Nicholas Cafardi on Cardinal Martini, Attack on Liberation Theology, and U.S. Elections

Nicholas Cafardi at America's "In All Things" blog on Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the suppression of liberation theology by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), and the current U.S. elections: 

John Paul II and the then Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Ratzinger condemned the nascent liberation theology in Latin America and took strong steps to shut it down. While their motives are understandable, since they feared Marxism in its European version, and could not understand or accept a Christian version of it, this was a major misstep that ended up causing great harm to the Church. Whether they meant to or not, Wojtyla and Ratzinger were making a political choice. In preventing liberation theology, as preached by these martyrs, from reaching its full stage of development, they were keeping the Church aligned with the old power structures of Latin America. They might just as well have sent a telegram. These religious men and women, who in the name of the Gospels, stood with the poor, would not be defended by their Church. They were expendable, and they were murdered.   

While these murders happened over twenty years ago, their repurcussions* are still felt today, not only in Cardinal Martini’s last words, but in our own presidential election. The Republican candidate for President, Mitt Romney, got a large part of the initial investment to start Bain Capital from wealthy El Salvadorian clans that, beside funding Bain, also funded the right wing El Salvadoran death squads.  It is unknown if any Bain profits went back to El Salvador through the hands of these investors to fund more murders of the poor, of priests and of nuns, but it is a question that needs to be answered. Certainly Bain paid these El Salvadoran “investors” many times over what they invested. The Church’s treatment of the El Salvadorian martyrs weighed heavily on Cardinal Martini’s mind in his last days. Who their murderers were and who was in business with them should weigh heavily on our minds as we consider how to vote this November. 

 ". . . [T]hey were keeping the Church aligned with the old power structures of Latin America. They might just as well have sent a telegram. These religious men and women, who in the name of the Gospels, stood with the poor, would not be defended by their Church. They were expendable, and they were murdered."   And this, of course, is why, for some of us, the push of the current leaders of the Catholic church to canonize John Paul II is incomprehensible and even sinful: Jesus never made the poor expendable.

As incomprehensible as the choice of a full half of American Catholics to vote for** a ticket this fall whose primary agenda is to blame the poor for being poor, while granting the already rich further privileges and exemption from taxes . . . . The continuing decision of half of American Catholics to ally themselves with a political agenda targeting the poor and adulating the rich attests to the abysmal catechesis provided to Catholics in recent years by the current pastoral leaders of the church.

*I.e., "repercussions."

**Thanks to Dennis Coday's "Morning Briefing" column in National Catholic Reporter for the link to this report on Catholic voting patterns in 2012.