Brazilian Crisis Sparks Chances for Socialist Marina Silva in the 2018 Presidential Election

By Julio Severo

In the midst of the deep political and financial crisis in Brazil, and massive protests against its leftist President Dilma Rousseff — despised by most Brazilian population who, according to Datafolha polls, wants her impeached for corruption and economic recession —, a new political scenery and possibilities begin to emerge.

Former Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva is one of these possibilities. According to another poll by Datafolha, she is the preferred choice for most Brazilian constituents for the 2018 presidential election in Brazil. In second place is Aécio Neves, a social democrat. In the last place is Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, from the ruling socialist Workers’ Party.

Neves, who was also a presidential candidate in the last election, had his candidacy built by Marxist strategist David Axelrod, a longtime top Obama adviser. Yet, he has received less support now than earlier, because his name is also involved in the political and financial scandals sweeping the socialist Brazilian government.

Even though not directly involved in these scandals, Marina Silva had her origins in the Workers’ Party and Liberation Theology, and today she is heavily involved in international environmentalist causes. She and other socialists have strategically supported the Brazilian protests. This is a far cry of some interpretations of the Brazilian political reality in some websites, which try to present the Brazilian anti-government protests as exclusively “anti-Marxist.”

The popular dissatisfaction has been provoked by economic constraints in the Brazilian workers’ pockets. The choice of Silva, Neves and even Lula among Brazilian constituents is an evidence that Marxism is a dominating force in the people’s aspirations.

The portrayal of the Brazilian reality in some websites as protests against Marxism is as mistaken as the portrayal of Silva as “conservative.” In fact, even the U.S. Christian media had portrayed her this way in the last election, perhaps because she is a Pentecostal from the Assemblies of God, and Pentecostals are generally conservative.

Her background is Catholic, in the Liberation Theology, never giving up this ideology. Even though the Assemblies of God is the largest evangelical denomination in Brazil, with over 15 million members, Marina Silva has not received its political support.

Most of her political support comes from liberal Catholics. Brazil is the largest Catholic nation in the world and its National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (NCBB) was founded by Marxist Bishop Helder Camara, who is in process of sainthood in the Vatican.

The founding of the Workers’ Party is credited to prominent NCBB bishops.

Silva and her former party are children of this institution.

So if the Workers’ Party is removed by the popular impeachment of its president, NCBB bishops will manage to support a new president with its socialist convictions.

Marina Silva’s political growth is a symptom that to come out from Worker’s Party pit, many Brazilians are willing to come into any other pit, whether socialist or otherwise, not minding that Silva’s pit is not different from Worker’s Party pit.

Portuguese version of this article: Crise desperta chances para socialista Marina Silva na eleição presidencial de 2018

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

Understanding Anti-Government Protests in Brazil

Were Brazilian Protests an Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution?

Anti-Marxist Conscience of the Brazilian Evangelical

U.S. Betrays Military Men Who Protected Brazil from Communist Threat

John Perkins and His Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Brazil, the Next (Regional or Global) Threat to the U.S. Economic Supremacy?

Inflamed by American Prophecy, Brazilian Evangelicals Want a Woman for Brazil Presidency

Brazilian Pentecostals: Church Growth Endangered by Socialist Embrace

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.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the top Roman Catholic official for inter-church relations, said the re-emergence of Catholic churches in Ukraine and Romania is creating major tensions with the Russian Orthodox Church. For decades during communist tyrannies, these churches were largely suppressed.

“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

Recommended Reading:

Learning from Russia’s Return to Its Historical Roots

Kremlin Hosts International Meeting of Pro-Family Leaders and It is Accused by The Moscow Times of Throwing a Global Neo-Con Party

Can a Pro-Life Activist Defend The Inquisition?

The Pope and Abortion in Brazil

Brazilian president is about to enact pro-abortion law, and the pope does not know about it

By Julio Severo

A bill protecting victims of sexual violence was passed by stealth in the Brazilian Congress recently. There is no problem in laws protecting such victims. But pro-abortion groups praised it because it will effectively legalize abortion in Brazil. It will enforce another law that says that to get an abortion is enough for a woman to say that she was a victim of rape. There is no need of medical and legal evidence. Any woman can get an abortion by alleging violence.

Pope Francis and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff

This bill, the way it is, helps more abortion than victims of sexual violence. Now, it waits official enactment by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, a fervent socialist who, nevertheless, seeks not to antagonize her massive Catholic population.

Pro-life groups throughout Brazil are pressing the Catholic National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (NCBB) to convince Rousseff not to enact the pro-abortion bill. But NCBB, traditionally aligned with many of the Liberation Theology tenets, has been divided about an opposition to the bill.

Rousseff will react according to the popular mobilization she sees. She is seeing some small Catholic and evangelical groups opposing. She is seeing NCBB divided. And in this urgent context, where abortion can be legalized at any moment, the pope comes to visit Brazil!

Just one word from Pope Francis asking Rousseff not to enact the abortion law would be more than enough for her to comply with his wishes. His word represents the will of millions of Catholics, and Brazil is the largest Catholic nation in the world.

But largely leftist NCBB has not informed the pope about the urgent issue. Brazilian pro-life leaders are trying to get to the pope to ask his help, but even in this case, under the alarm of learning about the desperate situation in Brazil, the pope could eventually get disoriented by seeking additional information directly from the most important Catholic hierarchy in Brazil: NCBB.

Rousseff is with her pen in her hand, ready to sign into law the pro-abortion bill, but she is waiting. If the pope speaks up, pro-abortion groups will suffer inevitable defeat. If the pope leaves Brazil without speaking up, pro-life groups will have a hard time to explain about the urgency and importance of the pro-abortion bill. After all, if it is so pressing, why did not the pope speak up?

Rousseff and Brazil are waiting the specific pro-life words by the pope on the pro-abortion bill that she is about to sign into law.

If the pope leaves Brazil without such words, the Catholic National Conference of Bishops of Brazil will have innocent blood in its hands.

Portuguese version of this article: O Papa e o Aborto no Brasil

Source: Julio Severo in English: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

Recommended Reading:

Abortion games between Brazil and UN

If you want to know about Liberation Theology in Brazil, download my free English book here: http://bit.ly/1a6brwP