Excommunicated! - Mass Nude-In Complicates Church-State

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Excommunicated! - Mass Nude-In Complicates Church-State

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

CounterPunch - Jun 9, 2007

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross06092007.html

Excommunicated!

Mass Nude-In Complicates Church-State Scuffling in Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City

The crowds pushing in around the newspaper kiosks a few Monday mornings

ago oohed and ahhed at what has come to be known in this cosmopolitan

metropolis merely as The Picture - 18,000 buck-naked chilangos and

chilangas (Mexico City residents) staging a mass nude-in in the great

Zocalo plaza as captured by internationally celebrated photographer

Spencer Tunick. Tunick has made a good living setting up such shoots in

many of the world's major cities.

But the artist's shoot, usually viewed as a harmless lark, raised

hackles in conservative quarters here and indeed has become one more

irritant in a spate of nasty squabbles between Church and State.

In one pose, Tunick had his naked subjects kneel in prayer, heads

pressed against the ground in the Islamic fashion, and turned towards

the rambling old Metropolitan Cathedral, a citadel of the Roman

Catholic Church in Mexico. Not at all happy with the pulchritude, the

nation's leading prelate, Cardinal Norberto Rivera demanded that Tunick

remove any image of the Cathedral in the photo. Spencer Tunick had been

contracted by Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a tall handsome JFK

clone, who had just been excommunicated by Cardinal Rivera.

Church-State relations are always dicey in Mexico. Extending from the

Conquest and Colonial rule into the 19th Century civil war between

conservatives and liberals, and through the Cristero war which took

30,000 lives in the aftermath of the anti-Church Mexican revolution,

the face off between civil and clerical authorities continues to

provoke confrontation.

Although 93% of all Mexicans profess to be Catholics or at least

Guadalupanas (devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe), what the Church

refers to as the "Jacobin" strain continues to find voice. Indeed after

a century-long rupture, Mexico and the Vatican only resumed diplomatic

relations 15 years ago.

Since Mexico City went left in 1997, relations between the Church as

personified by the Metropolitan Cathedral on one side of the Zocalo and

City Hall on the other, have been frosty. But they went into deep

freeze last November when the capital's legislative assembly. dominated

by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), signed off on

the nation's first gay union law to the dismay of the archdiocese. Then

on January 1st, the northern border state of Coahuila legalized gay

unions - Mexico's first gay "marriage" took place March 7th in Coahuila

when two lesbians tied the knot.

Although the Church hierarchy fussed and fumed at all this blasphemy,

the moral pontifications of the bishops and cardinals had a

hypocritical ring in light of serial pederasty scandals involving

predator priests, perhaps the most scandalous of which stars Cardinal

Rivera himself.

As Bishop of Tehuacan in Puebla state during the late 1980s and early

'90s, Rivera is accused of protecting the rapist priest Nicolas Aguilar

who parents charge with abusing 60 young boys in the diocese. Rivera

would later exercise his exalted power as Cardinal of Mexico City, the

world's largest Catholic congregation, to ship Padre Nico to Los

Angeles where he would have similar protection from Cardinal Roger

Mahoney. But after the good father had notched 26 new victims in

Mahoney's jurisdiction, the Cardinal quietly flew Aguilar back to

Mexico as if the whole affair was covered by some NAFTA chapter on

priestly pederasty.

Never arrested for his crimes, Pope Benedict XVI last October stripped

Father Aguilar of his clerical functions and he is now said to be eking

out a living in Mexico State selling religious cassettes. Both

Cardinals Mahoney and Rivera are being sued by Aguilar's victims who

have vowed to bring criminal cover-up charges against the two powerful

Churchmen.

According to SNAP-Mexico, a molestation survivors network, at least 40

U.S. predator priests on the lam from U.S. justice are loose in Mexico

- - no figures are available as to how many Mexican "padres pederastas"

have fled north of the border for protection.

The pontiff of all Mexican pederast priests is Macial Marcial, founder

of the Legionnaires of Christ, an immensely wealthy order, who made a

habit of raping young acolytes he accompanied to Rome for nearly six

decades - the first accusations date back to the 1950s. Kept out of

sight in the Vatican by Pope John Paul II, Benedict finally condemned

the 86 year-old Marcial to a life of prayer and penance on his palatial

estate in Michoacan.

But more pertinent than gay unions and gay priests, the battle between

Church and State that is lighting up the heavens these days is an old

bugaboo - legalized abortion.

This April 24th , the Mexico City legislature, availing itself of its

solid PRD majority, passed an abortion on demand bill. The measure

would apply to the first 12 weeks of gestation only and the procedure

performed at the city's 14 hospitals without fee. Like the legalization

of gay marriage, the abortion on demand law was the first anywhere in

the country, and spurred on by Cardinal Rivera and Jorge Serrano Limon,

long-time leader of Pro Vida, a vitriolic anti-abortion group, street

marches, mass pray-ins, and Pro Choice

- - Pro Vida scuffling in the Zocalo followed. Passage of the bill led the

Vatican to issue excommunication orders for Mayor Ebrard and all

legislators who had voted for the abortion law.

The law was also immediately slammed by President Felipe de Jesus

Calderon Hinojosa (his baptismal name), a devote Catholic and member of

a founding family of the archly rightwing National Action or PAN party,

created in the 1930s by Catholics to oppose what they labeled a

"Bolshevik" president (Lazaro Cardenas.) "I stand with life" the

President assured Televisa, the nation's number one TV octopus, using

the standard anti-abortion euphemism. His wife, Margarita Zavala,

seconded the sentiment.

After dining with Carlos Aguar, bishop of Veracruz and president of the

Mexican Episcopal Council or CEM which groups together the country's

hierarchy, Calderon instructed his attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora

to intervene in the brouhaha. This May 26th, both the Attorney General

and the National Human Rights Commission under the signature of

ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, an Opus Dei associate, filed for relief

with Mexico's Supreme Court on the grounds that the Mexico City law

violated the constitutional rights of "the product of conception."

Roe Vs. Wade a la Mexicana has an instructive history. In 1999, the

court quashed another abortion-on-demand edict promulgated by

then-Mexico City interim mayor Rosario Robles but under the Supreme

Court's rules, each case must be treated separately and does not

establish a precedent,

Nonetheless, since the Robles decision, the court has moved to the

right and Pro Vida's Serrano Limon, who was given millions of pesos by

Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox to establish adoption homes that

audits show he lavished on fancy lingerie, is reasonably optimistic

that the current abortion law will be struck down. Serrano curses the

PRD as if it was a biblical plague. "First it was homosexual marriage.

Then it was abortion. What's next? Euthanasia?" he asked the left daily

La Jornada. "Exactly" one PRD legislator, who asked not to be quoted,

responded.

The PRD and the Church hierarchy squared off after the July 2nd 2006

presidential elections which many thought was stolen from leftist Andres

Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO.) During the bitter campaign, the Church's

preference for Calderon was patent - though often masqued by the

homilies of the bishops and the cardinals as "a vote for life."

Sunday after Sunday, irate AMLO supporters - tens of thousands were then

camped out in protest on the streets of the city - invaded the

Metropolitan Cathedral with pro-Lopez Obrador banners and disrupted

Cardinal Rivera as he said Mass. Police had sometimes to be called and

the cathedral's doors were locked to prevent infiltrators, making

Sunday Mass a kind of invitation-only siance.

More recently, Cardinal Rivera grew furious with Mayor Ebrard after

access to the Cathedral was blocked during Sunday Mass because of

preparations for a concert by Shakira, the pop idol whose gyrating

belly button must cause the Church fathers to gnash their teeth.

This Monday (June 3rd) Felipe de Jesus Calderon will have his first

tete a tete with Pope Benedict XVI in the Holy See before setting out

on a European junket. In a previous persona as the Vatican watchdog for

doctrinal heresies, Cardinal Josep Ratzinger waged an unrelenting witch

hunt against Mexico's liberation bishops, most pointedly Chiapas

emeritus bishop Samuel Ruiz who Ratzinger, a one-time member of

Hitler's Nazi youth brigades, hounded for preaching "a Marxist version"

of the Gospel.

Ratzinger's relations with the Latin American Church turned tense

during his recent visit to Aparacida Brazil to address the continent's

Council of Bishops or CELAM. Whereas his predecessor John Paul II

accepted responsibility for the genocide of 50,000,000 indigenous

peoples in the wake of the Conquest and the Evangelization (sounding a

little like Subcomandante Marcos, John Paul once shouted 'Mexico needs

its Indians and its Indians need Mexico!"), Pope Benedict has proven

himself a holocaust denier.

The Church's trajectory in Latin America had been a "glorious" one he

told the bishops on May 13th. Rather than imposing Catholicism upon the

Indians and annihilating ancient native belief systems, the

Evangelization had been the "salvation" of the continent's indigenous

population. Latin America's Indians "silently desired Jesus Christ as

their Savior" Ratzinger avowed. Although later he would concede that

their had been "shadows" during the Church's reign in the Americas, no

mia cupla was forthcoming.

On the eve of the huddle between Calderon and Pope Benedict, Mexico's

foreign minister Patricia Espinoza was adamant that abortion was not on

the agenda - which in diplo-speak, means it is the only item on the

agenda. With Latin America moving left at the speed of sound, Ratzinger

fears a domino effect as abortion-on-demand laws sweep the continent -

actually, there is little current evidence that leftist regimes promote

abortion. At least two Latin American socialists, Chile's Michelle

Bachelet and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, preside over countries with

total bans on abortion.

Still, if abortion-on-demand stands up in Mexico City which has the

largest concentration of Catholics on the Church map (most of the 215

woman upon whom abortions were performed in the first month of the law

were Catholics), the implications for the Church's future in Latin

America are dire.

"Popes try to impress upon Catholic presidents that they should serve

the Church," observes Roberto Blancarte, once a diplomat in Rome.

Although Benedict will applaud the Mexican president for his stand "for

life", he will ask him to do more to rescue the Church from the

incipient danger of legalized abortion and take his convictions to the

rest of Latin America, to convince other heads of state that a woman's

right to choose and the decriminalization of abortion is a grievous sin

against Jesus Christ.

Given the current socio-political dynamic in Latin America, Calderon,

despite his deep Catholic roots, cannot commit to so lost a cause.

"Felipe Calderon goes to the Vatican with his own problems - the narco

wars for example. He doesn't need new ones" considers La Jornada

religion writer Bernardo Barranco.

John Ross is in Mexico tracking Brad Will's killers and reimmersing

himself in the real world. See: http://www.friendsofbradwill.org

If you have further information write him at: johnross@igc.org.

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