Ron Jacobs; "Hugo Chavez and the Men Who Claim To Speak For Jesus"

[Nothing Without Hope]

I hadn't realized that Opus Dei was also involved in these political coups and opposes Chavez. I should have guessed. They are on the side of the rich and powerful and they oppose freedom, though they profess to be selfless doers of the works of God. (Hence their name.) But WHO decides what is the will of God? Murderous hypocrisy is making some very strange bedfellows.

Very, very sinister. The Da Vinci Code wasn't wrong about the creepy aspect of these men (most of Opus Dei are men, especially the ones with any power) who believe that the end justifies the means and that they move with God's will. The hypocrisy makes the situation much uglier, in my opnion. Pascal had it right:

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. --Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

But between you and me, I don't think Pat "Fatwa" Robertson truly believes he is doing God's will. Like the Bush administration, he is far more concerned with Venezuela's oil than with more spiritual matters. Here is Ron Jacobs' article:

http://www.counterpunch.com/jacobs08252005.html

Who Would Jesus Assassinate?

Hugo Chavez and the Men Who Claim to Speak for Jesus?

By Ron Jacobs

08/24/05 "Counterpunch" -- You know, when I was growing up as a Catholic, I was given many differing views of Jesus Christ. Virtually all of them were speculative, of course, and as I grew older, I became aware that most of them were based on the teacher's particular political and cultural persuasion. The Pallotinian nuns that taught me in the first and second grades were always telling us horror stories about the communists in the Soviet Union and China and had us pray for the souls of their children every morning. The Jesuits I knew in high school provided me and my fellow catechism students with a different view of Jesus. Indeed, for most of these men Jesus was a revolutionary. How much of his revolution was spiritual and how much was social depended on their level of social and political involvement. Being a very political person, I saw Jesus as a revolutionary communist with a small "c." Of course, there were a number of men with Roman collars at the time who were taking this perception and turning it into the basis for a social movement in many parts of the world, especially in Latin America. Many of them were Jesuits.

It is this tradition that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela recalls in his speeches and social programs. It is also this tradition, known today as liberation theology that the late pope John Paul II attacked within months of his appointment in 1978. John Paul II's opposition to this perception of Jesus and his works were also part of the reason for the demotion of the Jesuit order as the pope's protectors and the ascension of the right wing Catholic organization Opus Dei into that role. The new pope is even less sympathetic to this train of thought. The underlying reason for this vehement opposition to liberation theology among the Catholic hierarchy stems from its alliances with nonreligious leftists and its attacks on the Church's role as part of the oppressive structure in the world of the peasantry. Nowhere is this role greater than it is in Latin America.

Ever since Chavez began his popular upheaval in Venezuela he has been under attack by the Catholic hierarchy in that country. In fact, members of Opus Dei were involved in the failed coup of 2000 and have been instrumental in the CIA-funded opposition movement since the coup, just as they were intimately involved in the murderous CIA-sponsored coup in September 1973 in Chile. Last month, Bishop Baltazar Porras, president of the Venezuelan bishops' conference, said proponents of radical liberation theology are using it to weaken and divide the Church. "This is part of a plan to debilitate the Church," Porras told The Associated Press in an interview last week. He cited a recent forum in which the Church was accused of turning her back on the poor, where Chavez garners most of his political support. "This is a new program led by a group of theologians like the ones in the times of the Sandinista rule in Nicaragua with the same arguments," said Porras. "The argument is fundamentally anti-Catholic, anti-hierarchy." (Catholic World New, 8/15/2005) It is quite interesting to note Porras equating being anti-hierarchy with being anti-Catholic. I wonder how the Jesus who threw the moneychangers out of the temple and challenged the Scribes and the Pharisees would feel about that equation.

Now, in addition to having the Catholic hierarchy opposed to him, Mr. Chavez has incurred the wrath of some in the evangelical community. Given the generally political conservatism of much of this community, this is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is the vehemence of this wrath. Pat Robertson, former US presidential candidate and head of the multimillion-dollar Christian Broadcast Network, called for Chavez's assassination in a broadcast Monday night. Calling assassination " a whole lot cheaper than starting a war" Robertson went on to say that if Chavez were killed by US covert operatives he didn't "think any oil shipments will stop."

(snip)

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: [email protected]

[wli]

1. sounds like an Opus Dei roundup is needed... put 'em in the Hague n/t

[Kikosexy2]

2. Jesus..

Chavez Superstar!

[Dob Bole]

3. One evangelical who agrees with Chavez...

is ME!!!

Screw Robertson. Nobody likes him anyway.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. A LOT of evangelicals disagree with Robertson. See this LA Times article:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2030937
Thread title: LATimes on Robertson's fatwa on Chavez: "A Call for Assassination Brings {a Cry of Outrage"}

This disagreement is only natural, since what Robertson has done is so contrary to what has been accepted for thousands of years as God's law. One quote from the article:

Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA and who served as a Pennsylvania Democrat on the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1976 to 1979, said Robertson's comments made no sense.

"It defies logic that a clergyman could so casually dismiss thousands of years of Judeo-Christian law, including the commandment that we are not to kill," Edgar said

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Keep in mind: Opus Dei backed Ratzinger for Pope. I do wonder what

subterranean connections are going on there and what they mean for the world.

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. This is a significant issue that has been mostly

overlooked. We continue to overlook the extreme right wing of the Catholic Church, which now overtly controls the Church, at our peril. They are strange bedfellows with the neocons and factions of similar ultra-conservative ideology in many countries and do not shrink from exerting their power.

Even Christopher Hitchens gets it:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2123780
(snip)

The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."

(snip)

[Time for change]

10. Nobody does evil without rationalizing it to make it sound as if it serves

some higher purpose. And they usually do make themselves believe it themselves. That's the only way they're able to live with themselves. But that doesn't excuse it, of course.

I don't know how much of the Christian Right has evil intentions. Probably most of them are just followers of people like Robertson and have no clue as to the agenda behind the rhetoric. My wife has a lot of family members like that.