Archbishop Romero Is Important 25 Years After His Death.

To sum up what has been covered in this section.

During the 1980s the United States backed a military government in El Salvador that is best remembered for its “Death Squads” and assassins.

One of the most significant victims of this process was Archbishop Óscar Romero.

Archbishop Romero was one of many priests in Latin America known as practitioners of Liberation Theology.

The Vatican and Pope John Paul II generally opposed Liberation Theology and took measures to suppress it.

Regarding the issue of the Church’s involvement in political movements that address poverty and exploitation, the views of Catholics in places like “Latin America” are quite different from the views of the Vatican and Catholics in developed countries like the United States.

In the United States, what seems to concern Catholics are issues like abortion, contraception, same sex marriage and so on; in much of the remainder of the world, day to day survival is uncertain.

Pope John Paul II is not without critics.

Next I will examine the connection between the Vatican, Pope John Paul II and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

If the Vatican has been reluctant to become involved in political struggles in the underdeveloped world over issues like poverty and victimization, it is fair to say that it has taken an open and antagonistic stance regarding the Soviet Union and Communism. To briefly recap what happened during the 1980s and early 1990s, Pope John Paul II was especially active in his country of birth, Poland, and openly supported the Labor Movement Solidarity and its leader Lech Wałęsa. John Paul II visited Poland in June 1979. Relations between Solidarity and the communist government worsened over the next two years and Martial Law is imposed in December 1981. Leonid Brezhnev dies in November 1982. Nevertheless the crisis continues and Grzegorz Przemyk is murdered by the police in May 1983. In June of 1983 John Paul II visits Poland for a second time. In July, Martial Law is lifted but tensions remain high and Lech Walesa is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in October. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev is named General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. He is the last person to hold this position.

However tensions remain high as Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan meet for the first time in Reykjavík, Iceland in October 1986 and the two leaders seem to establish a personal relationship. Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) between the United States and the Soviet Union result in significant reductions in deployed nuclear weapons in Europe as well as in the United States and the Soviet Union.

In July of 1989, Gorbachev states that the Soviet Union will no longer be actively engaged in the management of internal governmental relations of Eastern Bloc nations in Central and Eastern Europe.

Events continue to move quickly and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved in December 1991. The Cold War is ended somewhat euphemistically in 1991 as well.

All of this information can be found in a number of sources on the Internet including Wikipedia. The issue then becomes one of discovering the role and influence of John Paul II in all of this. To understand this, one has to look at issues even more basic, fundamental; issues that transcend what we normally perceive.

In Pope stared down Communism in homeland - and won, CBS News goes on to say:

Through public statements, private negotiations and repeated trips to his native Poland, John Paul helped undermine communist rule in his home country in 1989. That event reverberated throughout other Soviet bloc countries such as Hungary, East Germany and Romania, sparking a chain reaction of revolutions and coups, most of them nonviolent. Today, that region is largely free and democratic. Years later, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reflected on the changes that occurred behind the Iron Curtain. "It would have been impossible without the pope," he said.

The conclusion expressed in the last sentence is questionable. By the late 1970s, the conventional war fighting capability of NATO had increased to the point where a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe would have been difficult to sustain and NATO could have deterred such an attack without the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Thus technology rather than ideology was the determining factor.

Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the conflict between the Vatican, Communism and the Soviet Union has a long history that predates the lives and actions of Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and John Paul II. Communism is a materialistic ideology, the antithesis of religious beliefs and Christianity. The conflict that resulted preceded the Cold War, the Superpower relationship and the 40,000+ nuclear weapons the United States and Soviet Union deployed and fully intended to use in a conflict that would have brought the planet as we now know it to a catastrophic end. Capitalism too is a materialistic ideology and the conflict between the capitalist nations and the Soviet block was essentially one for the material resources of the earth. Capitalism, Communism and any combination(s) are all the same and simply constitute a materialist economic system and nothing more.

The discord between the Vatican and religion in general and communism was a more fundamental conflict. It was a struggle about the nature of existence and the purpose of life itself. To communism, the life of an individual is meaningless beyond its dialectical role. The contradiction is one of class: rulers and slaves, owners and workers and nations that control resources, exert power and formulate reality and history as a result.

More to the point, for the Vatican it went a great deal beyond this. It was a fundamental challenge to its existence:

With the Russian Revolution, the Vatican was faced with a new, so far unknown, situation. An ideology and government which rejected not only the Catholic Church but religion as a whole. “Some hope developed among the United Orthodox in the Ukraine and Armenia, but many of the representatives there disappeared or were jailed in the following years. Several Orthodox bishops from Omsk and Simbirsk wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XV, as the Father of all Christianity, describing the murder of priests, the destruction of their churches and other persecutions in their areas.

To Catholicism the individual when in a state of actual grace is one in being with Christ or more correctly the Trinity. This is as important a relation as there can be, nothing can supersede it. In every Catholic Mass this belief is stated in the Profession of Faith, an affirmation and acceptance of the Symbolum Apostolorum or Apostles' Creed. It also may be known as The Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. (Emphasis added)

To Catholicism, this one phrase “The life of the world to come” constitutes the complete rejection of materialism and the acceptance of eternal life. To the Vatican and Catholics this is the core of existence and really nothing else matters. It is the role of the Vatican, the Pope and Catholicism in general to defend this core belief against all enemies.

In my opinion, this is good and I’ll explain why. It is so important that I will advise that if the reader has made it to this point and doesn’t understand the Profession of Faith, then read it again because it is the key concept in this essay and logically leads to the rejection of and liberation from materialism. If one has a spiritual existence and has faith that this existence is as real as what sensory information provides, then there is nothing that can harm them. There is a better place and what is seen in the world of materialism is the illusion. This is an important component of Liberation Theology.

Well there you have it, how could this possibly coexist with a materialistic ideology? It is completely rejected as trivial and unimportant. This is the true revolutionary potential of Catholicism.

Why didn’t John Paul II grasp this? Indeed one has to ask exactly what problem does this church have with Liberation Theology.

I will explore this topic in Section III. To summarize the material just covered:

The significance of the efforts of John Paul II on the world stage is presently inconclusive.

His visits to Poland can be seen as an attempt to bring legitimacy to the Labor Movement Solidarity and its leader Lech Wałęsa.

Had a hardline General Secretary in the tradition of Leonid Brezhnev retained this office during the 1980s, the world could be quite different today. Solidarity could have been suppressed in much the same way as the Soviet Union responded to attempts to leave its orbit of influence as it did with the cases of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The United States had deployed Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles as well as Cruise Missiles in NATO bases in Western Europe and was in the process of deploying the highly MIRVED ICBM MX in silos in North America as well as creating the B1B strategic bomber fleet and an enhanced Trident II SLBM system.

These were considered first strike weapon systems and coupled with the rhetoric from Ronald Reagan about SDI, the Soviet leadership was concerned that the United States and NATO were in the process of launching a preemptive nuclear war.

The tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union at this time were as great as any period of time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

For details on how close the world was to general nuclear war, see the scenarios that were being considered in Able Archer and Operation Ryan.

That the world avoided general nuclear war at some point during the 1980s can largely be seen as a product of negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, specifically Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.

III. A Political Active Church and the Oppressed – Why a Latin American Pope is Needed

Clearly John Paul II’s vision of his role and that of the church he led was tragically narrowed by his cultural relativism. How could such a political activist fail to connect the dots between what he saw happening in Poland (he was from Poland of course) and what Priests like Archbishop Romero were facing in Central and South America? Was he really so naïve, understandable as an idiosyncrasy of biography? Sadly it appears that it may have been so. This question is explored in a Frontline documentary broadcast in the United States by PBS in September 1999. I'm going to quote from it extensively:

In 1980, when the workers struck at Gdansk, there were posters of the Pope everywhere. He supported the strike from the Vatican and sent word to Primate Wyszynski to do the same. When the regime imposed martial law in 1981, the Pope expressed outrage in his radio broadcasts and started sending material, spiritual and financial support home. In 1982, Father Jerzy Popieluszko began joining sit-ins and speaking out against the regime. Poles flocked to his church because of his radical politics. John Paul II personally encouraged his work by sending him a crucifix through friends. It was not long before Father Popieluszko was considered such a challenge, the Communists had him murdered.

Meanwhile, in South America, John Paul II raged against priestly involvement in politics. In 1982, the Pope stopped in Argentina. As he decried the Falkland war, his priests and nuns expressed their support for it by waving banners, saying, "Holy Father bless our war." In 1983, he made his famous trip to Central America where his clerics held a number of positions in the left-wing government. John Paul II publicly scolded Ernesto Cardenal. In private, he negotiated the excommunication of Miguel D'Escoto, a Jesuit who'd joined the Sandinista's government with permission from his order. In 1984, the Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff, a brilliant liberation theologian, was summoned to the Vatican to answer for his latest book. In it, he used Marxist language to critique the Church and analyze its mission. He was silenced, forbidden from speaking or publishing his work. Ultimately, Boff felt compelled to leave the priesthood.

Father Boff left the priesthood? Many Catholics like me have great difficulty in resolving this.

As a result the Vatican can largely be seen as just another player in the Cold War, taking a stance against Communism in the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe but supporting the status quo in Central and South America and much of the underdeveloped world. This could all be quite different if a Liberation Theologian became Pope and the ideas of Liberation Theology were supported by the Vatican throughout the world.

This summarizes and concludes Section III.

IV. Sexual Assault and the Catholic Clergy

The only additional topic that I intend to discuss in this essay before providing my conclusions and my recommendations for specific steps to progress is the issue of sexual assault against children by the Catholic Clergy. I would prefer not to have to deal with this subject. It is so repulsive but thoroughly human that the Vatican’s failure to put a stop to it is the major impediment that prevents me from attending Mass on a regular basis. It is so blatant and so odious that one cannot imagine being associated with an entity where it occurs and has occurred for so long and to such magnitude.

Everything I’ve said about a revolutionary potential of Catholicism is negated by this single issue. Yes the problem is that profound and by all accounts the Vatican’s efforts taken to this point in time to resolve it appear totally inadequate. And make no mistake, the continued existence of the Catholic Church itself is at risk here.

In At the Vatican, Up Against the World cited above, the position the Vatican has historically promoted is that sexual abuse of children by the clergy is a sin and should be treated in the same manner Catholicism deals with all sins, which fundamentally consists of confession, penance and forgiveness. That all sins can be forgiven is not an issue. This issue is how deviant behavior and recurring deviant behavior (recidivism) is treated. In the secular world, sexual assault and sexual abuse could be prosecuted as a felony.

A recent series of articles in the New York Times looks at this in depth. The first of these that I’m going to draw information from is A Papal Conversion.

…to wind the clock back a decade. Before then, no Vatican office had clear responsibility for cases of priests accused of sexual abuse, which instead were usually handled — and often ignored — at the diocesan level. In 2001, however, Pope John Paul II assigned responsibility to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s all-important doctrinal office, which was headed by Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal. As a result, bishops were required to send their case files to Cardinal Ratzinger’s office. By all accounts, he studied them with care, making him one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world to have read the documentation on virtually every Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse. The experience gave him a familiarity with the pervasiveness of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic Church can claim.

And:

What we are left with are two distinct views of the scandal. The outside world is outraged, rightly, at the church’s decades of ignoring the problem. But those who understand the glacial pace at which change occurs in the Vatican understand that Benedict, admittedly late in the game but more than any other high-ranking official, saw the gravity of the situation and tried to steer a new course. Be that as it may, Benedict now faces a difficult situation inside the church. From the beginning, the sexual abuse crisis has been composed of two interlocking but distinct scandals: the priests who abused, and the bishops who failed to clean it up. The impact of Benedict’s post-2001 conversion has been felt mostly at that first level, and he hasn’t done nearly as much to enforce new accountability measures for bishops. (Emphasis added)

From this we find that the Vatican moves slowly on practically everything, which should be no surprise. However at some point it did seem to understand that the recurring sexual abuse cases were a problem and then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now the current Pope) was put in charge of sorting through the details of the cumulative evidence.

Okay so far? If not then you will need to reread the previous 2 or 3 paragraphs in order to comprehend what follows.

The Vatican’s response to this was basically one of saying they were doing as best they could under the circumstances that were emerging.

In light of media reports that have questioned what Benedict knew about abuse cases, Cardinal (William J.) Levada said, “Anyone can say, ‘Why didn’t you do this?’ ‘You could have done this better.’ That’s part of life, but certainly it’s not the case to say that he is deficient,” Cardinal Levada said. “If anything, he was the architect of this step forward in the church and I think he deserves his credit.” Benedict named Cardinal Levada, a theologian, a former archbishop of Portland and San Francisco, and a former chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to succeed him as prefect after he became pope in 2005.

Then something I find very interesting is revealed:

A full 80 percent of the abuse cases to come through the congregation in the past decade are from the United States, according to the head of the internal tribunal that handles abuse cases, Msgr. Charles Scicluna.

Of course it is now known that this same phenomenon was occurring in Ireland so how widespread the problem is may not be completely known at this point. In the New York Times article Abuse Scandal’s Ripples Spread Across Europe:

The fallout from the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church settled across Europe on Wednesday, as prosecutors said they were weighing criminal charges against a priest suspected of molesting children in Germany, and Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of mishandling allegations of abuse in Ireland. The possibility of criminal charges emerged from new accusations against a priest at the center of the child-molesting scandal rocking the church in Germany. On Wednesday, church officials in Munich said the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann — whose transfer in 1980 to an archdiocese led at the time by Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, has drawn the pope himself into the nation’s child abuse controversy — had been accused of molesting a minor as recently as 1998. The latest revelation comes as church officials in northern Germany say they have “credible evidence” of at least two other cases of sexual abuse committed by Father Hullermann in the 1970s, adding to a trail of accusations that suggest a pattern of abuse over two decades. During that time, church officials repeatedly transferred Father Hullermann to new parishes and allowed him to work with children, even after a 1986 conviction for sexually abusing boys.

Victim networks which have been formed worldwide, again no surprise in view of the scope of the problem, are expressing increasing criticism of how the Vatican is dealing with the problem.

At the Vatican on Thursday, a small group of abuse victims gathered to demonstrate against the church’s refusal to defrock a priest in Wisconsin implicated in the abuse of as many as 200 deaf boys, and the role the pope had played in the case when oversaw the Vatican’s doctrinal arm. “The goal of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was to keep this secret,” Peter Isely, Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told the Associated Press. “This is the most incontrovertible case of pedophilia you could get.” The A.P. reported that some of the demonstrators were detained by police. In Ireland, Bishop John Magee, whose resignation was accepted by the pope on Wednesday, issued a statement of apology. In 2008, an investigation by a church panel into allegations in Cloyne found that Bishop Magee had failed to respond to accusations of abuse and that policies to protect children were severely lacking, setting off calls for his resignation.

While drawing definitive conclusions at this point would be premature, the increasing level of criticism of the Vatican’s actions indicates in does appear safe to say that simply making apologies may not be sufficient for a resolution.

The story is still emerging and I will make an effort to keep this section updated as more information becomes available. Obviously for Catholics that have always held the priesthood and church in high esteem, this is a time of great difficulty to put it mildly. It must be remembered that ultimately what is being seen is the activity of human beings; attempting to ignore or deny the role human sexual needs play in human interaction may be a mistaken endeavor. However passing judgment on the behavior of others is not my intention.

To paraphrase John Huston ‘s remark to a somewhat incredulous Jack Nicholson in the movie Chinatown, “given the right circumstances, human beings are capable of anything.” To reiterate the obvious, one is dealing with human beings and the Vatican here and it could be decades if not centuries before this issue is fully resolved. For context, see for example Galileo affair.

Now I want to begin addressing the final topic I intend to cover here: the morally offensive political actions presently taking place in the United States.

V. Liberation Theology and the Morally Offensive Political Climate in the United States

After the votes were counted in 2008 I thought that when the new president assumed the office that the country would respond in much the same way as it did in Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. The reason I thought that would happen is because that is how serious the problems facing the country seemed to be. If you were somewhere else at the time, here are a few links from the PBS program Frontline that I consider to be objective and describe the problems the United States is still dealing with.

Breaking the Bank.

Inside the Meltdown

The Warning

Sick Around the World

Sick Around America

There is much on Frontline that is essential.

I also usually am in sync with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. On subjects like war in general and the invasion of Iraq in particular, nuclear war, terrorism I’ve been consistently in agreement with the U.S. Catholic Bishops, Pope John Paul II and the Vatican as well. See for example The Already Wealthy and Nuclear Weapons and the United States and others.

Here I’ve attempted to present facts about the creation of human life from a scientific viewpoint. This is not an issue I would argue with someone about however. If Americans no longer have any aptitude for science, the rest of the world does. We shall see where that leads. I also consider debates over issues like “sexual preference” to be trivial. Believe whatever you want, I don't participate in ideological wars.

If you want to discuss any issue in a public forum however, I would highly recommend that you stick to provable assertions, don’t threaten anyone with a lethal weapon during a discussion and don’t break any existing laws on criminal behavior. I don’t think that carrying lethal weapons around in a place where there is an ongoing or anticipated political debate is appropriate behavior in the 21^st Century. People who do so should be watched very closely by Federal law enforcement.

Here is a list of things that instantly qualify one as being mentally ill.

Listening to am radio.

Watching any commercial television station for more than 15 minutes without switching to something with no commercials running.

Watching the FOX news network.

The belief that graduating from High School is a major event in one's life.

I could probably think of others but if you do any of these items, you are mentally ill and need professional help. Don’t expect anything from me however.

If one is essentially a spiritual person and is comfortable with the Nicene Creed and doesn’t have to worry about food, shelter, medical care, being a victim of crime or violence, one doesn’t have a lot to complain about. However the issue for Catholics and Liberation Theology is about those who don’t enjoy these aspects of life.

As I have already stated, I find the actions of John Paul II to be inconsistent. He opposed the status quo in Poland and supported it in Central and South America. He was doing this when priests were being assassinated during Mass, Nuns were being raped and murdered, real “death squads” were running around the streets in El Salvador and so on. It will be generations before we finally know how history will judge his actions as Pope and before, whereas the stature of Pope John XXIII has already been recognized. Whatever he accomplished with his three visits to Poland are in all probability historically inconsequential. It is the magnitude of the weapons buildup in the cold war that is notable for this time in history.

My belief is that suffering is not a normal or acceptable part of life. As long as there is suffering in the world then something is wrong and when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, the judgment will be a harsh one. You can take it from there.

I will add one more thing about the economy. There are sectors in any normal economy. They are generally considered to be the Primary Sector, Secondary Sector and Tertiary Sector. So-called “information sharing” is merely an aspect of the tertiary Sector. Any economic activity that creates wealth without producing anything (“Financial Sector”) through the buying and selling of abstractions like stocks, bonds, money, derivatives and so on should be regulated and taxed out of existence.

The last two paragraphs are what I would consider to be fundamental to Liberation Theology and the Catholic Church should support it worldwide. Anything less is a mortal sin and you won’t get into heaven with that on your record.

After calling the Soviet Union an Evil Empire and then meeting Mikhail Gorbachev and visiting Russia, Ronald Reagan was asked if he still looked at them as an “Evil Empire.” He said no and that we must start talking to each other instead of about each other. And that is a good point to end this on.