The Pope And The Argentine Junta

[Evangetholic]

Now that he has become the leader of the world’s largest Christian church – a position of both spiritual and political influence – many people are beginning to ask what role Pope Francis played when Argentina collapsed into terror and dictatorship in the 1970s.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/pope-francis-and-argentinas-military-junta-which-side-was-he-on/article9761162/

[Aloysius]

I think it's hard to tell what the truth of the story is.  I think there is a motivation by people with grudges to paint the story as true, but obviously there's a motivation for he himself to deny it.  what will clearly happen now is most faithful Catholics will try to fall in lockstep around the refutation of the story while non-Catholic agitators along with Catholics with a bone to pick with Pope Francis over something will insist that the accusations are true.  all sorts of motivations obscure the facts here, so I really don't know what to think; except to say that he doesn't seem like a guy who would do anything like that now and I hope that if he did have failings during those terrible years that he has made his peace with God over them.  Telling the details of trying to get them out so much later seems strange (one would've thought he'd have come out with that sooner, but then again maybe he just wanted to maintain humility and not get credit for secret good deeds)... I get the sense that he probably was positioning himself and maneuvering to attempt to mitigate the things that were going on as best he could, I hope his story of a personal plea for those two priests is true, I hope he did the best he could.  If there was more of an avalanche of accusations against him at the time I'd be more worried; as it stands, it looks like two priests deeply committed to radical liberation theology who developed a grudge against Bergoglio and therefore blamed him for what happened to them.  What he did or did not do is difficult to know based off the stories one sees (actually some people have said that the 2005 whisper campaign spreading this information was motivated from the opposite end of the political spectrum, from Catholics committed to more right-wing Capitalism that wanted Bergoglio, who is a reasonable critic of Capitalism, painted as bad so that there wasn't a legitimate voice for such critique, that the only critique out there was the more anathematizable pure marxist radicalism of the liberation theologians)

 

I'll say this, I sincerely bet that it was not ministering in the slums that would've drawn disciplinary action, it would've been expressing heretically marxist levels of liberation theology, note that the most extreme levels of liberation theology start to deny the whole spiritual aspect of Holy Religion insisting that the stories are nothing more than metaphors for liberation meant to inspire political action.  I'd bet you that if those priests were removed, it was for flirting with that type of thing.  STILL, I hope Bergoglio still did what he could to protect them no matter what proper ecclesiastical positioning may have been going on.

[Apotheoun]

I heard that the new pope is going to be held personally responsible for the pollution caused by the smoke that came out of the Sistine Chapel chimney.

[WillT]

Didn't the Church officials there issue an apology at some point? If he was involved, I would take it that he's repented by now so it shouldn't matter much. Unless your talking to a Donatist, of course. He certainly doesn't seem to have made a pattern of that sort of thing.

[IcePrincessKRS]

I wish I'd posted the article yesterday, but one of the things I read was quotes from Pope Francis' authorized biographer. The biographer was quoted as saying that a lot of what the Pope did back then was behind the scenes. He came under a lot of fire for not being very vocal publicly and he never corrected anyone putting out false accusations against him, he just kept working quietly to help his people.

[Aloysius]

Didn't the Church officials there issue an apology at some point? If he was involved, I would take it that he's repented by now so it shouldn't matter much. Unless your talking to a Donatist, of course. He certainly doesn't seem to have made a pattern of that sort of thing.

 

Indeed.  Was he personally part of any personal apology of his own?  I'm merely curious, as it would indicate to me whether he felt he had done anything to publicly repent for.  If, as Icey indicated below, he was indeed doing things behind the scenes, then perhaps he wouldn't have done so.

 

I wish I'd posted the article yesterday, but one of the things I read was quotes from Pope Francis' authorized biographer. The biographer was quoted as saying that a lot of what the Pope did back then was behind the scenes. He came under a lot of fire for not being very vocal publicly and he never corrected anyone putting out false accusations against him, he just kept working quietly to help his people.

I heard that as well.  Seems very much like the Pius XII controversy on the whole of it, the idea of doing things behind the scenes vs. trying to publicly denounce what's happening as a very fine line to tread.  when it comes to Pius I've seen enough facts to definitively prove that he was indeed doing plenty behind the scenes... I very much hope something definitive comes to light to support the idea that Bergoglio was doing something behind the scenes.  Of course that wouldn't shut up the Pope's critics who are going to tend to believe the accusations just because they're made against the pope, but I'd just generally be interested in knowing what kinds of things he was doing.

 

in any event if this is the ONLY story attempting to implicate him as a regime collaborator, I doubt that he was all that cozy with the regime as they're trying to allege.

[IcePrincessKRS]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/14/pope-francis-election-stirs-up-argentine-dirty-war-allegations-biographer-calls/

 

 

[IcePrincessKRS]

This doesn't really have any new information, but her conclusion made me smile:

 

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/papamoon/

 

Hey, if you're interested in pawing through his disastrous reactions or shameful non-reactions to your favorite historical document, or if suddenly you're willing to pretend you're an instant expert on the Dirty War and if you had been Archbishop of Argentina, then this is how you would have done, then be my guest.  I, for one, am going to bask in the joy  and excitement of getting to know our new pope.  We've got plenty of time ahead of us, and if these first days are any indication, he is going to keep us on our toes.  Viva il Papa!

 

[IcePrincessKRS]

Just to add to my last post, I think we have to bear in mind that a lot of the accusations against him date back to the mid 70s when he was in his 30s. He was ordained to the priesthood in December of 1969. Really, he was a relatively new priest and fairly young. I can't find room to fault him for behaving in a manner that many of us would have done ourselves.

[WillT]

Indeed. Was he personally part of any personal apology of his own? I'm merely curious, as it would indicate to me whether he felt he had done anything to publicly repent for. If, as Icey indicated below, he was indeed doing things behind the scenes, then perhaps he wouldn't have done so.

I heard that as well. Seems very much like the Pius XII controversy on the whole of it, the idea of doing things behind the scenes vs. trying to publicly denounce what's happening as a very fine line to tread. when it comes to Pius I've seen enough facts to definitively prove that he was indeed doing plenty behind the scenes... I very much hope something definitive comes to light to support the idea that Bergoglio was doing something behind the scenes. Of course that wouldn't shut up the Pope's critics who are going to tend to believe the accusations just because they're made against the pope, but I'd just generally be interested in knowing what kinds of things he was doing.

Exactly. Either way, we will have no proof either way and detractors will be detractors. If only he would've taken the name "Augustine"!

[Evangetholic]

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/argentine-church-under-the-shadow-of-the-dirty-war/

 

LONDON — The election of an Argentine to the papacy has revived a polemic about the role of the Roman Catholic Church during his country’s so-called “dirty war” and about his own dealings with a military junta that murdered up to 30,000 citizens.

[Evangetholic]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/world/europe/vatican-new-pope/index.html

[CatholicCid]

When nothing else will work, accuse a Catholic prelate of NSO

 

The mainstream media is in panic over Pope Francis.

The new pope is solidly opposed to everything big media wants (contraception, abortion, ‘same-sex marriage’, etc.), but it can’t simply write him off as an out-of-touch academic (Benedict) or as a provincial Slav suffering Nazi and Communist induced post-traumatic stress disorder (John Paul II). Worse, the first prelate of the Catholic world is a man of proven commitment to the poor (far more demonstrably than are his limousine liberal critics), and has lived his whole life in a simplicity that is utterly beyond the ken of Manhattan or the Beltway sophisticates.

So, confronted by a major Catholic prelate of such palpable integrity, what’s the media to do? Only one thing: Look up what country the prelate calls home, find out what trauma that country suffered (that’s not hard to do, all modern countries suffer from traumas, generally those organized by their governments), and accuse the prelate of—wait for it—Not Speaking Out.

NSO is the perfect accusation: first, it can only be levied by history, that is, by folks with access to much more information than was possessed by those against whom an NSO is aimed; indeed, as NSO is almost always raised well after the trauma and its agents have passed from the scene, retaliation by such agents for reminding folks of their travesties is unlikely or impossible;  very importantly, NSO allows the media to claim the moral high ground by implying that, had it been on scene during the trauma, it would surely have “spoken out”. That last claim is, of course, the most laughable (as—to take just one example of ignored victims of modernity—hundreds of millions of baby souls will attest on Judgment Day). Best of all, even if evidence of “speaking out” can be found, it can always be dismissed as “not enough”.

http://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/when-nothing-else-will-work-accuse-a-catholic-prelate-of-nso/

[IcePrincessKRS]

Lil Red shared this link elsewhere earlier today, but I thought it was fitting for this thread:

 

http://www.aleteia.org/en/politics/documents/dispelling-rumours-of-jorge-bergoglios-cooperation-with-the-argentine-dictatorship-479003

 

The headline:

Dispelling rumors of Jorge Bergoglio’s cooperation with the Argentine dictatorship An Argentine Nobel Peace Prize recipient & the former Public Defender of Argentina attest to his innocence