NEWS FROM BRAZIL
supplied by Brazil Justice Net
Number 566, April 13, 2007
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In this week´s edition of News from Brazil:
A VERDADE, PILATOS, É…
The Truth, Pilate, is . . .
by Pedro Casaldáliga
March 24th, 2007 Easter of St. Romero
In total fraternal communion With Jon Sobrino, Theologian of the God of
the poor, Faithful companion of Jesus of Nazareth, Witness to our
martyrs.
What is the truth? Who has the truth? What are true politics? What is
the true religion? These questions, with diverse tones and sometimes
evoking unease and indignation, are universal and everyday questions
and we cannot ignore them, neither in politics nor in religion.
Globalization, on the one hand, chains us to merciless profiteering, on
the other hand allows us new spaces for dialog and companionship in
shared truth. Our Latin American World Agenda for 2007 and
2008 raises the question of true democracy and denounces false
politics. In 2007, “We demand and create a
different democracy,” and in 2008, “Politics is
dead, long live politics.”
Here, in Our America, in the midst of ambiguities, spasms and
disenchantments, a turn to the left is taking place. But in congresses
and publications, the inevitable questions are being asked: What is the
left, what is democracy, what are true politics, what is true
religion, what is the true church?
There is no doubt that we are on the way, despite the dramatic
statistics that the UN Development Program and other institutions of
opinion give us. Eight hundred and thirty four million people are
hungry in the world and each year there are 4 million more. Some forty
per cent of the world’s population lives in extreme
poverty. In Latin America some 205 million are in poverty. In
sub-Saharan Africa, there are 47 million in poverty. The
economist Luís de Sebastián notes that
“Africa is Europe’s sin,”
humanity’s greatest debt.
Annually the world spends a trillion dollars on arms, 15 times the
amount destined to international aid. The inequality in our global
village is a true blasphemy against universal community. An
example: the average annual income of the richest in the U.S.
is $118,000; and the average annual income of the poorest in Sierra
Leone is $28. The ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue continues,
but still at the margins, still among a minority. The grave
and world-wide phenomenon of migration demands responses and decisions
that affect different peoples, cultures and religions. Who has the
truth? Who does not?
The Church, the Catholic Church, is about to celebrate in Aparecida,
Brazil, this May, the Fifth Latin American and Caribbean Bishops
Conference. Voices, sincere and worthy of full participation, are
already being raised, demanding “what cannot be left out at
Aparecida”: the option for the poor, ecumenism and
macro-ecumenism, the connection between faith and politics,
care for nature, prophetic confrontation of neoliberal
capitalism, the rights of indigenous and Afro American
peoples, action on the part of the laity, effective
recognition of women’s participation in all ecclesiastical
levels, the co-responsibility and helping role of the whole Church,
encouragement of the base communities, the commitment-producing memory
of our martyrs, the sincere inculturation of the Gospel in
theology, liturgy, pastoral work and canon law. That is, the
continuation, brought up to date, of our “Latin American
tradition that cannot be surrendered,” which is rooted above
all in Medellín.
The theme of the Fifth Latin American and Caribbean Bishops Conference
(CELAM) is “Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ, that
in him our people may have life. I am the way, the truth and
the life.” (Owing to the non-inclusive of grammatical gender,
women disciples and women missionaries do not enter into this official
title; we hope that they will enter into the decisions of the
Conference). Discipleship and mission are the concrete and
passionate living as followers of Jesus in “quest for the
Kingdom.” The theologian A. Brighenti emphasizes that the
ecclesiological deficit of the Document of Participation is shown,
above all, in obscuring the Kingdom of God, which is
mentioned only two times in the entire document. Why would there be
such fear of the Kingdom of God, which was the obsession, the life, the
death and the resurrection of Jesus? In this Conference of CELAM, not
everything is not totally comfortably consensual.
Now, on the eve of the Conference, with a highly suspect gesture, the
case of our beloved Jon Sobrino has exploded. This is highly
symptomatic, because a cardinal of the Roman Curia had already declared
that before Aparecida liberation theology would be liquidated. This
illustrious cardinal will have to recognize, I think, that after
Aparecida, the God of the poor will continue live and active, and the
Gospel of liberation will continue to be subversive; and that
unfortunately hunger, war, injustice, impoverishment, corruption, and
greed will continue to demand of our Church the real commitment
to service to God’s poor.
I have written to Jon Sobrino, reminding him that we who are
with him number in the millions, and above all, Jesus of Nazareth is
with him. I reminded Jon of that verse that I wrote about the root of
the martyrdom of his companions at the University of Central
America:
“You are already the
cross-truth
and
prophecy-knowledge,
and it adds up to the great
companionship,
companions of Jesus”
With despotic disdain, Pilate asked Jesus What is truth, but would not
stay for an answer and handed him over to his death and washed his
hands. Maxence van der Meersch responds to Pilate and to all of us:
“The truth, Pilate, is to be at the side of the
poor.” Religion and politics must take this response to its
ultimate consequences. The entire life of Jesus, for that matter, is
the same response. The option for the poor defines all
politics and all religion. Before, it was “outside
the Church there is no salvation,” later, “outside
the world there is no salvation.”
Jon Sobrino reminds us yet again that “outside the poor there
is no salvation.” John XXIII advocated a Church of the poor,
that there might be a Church for all.” What is
certain is that the poor define, with their forbidden lives and their
premature deaths, the truth or falsity of a society, of a Church. Our
Jon Sobrino says: “ Those that do not know God explicitly ,
will already have encountered God if they have loved the
poor,” and this the Gospel repeats numerous times
in the Word and the life of Jesus, in his manger, in his Calvary, in
the beatitudes, in the parables, in the final judgment.
Brothers, sisters, dear friends and those closest to us in
the same watchfulness and the same hope, we are going on. Trying to
“do the truth in love,” as the New Testament asks,
in brotherly and sisterly communion and in liberating praxis
“with the poor of the earth.” As our lives are
“lives by the Kingdom of Life,” as we proclaimed in
the Pilgrimage of the Martyrs of the Way.
May this little letter be a great embrace of commitment, of gratitude,
of unconquerable hope, on the way into the Kingdom.
Another Life Being Threatened in Para
More than two years after the assassination of Dorothy Stang,
yet another is receiving threat threats because of his commitment to
the poor and to the environment. This time it is Don Erwin
Krautler, bishop prelate of Xingu, Para. An anonymous phone
call was made to the bishop, stating that he would be assassinaed on
April 29th, during a scheduled visit to the city of Gurupa.
The Public Minister of Para has asked the Federal Police to investigate
the matter.
Krautler recently received the Jose Carlos Castro Human Rights Award
given by the Order of Brazilian Lawyers for his "actions in defense of
life and environment of the people of the Amazon."
In related news, one of the murders of Dorothy Stang, Vialmiro Bastos
de Moura, was denied a request to be freed while he awaits for his case
to be appealed. The decision was based upon a concern that
Bastos would flee the country, and upon threats he had made to
witnesses against him.
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo, April 10, 2007
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