End of communism not good for Catholicism?
Brazil and its large Catholic population are prisoners of socialism, but the Vatican has been worried (for about 1,000 years!) about the Orthodox Church
By Julio
Severo
While
the world is celebrating the end of communist tyranny in Europe, its end was
not all positive for Catholicism, a senior Vatican official indicated on
Monday. According to Reuters through WorldNetDaily, the Catholic official thinks the
fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago brought religious tensions between Rome
and Russia back to the surface. These tensions are much older than the Soviet
Union.
“The
changes in 1989 were not advantageous for ecumenical relations,” Koch told
Vatican Radio.
Koch,
who spoke a week after the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, noted
that talks on closer ties between Catholic and Orthodox theologians were
suspended between 2000 and 2006 because of tensions between the two sides.
Persecution
of Christians in the Middle East has brought Catholics, Orthodox and
Protestants there together, he said, but behind the Ukraine crisis there is a conflict
of interests between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russians,
who make up two-thirds of the world’s 300 million Orthodox, are wary of the
efforts of Pope Francis, who will visit Turkey to meet Patriarch Bartholomew,
the Orthodox leader in Istanbul.
Because
of his more progressive stances, it is not only Orthodox Christians who are wary
about this pope. Conservative Catholics and evangelicals are also worried about
his non-conservatism and about how liberals,
including homosexual activists, have welcome him.
Problems
between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are not new. Since Orthodox
Christians left the Catholic Church and the supremacy of the pope about one
thousand ago, their relationship has been hard, even in our days.
Yet,
both churches were not supposed to have a so bad relationship, because, in important
ethical points challenging Christianity today, they have been champions of
truth.
The
Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have a good stance against abortion,
the gay agenda and population control. Of course, they have also theological
problems, including the replacement theology, which says that the Catholic
Church replaced Israel. Both the Orthodox Church and the Protestant Reformers
inherited this theology from Catholicism.
Because
of this theology, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and many traditional
Protestant churches do not have a good relationship with Israel.
About
communism, the senior Vatican official should know that if it has fallen in
Europe (I doubt it, because its milder anti-Christian and pro-Islam forms are
advancing fast, at least in Western Europe), this is not true about Latin
America. In fact, this is not true in the largest Catholic nation in the world:
Brazil.
While
the Orthodox Church had to be suppressed in Russia and other places in the
communist times, the Brazilian Catholic Church never suffered any suppression
from a communist rule. On the contrary, after a military rule saved Brazil from
a communist tyranny in the 1960s, prominent Catholic leaders defended communist
leaders and attacked their opposition.
The
most outspoken critic of the 1964-85 Brazilian military rule was Bishop Helder
Camara, a liberation theology advocate. He was called “Red Bishop” because of
his Marxist stances.
In
1973, Camara was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a U.S.-based leftist organization,
the American Friends Service Committee.
According
to Dr. Constance Cumbey in her book “The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow,” the
Brazilian bishop played a prominent role in international New Age events.
Camara
was one of the founders of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (NCBB),
the most powerful Catholic organization in Brazil.
For
decades, NCBB has kept the Catholic population in Brazil under its Marxist
spell and it is credited for having helped to found the ruling Workers’ Party,
which has kept Brazil enslaved under its pro-Cuba socialism for 13 years.
In
Russia, the most Orthodox nation in the world, the relationship between the
Orthodox Church and communism was not easy. In his book “Their Blood Cries Out,”
Paul Marshall says, “In the 1920s and 1930s approximately two hundred thousand
Russian Orthodox priests, monks, and nuns were slaughtered. A further half
million were imprisoned or deported to Siberia.”
While
in Russia and other nations the Orthodox Church was violently suppressed to
serve communist ambitions, in Brazil no such violence and suppression was
necessary. NCBB has voluntarily and wholeheartedly worked to make Catholics and
Brazil more communist.
So
instead saying that the end of communism was not all good in Russia and Eastern
Europe, the senior Vatican official should worry that socialism has never had an
end in the largest Catholic flock in the world.
Brazil
and its Catholic Church are prisoners of the socialist ideology, especially
loved and promoted by the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, and the
Vatican is not helping them when it focuses its attention on Russia. Instead of
trying to bring Orthodox Christians to the Catholic fold, the Vatican should
try to take Brazilian Catholics from the socialist fold and its liberation
theology.
With
information from WorldNetDaily and Reuters.
Portuguese
version of this article: Fim do comunismo não foi bom para o catolicismo?
Source: Last Days Watchman
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