Roman Catholic Church launches harsh attack against Mexico City's leftist mayor

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Roman Catholic Church launches harsh attack against Mexico City's leftist mayor
By Associated Press

7:33 p.m. EST, March 7, 2010

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's Roman Catholic Church has published its harshest criticism to date of leftist Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, accusing his administration of botching issues ranging from crime to public transit.

The church has often disagreed with Ebrard's Democratic Revolution Party.

An editorial published Sunday on the Archdiocese of Mexico's Web site accused Ebrard of "following the line set down by foreign groups" in approving legalized abortion and same-sex marriages.

Ebrard is viewed as a top contender in 2012 presidential race, and some leftists have accused the church of supporting more conservative rivals.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-lt-mexico-church-politics,0,2132185.story

[madrchsod]

1. who are "foreign groups".....the jews or the moslems?

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Isn't The Vatican a foreign group?????????

[mitchtv]

27. Freemasons

also

[HeresyLives]

2. And who asked the RC church for their opinion?

The church should spend more time solving its own problems, and stay out of politics.

[No Elephants]

31. The Catholic Church has had, depending upon your view of the Great Schism, either 2000 or 1000 years

to solve its own problems.

So far, it's not looking good for that.

Maybe that's why it's deciding to butt in everywhere else.

[BeatleBoot]

3. As questions arise about the Pope's brother's choir

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6251S620100306

German choir abuse predates Pope's brother: Vatican

After cases of abuse at Jesuit schools around Germany came to light last month, shocking the country, the Roman Catholic Church on Friday revealed charges of priests beating and sexually abusing boys in at least three schools in Bavaria.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano printed a statement on Saturday by the Bishop of Regensburg Gerhard Ludwig Muller saying that one case of abuse by the deputy director of a primary school linked to the choir was detected in 1958.

The clergyman was promptly dismissed and prosecuted, the statement said.

Another priest, who worked with the cathedral choir in 1958 for seven months, was convicted of sexual abuse 12 years later. An investigation was now taking place into whether he committed any abuse during his time with the choir.

<more>

[jakefrep]

8. How is that relevant to the OP?

[ima_sinnic]

20. just one more example: the RCC needs to go to "hell," where it belongs

instead of sticking its nose into "Caesar's business," it needs to start cleaning house and acting on some of the "Christian" principles it pretends to espouse. "Leftist" policies usually benefit The People, including the most weak and vulnerable--something the RCC gives lip service to, but its attitude toward molestation of young children shows them to be liars and hypocrites.

[jakefrep]

22. So what does that have to do with the mayor of Mexico City?

Is there some sort of Godwin principle at play here, where some feel entitled to drag the church sex scandal into a debate, no matter how completely irrelevant to the topic at hand?

[No Elephants]

32. The point is: The Church is trying to influence the running of Mexcio City, which it has no

business doing, while it has plenty of other things it could and should be doing, which actually are its business.

It's something like your neighbor, who has already been convicted of criminal neglect of his or her own kids, lecturing you on your failure to groom your poodle correctly.



Or, as someone near and dear to the heart of any Christian religion put it,

Luke 6:42 (King James Version)

Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.

Luke 6:42 (King James Version)

Do you think the Vatican has any business butting into traffic control in Mexico City?

ETA: Doesn't Godwin's law have to do with mentioning, say, Hitler or Nazis in a thread that has nothing to do with Hitler or Nazis? This is a thread about the RCC butting into government matters in Mexico City, so mention of more appropriate areas in which the RCC might direct its attention in resources seems to be nothing like Godwin's law.

[Cha]

4. Friggin churches need to stay the

fuck outta politics and tend to helping the poor and not theirselves.

[DeSwiss]

5. K&R

Matthew 7:5 "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

[UTUSN]

6. OOOoooo, K&$ #7 for, it's gonna be a battle HERE at LBN!1 n/t

[Cartoonist]

7. Mexican Independence Day

They celebrate it every year, but they will never be independent until they get rid of the Church.

[a la izquierda]

10. ummm, i wouldn't go there.

attachment to the idea of Catholicism and attachment to the strictures of today's church are very, very different.
you can't parse Catholicism out of Mexican culture. but you can certainly restrict the power of the church (it's been done before and can be done again).

[Proletariatprincess]

15. Ireland is sure changing it's attitudes about the church.

Mexico and Ireland are said to share the same attitudes about the RC. That is changing now in Ireland...and none too soon. I think it could, and should, happen in Mexico too.

[a la izquierda]

19. You think it's that simple?

But you need to acknowledge that Mexico isn't one homogeneous culture. The relationships between Mexico's peasantry, or its native population, and the Church are quite different than almost any that exist anywhere. They don't care about the hierarchy. They care about the fact that folk religion cannot be separated from Catholicism. Changing 400+ years of history isn't going to happen easily or quickly.
The relationship between regular folks in Mexico and the Church might be similar to that in Ireland. I don't know. I'm not one of those Irish Americans that believes she has any clue as to what truly goes on in the mind of people on the Isle. I don't even pretend that my Spanish ethnicity helps me pretend to know the minds of Latin Americans. I live there part of the year and I have spent years studying Mexican peasant and indigenous culture.

Sorry to be harsh, but part of being a member of the Left is understanding that just because I disagree with the Catholic Church (and I do, if you read my other post) doesn't mean that I can snap my fingers and shit's gonna change overnight someplace else.
So, unless you're Mexican, or have spent significant time studying their religions, it's an extremely complicated aspect of culture that most people don't understand.

[No Elephants]

33. You can reduce the Church in the same way that the Church reduced the Mexican paganism

that preceded the Spaniards. Sure, there are still cultural celebrations, but no one thinks Aztec, Mayan or Toltec gods should have a say about who governs Mexico or how.

ETA: Maybe it can't be done in five and a half minutes, but it can be done. Saying it can't is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You can also instill the idea that churches should tend to religion, not to traffic in Mexico City.

[demosincebirth]

12. they tried for almost ten years, after the revolution, They even made it

against the law for clergy to be seen in public in their clerical garbs. That lasted until the ruling PRI lost control, after seventy four years, of government in '98 (I think). President Fox, was the first Mexican president to be seen, publicly, attending Mass.


See the 1947 movie The Fugitive with Henry Fonda. Tells a lot of what happened in Mexico in that era

[a la izquierda]

9. Hey Mexican Clergy...

Remember the 1917 constitution and stfu. Want to do some good? Help Mexico's millions of poor.

[TlalocW]

13. Well, if the Church is attacking him

He's probably doing something right.

TlalocW

[bertman]

14. is the church tax-exempt in Mexico? Now there's a source of revenue to finance the

socialist mayor-wannabe-Presidente's radical agenda.

Rec.

[defendandprotect]

18. Catholic Church owned half of land in Mexico . . . Mexico confiscated church property . . .

Mexico fought back --

Couldn't find my notes on this -- but this one gives a kind of "Persecution of the RCC"

flavor to the event --



Following the Revolution of 1860, US-backed President Benito Juárez, issued a decree nationalizing church property, separating church and state, and suppressing religious orders.

Following the revolution of 1910, the new Mexican Constitution of 1917 contained further anti-clerical provisions. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools and prohibited the Church from engaging in primary education; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Article 130 deprived clergy members of basic political rights.

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles's enforcement of previous anti-Catholic legislation denying priests' rights, enacted as the Calles Law, prompted the Mexican Episcopate to suspend all Catholic worship in Mexico from August 1, 1926 and sparked the bloody Cristero War of 1926–1929 in which some 50,000 peasants took up arms against the government. Their slogan was "Viva Cristo Rey!" (long live Christ the King).

The suppression of the Church included the closing of many churches and the killing and forced marriage of priests. The persecution was most severe in Tabasco under the strident atheist governor Tomás Garrido Canabal.

The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.<31> Where there were 4,500 priests serving the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion and assassination.<31><32> It appears that ten states were left without any priests.<32> Other sources, indicate that the persecution was such that by 1935, 17 states were left with no priests at all.<33>

Some of the Catholic casualties of this struggle are known as the Saints of the Cristero War.<31><34> Events relating to this were famously portrayed in the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.<35><36> The persecution of Catholics was most severe in the state of Tabasco under the Governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. Under the rule of Garrido many priests were killed, all Churches in the state were closed and priests who still survived were forced to marry or flee at risk of losing their lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism#Mexico


And, recently reversed to some degree . . .


Mexico Ending Church Restraints After 70 Years of Official Hostility
By TIM GOLDEN,
Published: December 20, 1991

Through waves of antagonism between Government and church leaders, the country's Catholic identity has survived almost unquestioned.

From their first declarations of independence from Spain, Mexican leaders decreed Roman Catholicism to be the country's sole religion. But the church, which at the time wielded enormous influence and owned about half the country's land, opposed the independence movement.


http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/20/world/mexico-ending-church-restraints-after-70-years-of-official-hostility.html?pagewanted=all


Another similar article ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/mexico/stories/910710.htm

[bertman]

26. thanks, defendandprotect.

[defendandprotect]

16. Latin America is liberal . . . they support reproductive freedom, for one . . .

and that's going to kick the Catholic Church out --

From the beginning we knew we'd reach this point one day --

It obvious that the only way the church can win again is by remilitarizing --

and, in a sense, IMO, they have in many ways over the past decades!!

[NYC Democrat]

21. they are liberal yes but trust me they won't be kicking the church out anytime soon.

the people there are pretty damn religious.

[defendandprotect]

25. Understand what you mean . . .

yes, it surprises me that Catholics here in NJ can still support the Catholic

Church -- two I'm aware of in my area are expanding! So they are still being

given money -- or our tax dollars are helping them.

Btw, they began an investigation into whether the RCC used taxpayer money given

to them for "faith-based" organizations and used it to pay off their pedophile

lawsuits!!

If you read the article, even at the time of the revolution when church property

was confiscated there was great support for the church!

And, I think the RCC in America is still "importing" priests from that area to

run their churches here?

I'm a recovering Catholic but I'm not really familiar with all that's going on

with the church here.

It almost seems that given the humiliation of the pedophile priest scandals, some

have chosen to completely and willfully ignore it. I think they do so at their

own peril!! The right wing is firmly in control of the church now -- moving to

Evangelicalism -- in fact the priest who was recently arrested for corruption --

see the other article on the "prostitution ring in the Vatican" -- was some part of

leadership in moving the church toward Evangelicalism!! Now that's real fanatacism!!

[PM Martin]

17. Satan's Church needs to STFU!

[Unvanguard]

23. A good sign that he is doing a fine job, and should be supported. n/t

[Javaman]

24. It's all about market share...

Mexico has long been know to be the bastion of Catholicism in the western hemisphere. So here comes a "leftist" government that questions normal conventions, thus creating a territorial control issue for the church.

Folks, it's always about money. Never ever forget that.

If it was about souls, the church wouldn't give a shit as long as the people were happy. See?

[Zoeisright]

28. TAX THE CHURCHES

If they are going to insert their immoral viewpoint into politics, they need to start paying taxes. NOW.

[defendandprotect]

29. Highly agree . . . !!!

[No Elephants]

30. When is the left going to push back against the neo theos? International religious and/or f

political consevatives (who can tell them apart anymore?) have been working to push governments to the right. It's practically a damned cult at this point.

I do not know of any nternational organizaations that are their counterparts on the left. What are we waiting for?

[panzerfaust]

34. While defending violent and predatory RC priests in America, Ireland, Germany, Holland ...

... and lecturing the UK about its devilish policy of gay rights.

Yep. Sounds about what one would expect from God's Church on Earth.