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trotsky

(49,533 posts)
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 11:37 AM Mar 2013

How the Catholic Church Lost Argentina

Argentina's laws ensuring lesbian, gay and transgender people's right to marriage -- which it extends to non-resident foreigners -- and adoption are among the most liberal in the world. Nearly three years since the passage of the law in July 2010, more than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples have tied the knot in Argentina, according to Esteban Paulón, president of the Argentina LGBT Federation.

Meanwhile, the church's slow decline has continued. According to the Pew Forum, 76.8 percent of Argentina's population is at least nominally Catholic, but only 33 percent of Catholics interviewed in Argentina in 2010 cited religion as very important in their lives, down from 40 percent in 2002, and only 19 percent said they regularly attended mass.

But it may be the church's ambiguous stance during Argentina's last dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, that has done the most to damage the institution's credibility.

...

Unlike the nuns and priests in El Salvador, Chile, Brazil and the Dominican Republic who spoke out against dictatorship, often becoming victims to it, very few members of Argentina's church denounced the dictatorship of Gen. Jorge Videla, currently serving multiple life sentences for human rights crimes. This near-absolute silence has been interpreted since as acquiescence, and even complicity.


More at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/22/how_the_catholic_church_lost_argentina
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struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
1. Nunca Más (Never Again)
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 01:54 PM
Mar 2013

Report of Conadep (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) - 1984
http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_001.htm


I. The attitudes of some members of the Church

The bishops of the Argentinian Church repeatedly condemned the repression which this Commission investigated. Scarcely two months had passed since the coup on 24 March 1976 when the Episcopal Conference in a General Assembly described the methods used as 'sinful'. In May 1977, after making representations to members of the Military Junta, it published a strongly worded document on similar lines.

Regrettably, some individual members of the clergy by their presence, their silence or even by direct involvement supported the very actions that had been condemned by the Church as a whole ...

Von Wernich was also named in the following files: Nos. 2852 (deposition on the disappearance of María Magdalena Malner and Pablo Joaquín Mainer); 2818 (deposition on the disappearance of Cecilia Luján Idiart); 2820 (deposition on the disappearance of Domingo Héctor Moncalvillo); 2821 (deposition on the disappearance of Liliana Amalia Galarza); 2822 (deposition on the disappearance of María del Carmen Morettini); 6982 (testimony of Luis Larralde) ...

Monsignor Miguel Medina was also named by, among others, Emma Elena Giménez de Giribaldi (file No. 2459) and Gustavo Rafael Larratorres (file No. 4859).

http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_179.htm


So CONADEP said that the Catholic bishops in Argentina had promptly denounced the repression. CONADEP noted, however, that two Catholic clergy, Von Wernich and Medina, were possibly implicated in the repression. Von Wernich, of course, was later convicted; I currently don't know whether Medina was ever charged

trotsky

(49,533 posts)
2. So many questions remain that the church could easily answer if it chose to.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 02:16 PM
Mar 2013
A contingent of priests led by Eduardo de la Serna, a parish priest in San Francisco Solano and the coordinator of the Group of Priests in Option of Argentina's Poor, has demanded that the church cease giving communion to incarcerated ex-dictator Jorge Videla and publish the records of the military's Catholic confessors.


The lack of access to information about the full extent of the church's role is really curious and I think, worthy of investigating. Others appear to be quite willing to just let bygones be bygones. You know, kinda like "Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who." Funny how getting your raped daughter an abortion gets you excommunicated, but being a brutal dictator allows you to remain a Catholic in good standing.

struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
5. Not being Catholic, I of course cannot speak for Catholics on their theory of excommunication,
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 02:52 PM
Mar 2013

but it is my present understanding that their excommunication is not regarded as a punishment, but rather as a medicinal treatment, intended to impress upon the excommunicated person the severity of their offense, with the aim of inducing a sincere repentance and good-faith confession leading to forgiveness and absolution: in particular, excommunication is not a permanent exclusion from the sacraments, but only an exclusion until appropriate confession

This is a branch of ancient Christian theory that honest self-appraisal, with regret for sins of both commission and omission and with sincere intent to reform, is the road to entry into the community and (under the hypothesis that all humans constantly fail to think, speak, and act appropriately) also the road to regular re-entry into the community



struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
6. The article in your OP asserts: "very few members of Argentina's church denounced the dictatorship"
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 02:57 PM
Mar 2013

The CONADEP report asserts: "The bishops of the Argentinian Church repeatedly condemned the repression"

struggle4progress

(118,039 posts)
3. The article (dated today: 22 March 2013) in your OP asserts:
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 02:18 PM
Mar 2013
... One Argentine priest is currently on trial on charges of working closely with torturers in a secret jail during the dictatorship ...

To which priest does this article refer?

I am aware of the case of Von Wernich, who had been a military chaplain at one or more secret detention centers and was given a life sentence in 2007 for his complicity in kidnapping, murder, and torture, but I am not aware of other prosecutions.

Is Von Wernich on trial again on other charges? Is another priest currently on trial? Or has the author of the article carelessly misunderstood the dates of the 2007 Von Wernich trial and conviction?
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