Agents of Change - Jesuits and Liberation Theology

The people and the revolution that sent tremors through the United States and the Vatican:

The 1960s sparked revolutionary changes that swept the secular and religious world. At the forefront of the battle for a new – better – world was the most powerful Catholic Order.

Progressive Jesuit priests started a movement that would turn the archaic religious institution into the leading force for change, and in the process put them at odds with the United States.

These Agents of Change saw the need to do away with antiquated political and banking systems, with murderous military-industrial complexes, and flawed educational systems.

They became the biggest threat to U.S. interests...

Inspiration and Historical Context:
http://www.spywriter.com/aoc/index.html



SpyWriter Jack King: Agents of Change,

Concentration Camps

On this day in 1945 the Nazis began to evacuate the Auschwitz concentration camp, ten days later liberated by the advancing Soviet troops. Let's remember the horrors instituted by blind militarization, homophobia, and nationalism, not least because of my grandfather who was imprisoned for 5 years in Auschwitz and Mauthausen.

According to Jesuit sources (Malachi Martin, The Keys of His Blood) the Nazis "established some 8,500 concentration camps on occupied Polish soil, and organized them into a brutal industry divided into 13 administrative districts. Of the some 18 million Europeans who were imprisoned in concentration camps, some 11 million were killed - of those 3.5 million were Poles, and 7.5 million other nationals". Why such a high number of Poles? It was a part of the plan that was hatched on January 25, 1940, in "a secret circular" drafted by Hermann Göring. According to Hans Frank (the Governor-general of the General Government of occupied Poland) the circular was a handbook for "making certain that not one Polish man, woman, or child, was left alive to soil the territories now and forever part of the Third Reich".

Concentration camps were set up for political enemies, prisoners of war, foreigners, criminals, etc. My grandfather spent over five years in Auschwitz and Mauthausen (survived a death march) simply because he was born Polish.

What were concentration camps?

"After 1945 the term concentration camp was almost completely associated with the German dictatorship; the dictionary definition of 'concentration camp' in English describes them as German and locates them firmly in the brief twelve years of the Third Reich. This focus on the concentration camp as a German phenomenon entirely distorts the historical reality, not only because it ignores the long history of concentration camps in other geographical locations.

[...] the concentration camp is essentially a product of the First World War and its immediate aftermath. This was the period in which what might be described as a 'camp culture' developed, encouraged by the growth of a large camp structure for prisoners-of-war and refugees, but more specifically the camps set up for enemy aliens. These camps concentrated the targeted group, created the physical pattern of future camps, and bred a crude popular culture of exclusion." Source

What was Auschwitz?

"Auschwitz? That was a real Tower of Babel. But, what does it mean to be Polish? What does it mean to be a Slav? The French wore the same numbers on their forearms, and were beaten all the same, and the Gypsies were beaten even more. We [concentration camp survivors] know something that you cannot, because you could've been killed by bombs or soldiers, whereas we were beaten and beaten by wardens and could not be killed, because as long as you have respect for yourself you cannot be killed, only murdered. And if you survive, and continue to have respect for yourself, you will respect others, whether Poles, or French, or some other. We learned in Auschwitz that there is only one difference - a human, and an inhuman." Maria Kuncewiczowa, in The Phantoms (my translation).

What was it like to be imprisoned inside a concentration camp? Look up Smoke over Birkenau, a first-hand witness account by Seweryna Szmaglewska.

The Voynich Manuscript dates to the early 15th Century

"University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" -- the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day.

Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought.

Currently owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, the manuscript was discovered in the Villa Mondragone near Rome in 1912 by antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich while sifting through a chest of books offered for sale by the Society of Jesus. Voynich dedicated the remainder of his life to unveiling the mystery of the book's origin and deciphering its meanings. He died 18 years later, without having wrestled any its secrets from the book.

"Is it a code, a cipher of some kind? People are doing statistical analysis of letter use and word use -- the tools that have been used for code breaking. But they still haven't figured it out."

More: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110210153016.htm

Priests implicated in JPII assassination plot

Priests implicated in John Paul II assassination attempt:

Polish priests working for the Soviet KGB could be informants for the plotters, according to John Koehler, a former US intelligence agent and adviser to US President Reagan. The Vatican hid the names of the spies, Koehler alleges. In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Koehler said that "we can not exclude the possibility that some Polish priests, Moscow's spies, were kind of informers utilized to carry out the assassination attempt on John Paul II”.

The former US intelligence officer relies on the findings of Jesuit Robert Graham, who has spent more than 50 years in the Vatican and since 1945 has collected data on the clergy-spies. Those were mostly Polish priests who worked for Moscow," says Koehler.

"All the names of the revealed agents have been discovered among 25,000 private documents which after Graham's death in 1997 at the age of 84 were packed in 200 boxes hidden in the Vatican according to the Pope's personal request," Koehler marks in the interview with La Stampa. The problem is that Benedict XVI upheld the decision of Pope John Paul II on the classification of the archive of Robert Graham, the researcher points out.

"The information gathered by the Jesuit, could be useful in clarifying the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II," says Koehler. "There were no arrests or processes in many cases, these spies are still living quietly in their places of origin in Poland," he has added.

La Stampa article (in Italian), interview with John Koehler.

Enemies of war

On November 16, 1989, special forces stormed the Universidad Centroamericana and assassinated six professors and two women. At the time civil war was raging in El Salvador. The profs, Jesuits, were vocal critics of the conflict. Their voices, voices of reason, were a shield capable of stopping tanks and bullets. Alas their bodies were frail, as all human life is. So the genocidal oppressors figured that the easiest way to rid the country of the troublesome Jesuits would be to riddle their bodies with bullets. But, with the bullets being supplied by the American taxpayer the murder backfired. A couple years later something of a truce was instituted, and a mock trial found the guilty of the murder. The world forgot about what happened. Until...

Yesterday, Spain's Association for Human Rights started the proceedings against the president of El Salvador and the military officers responsible for the assassinations.

Read the full story here (in Spanish), then watch the PBS documentary Enemies of War, listen to this radio podcast (in Real Audio or Windows Media) and wait for my novel AGENTS OF CHANGE, which echoes the events (I will finish it, soon, I promise!)

Before a great man there is even greater woman

In 1552 the princess, 17 at the time, married the heir to the Portuguese throne. When he died two years later, she returned to Spain.

Young, beautiful, and aware of her royal position and power, Juana was also endowed with a talent for ruling. While her brother, Philip II of Spain, was in England as husband of Mary Tudor, he made Juana regent. From 1554 to 1559 she was the effective ruler of Spain.

Juana had an additional ambition: to become a Jesuit. Telling none of her family, she informed Spanish grandee Francis Borgia, an early Jesuit, that she wanted to join the Society of Jesus.

So perilous was the project that all existing Jesuit correspondence about the situation avoids her name, using the pseudonym Mateo Sanchez, or Montoya, instead. In a quandary, Ignatius appointed a committee to advise him. It recommended that Juana enter the Society as a permanent scholastic; truly a Jesuit but forever in formation. Otherwise, with solemn vows, she would have been—according to canon and civil law—legally dead, dispossessed of everything, and incapable of ever marrying again.

With the novel, simple, and terminable vows of a Jesuit scholastic, she could have separated from the Society if necessary. When Juana pronounced her three religious vows as a Jesuit, absolute secrecy was enjoined on everyone.

She could make no obvious change in her manner of life. So, for her, poverty meant leading a rather austere life at her already simple court. Chastity meant never marrying again. Obedience—well, her letters show her sometimes trying to give orders to Ignatius and Borgia. SOURCE

The operative word here is "tried" to give orders, and the author of this article does not amplify, but elsewhere I came across Jesuits saying that Juana "gave orders" to Ignatius and Borgia. If they were followed through it would mean that the feisty woman was actually in charge of the Jesuit Order, no? They say that "Behind every great man there's a great woman", but here's an example that it actually works the other way around.

Juana:

Globalisation - a path to Hell?

Fr Jon Sobrino, SJ, in Edinburgh:

He drew on his latest book, 'The Eye of the Needle' - No Salvation
Outside the Poor' to contrast what humanises and gives life with
what dehumanises and destroys life. Globalisation,
in particular, is terribly dehumanising because though it implies
a good, it is in fact destructive and divisive. The
poverty gap - or wealth gap - dehumanises even before we make
an enquiry about any causal relationship between the rich and
the poor. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus sums
up the global reality very well, says Sobrino. In contrast,
the poor themselves humanise us, and the Latin American bishops
of the Medellin conference famously urged us to make an 'option
for the poor'. For Jon Sobrino the poor, in fact, lead
us to the divine, and he proposes an 'option to let salvation
come from the poor'. SOURCE

Church - the irrelevant social club

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators". But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven", and had to obey God rather than man. They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

[...] the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning [...] I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

Martin Luther King Jr in: Letter from Birmingham City Jail

***

There are a few good men (and women, no doubt) in the church:

PRIESTS WHO PROTESTED TORTURE POLICY RELEASED FROM PRISON

Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale and Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly were
released today from California jails, after serving five month
sentences as federal prisoners.

The two were sentenced last October in Tucson, following their
November, 2006 arrests at Ft. Huachuca, in Sierra Vista, Arizona,
during a nonviolent protest of military involvement in U.S. torture
policy. After Magistrate Judge Hector Estrada forbid them to use
international law in their defense, the two pled no contest to
charges of trespass and failure to obey an officer on October 17 and
were taken into custody.

Both men plan to return briefly to Arizona, where supporters are
invited to join them in a peaceful vigil against torture from 2-3
p.m. Sunday, March 16, outside the main gate of Ft. Huachuca, at Fry
Boulevard and Buffalo Soldier Trail, Sierra Vista, Arizona.

For more information, including complete background on the case and
legal briefs about torture and international law, visit
tortureontrial.org

Novel inspiration

This weekend marked the 18th anniversary of the event that inspired my latest novel: the assassination of the Jesuit scholars in El Salvador.

The murderers were graduates of the American School of Assassins at Fort Benning, and recipients of military aid aimed at terrorizing the civilian population.

Martyred Jesuits were the faculty of the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador. Their deaths brought to the world's attention the criminal activities of the US government: training of assassins and torturers that terrorize Latin America: from murdering, torturing, raping, and "disappearing" to staging coups - such as the overthrowing of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Lat weekend, over 11,000 protesters gathered outside of the Fort Benning were murderers are trained courtesy of US taxpayer. Among the protesters was Dennis Kucinich, Jesuits, students, families of the murdered and disappeared, and scores of people of conscience. Vigils in support of the protest were staged across America.

Jesuits murdered 18 years ago:

Fr Ignacio Ellacuría Beascoechea (1930-1989)

Fr Amando López Quintana (1936-1989)

Fr Joaquín López y López (1918-1989)

Fr Ignacio Martín Baró (1942-1989)

Fr Segundo Montes Mozo (1933-1989)

Fr Juan Ramón Moreno Pardo (1933-1989)

Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara

Today marks the anniversary of the death of one of the most significant figures in Liberation Theology and social justice.

Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara was a catholic archbishop in Brazil.

He was instrumental in delineating the course of Liberation Theology, a premise for my latest novel.

To cut to the chase let me post some quotes from the colorful Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara:

"When I give food to the poor the call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist."

"I will never carry a weapon and will never kill anyone. But I am ready to give life for the poor."

"The greatest problem of the Church is not a lack of priests, rather the hunger faced by the people."