structural hypocrisy of the Catholic Church
Interview with Fernando M. González *
by Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
After losing many of its privileges from the century XIX, limited by the Constitution of 1917, the Catholic Church has maintained its siege on the secular state to undermine and regain ground in social and political life of our country.
To achieve this, has even resorted to the manipulation of history, as in the case of the beatification of martyrs warriors ", which has been used to obtain symbolic benefits that seeks to translate into policy.
If on one hand the Church has sought to highlight their martyrs even resorting to falsification of history, also wanted to hide the faults of nefarious characters. Thus tried to silence allegations of pedophile activity founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel, for which activated mechanisms that endeavor the shade and oblivion to such facts.
on both aspects is the book of Fernando M. Gonzalez, The Church of silence. Martyrs and pedophiles (Mexico, Tusquets, 2009), on which a few months ago we had a conversation with the author, which addressed various aspects of what he calls "schizophrenia" and "structural hypocrisy of the Church" .
González has a PhD in Sociology of Institutions at the University of Paris, a researcher at the Institute of Social Research of the UNAM and member of the System Researchers at National.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why write and publish a book like yours? You have worked long the two themes of the book, war and pedophilia Cristero Father Marcial Maciel. Fernando M.
González (FG): The reasons are easy to answer. I had already worked Cristero war in the struggle between Catholic organizations and the way the bishops had spoken both in the uprising and in its continuation and in the arrangements that gave him purpose. What I had not worked is what I call "martyrs warriors" had not been beatified Anacleto González Flores and a series of characters who accepted armed struggle directly, nor the father Miguel Agustín Pro, who is the only first generation who had been beatified in September 1988, three months before the entry of Carlos Salinas de Gortari as president. In both cases I found it interesting to report the story of how the history of an event that was in 1926-1929, is still used today, in what history calls the present time "these past that never quite happen" and to be re-symbolizing.
That is the reason for writing the first part of the book.
The second part deals with Marcial Maciel. I wanted to know what kind of institutional mechanisms had been used Legionaries of Christ to seek beatified, because if you do not have a religious congregation beatified its founder, becomes a second-class congregation. There is a kind of symbolic stock among religious groups, and it is important that the founder to be beatified.
What happened is that Maciel, shortly before his death, was explicit in his imposture, appeared all of his pedophilia, his drug abuse and its handling. He touched attend the debacle of his image. He grew so much that suddenly appeared in the open, but still Legionnaires were always denying that, for what they claimed was a kind of moral martyrdom.
But suddenly came the double life of Marcial Maciel, who did not triple, that is the pederast and drug addict, "and the legionnaires, who fought from 1948 to February 2, 2009 under the claim that any criticism of him and the Legion was a plot, he suddenly had to acknowledge, and I had to make a very specific way, because there appeared a strong result, with DNA in hand, her daughter and could no longer denied.
Legionaries had to make a cut, and remained with the strategy that "this happened outside the institution, and we just heard. It's easy: cut it as a rotten fruit, as delete, and were untouched once again. "
So, what interested me was to analyze the institutional arrangements of the Catholic Church concerning sexuality of its staff, and especially pedophilia. What type of mechanisms used to try to transfigure, divert, mute? Maciel is the paradigmatic example, it covers from the top to the bottom, and can display all the relationships that exist in a case of pedophilia.
AR: The case lasted much, you mentioned a case of the forties of the twentieth century.
FMG: From 1944 is the first case that I have found, which is in the Vatican secret archives. In 201 documents those who had access are different types of complaints made since 1948, and leading to 2004.
So it's a long story, but became visible after 1997. As I said in the introduction, do not confuse the appearance of an event with its reality.
AR: What are the major problems had to do this kind of research?, Did you ever have suffered some kind of threat?
FMG: No, not really. Issues are very controversial, but I have not received any threats. For Marcial Maciel, because I went after people who do the dirty and broke the silence, as was the group of legionaries and some priests who made complaints, as well as some journalists like Ciro Gómez Leyva, Marisa Iglesias, Salvador Guerrero Cyprus, who first opened in Mexico these matters, just before the Channel 40 - and then Carmen Aristegui, Javier Solórzano.
I came to collect the fruits of others. I was extraordinarily lucky because after two years of searching documents for my research, suddenly and without my request because there seemed unthinkable even a group of priests offered me the Vatican Secret Archives. I said: "We know you're working on it, we read some of your text, we know how you work. We make confidence: we have the Vatican Secret Archives. Do not ask us how you'll never find out. We give you access, and work it like you want. "
file documents that are open until 1940, then closed, with some exceptions. I gave a file of 201 documents ranging from 1944 to 2004. They did it for pure confidence, because these people, highly ethical and problematized, he said: "This is a disgrace to our church, what happened is silenced and manipulated. You are in the UNAM, are secular, and you can be free to investigate without anyone walk audited. "I never asked me or accounts audited. Then I fell
other two files Plants Barragán, an early patron of the Legion, whose daughter was furious with the Legionnaires for the abuse that her mother had made, the money they asked and how she was treated. Also file Luis Ferreira Correa, who was vicar general of the Legion in 1956-1957, who replaced suspended Maciel when for the first time, his nephew gave it to Dr. Joseph Beard, who provided me.
Then I fell three unpublished files without having expected. I did trust and have never had either threats or anything. When Tusquets received the manuscript of the book, he said: "We will consult with lawyers because Legionnaires can put a claim and we are willing to risk our necks with you. "
the public, and the legionaries never pressured me and threatened me. They know that I have hard data, I am quoting things completely authentic, and if they attack me I can get the documents and publish complete. I guess I thought that when they realized it was too late because the book was published.
On the other hand, in the first part of the book is unpublished letters, from collections such as, for example, files of the Center for University Studies, which can be accessed without any problem. But the Jesuit archives are not so, but I was a Jesuit papers offered -10 internal letters to the Society of Jesus in times of Cristiada-and who told me: "here is, do any work as you want, and I do not audited. Interestingly, another Jesuit, who has died and I felt very much, Father Luis Sánchez Villaseñor, I translated the Latin two cards, because the accuracy of the statements is important.
The Church and religious congregations are very complex, are never univocal and homogeneous, and the text as shown. Cristiada During the same Society of Jesus had at least four widely divergent positions, it is by far the Legion, which until on February 15, 2009 showed a single face, but now shows cracks all that has happened.
I try to pay tribute to the complexity of an institution for re not unique.
AR: In that sense, would you say that there are sectors of the Church who are in favor of transparency?
FG: But they are always in a subordinate position.
AR: You do not have the capacity to church records made public?
FG: No, if they do, the melt directly. They employ a layman, someone who is not committed to ecclesiastical institutions, but belongs to a public university, where no monitors which investigates one, but the only thing you're asking that if you do a book, to be sufficiently substantiated, for the honor of the Institute for Social Research and the UNAM is at stake.
AR: His book, in my opinion, is dedicated to disarm forgeries and manipulations, but you prefer to call them "impersonations and historical transfiguration" - especially in the part devoted to Cristero movement. What are the political benefits that the Church has received it, for example, of the three waves of beatification?
FG: Before the arrival of the beatification, ran a sort of Damocles sword of virtual and imaginary why I always said that to the extent that the war did not change the laws Cristero laying up the movement "because the bishops themselves cupulares made arrangements and left hanging to the elevations at the risk of his life, and boy it was because later killed at least 500 thousand, as said Jean Meyer, the government was pursuing because those rules governing since 1917, could apply at any time.
But it was Cardenas who, in 1938, let the churches preach support for the expropriation of oil and Catholic people give jewelry and money to support the measure, which gave them an honorable exit. Strictly speaking, from that when the Catholic Church and was not pursued. There may be a story of a mayor, but only one bogey. But his speech pursued served until 1992, which brought him a symbolic benefit: a supposedly Church in the catacombs, it really was not.
But in 1992 Salinas legally recognized churches, as Catholicism is no longer the excuse of persecution, which triggers the machinery to beatify characters Cristero war. It was like saying: "We do not officially pursue, that we can no longer use, then, remember when we do bad government persecuted and attacked us."
Even before the PRI allowed ceremonies, the first of which is that of Miguel Pro in September 1988, in which the father is presented as the quintessence of what is impunity Presidential accused of being in the failed attack against Obregon in 1927, he and his brother were sent to be shot without trial by Plutarco Elias Calles, President of the Republic.
beatify Pro in 1988 was a provocation, but not had an impact, which could measure and calibrate the effect of war and twitching Cristero between the Church and the Mexican government had already fallen sharply. So Pro is like the spearhead of the "martyrs Cristeros."
What I try to point you in the book is that as it appears at the time of being shot, totally defenseless against the bullets, a situation that is the product of impunity presidential Pro is left blood, but on the other hand, it clears the wheel. Moral support armed struggle, his brothers Humberto and Roberto distributed arms and ammunition to the Cristeros. The first was in charge of the National League for Religious Defense, which is supposed to be coordinating the armed struggle in the Federal District. Michael was very proud of her 2 brothers, that support the armed struggle, saying: "I am a priest and I can not go to the battlefield, but the moral support." All this part is deleted.
AR: As is the case of Anacleto Gonzalez Flores.
FG: This is a case that goes even further, because it was a layman, and now wants to be resisted the idea of \u200b\u200barmed struggle. But organizations belonged to 4 different status, and in a given time, accepted the armed struggle. Never fired a shot because he was on the run, hiding, and, being hidden in the home of the Gonzalez Vargas, led with his attitude, which killed two members of that family. Anacleto is a responsibility for not having gone to the mountain. In his latest article, a day before the incident, said: "Blessed are those who, with weapons in hand, defend Church of God. " It was the civil leader of Jalisco, at his death, his lieutenant, Gómez Loza, was civil governor of that state, and almost touched her shoot entry to 17 people of the Federal Army.
amazing thing is that in the formula of beatification used the same as the second generation of 20 priests and 3 lay people, that is, were harbingers of peace, who were in the midst of an armed conflict between Mexicans who knows why fought against each other. Is the official version of the Church hierarchy to remove the traces of the past, his own involvement and responsibility.
This is surprising, since members generación de Anacleto aceptaron la lucha armada, que otros mataran por ellos e hicieran el trabajo sucio, y, sin embargo, les borran otra vez la pólvora y los dejan totalmente ensangrentados e inermes como mártires. Es una de las operaciones más escandalosas de sustracción histórica, de falta de probidad histórica y ética.
Esto lo siguen haciendo. Es un pasado que no termina de pasar, que se resignifica, y que es tomado también por el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), o por una parte de él. Por eso, cuando se realizó el Sexto Congreso Internacional de las Familias, Felipe Calderón, con los legionarios allí presentes, dijo: “Bienvenidos a la tierra de María de Guadalupe, San Felipe de Jesus and the martyrs Cristeros. " This is the PAN and the symbolic uses of Cristiada. Since that game is not inserted in the symbolic fabric of the nation in a forceful because the PRI and the PRD have monopolized the heroes of the country, has no where to be. Then you have to resort to the martyrs and the Virgin of Guadalupe.
These uses symbolic martyrs resignifying will show how memory.
I take the memory as a historical object, and observe how the past is renewed, so a little psychoanalytic. I am a psychoanalyst by training, so that, somehow, I use metaphors Freud's redefinition of the story and how it reappears in the present with other clothing.
AR: You mention here the case of Calderon, but in the book are referred to those of Emilio Gonzalez Marquez, the PRI Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez Portillo and his dealings with the popes, or of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and donation for Mariana Plaza.
FG: It is the political use of religious symbols by the PRI, PAN and PRD
. It is believed that all started with Vicente Fox, I say no, but that started before Ernesto Zedillo. I note the case of San Luis Rio Colorado, about 1991, when the campaign Manlio Fabio Beltrones using calendars for governor of the Sacred Heart and The Last Supper. Then those same schedules were used to support the PRI candidate for municipal president of Ocotlan, Jalisco. To which he interviewed him, and said: "They were very successful my calendars to support Manlio Catholics in San Luis Rio Colorado."
So are PRI members who inaugurated these applications, the PAN and the PRD's still no slouch. It's what I'm trying to say, do not believe it all started with the PAN, and will end with them.
AR: In the book you say that the "process of church-state separation laws made by reform lacks a good way to go and multifaceted to be clarified. " Today, what progress have to push this?
FG: I think it is desirable to know that religious convictions are very respectable, but that politicians should avoid publicly and openly use religious symbols when they are practicing as such. One can understand that a President wants to go to church, but do so privately, and not exercising their public office, not doing what Fox when he went to the Basilica shortly before taking power, receives no crucifixes in a public ceremony, and so on.
This has to do with the whole conduct of some PAN, the strongest representatives were Fox and Carlos Abascal. PRI was established with a sort of institutional hypocrisy, which the priests called the "syndrome of Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to visit Christ at night to avoid being seen. Then said, "our relations with the state are Nicodemus, we still regard it is inevitable, but the hide."
When PAN came to power, the party saw it as hypocrisy. They said: "We must be open, and religious beliefs to make public." But, as I said Adolfo Christlieb Ibarrola, who was PAN president, "every time you commit religious beliefs in politics, lost its footing, because politics is always of joints, is very volatile, and religious beliefs beyond the joints. We should not use religion in politics should know that politics is secular, there are different positions and even the Catholics are not homogeneous and that some people will vote for one party or another, do not have to vote for the same line, it would be a lie. "
This secularization of politics, it was clear Christlieb, these PAN last minute as Abascal, Fox and others, not understand. Mixed, on the pretext that you have to be authentic, as if religious beliefs could be automatically deducted from the policy actions. When their private convictions Emilio González Márquez decided that because a Catholic is to apologize, on behalf of the citizens of Jalisco, for the murder of Anacleto, confused Catholic citizen and a Catholic with a homogeneous condition. Of course he did pay dearly for this, but there is a blatant confusion.
This is because secularism is still not elucidated. You can see that the governments of Sonora and Yucatan, the PRI, are completely interchangeable with the governments of Jalisco and Guanajuato in any part of the biopolitical relations with gay couples, condoms and abortion, for example. What this says is that there is a confusion between religious morality and what is public health is to make something unique Catholic morality, free and compulsory as text only.
That's what I did not understand the Catholic Church, and what is not understood by politicians and by Abascal and Fox: the moral of the Church is one more, and have no right to impose it on the rest of the population. Secular morality is much more respectful, because this, if anyone has problems with abortion, for example, and has a crisis of conscience, not forced to have abortions. Allow the legalization of abortion and says: "If you want an abortion, these are the conditions." But it forces you to you, a Catholic, to do so. On the other hand, the Catholic, says: "this is morality, and must govern for all."
There is much work to do in that area.
AR: I'm also very interested in the changes brought about democratization of the country in various spheres of national life. What changes have you registered to the Church in our democratic process?
FG: From the standpoint of how to govern themselves in, the Church has not changed anything. It is still monarchical, hierarchical, fully discretionary power, which coincides with the complaints to the Church in the sexual life, which is one of the weaker sides. What he has done with its dissidents and critics tried to silence, to break off, to suppress. In that remains totally undemocratic.
However, despite all the criticisms that have been made, still talking as if nothing had happened until today, as if not touched, and turns up the luxury of speaking out for democracy and how they should behave just citizens and governments.
is remarkable the degree of blindness that is the Church, lack of self-criticism. However, there are lapses, as the document Abelardo Alvarado in 2002, when he was secretary of the Bishops, where he and Bishop Raul Vera makes a critique of how the church handled the sex, which is brutal violence with their parishioners. However, the other bishops said: "Yes, but only one case, no mistake, in addition, our critics what they want to make money, are anticlerical and they want to denigrate the Church." That is, an acknowledgment made and then block it. These two bishops, made a diagnosis and said: "This has been, is regrettable, and we can not keep doing it."
Somehow they are impacted, but the bulk of Bishops not received to date, and is still arrogant, arrogant and lacking in self-criticism.
In that sense, there is a noticeable difference with the U.S. bishops, not because it is more virtuous, but because there is no other criminal complaints culture where people no longer is on the intricacies of canon law, but the civil law that governs us all. We have gotten some impressive economic demands. In this sense, the American bishops have been forced to become virtuous reluctantly, accept the crime and pay sums in the millions, which does not happen in Mexico because the families themselves abused, the mechanisms of the Church and the judges themselves civilians, all conspire to keep silent about the fact. Ours is a very little democratic culture, and religion continues to crusade for civil law.
AR: In that sense, the Church did not follow the process that marks the canon law judge Marcial Maciel, who only made a call to meditation and penance. You also mentioned that civilian authorities have had some complicity. What happened in the civil sphere in this case?, Was there any civil suit?
FG: No, because here the case was completely blocked in, and the petitioners in this case the nine Legionnaires (eight Mexican and English) decided to take the path of the Vatican, was, at the same time, his triumph and error, because it was entering the canon law, parallel, not in the law that governs all.
Vatican took her a long time: first, let him do whatever he wanted Maciel since 1959, and in February of that year gave him a free and exonerated him, knowing what was at stake. When he finally Ratzinger, who had blocked the case in 1998, he decided to open on December 2, 2005, and when John Paul II was quite ill and he could be papabile "I guess he made a political calculation, they did to the decision of 2006 was an act of breathtaking cynicism, for which the victims were completely erased and the important thing was: "How we keep the face of the Vatican and the Legion of Christ?"
So that's why I speak of a surgeon, in this case Ratzinger, who signed a statement in which it is cut Maciel Legion, victims are not even mentioned and invented what I call the figure of pederast solipsistic: a pederast who is the acts themselves, which is a contradiction, since it is a pederast because he has a violent relationship another. That cut it cleanly, which left the Legion of Christ without any complicity. Legionnaires agents that getting their own ephebes people were efebos within the Legion were totally exonerated by the statement, which did not even appear as such but as an invitation to retire to a life of prayer and penance.
I compare it to the American bishops' document November 2002, in which Archbishop Levada, who was archbishop of San Francisco and then replaced Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said: " when sexual abuse was found by a priest and for reasons of age or illness has not been tried, conmínesele to a path of prayer and penance, and to leave the priesthood. "That was a sentence, not the one signed Ratzinger a cynical act of institutional ratio of the Church to save face of their own bodies Vatican were accomplices of Maciel for over 50 years: the Secretary of State, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Sacred Congregation for Religious.
When you see the daughter of Marcial Maciel with DNA in hand, the Legion continued to use the same strategy: they say he did outside the organization, and they used that fact to try to erase pedophilia and drug addiction. But now the situation are complicated, because the Pope sent a commission directly, but which was then left to the agencies that were complicit for 50 years. As I mentioned, become judge and judge only, and will play only what you want. They can move as they like and do not know how long it will be because, as a committee of five members, must negotiate among themselves, to assess the damage inside.
is an act of realpolitik , although I would call real cynical.
AR: At the end of the book in an appendix, José Barba Martin makes a quotation from John Paul II, who says: "How can one remain silent about the many forms of violence perpetrated in the name of faith and other forms of human rights violations? "How do agree that statement the Maciel case?
FG: And how is it possible that this Pope has supported to the bitter end?
AR: He, Ratzinger and, if not bad memory, there is some reference to Norberto Rivera.
FG: They are irreconcilable, but the Church lives permanently coupled, can give the speech that is, while it dissociated from their practice, and while it is as quiet as possible. There is a structural institutional hypocrisy. What one tries to work is if there are two or three cases of pedophilia, but how it makes an institution work to rid the face of these pedophiles and the image of the Church without caring about the future lay and abused.
AR: You say that the priesthood is the factor that articulated the four core activities Maciel, founder of the Congregation of the Legionaries, educational entrepreneur, pederast and drug addict. How do you reconcile being a priest with some activities that theoretically is in clear contradiction?
FG: It's a kind of schizophrenia. What happened is that Maciel did not show everyone their part pederast, which own some of the legionaries, students and larger people received only priestly appearance and devotion to the Mass, educational entrepreneur, etc., but not perceived the parties nor the pederast addict. The political and economic upper class who gave their children did not perceive these aspects.
The priesthood articulates all that the abused because he used his position as founder and priest to convince them to be touched and abused. With widows used to tell the priest: "I'm doing a wonderful work" for entrepreneurs and politicians said, "I'm going to be fully to their people because I am an educational entrepreneur, but I have a plus: I have comprehensive religious education. "
So always used to convince the priesthood factor in different contexts. Only a minority of attending religious acts has been abused, and that after being abused could go to church, which gave him communion Maciel and lifted the host with great devotion, for he knew as a teacher to handle the body and the external signs.
Maciel What made was to use the priesthood as the cement that articulated all these contexts, what made him credible. So for the abused was so difficult to report because they could answer: "No you may say that Maciel abused him is that after going to the infirmary chapel and say this mass. You're telling me a lie. The father is so devoted, it is two minutes with the host at the consecration can not be. "
used the priesthood as an articulator of contexts, which meant re improbable acts.
AR: What is the cost you are paying the Church for trying to hide this kind of facts?
FG: It is difficult to estimate, but obviously that he just happened to the Legion when incriminate and has to charge, nothing more and nothing less, its founder. Now the new trend is to remove all pictures of Maciel of houses using the Stalinist method, which is coarse and brutal, murderous and wants to erase symbolically. That's what I want to do the Legionaries, which speaks of his intellectual capacity.
They are trying to do, but the cost is already very strong: from February 2, 2009, for the first time, a fissure. There are people of good will, honest within the Legion, who suddenly have breakfast with this double life information, and then it becomes plausible that the Legion triple life as a plot tried to hide. Start saying, "And what if that was true also? So why the dome and others hide it? "
had a network of silence, omerta within the Legion, although that began to smack an irremediable fracture. For example, I quote the spokesman for the Legionaries in the United States from 1998 to 2004, Jay Dunlap, who is not a priest and wrote a letter to Jason Berry, who along with Gerald Renner, Maciel had explained the case in February 1997, in which he apologized: "I'm sorry and I apologize for everything that I told you about the case against Maciel. And through you I apologize to the nine legionnaires who openly denounced Marcial Maciel. "
is brutal, because it is the crack inside. On the other hand there are other cracks: people who believed and starts to feel a certainty: "There was a saint, a guy who was having a moral martyrdom, and suddenly I realize I was an impostor." Pain and tears come a belief when it falls. That's a price you're paying the Legion inward; but it is a credible price they are paying out to support the bishops and other Church bodies. For
Catholic religious congregations, obviously everything is concentrated in the Legion of Christ, and that is very important because those others also have their pederast header, its gay, its straight with their wives in the closet. Then, as all the lights are on the Legion, the other congregations suits them. But there is a kind of omerta among them: I do not denounce you, you did not complaints, and so we are leading us. Institutional structure is hypocritical, in that there is an overlap between all instances of the Church: "we keep the maximum of silence, on the pretext of not offend our ever naive, weak and fragile faithful." But in reality is "the face we protect ourselves, protect the face of the institution above those .
AR: Is the Church of silence.
FG: Yes, of course, should be called "Different Silences of the Church", or "Some stills from the Church."
* A slightly shorter version of this interview was published in Millennium weekly, no. 649, April 5, 2010. Reprinted with permission from the director.
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