What are human rights and how can they be rescued from utopians now creating dystopia?

“All the races of the world are men, and of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the entire human race is one.” - Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas (1550)

Since it is akin to asking what color Napoleon's white horse is, the definition of human rights ought to be self-evident at first glance. Human rights are those that you have just by virtue of being a person. These rights ought to apply to everyone since they are fundamental to being a human. 

The modern concept of a universal human rights standard, despite its simplicity, was not even discussed until the 1550s. In a discussion concerning the rights of the native people of the Americas, Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas presented a universal concept of human rights for the first time.

“All the races of the world are men, and of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the entire human race is one.”

The French revolution is tied the emergence of rights to a particular national experience while appealing to enlightenment values. At the same time critical voices, such as Edmund Burke, emerged that challenged the abstract rights discourse with concrete examples and through his own prior actions provided a working alternative rooted in tradition, and moral values.

Bartolomé de Las Casas by Parra

Why return to these ideas now?

 Theologian Nigel Biggar and The European Conservative's monthly show, The Forge, "hosted by Harrison Pitt which aims to revive the art of Socratic dialogue and intellectual combat," discuss questions that this blog has previously addressed and returns to them because of their conversation which raise important questions. "What is the proper relationship of these alleged rights to other important concerns, from duties and virtues to democratic politics and national traditions? Do natural and/or human rights exist at all? And even if they do, how did rights-talk come to be so effectively weaponized by utopian activists?  

 

The failed enlightenment human rights project

 

Enlightenment liberalism is committed to full equality, individual rights, dignity and has a discourse to protect the marginalized. All of that is true and is backed up in the historical record. An excellent example of a document that is a pure product of enlightenment liberalism is "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," also known as the "Declaration of Human and Civic Rights" adopted on August 26, 1789 and is a product of the French Revolution as is the even more egalitarian document produced in 1793 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of Year I. Article 1 of the 1789 declaration reads: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good."

Enlightenment liberalism constructed abstract models that failed to take into account the full complexity of human nature and its contradictions. The French human rights charter declares men absolutely both free and equal. Edmund Burke believed that "full equality" outside of the moral and spiritual sphere is unattainable and a dangerous fiction. First, to permit absolute freedom is to tolerate profound inequalities because people if left to their own devices develop hierarchies. Secondly, to enforce absolute equality requires an all powerful state to repress natural inequalities.  The French Revolution: How utopian aspirations led to dystopian results 

The execution of Robespierre and his supporters on 28 July 1794.

The end result is not absolute equality but a small group with great power at its disposal making slaves of the majority. This is what happened in the French Revolution and reached its apex with Maximilien Robespierre, in 1794 with an observation that he applied in governance: "The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny." It is a contradiction in the same way that combining absolute freedom and equality as revolutionary goals are in contradiction and doomed to failure. Robespierre was only applying the logic of enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau's who spoke of "forcing men to be free." The "rights" that emerged out of the French Revolution were a rejection of tradition, the Ancien Régime and the Catholic Church more specifically, gave Europe its first modern genocide of peasants in which men, women, and children were systematically exterminated, The Vendee, and the end result was the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a world war that took three million lives.  Edmund Burke, and a conservative conception of Human Rights

Edmund Burke

In Reflections on the Revolution in France, written less than a year into the French Revolution, Edmund Burke predicted in 1790 that the follies of enlightenment liberalism and its abstractions would lead to widespread slaughter, tyranny, and ultimately a dictatorship.

Burke provides an alternative approach to the defense of human rights that rejects abstractions, defends tradition, but also has a moral sense informed by his Christian faith. Edmund Burke's lifelong opposition to "entrenched and arbitrary power" led him to clash with enlightenment liberalism at pivotal moments. He was the prosecutor who attempted to remove Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India, ten years before the French Revolution, for poor leadership, personal corruption, and mistreatment of the Indians he was responsible for. On February 15, 1788, Edmund Burke opened with a speech which is excerpted below:

My Lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons, nor the whole Legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will; much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection—all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, pre-existent law, prior to all our devices and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir. 

Edmund Burke in the trial against Hastings advocated for the idea that people of different races should not be exploited and of the need for accountability. It was not the first time Burke spoke out against arbitrary rule. In his March 22, 1775 speech on conciliation with America he explained to the British government that the way to keep the allegiance of the colonies was to maintain the identification with civil rights associated with colonial rule warning that if that relation were broken it would lead to dissolution. 

Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government-they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation - the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you.

Edmund Burke's concept of human dignity as derived from the creator combined with a concept of man's moral equality has deep roots in the Christian tradition which incidentally is where the very language and concept of human rights first emerged in the 1200s in the Catholic Church and was refined by Thomas Aquinas.  Edmund Burke's defense of the marginalized, the colonized, and the conquered was rooted not in abstract enlightenment theory but a Christian moral vision of the universe. According to Burke, in his 1796 Letters on a regicide peace, man has freedom but it is not absolute:

As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others; or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct.

Conservative skepticism

The skepticism expressed by conservatives Nigel Biggar and Harrison Pitt in their conversation on human rights is not new. Paleo-conservative writer Thomas Fleming in The Morality of Everyday Life asks: “If rights are claims to be enforced by government, then what are ‘international human rights’ if not the theoretical justification for world government?”[Fleming, T. 2007 ] American conservatives are also concerned with the proliferation of rights into areas that undermine traditions.

It has been demonstrated that governments have a history of mass killing. Why should one think that a world government would be any better? The question has not only been raised by American conservatives but also by a man who the official media of the Soviet Union described as a reactionary utopian upon his death in 1948. Mohandas Gandhi looked upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although it appeared to be doing good by minimizing exploitation, it did the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality. Furthermore Gandhi believed that: “Centralization as a system is inconsistent with [a] non-violent structure of society.”

Nature abhors a vacuum.
 
Despite this skepticism the fact remains that both human rights discourse and the universality of human rights emerged out of one of the most conservative institutions: The Catholic Church. Conservatives must not abandon the conversation on human rights to the Left. Therefore, if one wants to understand how human rights came to be and what can be done to ensure that they can be preserved in a way that, while acknowledging that utopia is unattainable, aims to improve the lives of their fellow humans, one must have a conservative conception of human rights. The Revolution in China, France, Russia, Cuba, and many other countries demonstrate that, when left to their own devices, the Revolutionary's imposition of expanding abstract rights results in a dystopian hellscape rather than a utopian paradise.

Bishop Agustín Román on the Cuban Resistance: Celebrating life and lessons of a good Priest.

Ten years ago tonight Cubans lost the physical presence of one of the great leaders of the Cuban exile community who passed away at the age of 83 but his spirit and his writings live on. Bishop Agustín Román wrote and spoke about the challenges facing the Cuban people and in this December 16, 2006 reflection offered an analysis of the state of the Cuban dissident movement that remains extremely relevant a decade after his death. This is an English translation. The original Spanish text is available here.

 

The importance of the current internal dissident movement in Cuba
by Bishop Agustín Román


INTRODUCTION

Less than a week ago we celebrated the date of December 10, the anniversary of the proclamation by the Organization of the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that is growing in importance over the years, because in it achieved capturing a strong recognition of the dignity of the individual without limitations of race, nationality or belief and without limitations of time and place either, as the same is true for all times and all peoples.

Clearly this being the statement of a secular and supra-confessional organization, there is no religious reference in that statement whatsoever. However, the men of faith and even those without being religious who have followed the development of the human race from its beginnings to the present, it is not difficult to find the source of the underlying principles of human belief about their own dignity and inherent rights in their relationship with God, a god who in almost all major religions demonstrates providence, attentive to the needs of his creatures and possessor of a clear sense of the just.

On the other hand, the important role the delegation of the Republic of Cuba to the United Nations in 1948 in the drafting and promulgation of the Universal Charter, particularly by Drs. Dihigo Ernesto, Guillermo Belt, and Guy Perez Cisneros is a historical fact.

So for me, being Cuban and Catholic, it is an enormous privilege that our beloved and respected Father Felix Varela Foundation, invited me to share with its members and friends some thoughts on the importance of current dissident movement in Cuba, as this issue cannot be properly addressed without relating it directly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's good, then, do so now, as part of the celebrations for the 58th anniversary of the proclamation and it is urgent to do so also by the special circumstances faced by the Cuban nation in these moments.

Thanks, then, to the Father Felix Varela Foundation to create a favorable atmosphere for this opportunity to carefully and sensibly that we must seize to look carefully at the past and present of our people to learn and understand what is necessary in order that each of us can be a facilitator of a future in which that document becomes an invaluable guide of coexistence among Cubans. If we achieve that, we will be implementing in the field of civic, what the Lord previously synthesized in his new command as a compendium of his doctrine: "Love one another as I have loved you."

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The dissident movement inside Cuba is something new in its methods, but is part of a tradition as old as the recorded history of the island following the discovery: the search for justice, which is equivalent to what we now define as respect for human rights. Colonization had barely started under the command of Diego de Velasquez, when he encountered the determined resistance of indigenous groups, that if we take into account their peaceful nature, and lack of coordination between different tribes in remote villages separated from each other, we have be described as remarkable, though doomed from the outset by superior numbers and armaments of the colonizers. Those Tainos were guided by the natural light that makes man differentiate between right and wrong.

Since then and even before it was surfacing the idea of the ​​Cuban as something other than Spanish, a strong sense of justice was taking over increasingly growing segments among the inhabitants of the "ever faithful Isle of Cuba", subjected to the arbitrariness of the representatives of the Crown, to the point that all students of this subject agree that that was precisely what eventually shaped the "criollo" as being different from the "peninsular."

The early rebellions of the miners of El Cobre and the planters of Jesus on the Mount in the first half of the eighteenth century, the preaching of learned men who today identify as founders of our nationality such as Father Varela, Luz y Caballero, Saco, etc.., and the first separatist conspiracies and attempts, often encouraged by Creoles of high economic status, we further indicate that the aspiration to justice was shared by men and women of all races and social strata. All this crystallizes in the Ten Years War, at whose beginning Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, after appealing to the "God of our consciousness with his hand over his heart," declared, "we believe that all men are equal, we love tolerance, order and justice ... "and later consolidated in the War of Independence, when José Martí summarizes the purpose of it saying that he wanted that "the fundamental law of the Republic be the respect of each Cuban for the full dignity of man. "

Later, over the 56 years since the establishment of the Republic until 1 January 1959, we see that the desire for justice is growing and it is the engine of social progress in Cuba. Under its influence popular laws arise, powerful labor movements, political groups, educational institutions, and social work. Early on it achieved the recognition of the right of women to vote, the eight-hour workday, the concept of equal pay for equal work, etc.. Persistent evils such as public corruption, racial discrimination and the marked economic differences between rural and urban areas, always found it rejected by citizens. The Constitution of 1940 and its complementary laws, not always obeyed, are on the path of achieving justice. The political-philosophical debate between liberals, conservatives, marxists, social democrats, etc... is a debate designed to show which proposal is closer to what is right. Cuban Catholic Action in the mid-1950s, an emerging force that proposes the Social Doctrine of the Church as an ideal vehicle for those aspirations.

These aspirations centered on demands such as the restoration of constitutional order, the cleaning up of public administration, etc.., are what were moving the large Cuban majorities support of the revolution that came to power on the first day of 1959. These same aspirations for justice are what make this euphoria quickly fade, like a soap bubble, before the marxist twist of the revolution. As early as November 1959, the Civic Plaza in Havana is filled with Catholics who, at the foot of the venerated image of Our Lady, Patroness of Cuba under the beautiful title of Our Lady of Charity, cry out loud "Social Justice, yes, communism, no! ". Then began another new and bloody stage of struggle for Cubans, this time against an enemy unknown in its cruelty and underestimated in its audacity. But again the ideal of justice moved Cubans to a heroic and at the same time extremely painful confrontation, as civil wars always are.

Without calculating risks or measuring the chances of success, those with "hunger and thirst for justice" faced a totalitarian despotism that did not hesitate to take thousands of compatriots before firing squads, and filling the prisons. The cries of "Viva Cristo Rey!" were the best evidence of the most just motivation of that struggle, which had memorable episodes at the Bay of Pigs, in the mountains and plains around the country and in urban centers where, according to the mentality of the times, tradition, and what appeared to be logical, it saw the armed violent struggle as the only way to get one day, paradoxically, the Republic that, together with Martí, we dreamed cordial, "with all and for the good of all."

By the mid-60, the magnitude of the repression, the support of the Soviet camp of the oppressors, the abandonment of those we believed allies of the fighters for democracy and the complacency of a world, many of whose leaders and thinkers believed fatally destined to fall into the Communist orbit, crushed in Cuba the active resistance. The Camarioca exodus in 1965 and subsequent "Freedom Flights" gave the mortal blow to the brave and sacrificed Cuban underground.

It continued, yes, the quiet individual resistance of the worker who broke his machinery, of the desperate one who painted a sign, or the old woman who, despite the consequences, went to Church.

It was like this up to January 28, 1976. If one were to put a date at the beginning of the active dissident movement within Cuba, it would have to be this, the day that it was consituted that is more or less diffuse, the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, founded by Ricardo Bofill and a small group of collaborators.

Not that before that date there were no dissidents. There where, many and very prominent, such as President Manuel Urrutia, Prime Minister Miro Cardona and commanders Huber Matos and Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, just to name a few among the many who, in turn, denounced in word or deed the marxian entrail of castroism. But they ended up in prison or in exile, while many others, like the unforgettable Porfirio Ramirez, died in an unequal struggle in the mountains of Cuba. The Cubans had not yet discovered the feasibility of the nonviolent struggle as an instrument of liberation.

Underlining its membership in the historic struggle of the Cuban people for justice, the Cuban Committee for Human Rights comes to light on the anniversary of the birth of Martí and cite Father Varela as one of the inspirations of their founding document. It's the same struggle, but it is boldly different: it seeks justice, but by peaceful means. The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its transcendence for the future of Cuba.

One must note that during all that time, before and after the emergence of active internal dissent, exile was, and remains so today, the "other lung" of the Cuban people's struggle to reclaim their rights, the "other trench," which has resisted since day one, with possibilities and without them, with hits and misses, but with exalted fidelity, totalitarianism's attempts to be made permanent in Cuba. Almost all the leaders of the dissident movement also recognize that without the support of the exiles, it would not have been possible to carry out their work, or even survive.

***

"The force of reason is, and should be more powerful than the reason of force." 

- Bishop Agustín Román

 

 

THE MUSTARD SEED.

What began at that scrawny Cuban Committee for Human Rights, that many classified as quixotic, is at present a notable force due to their courage, their determination and their moral authority. It is not a massive movement, but it is the largest of those who have been in any of the countries which were subjected to communist totalitarianism throughout the world.

Also, it is very diverse, it includes in its ranks Cubans of all social strata of the country, medical doctors like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, engineers such as Oswaldo Paya, lawyers like Rene Gomez Manzano, economists such as Marta Beatriz Roque, poets like Regis Iglesias, educators such as Roberto de Miranda, philosophers like Jaime Legonier , ex-military such as Vladimiro Roca, peasants like Antonio Alonso, trade unionists such as Carmelo Diaz , housewives like Berta Antunez, and simple country people such as the brothers Sigler Amaya and many more.

Among them are whites, blacks and mulattoes, Catholics, Protestants and Santeros, liberals, conservatives, christian democrats, socialists and all other non-Communist political denominations. And they are from the extreme western end of the island, as the Pro-Human Rights Party, in Guane, to the extreme eastern end, as the Youth Movement for Democracy in Baracoa.

In its shadow and with its momentum has been reborn in notable measure the civil society of the nation: journalists, librarians, cooperatives, professional associations, farmers, workers, artists, intellectuals and independent disabled, among others.

They have achieved international recognition at very high levels, as witnessed by major prizes for the promotion of human rights granted to different activists by the European Union, non governmental organizations and other institutions in different countries. What is more important, every day they earn more respect among their fellow citizens.

It should be noted, also, that in Cuba, as elsewhere, important semantic differences that had importance in the past have been erased. Today, in the Cuban context, opposition and dissident are synonymous, because under the classification of "dissidents", "dissent" or "the human rights people," as the general population calls them, it includes persons such as Oswaldo Payá , for example, who never belonged to the ranks of the regime, and others who believed for more or less time in the mirage of the revolution.

We can say, therefore, that the current internal dissident movement is a vivid display of the entire Cuban nation and that it is, today, the most important agent of change within the island. In it is fulfilled the parable of the mustard seed, thus from a tiny seed has emerged a corpulent tree. It would not be prudent to exaggerate their importance in terms of the correlation of forces with the dictatorship, but neither would it be to ignore its potential as channeling the desire for justice, now widespread at the popular level, that originated when those desires were expressed by only a few.

The dissident movement does not have an effective articulation throughout the Cuban territory, but I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that it demonstrates already the ability, when the moment arrives and with adequate support, power, together with other independent bodies, religious and fraternal, that offer answers to peremptory uncertainties, the instability and initial disorder that inevitably accompany any significant change in a previously totalitarian society.

In summary, since the issue has arisen: if they ask me what the real importance of the current internal dissident movement, I would say it is the Cubans having revealed to themselves the possibility of banishing violence from political struggles and the effectiveness of non-violent methods in the pursuit of justice.

Cuba inherited old concepts which indicated that the only honorable way to resolve grievances and disputes was through blood, however evident it is today that to win by force means that it is the stronger or the better armed then the other, but not that one necessarily is in possession of reason or rights. The armed or physical confrontation became erroneously, the only acceptable proof of courage and honor.

That mentality which ferociously pushed Spaniards and their Cuban sons to confront each other when the latter justly demanded their independence, continued to mark the Republic, and that is how we saw patriots who won indisputable merits out in the fields confronted each other afterward with the same violence because of political disparities or ambitions of power, providing our nation’s history with very sad pages like the death of Quintín Banderas in the times of Estrada Palma, the racial and veterans confrontations during the government of José Miguel Gómez and the excesses of the government and the opposition during the Machado eras.

It is not wanting to judge by modern parameters, and in the light of experiences they had, to people acting according to the culture of their time and by what they had learned as good and honorable, and who, on the other hand, well are indebted for much good that they did. This is an attempt to dispassionately understand this harmful and counterproductive tradition of violence that caused rivalries and grievances passed from generation to generation, without the possibility of solution. There was always a debt to settle, and it was paid off with blood, the blood of brothers.

Along with this, we must clarify that none of this implies that one can condemn a people at one time if he is forced to resort to violence in an extreme situation, as sometimes one resorts to an amputation to avoid death, especially where the obstinacy of the oppressors shuts out all other attempted solution. Countries, like persons, have the right to defend themselves against aggression. This resort to non-desired violence, has, nevertheless to be imposed temporarily by circumstances, and not be a favored option, much less a practice or method of justifiable struggle.

The syndrome of violence that marked our Republic and to which I referred to earlier, has had its most cruel expression in the present regime. We can never forget the executed by firing squads, the tortured, the fallen in combat, those murdered while trying to escape the island. We can not nor should we forget the experience of living in fear, the heroic Calvary of political imprisonment, nor the horror of the acts of repudiation. It is precisely out of respect and gratitude to the fallen and what we have all suffered that we have to fight for their grandchildren and the grandchildren of all Cubans of the present, can live a different Cuba to the one we had to live in both them and us. A Cuba where the problems are resolved "among Cubans" in harmony and civility, not by some imposing it on others. A Cuba, finally, "where the first law of the Republic is the respect of each Cuban for the full dignity of man."

The conduct and methods that sunk Cuba and keep it under to the present, are not the ones that are going to save it. To assume the thankless task of trying to break the burdensome legacy of violence is the greatest merit of the dissident movement, because, if achieved it would be an inestimable good for Cuba, not only for today and for us, but also for the future, for those who are still to come.

More concretely, I would say that the greatest importance of the internal dissident movement in Cuba today, is that it has proven that political action can be consistent with what conscience knows and that is that the force of reason is, and should be more powerful than the reason of force.

***

 

"If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it." - Bishop Agustín Román  

 

 

 CONCLUSIONS.

Everyone knows that there are none so blind as those who will not see. I believe that only those may try to deny the importance of the current dissidents in Cuba, but, if one needs a convincing testimony about it, I think none better than the dictatorship itself: if those opponents did not represent a real challenge to the regime, then why do they repress them with such virulence? ... Why jail them? ... Why try to discredit them constantly?

The skeptics should be reminded that although the end result sought by the Cuban people has not yet been obtained by dissidents or anyone else, they have shown that non-violent civic resistance can jeopardize totalitarianism, as it happened with "Concilio Cubano" in 1996, in 2001 with the Varela Project and in 2003 with the ferment opposition that caused the "Black Spring" of that year, all of which shows that in these methods the potential to trigger the definitive change.

And at this point, it is clear that it would be logical that all Cubans, both on the island as in exile, ask ourselves what can we do to help the dissidents? ... We the exiles should ask ourselves what to do, between them and us, imparting all the possible effectiveness of the legitimate struggle for the liberation of the common homeland.

I could not offer policy prescriptions nor strategies for action, because I am not a politician or a strategist. I am a Cuban priest, a simple shepherd of souls, and as such, could only refer to what I learned in the light of the Gospel, remember what some of our great thinkers have suggested and recommend that we not forget the proven wisdom of our peasants, that which today is called common sense.

I said at the beginning of the urgency to reflect on these issues as we did today, because of the special circumstances that the Cuban nation is living at this moment. That same sense of urgency we should have with regards to the steps we must take. It is not for me to say what are those steps, but, whatever they will be will move us forward, and not backwards only if we take them through paths of virtue. ¨No homeland without virtue," said to us the first who taught us to think and it occurs to me that I could suggest some of the virtues necessary for our steps to lead us to the goals of the common good, that we want for Cuba:

1 - Firmness of principle and clarity of the objectives. We must be aware of what we want for Cuba: true sovereignty, rule of law and respect for human rights. This sums up all the other just demands such as, for example, the release of political prisoners, democracy, free elections, just proceedings, and so on. We should put forward, in addition, our non-acceptance of formulas that attempt to impede or obstruct the right of Cubans to freely choose their destination or promote continuity of this system or something similar, under the appearance of democracy, openness and reforms.

2 - Equilibrium. Humans are very susceptible to the passion that makes them lose clarity in their vision of things. Cubans are no exception to this rule, on the contrary, therefore, we must remember the wise words of the well named prophet of exile, our unforgettable Bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal. He told us about this, I quote: "The equilibrium is not to dance the tightrope, but it is to adopt a clear and defined attitude that asks nothing borrowed from anyone, but is born of good doctrinal training and a dispassionate and objective study of reality "End of quote.

3 - Unity. Unity in diversity, which is as it should be, but firm unity, because if we have always needed it, it is essential to us today. You do not have to explain it to any Cuban how much damage disunity has done us. It is time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Do not forget what the Lord Jesus himself tells us in chapter 12 of St. Matthew: "Every kingdom divided against itself will become desolate. And every city or house divided against itself will not stand."

4 - Prudence and energy. The Servant of God and architect of Cubanness, Father Varela, recommended to the Cubans of his time in his "Moral and Social Maxims" not to mistake weakness with caution, noting that it "tells the man what he should choose, practice and omit in every circumstance." I would emphasize this valerian maxim, remembering that the first that prudence indicates is to think before acting. Varela also noted in "El Habanero", something which seems written for our day. I quote: "It is not time to entertain ourselves with particular accusations, or useless regrets. It is only to operate with energy to be free." End of quote.

5 - Justice, truth, forgiveness and reconciliation. I said earlier that the cause of the internal dissident movement, the cause of all of us in the end, is the continued pursuit of justice for the Cuban people. Cuba cries out to heaven for justice, justice is essential. The truth is the complement of justice and should be the first condition of our work and firm foundation of the society. Every Cuban will recognize the truth of their responsibilities and errors if we want to enter the new Cuba with the cleanness that we want. At the same time, the country equally needs of forgiveness and reconciliation in order to have possibilities of a future. A society that remains with its wounds permanently open condemns itself to a continuation of its conflicts and eliminates its possibilities to live in peace. Justice, truth, forgiveness and reconciliation are not mutually exclusive or contradictory terms. Our very remembered Pope John Paul II said with respect to the following, in his message for World Day of Peace on 1 January 1997. I quote: "Forgiveness, far from excluding the search for truth, demands it. The wrong must be recognized and, where possible, repaired ... Another essential requisite for forgiveness and reconciliation, is justice, which finds its justification in the law of God ... In effect - the Pontiff added - forgiveness does not eliminate or decreases the demand for reparation, which belongs to justice, but seeks to reintegrate equally individuals and groups into society. "End of quote.

6 - Faith, hope and charity. The most important I have left for last, because it's what surrounds and makes everything else possible. Faith in God because without Him every effort will be useless: "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain," affirms Scripture. Hope in God, because through Him comes us all that is good: "Blessed are they who have placed their trust in the Lord," proclaims St. Matthew in his gospel. Charity, that is love of God and of our brothers, because we have already seen too much the fruits of hate in our people. Because charity is what God wanted for us, sent to us over the sea the image of the Mother of his beloved Son under the inspiring nickname: the Mother of Charity, Mother Love, Mother of the country. If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it.

If all of us who want the good of the nation, of the important internal dissident movement and the persevering of exile arm ourselves with these virtues, we will be effective. If we are committed to not let personalism, or the passions dilute them, we will have won. If we keep them and transmit them to all our people, we will have secured for Cuba a happy future.

I end with an expression of loyalty, affection and paternal recognition to the work of the Catholic Church in Cuba during this difficult stage in our history. On February 3, 1959 the first joint pastoral of the Cuban Bishops saw the light, which focused on the topic of education, those shepherds launched demands and questions applying to all of the deceptive revolutionary project that began then. Earlier, only two days after the triumph of the revolution, the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Monsignor Enrique Pérez Serantes, reminded the new government and the entire people why they had fought, saying: "We want and expect a purely democratic Republic , in which all citizens can fully enjoy the richness of human rights "End of quote.

Since then, the facts, well documented also show us the suffering Church, harassed sometimes more covertly than others, but always harassed, on the side of the people of Cuba. This was, perhaps, its most eloquent point with the pastoral "Love hopes all things", of 1993, but there is also a long and rich history, which one day will be known in all its details, of the generous, brave and quiet labor of the Church in favor of the legitimate interests and needs of the Cuban people in these times. It's not for nothing that the loudest cries of "Freedom!" Heard in Cuba in recent times took place in public places during the visit of John Paul II in 1998.

I also equally affirm my personal appreciation and respect for the internal dissident movement in Cuba and I do it from the heart of a Cuban naturally proud to be exiled, of belonging to this exile committed to the national destiny, full of men and women of faith and action, whose merits and virtues are not always fairly valued. When a happy end could be brought to the prison riots in Atlanta and Oakdale in 1987, I remember the excitement made me exclaim that day that if I were not Cuban, I would pay to be. Without a trace of arrogance, with great respect for all peoples of the world, I repeat it today: I would pay to be a dissident, I would pay to be an exile, because both are the same: Cubans, good Cubans trying to be better.

I should apologize for having forgotten the time limit, but I thought that the important choices we have before us Cubans right now, asked for these considerations that I wanted to share with you, taking advantage of the invitation of Father Felix Varela Foundation, which again I want to thank. Maybe I failed to add one of the virtues we need, is to say more in less time. But you, who are so generous, will understand, because you are Cubans like me.

Thank you very much everyone.

Bishop Agustín A. Román
Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus
Miami, December 16, 2006

 

This remarkable and humble man of God lived a life in accordance with the principles and faith that he evangelized. Below is a short documentary where the good shepherd looked back over his life.

 

Tens of thousands in Nicaragua demand an end to Sandinista rule on 11th day of protests

As the death toll climbs, outrage continues to build in Nicaragua, and tens of thousands continue to protest.

Tens of thousands protested against Ortega regime on Saturday

Thousands of Nicaraguans congregated outside of Managua's Cathedral during a massive march called by the Catholic Church as a day of prayer, in Nicaragua, Saturday, April 28, 2018. This gathering was called following the largest protests Nicaragua has seen in 40 years.

                                                                                     (AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga)

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article210061224.html#storylink=cpy

The sounds and images of resistance to the Sandinista regime were seen across social media and a selection of these images can be seen below.

So this has mostly been a vigil for those killed, with very few calls for Ortega to step down, or that he’s Somoza, etc. Except for when this guy gets going and I’m kind of here for it pic.twitter.com/4qGXN4AlOb

— Sarah Kinosian (@skinosian) April 28, 2018

They are risking everything to honor those killed by Ortega, to demand an end to the killings and for Daniel Ortega to resign.

And a video of the action for good measure: #SOSNicaragua pic.twitter.com/tP5DAjklUJ

— Sarah Kinosian (@skinosian) April 28, 2018

Death toll in Nicaragua has risen to 43 dead confirmed with other reports placing the number of dead at 58. Video evidence shows that Ortega's police were killing non-violent protesters. The Washington Post published a series of videos provided by the family of Maroni Lopez, a 22-year-old student who was killed by the police on April 20. Video includes the final moments before Maroni was killed.

#Nicaragua
"Supe de tres jóvenes... les arrancaron las uñas de las manos. Las historias son terribles y nuestra juventud no merece eso”, expresó llorando el religioso. https://t.co/48r0UQQ0qa

— 100%NOTICIAS (@100noticiasni) April 27, 2018

Daniel Ortega's regime shut down independent media and violently crushed non-violent protests in Nicaragua beginning on April 18, 2018 murdering dozens, torturing and arbitrarily detaining many more but failed to silence Nicaraguans, who have continued to protest against the Sandinista dictatorship. In the tweet above Father Silvio Báez  with tears welling up in his eyes said: "I learned of three young people ... they ripped off their fingernails, the stories are terrible and our youth do not deserve that." Tens of thousands took to the streets of Nicaragua on April 23rd denouncing Daniel Ortega as a murderer and demanding his resignation.

Murdered on Ortega's orders in April 2018

La Prensa has provided sketches of 34 of the victims and photos of 24 of them. They were murdered for peacefully protesting against the Sandinista regime. Jonathan Valerio, a twenty year old was shot twice in the neck and killed for saying "I do not agree with this regime." Michael Humberto Cruz, age 29, was a graduate student at the Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua (Upoli). He was shot in the chest by an AK-47 wielded by Ortega's thugs. Journalists in Nicaragua continue to fear for their lives and continue to work through the fear. Sandinistas tried to burn a radio station to the ground with 12 persons inside.

It is time for Ortega to go. It is time for Nicaragua to be free of the Sandinista dictatorship.

Cuban Catholic Priests in a letter to Raul Castro: Time for peaceful change is running out

Cubanet published an important letter by three Cuban Catholic priests, dated January 24, 2018, that says that Cubans are living in fear and calls on the Cuban dictator to open to peaceful change now to avoid a violent conflagration later. Below is a translation taken, in part, from one prepared by the Center for a Free Cuba.

 

To Raul Castro Ruz, on the 20th anniversary of the Mass for the Homeland presided by Saint John Paul II and the words of Mons. Pedro Meurice in the Plaza Antonio Maceo, Santiago de Cuba, on 24 January of 1998.

This past  January 1st marked the 59th anniversary of the triumph of a Revolution. A Revolution that was necessary because of all the atrocities committed with impunity by a government that had turned against this people. Many fought and many died to give their children a Cuba where they could live in liberty, in peace and prosperity.

Today, nearly six decades later, we have sufficient arguments to evaluate what we have lived through in our land.

Since the institutionalization of the Communist Party as the only party authorized to exist, this people have never been allowed to raise a different voice, and every different voice that tried to make itself heard has been silenced.

 This totalitarian style has permeated every level of society. Cubans know they don't have freedom of expression. They are cautious when they talk about what they believe and feel because they live with fear, often even fear of those in their daily lives: school and work mates, neighbors, friends and relatives. We live together in a latticework of lies that reaches from the home to the highest levels.

We say and do what we don't believe or feel, knowing that our interlocutors do the same. We lie to survive, hoping that this game will end some day or that some way of escaping to a foreign land will appear. Jesus Christ said, “the truth will make you free.” We want to live in truth.

The monopoly and control of the mass media means no one can freely access the public means of communication. In the same way, there is no alternative education. All Cuban children are required to go to school, but it is only one school model, one sole ideology, an education in only one way of thinking. Cubans have a right to education alternatives, to options for different teachings on ways to think. Cuban parents have the right to elect what kind of education they want for their children.

It's deplorable that our people live in economic abandonment, forced by circumstances to beg for help from relatives who managed to go abroad or foreigners who visit us; or to steal anything we can, while renaming thievery with delicate words that keep our consciences at bay. Many families lack a minimally stable income that allows them to calmly obtain the basic items they need to live. Eating, dressing and buying shoes for the children is a daily problem. Public transportation is a problem, and even obtaining many medicines is a problem.
  
And in the middle of these people who struggle to survive lies the hidden suffering of the elderly, often silently abandoned. How can one say that the money belongs to the people, when the people don't decide what to do with it? How can needed public institutions be kept up when the required resources are not available? Why are foreigners invited to invest  with their money, while barring Cubans investing their money in equality of opportunities? Cubans have the right to participate as investors in the economy and in the negotiations of our country.

And to all of that is added the lack of religious freedom. The church is tolerated, but is still monitored and controlled. Freedom of religion is restricted by a system of permits to worship. Christians can gather to share their faith, but they are not allowed to build a church. The church can celebrate open-air masses and processions, but only with a permit issued by authorities who can deny them without explanation or appeal. The church can raise its voice inside the temples, but does not have free access to the mass media. And in the few cases where it does have access, it is always under censorship. Lay people are sanctioned when they apply their faith to political and social practices.

This social dynamic that has emerged in Cuba has forgotten the person, the person's dignity as sons of God and their inalienable rights. It's nearly 60 years since Cubans first believed in an ideal that is always postponed and never realized. When anyone raises a question, when anyone raises their voice, they find vulnerability and exclusion.

We want a country where life is more respected from its conception to a natural death, where family ties are strengthened and the marriage between a man and a woman is nurtured; where retirement pensions are enough to allow our elderly to survive; where professionals can live on their salaries with dignity; where citizens can become entrepreneurs and there's more freedom of labor and hiring for sports figures and artists. Young Cubans should be able to fiind opportunities for jobs that allow them to develop their talents and skills here, instead of leaving Cuba as their only option.

We have a legal system subordinated to a power, not the “rule of law.” It is imperative to clearly establish the separation and independence of the three powers: executive, legislative and judicial. We want that our judges not be pressured, that the law be order, that illegality not be a means of subsistence or a weapon of control. That our Capitol be filled with lawmakers who have the power to represent the interests of their voters.

Our people are dispirited and tired. There is a stagnation that can be summed up in two words: survive or escape. Cubans need to experience the joy of “thinking and speaking without hypocrisy” with different political criteria. We are tired of waiting, tired of fleeing, tired of hiding. We want to live our own lives.
 
This letter also has a goal, which is a right: We want to be able to freely elect. In Cuba we have votes, not elections. We urgently need elections where we can decide not only our future but also our present. Now we are invited to “vote” and say “yes” to something that already exists. There is no option for change. To elect implies, by definition, different options. To elect implies the possibility of taking different paths.

We write this letter because we want to avoid that some day, for some circumstance, Cuba is plunged into violent changes that would only add to more pointless suffering. We still have time to make progress towards a plurality of options that allow for changes favorable to all.

But time is running out. It is critical to open the door.

It's useless to hide the truth. It's useless to make believe that nothing is going on. It's useless to cling to power. Our Teacher Jesus Christ says to us Cubans today, “What's the use of winning the whole world if it ruins your life?” We still have time to construct a different reality. We still have time to make the kind of Cuba that Marti wanted “with all, and for the good of all.”

We commend ourselves to the intercession of the Virgin of Charity, Patron Saint of Cuba. We beg her, mother of all Cubans, to intercede with the Lord, who as His Holiness Benedict XVI said during his visit to Cuba, “God not only respects human freedom but appears to need it” so that we can always choose the greater good for all.

Father Castor José Álvarez de Devesa, Priest of Modelo, Camagüey.
Father José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre, Parish Priest of San Francisco de Paula,Trinidad, Cienfuegos.
Father Roque Nelvis Morales Fonseca, Parish Parish of Cueto, Holguín.

St. Francis, his example, prayer and nonviolence

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart. - St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi and is the first Pope to bear that name. Yesterday the Archdiocese of Miami organized a conversation on Pope Francis's visit to Cuba. Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi and presents an opportunity to reflect on the life and legacy of this Saint.

Last month during the Pope's visit to Cuba the Free Cuba Foundation announced a fast for freedom which included a call for participants to pray the Peace Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

This prayer was not written by St. Francis but is traced to the early 20th century and it does embody the life he lived.  Cardinal Bergoglio is said to have chosen the name out of a deep concern for the poor but also nature and peace. Saint Francis at the height of the Fifth Crusade traveled to Damietta, Egypt, behind enemy lines, to meet with Sultan Malik al-Kamil and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. He also met with both parties in the conflict, the above mentioned Sultan and the Christian general Cardinal Pelagius preaching peace and an end to the killing. St. Francis was threatened with being branded a heretic by Church authorities for the encounter. The Catholic saint was characterized by his willingness to engage in open dialogue with all sorts.

We live in an age in which a constant stream of information bombards those trying to listen and understand the times, but the past offers knowledge that should also be heeded because it has endured the tests of time.

Church and Cubans stand up to repression in Cuba this Sunday

"To protect the inviolable field of the rights of the human person and facilitate the fulfillment of his duties, should be the essential task of every public authority." - Pope Pius XII, 50th Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (1941)

Another Sunday in which Raul Castro's paramilitary mobs and state security agents organized acts of repression against nonviolent activists. Nevertheless this Sunday offers cause for hope.  Ivan Hernandez Carrillo described two incidents that took place this morning in different parts of Cuba:

In Colón Father Nelson Santana stood before regime mobs preventing them from attacking the Ladies in White at the exit of the church. "You can march to your homes in peace this Sunday there won't be more repression," said Father Nelson Santana to Ladies in White of Colón. Thanks to Father Nelson Santana the Ladies in White of Colón who attended Mass could walk with six other activists accompanying them back to their homes.

In Matanzas, Cubans blocked the regime's mobs from storming the Church in Cardenas. The mob outside was threatening to kill all the activists inside the Church. The Bishop of Matanzas, Manuel Hilario de Céspedes y Garcia Menocal, inside the Cardenas church negotiated with regime "authorities" and gave protection to seven Ladies in White and eight opposition activists inside the Church.

Cardinal Józef Glemp: Poland's Cardinal Ortega in 1983?

Cardinal Józef Glemp

Pope Bendict XVI will be visiting Cuba arriving first in Santiago, Cuba on March 26, 2012 to hold a Holy Mass in Antonio Maceo Square to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre and will be departing from Havana two days later. A healthy debate has erupted around the trip and state of relations between the Cuban Catholic Church and the Castro regime. The debate over the role played by the Catholic Church in Cuba and its Cardinal Jaime Ortega could do with a little added context.

Cuba is not Poland. Poland is a profoundly Catholic country. Nevertheless there are parallels between the Catholic Church in Cuba and Poland when confronted with a communist regime.
Reading over the role of the Polish Cardinal Józef Glemp in the penultimate chapter of the 1999 book, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, which covers the role played by the Vatican, the Church in Poland, the KGB and the Polish intelligence agency, the STB. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, the Catholic Church was heavily infiltrated by state security agents because they viewed it as a profound threat. At the same time when martial law was enacted and many of the more radical elements in the Solidarity movement counseled a general strike, Cardinal Glemp counseled restraint. The Polish communists felt that the Cardinal's message served their agenda and they rebroadcast it several times.

The U.S. Library of Congress* in their Country Studies on Poland has a section that analyses the relationship between the Polish Catholic Church and the state. The following excerpt covers the last two years of Cardinal Wyszynski and the arrival of Glemp in 1981:

In 1979 the triumphal visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland boosted the Polish cultural self-image and turned international attention to Poland's political and spiritual struggles. The next year, the church lent vital moral support to the Solidarity labor movement while counseling restraint from violence and extreme positions. In 1981 the government requested that the church help it to establish a dialog with worker factions. Needing church approval to gain support among the people, the government revived the Joint Episcopal and Government Commission, through which the church gradually regained legal status in the early 1980s. In 1981 the Catholic University of Lublin reopened its Department of Social Sciences, and in 1983 clubs of the Catholic intelligentsia reopened in sixty cities. Twenty-three new church-oriented periodicals appeared in the 1980s, reaching a total printing of more than 1.2 million copies in 1989. Nevertheless, state censorship, paper rationing, and restriction of building permits provoked serious conflicts with the Polish government in the last decade of communist rule.

Wyszynski died in 1981. He was replaced as primate by the less dynamic Cardinal Józef Glemp, who attempted to continue the dual policy of conciliation and advancement of religious rights. By 1983 several activist bishops and priests had broken with an official church policy they saw as too conciliatory toward the regime. In a 1984 meeting with Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski, Glemp again attempted to obtain official recognition of the church's legal status as well as freedom for imprisoned dissidents. Later that year, the murder of dissident priest Jerzy Popieluszko by Polish security agents fueled a new confrontation between church and state. The Jaruzelski government, which had met with Glemp seeking the legitimacy that would come from renewed diplomatic relations with the Vatican, abandoned its conciliatory tone and returned to the pre-1970 demand that the church limit itself to purely spiritual matters and censure politically active priests.

The Archdiocese of Havana released an editorial today in advance of the Pope's visit which states in part:

It will be difficult to reach the proper social harmony and the necessary economic development, without a new political consensus of all our diversity. To achieve it, as we have repeated on other occasions, the patriotic path of encounter, of dialogue and reconciliation among all Cubans should be taken. At the moment this method may appear unreachable. The actors best positioned in the political mechanisms - equally in officialdom as in the internal opposition and in the groups in our diaspora that stand out - many times give the impression of not accepting this methodology.

[...]

Cuba is a plural country, where the majority of its citizens, at the margin of political, economic, social and religious differences advocate for a independent, democratic, developed homeland with social justice and without external interferences in our sovereign affairs.

This editorial, combined with the prayer sessions by Cardinal Ortega for the health of Fidel Castro when he fell ill in 2006 and just recently for Hugo Chavez who underwent surgery in Cuba appears to be part of an effort to strengthen the position of the Cuban Catholic Church. Its not the first time that a Cardinal has publicly prayed for the life of a tyrant. For example, the German Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber ( who criticized Nazism and called for an amnesty of all prisoners in the concentration camps) in 1936 also prayed for the life of Adolf Hitler. In the case of Poland the Church's policy of accommodation angered activists and some within the Church for being too soft and in the end the Polish regime eventually rejected the Church's role in political affairs and sought to limit their sphere of influence. On the other hand the Church managed not to alienate itself with the democratic opposition and when the final crisis of the regime arrived was able to play a constructive role. Time will tell if the same pattern repeats itself in Cuba.

*Glenn E. Curtis, ed. Poland: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992.

An Epiphany on the upcoming Papal visit to Cuba

"You cultivate the essential virtues: high purpose, intelligence, decency, humility, fear of the Lord, and the passion for freedom." - William F. Buckley Jr.

Pontifical Mass at the Church of the Epiphany

Thursday night February 2, 2012 at 7:30pm I was seated inside the Church of the Epiphany attending the first Pontifical Mass in Florida in 40 years presided over by the Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski. It was a Candlemas in the Extraordinary Form also known as The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the last day of the Christmas season. The Pontifical Mass lasted three hours. More than a thousand people participated in the Mass. Outside of the Church demonstrators gathered to protest the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba. In between prayers for a sick friend and the well being of friends and family members the Mass in Latin drew this participant further into spiritual reflection than the Mass normally does in the vernacular.



Archbishop Wenski's homily delivered in a steady and calm voice was powerful and stirring an excerpt is reproduced below:

Mary’s life – and our own lives – if we, like her, follow Jesus to the end, will be lived under the sign of the cross. For in a fallen world, in a world that has turned its back on God, those who live “ad orientam,” that is, looking, in joyful expectation, towards the coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, inevitably will encounter opposition and resistance. Such was the life of Christ – and such was the life of his mother who at Calvary shared in his sufferings; such is the life of the Church.

The “thoughts of many hearts” have been revealed in the betrayals and apostasies of the Church’s sinners but also in the constancy of her confessors, in the purity of her virgins and in the courage of her martyrs. Blessed John Paul II, when as Karol Wojtyla he preached a Lenten retreat to Pope Paul VI, said that “sign of contradiction” maybe be the “distinctive definition of Christ and his Church.”

Today, the witness of the Church on behalf of the dignity and right to life of the human person from the first moment of conception till natural death is itself a “sign that will be contradicted” – and is in fact contradicted in the present mandate of the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate to deny a religious exemption to Catholic institutions and thus force us to violate our consciences and to make us accomplices in evil.

Today’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord – thanks to the initiative of Blessed John Paul II – is also observed as the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life. Those who live their Christian baptism through vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as religious sisters, brothers and priests, should see the oblation of the Son of God presented today in the temple as the model for religious life. We pray for them – may their perseverance in seeking first the Kingdom of God above all else inspire all of us to seek to live holy lives in fidelity to the promises of our baptism.

The lighted candles carried in procession this evening are a sign of the divine splendor of the Christ who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil. May our lives as Catholics reflect the light of Christ to all who meet us; and may that same light guide us, as it guided that righteous and devout man, Simeon, when we go forth from this life to meet Christ.

The full homily is available online at the website of the Archdiocese of Miami and worth reading.

The following day I was invited to briefly address the Pope's visit to the island on a local television station giving me an opportunity to further reflect on it. Reading medieval scholar Carlos Eire on the subject offers historical context to what is happening in relations between the Church and the communist dictatorship in Cuba. At the same time reading Carlos Espinosa gives insights into the impact it is having within some families.


Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. "The Fight over Catholic Orthodoxy" (1980)

Although not as pessimistic about the Pope's visit to the island as the individuals who protested outside of the Church of the Epiphany one can understand their concern considering some of the historical and modern currents in the Catholic Church. There was a time that Liberation theology was on the upswing in the Catholic Church but Pope John Paul II put an end to that. In his sermon "An option for the poor" given in Mexico in 1990 His Holiness spoke plainly:

When the world begins to notice the clear failures of certain ideologies and systems, it seems all the more incomprehensible that certain sons of the Church in these lands - prompted at times by the desire to find quick solutions - persist in presenting as viable certain models whose failure is patent in other places in the world.

You, as priests, cannot be involved in activities which belong to the lay faithful, while through your service to the Church community you are called to cooperate with them by helping them study Church teachings...

...Be careful, then, not to accept nor allow a Vision of human life as conflict nor ideologies which propose class hatred and violence to be instilled in you; this includes those which try to hide under theological writings.

There are other currents within the Church that do give reason for encouragement. Pope Benedict XVI emerged from a current within the Church that has accomplished great things on behalf of orthodoxy and tradition. The question that Cuban exiles need to ask themselves is how to encourage and support those currents that will more robustly challenge the militant atheistic communist dictatorship in Cuba?

At the same time remembering that Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the island (March 26-28, 2012) will offer an opportunity for Cubans in large numbers to hear the Gospel and the message of hope and freedom that resides in it. The visit of Pope John Paul II that met with similar criticism at the time was, in spiritual terms, incredibly important to the millions of Cubans who heard his message and his exhortation not to be afraid and to be the protagonists of their own history.

Fourteen years later many Cubans who heeded his message are being persecuted for seeking change using ethical, nonviolent means. This is part of the legacy of John Paul II. It is no accident that the largest sustained dissident action was the Varela Project petition drive (named after a Cuban catholic priest) that obtained more than 25,000 signatures demanding fundamental changes to the Cuban constitution to bring it in line with international human rights standards. Nor is it an accident that the largest sustained opposition action are the weekly marches by the Ladies in White to attend Sunday Mass demanding their loved one's freedom. Since March of 2003 following the Black Cuban Spring these women have been subjected to acts of repudiation, physical assaults, and in the case of Laura Pollan - premature death at the hands of agents of the Cuban government.

One understands that the Pope will meet with sinners, possibly including Fidel Castro, excommunicated by John XXIII on January 3, 1962, but at the same time one would also hope that some of those who have suffered beatings, tortures and assaults on their dignity at the hands of this regime would also be ministered to by His Holiness.

At the same time one cannot forget that the Church in Cuba is a suffering Church that has endured decades of repression and has engaged in important evangelical and charitable work at the parish level that has saved countless souls and lives.

Protesters outside the Church of the Epiphany on Thursday evening during the Mass

The protesters sign outside of the Mass on Thursday night said a profound truth that perhaps they did not themselves understand the full significance of: "We must not forget. Faith is not negotiable. Long live Christ the King!" The good works of the Church transcend the princes and principalities of this fallen world and calls all of humanity to Jesus Christ and his teachings as set out in the Bible as the only way to real freedom. Don't forget it. An epiphany long to be remembered.