karphead posted:

i wish tpaine was still alive to see this thread

hes with his wife now.

“rebellion, division, dissent, offense and anarchy”, Müller replied: “The negative aspects of liberation theology referred to by Benedict XVI are the result of the misunderstanding and wrong application of this theology.”

Petrol posted:

RedMaistre posted:

If we are talking about the century we are actually living in: The Vatican condemned the invasion of Iraq , publicly decried the possibility of a US intervention in Syria, and, despite some moderate tensions over Ukraine, has had a healthily co-operative relationship with Moscow.

Compare this to all the leftists and liberals who jumped on and continue to jump on the bandwagon of every US push for regime change since 2001 in the name of "anti-fascism", "Enlightenment values", or solidarity with the best "revolutionaries" CIA money can buy.

Not to defend liberals, but there is no sense in comparing the amorphous group that is the western left, with the institution of the Church -- my beef is not with the amorphous mass (heh) of Catholics, but with the Church itself. Sure, point out a handful of political positions it has taken in this very young century that seem Good, but in the long history of the Church this is an aberration. The Church as we know it today was founded as a tool of empire, for a very long time had its own empire, and spent much of the past hundred years, to put it in your terms, very much on the wrong side of Things. So while I heartily accept that there are good Catholics and good movements within Catholicism, it's a more than a little specious to simply declare the Church itself "on the right side of economy and imperialism".

1. It makes no sense to compare the Catholic Church to the western left because the western left, with a few honorable exceptions, is, as you say, a rather amorphous entity…

2. When you say “founded as a tool of empire", you sound as if you are using the word "empire" in the hyper-abstract style of Hart and Negri--as if ‘the empire' meaningfully denoted some univocal continuous, statically Evil historical entity that has existed in all climes and epochs. Many of you here have seemed at least to agree to various distinctions between American Imperialism and the different types of power wielded over the past hundred years, and in the present, by Russia, China, and several others countries in a state of antagonism with the hegemony of the Anglo-American bloc. It makes no sense to me, than, that you would suddenly make an assertion positing a blunt equivalence between the power wielded by the Church or any of its defunct temporal allies in the past and that of Washington in the present.

And if Rome was "founded as a tool of empire", in the sweeping sense you mean, what does this make Paris, Moscow, or Beijing?

3. What I am suggesting to you Is a way of thinking about the history of twentieth century socialism and Catholicism which goes beyond who was on the "right” and who was on the “wrong side” and which takes note that, at end of the day, we are at a present conjunction in which we have a Pope praising the reforms of an indigenous leftist leader while self-identified hardcore communists are vocally supporting the right of private individuals to marriage, of all things.

May such trends continue!

Edited by RedMaistre (July 10, 2015 03:02:26)

wasted posted:

RIP tpaine:

lmao, when he strokes it to get it to work hahahahaha (at 58 seconds)

Peelzebub posted:

i took two years of latin in high school. i enjoyed it a lot more than the bullshit college persian and even amharic classes i took. all of that is worthless now when i could have spent the same amount of time becoming fluent in something useful like spanish.

anyway, why does the church pronounce the letter "c" with a "ch" sound instead of the classical hard c "k" sound? for example, in classical latin cicero is pronounced "kikero," while in ecclesiastical latin cicero is pronounced "chichero." the ecclesiastical pronunciation seems... "dirty" (or even vulgar :p) to me.

the answer is probably rooted somewhere in linguistics i guess. just curious if that is not the case.


(edit: actually, i'll admit that latin was far more useful than the other two for understanding the vocabulary of science. people see a third declension noun like lumen and have no idea how to decline it. it's a once in a while thing to recognize something like that, but its cool.)

wwhy kikero is piss #italiano

Agnus_Dei posted:

ilmdge posted:

i am legit disappointed Joel was on here and didnt comment

I'm sorry, I was very busy today and was just taking a short break to read, not long enough to actually write something thoughtful.

I think part of the problem is I don't really expect to convince a lot of people to change their minds. People want to attack the Church, using mostly the same arguments we've heard many times, about contraception in Africa, or the abuse scandal, or abortion rights, or the Nazis. I could address any of them in particular, if you want, and maybe I will in subsequent posts.

But all of this is coming in response to the ruling on same-sex marriage, which I assume that everyone here supports. I honestly wonder if you don't think same-sex marriage should be legalized. I am myself a bit conflicted on it (with my libertarian and patriotic side), and cars has taken kind of an anti-Church slant in this thread, and getfiscal is ambivalent when it comes to the Church, so if I were to argue the Church's position here I feel like I might be doing it solo.

To top it all off, this is a forum which is mostly about Communism, which is a historical enemy of the Church. I think there's always been kind of an understanding here that when push comes to shove, on this forum, the Church serves at the pleasure of Communism.

I will say this however. This forum loves Stalin, and Stalin was no friend to the homosexuals. While Lenin de-criminalized homosexuality, Stalin re-criminalized it, and people who were convicted of it were sent to the gulag for five years. This policy of opposition remained for the rest of the Soviet Union.

So for a forum that loves the USSR, if you want to attack the Church for its antiquated views on LGBT issues, I ask the reader how they reconcile that with their support of Stalin. Or Engels, who I guess opposed homosexuality as well. Or, for that matter, defense of radical Islam, which routinely murders homosexuals. Do you think that Stalin simply made a mistake and that if he was exposed to the Internet and media we here in America have been over the last fifteen years, his views would have similarly changed radically? Or would he, like Putin, the Russian Orthodox Christian, reject it as Western deviance and cultural imperialism? I think there is a case to be made that due to Lenin's stance, it is M-L orthodoxy to support LGBT rights, but it would still require calling Stalin, and various other Communist leaders incorrect on this issue.

Another thing to point out. The Church is unlikely to change its stance on this, or any other controversial doctrine that goes back to the beginning of Christianity. If it does we can be assured that the Church has been corrupted totally by modernism. But even Francis has been a loud proponent of traditional ideas regarding marriage. Personally, I prefer the real teachings, the history of them, and enjoy contemplating them, even if I am conflicted by them. I honestly think part of being Christian in any sense, unless you choose to belong to an extremely modernist Protestant branch like the Episcopalians, is that you will be routinely insulted by modern, secular, liberal society. It just comes with the territory. But on the plus side, you get to commune with Christ. You get to confess your sins and improve yourself according to traditional values. You get the sense of Christian community. And you have the hope of going to Heaven forever instead of staying up all night staring into the abyss. So personally, I think it's worth it.

Given the feelings of most people here about mainstream liberalism and its relationship to capitalism, I think that's why people here are generally sympathetic to traditional Christianity and other "alternative" ideologies, since the primary concerns of this forum are economy and imperialism, which the Church is on the right side of.

I love your passion! But the problem is, like Lucifer demands, anticommunism is founded on lies:

http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/04/08/homosexuality-in-the-ussr/

now back to your patriotic dungeon, false believer

Crow posted:

I love your passion! But the problem is, like Lucifer demands, anticommunism is founded on lies:

http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/04/08/homosexuality-in-the-ussr/

now back to your patriotic dungeon, false believer

thank u crow for knowing lots of good information about the soviet union

Crow posted:

yall atheists might want to uh, make use of that materialism if you're trying to prove something against the catholics

It was already pointed out that the church is anticommunist when the pressure is on, which is a pretty cogent and undeniable argument. Sure, you can namedrop liberation theology (which is minor and never achieved much of anything, unfortunately) and the current pope appropriating vulgar leftist rhetoric, but that doesn't erase the long history of reaction.

I'm sure you can bring up the Russian Orthodox Church grovelling at Stalin's feet and how that proves collaboration with clerics is possible, but the positions of the ROC and the Catholic Church aren't comparable at all, the latter isn't at all interested in submission to nation-states like the ROC historically is; rather, it has or had empire-like ambitions of its own.

Chears.

chickeon posted:

yeah, that's bad ass i can't deny that

EDIT: okay so maybe the Pope didn't like the gift but at least he praised Evo's policies.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/bolivia/11729834/Pope-rebukes-Bolivias-President-Evo-Morales-for-gift-of-crucifix-mounted-on-hammer-and-sickle.html

Edited by HenryKrinkle (July 10, 2015 15:28:36)

The disapproving look on the pontiff’s face made abundantly clear that he was not impressed

COINTELBRO posted:

Urbandale posted:

someone invoked stalin so here i am. not to be that guy or anything, but dei, if youre gonna talk about stalin's personal animus toward homosexuality you'll need to point to some writings of his expressing his views on the topic. i say this because everyone usually points to a soviet law passed during his tenure as evidence, but stalin didnt do a whole lot of law passing from his desk as secretary of the party, and the mans centrist tendencies are so pronounced trotsky called him a bonapartist for it.

That letter from the British faggot commie Harry Whyte to Stalin, I'm sure you know it. But I guess it's established that it was Gorky's idea.

Anyway, trying to absolve Stalin-the-individual of blame for policy under his regime seems a bit dumb and besides the point. It's like... okay, I'm sure he was a virtuous saint, it's just a shame about those 750k penal deaths* during his rule, he was too busy doing something or other.

It's better to just pass it off with the usual reasonable excuses - "every other country also hated homo deviants at the time; people like Kollontai were exceptions; look at the GDR!", etc.

* yeah, a lot of those executions were Ukrainian cossacks who collaborated with nazis, but it's still kind of disagreeable. Also, obviously that 750k figure doesn't include the deaths from mistreatment, neglect etc like the deportation of the Caucasus peoples to Siberia, which would bring it to 2 and 1/2 million.

Cheers.

those deaths didn't happen in a vacuum and without context, but, Hell, let's pretend they did, and, Hell, why not use bourgeois historians, as well

In the mainstream histories that I have read the 1930s are known as the period of Stalinist Terror. Getty and Naumov summarize the results of repression by the Stalin government in the 1930s as follows (emphasis added):

If we add the figure we have for executions up to 1940 to the number of persons who died in GULAG camps and the few figures we found on mortality in prisons and labor colonies, then add to this the number of peasants known to have died in exile, we reach a figure of nearly 1.5 million deaths directly due to repression in the 1930s. If we put at hundreds of thousands the casualties of the most chaotic period of collectivization (deaths in exile, rather than from starvation in the 1932 famine), plus later victims of different categories for which we have no data, it is likely that ‘custodial mortality’ figures of the 1930s would reach 2 million: a huge number of ‘excess deaths.

The number of the deaths in prisons and labor camps that were due to natural causes such as old age is not given.

For several reasons (see below) a famine occurred in the Soviet Union around 1932. In The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 (2004), R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft estimate the number of premature deaths – “registered excess mortality” – at 2.25 million.

Combining their figures with Getty and Naumov’s gives an approximate total of 4.25 million premature deaths in the USSR as a result of repression and famine. In 1930 the population of the Soviet Union was approximately 160 million. The fatalities in the USSR thus correspond to 3% of the population, or roughly one-quarter of the rate during the English Revolution.

https://thecapitalistholocaust.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/chapter-16-part-1-the-propaganda-war-preserving-the-natural-order-of-things/

((not to mention of course the famine, admitted by Davies and Wheatcroft (and even now by Conquest) was not a deliberate policy and in fact was a recurring problem solved by collectivization.))

Nonetheless, even if you count the deaths from the famine, which double the mortality, it is still less than the French Revolution & it's revolutionary wars (1,400,000 dead from 1789-1801, out of a 1792 population of 28,000,000 -- 5% of the population), and is more comparable to the mortality rate of 2.8% from the cracker spat called the American Revolution (70,000 died in the american revolutionary war out of a population of 2,500,000).

Cheers.

Good afternoon!

Several months ago, we met in Rome, and I remember that first meeting. In the meantime I have kept you in my thoughts and prayers. I am happy to see you again, here, as you discuss the best ways to overcome the grave situations of injustice experienced by the excluded throughout our world. Thank you, President Evo Morales, for your efforts to make this meeting possible.

During our first meeting in Rome, I sensed something very beautiful: fraternity, determination, commitment, a thirst for justice. Today, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, I sense it once again. I thank you for that. I also know, from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace headed by Cardinal Turkson, that many people in the Church feel very close to the popular movements. That makes me very happy! I am pleased to see the Church opening her doors to all of you, embracing you, accompanying you and establishing in each diocese, in every justice and peace commission, a genuine, ongoing and serious cooperation with popular movements. I ask everyone, bishops, priests and laity, as well as the social organizations of the urban and rural peripheries, to deepen this encounter.

Today God has granted that we meet again. The Bible tells us that God hears the cry of his people, and I wish to join my voice to yours in calling for land, lodging and labor for all our brothers and sisters. I said it and I repeat it: these are sacred rights. It is important, it is well worth fighting for them. May the cry of the excluded be heard in Latin America and throughout the world.

1. Let us begin by acknowledging that change is needed. Here I would clarify, lest there be any misunderstanding, that I am speaking about problems common to all Latin Americans and, more generally, to humanity as a whole. They are global problems which today no one state can resolve on its own. With this clarification, I now propose that we ask the following questions:

Do we realize that something is wrong in a world where there are so many farmworkers without land, so many families without a home, so many laborers without rights, so many persons whose dignity is not respected?

Do we realize that something is wrong where so many senseless wars are being fought and acts of fratricidal violence are taking place on our very doorstep? Do we realize something is wrong when the soil, water, air and living creatures of our world are under constant threat?

So let’s not be afraid to say it: we need change; we want change.

In your letters and in our meetings, you have mentioned the many forms of exclusion and injustice which you experience in the workplace, in neighborhoods and throughout the land. They are many and diverse, just as many and diverse are the ways in which you confront them. Yet there is an invisible thread joining every one of those forms of exclusion: can we recognize it? These are not isolated issues. I wonder whether we can see that these destructive realities are part of a system which has become global. Do we realize that that system has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature?

If such is the case, I would insist, let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change. This system is by now intolerable: farmworkers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable … The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable.

We want change in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in our everyday reality. We want a change which can affect the entire world, since global interdependence calls for global answers to local problems. The globalization of hope, a hope which springs up from peoples and takes root among the poor, must replace the globalization of exclusion and indifference!

Today I wish to reflect with you on the change we want and need. You know that recently I wrote about the problems of climate change. But now I would like to speak of change in another sense. Positive change, a change which is good for us, a change – we can say – which is redemptive. Because we need it. I know that you are looking for change, and not just you alone: in my different meetings, in my different travels, I have sensed an expectation, a longing, a yearning for change, in people throughout the world. Even within that ever smaller minority which believes that the present system is beneficial, there is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction and even despondency. Many people are hoping for a change capable of releasing them from the bondage of individualism and the despondency it spawns.

Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.

I do not need to go on describing the evil effects of this subtle dictatorship: you are well aware of them. Nor is it enough to point to the structural causes of today’s social and environmental crisis. We are suffering from an excess of diagnosis, which at times leads us to multiply words and to revel in pessimism and negativity. Looking at the daily news we think that there is nothing to be done, except to take care of ourselves and the little circle of our family and friends.

What can I do, as collector of paper, old clothes or used metal, a recycler, about all these problems if I barely make enough money to put food on the table? What can I do as a craftsman, a street vendor, a trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’ rights? What can I do, a farmwife, a native woman, a fisher who can hardly fight the domination of the big corporations? What can I do from my little home, my shanty, my hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet with discrimination and marginalization? What can be done by those students, those young people, those activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with their hearts full of hopes and dreams, but without any real solution for my problems? A lot! They can do a lot. You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts to ensure the three “L’s” (labor, lodging, land) and through your proactive participation in the great processes of change on the national, regional and global levels. Don’t lose heart!

2. You are sowers of change. Here in Bolivia I have heard a phrase which I like: “process of change”. Change seen not as something which will one day result from any one political decision or change in social structure. We know from painful experience that changes of structure which are not accompanied by a sincere conversion of mind and heart sooner or later end up in bureaucratization, corruption and failure. That is why I like the image of a “process”, where the drive to sow, to water seeds which others will see sprout, replaces the ambition to occupy every available position of power and to see immediate results. Each of us is just one part of a complex and differentiated whole, interacting in time: peoples who struggle to find meaning, a destiny, and to live with dignity, to “live well”.

As members of popular movements, you carry out your work inspired by fraternal love, which you show in opposing social injustice. When we look into the eyes of the suffering, when we see the faces of the endangered campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden native, the homeless family, the persecuted migrant, the unemployed young person, the exploited child, the mother who lost her child in a shootout because the barrio was occupied by drugdealers, the father who lost his daughter to enslavement…. when we think of all those names and faces, our hearts break because of so much sorrow and pain. And we are deeply moved…. We are moved because “we have seen and heard” not a cold statistic but the pain of a suffering humanity, our own pain, our own flesh. This is something quite different than abstract theorizing or eloquent indignation. It moves us; it makes us attentive to others in an effort to move forward together. That emotion which turns into community action is not something which can be understood by reason alone: it has a surplus of meaning which only peoples understand, and it gives a special feel to genuine popular movements.

Each day you are caught up in the storms of people’s lives. You have told me about their causes, you have shared your own struggles with me, and I thank you for that. You, dear brothers and sisters, often work on little things, in local situations, amid forms of injustice which you do not simply accept but actively resist, standing up to an idolatrous system which excludes, debases and kills. I have seen you work tirelessly for the soil and crops of campesinos, for their lands and communities, for a more dignified local economy, for the urbanization of their homes and settlements; you have helped them build their own homes and develop neighborhood infrastructures. You have also promoted any number of community activities aimed at reaffirming so elementary and undeniably necessary a right as that of the three “L’s”: land, lodging and labor.

This rootedness in the barrio, the land, the office, the labor union, this ability to see yourselves in the faces of others, this daily proximity to their share of troubles and their little acts of heroism: this is what enables you to practice the commandment of love, not on the basis of ideas or concepts, but rather on the basis of genuine interpersonal encounter. We do not love concepts or ideas; we love people… Commitment, true commitment, is born of the love of men and women, of children and the elderly, of peoples and communities… of names and faces which fill our hearts. From those seeds of hope patiently sown in the forgotten fringes of our planet, from those seedlings of a tenderness which struggles to grow amid the shadows of exclusion, great trees will spring up, great groves of hope to give oxygen to our world.

So I am pleased to see that you are working at close hand to care for those seedlings, but at the same time, with a broader perspective, to protect the entire forest. Your work is carried out against a horizon which, while concentrating on your own specific area, also aims to resolve at their root the more general problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion.

I congratulate you on this. It is essential that, along with the defense of their legitimate rights, peoples and their social organizations be able to construct a humane alternative to a globalization which excludes. You are sowers of change. May God grant you the courage, joy, perseverance and passion to continue sowing. Be assured that sooner or later we will see its fruits. Of the leadership I ask this: be creative and never stop being rooted in local realities, since the father of lies is able to usurp noble words, to promote intellectual fads and to adopt ideological stances. But if you build on solid foundations, on real needs and on the lived experience of your brothers and sisters, of campesinos and natives, of excluded workers and marginalized families, you will surely be on the right path.

The Church cannot and must not remain aloof from this process in her proclamation of the Gospel. Many priests and pastoral workers carry out an enormous work of accompanying and promoting the excluded throughout the world, alongside cooperatives, favouring businesses, providing housing, working generously in the fields of health, sports and education. I am convinced that respectful cooperation with the popular movements can revitalize these efforts and strengthen processes of change.

Let us always have at heart the Virgin Mary, a humble girl from small people lost on the fringes of a great empire, a homeless mother who could turn a stable for beasts into a home for Jesus with just a few swaddling clothes and much tenderness. Mary is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice. I pray that Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of Bolivia, will allow this meeting of ours to be a leaven of change.

3. Lastly, I would like us all to consider some important tasks for the present historical moment, since we desire a positive change for the benefit of all our brothers and sisters. We know this. We desire change enriched by the collaboration of governments, popular movements and other social forces. This too we know. But it is not so easy to define the content of change – in other words, a social program which can embody this project of fraternity and justice which we are seeking. So don’t expect a recipe from this Pope. Neither the Pope nor the Church have a monopoly on the interpretation of social reality or the proposal of solutions to contemporary issues. I dare say that no recipe exists. History is made by each generation as it follows in the footsteps of those preceding it, as it seeks its own path and respects the values which God has placed in the human heart.

I would like, all the same, to propose three great tasks which demand a decisive and shared contribution from popular movements:

3.1 The first task is to put the economy at the service of peoples. Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money. Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.

The economy should not be a mechanism for accumulating goods, but rather the proper administration of our common home. This entails a commitment to care for that home and to the fitting distribution of its goods among all. It is not only about ensuring a supply of food or “decent sustenance”. Nor, although this is already a great step forward, is it to guarantee the three “L’s” of land, lodging and labor for which you are working. A truly communitarian economy, one might say an economy of Christian inspiration, must ensure peoples’ dignity and their “general, temporal welfare and prosperity”. This includes the three “L’s”, but also access to education, health care, new technologies, artistic and cultural manifestations, communications, sports and recreation. A just economy must create the conditions for everyone to be able to enjoy a childhood without want, to develop their talents when young, to work with full rights during their active years and to enjoy a dignified retirement as they grow older. It is an economy where human beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system of production and distribution in such a way that the abilities and needs of each individual find suitable expression in social life. You, and other peoples as well, sum up this desire in a simple and beautiful expression: “to live well”.

Such an economy is not only desirable and necessary, but also possible. It is no utopia or chimera. It is an extremely realistic prospect. We can achieve it. The available resources in our world, the fruit of the intergenerational labors of peoples and the gifts of creation, more than suffice for the integral development of “each man and the whole man”. The problem is of another kind. There exists a system with different aims. A system which, while irresponsibly accelerating the pace of production, while using industrial and agricultural methods which damage Mother Earth in the name of “productivity”, continues to deny many millions of our brothers and sisters their most elementary economic, social and cultural rights. This system runs counter to the plan of Jesus.

Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment. It is about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right. The universal destination of goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social teaching. It is a reality prior to private property. Property, especially when it affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples. And those needs are not restricted to consumption. It is not enough to let a few drops fall whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself. Welfare programs geared to certain emergencies can only be considered temporary responses. They will never be able to replace true inclusion, an inclusion which provides worthy, free, creative, participatory and solidary work.

Along this path, popular movements play an essential role, not only by making demands and lodging protests, but even more basically by being creative. You are social poets: creators of work, builders of housing, producers of food, above all for people left behind by the world market.

I have seen at first hand a variety of experiences where workers united in cooperatives and other forms of community organization were able to create work where there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy. Recuperated businesses, local fairs and cooperatives of paper collectors are examples of that popular economy which is born of exclusion and which, slowly, patiently and resolutely adopts solidary forms which dignify it. How different this is than the situation which results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!

Governments which make it their responsibility to put the economy at the service of peoples must promote the strengthening, improvement, coordination and expansion of these forms of popular economy and communitarian production. This entails bettering the processes of work, providing adequate infrastructures and guaranteeing workers their full rights in this alternative sector. When the state and social organizations join in working for the three “L’s”, the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity come into play; and these allow the common good to be achieved in a full and participatory democracy.

3.2. The second task is to unite our peoples on the path of peace and justice. The world’s peoples want to be artisans of their own destiny. They want to advance peacefully towards justice. They do not want forms of tutelage or interference by which those with greater power subordinate those with less. They want their culture, their language, their social processes and their religious traditions to be respected. No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice. For “peace is founded not only on respect for human rights but also on respect for the rights of peoples, in particular the right to independence”.

The peoples of Latin America fought to gain their political independence and for almost two centuries their history has been dramatic and filled with contradictions, as they have striven to achieve full independence.

In recent years, after any number of misunderstandings, many Latin American countries have seen the growth of fraternity between their peoples. The governments of the region have pooled forces in order to ensure respect for the sovereignty of their own countries and the entire region, which our forebears so beautifully called the “greater country”. I ask you, my brothers and sisters of the popular movements, to foster and increase this unity. It is necessary to maintain unity in the face of every effort to divide, if the region is to grow in peace and justice.

Despite the progress made, there are factors which still threaten this equitable human development and restrict the sovereignty of the countries of the “greater country” and other areas of our planet. The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain “free trade” treaties, and the imposition of measures of “austerity” which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor. The bishops of Latin America denounce this with utter clarity in the Aparecida Document, stating that “financial institutions and transnational companies are becoming stronger to the point that local economies are subordinated, especially weakening the local states, which seem ever more powerless to carry out development projects in the service of their populations”. At other times, under the noble guise of battling corruption, the narcotics trade and terrorism – grave evils of our time which call for coordinated international action – we see states being saddled with measures which have little to do with the resolution of these problems and which not infrequently worsen matters.

Similarly, the monopolizing of the communications media, which would impose alienating examples of consumerism and a certain cultural uniformity, is another one of the forms taken by the new colonialism. It is ideological colonialism. As the African bishops have observed, poor countries are often treated like “parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel”.

It must be acknowledged that none of the grave problems of humanity can be resolved without interaction between states and peoples at the international level. Every significant action carried out in one part of the planet has universal, ecological, social and cultural repercussions. Even crime and violence have become globalized. Consequently, no government can act independently of a common responsibility. If we truly desire positive change, we have to humbly accept our interdependence. Interaction, however, is not the same as imposition; it is not the subordination of some to serve the interests of others. Colonialism, both old and new, which reduces poor countries to mere providers of raw material and cheap labor, engenders violence, poverty, forced migrations and all the evils which go hand in hand with these, precisely because, by placing the periphery at the service of the center, it denies those countries the right to an integral development. That is inequality, and inequality generates a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control.

Let us say NO to forms of colonialism old and new. Let us say YES to the encounter between peoples and cultures. Blessed are the peacemakers.
Here I wish to bring up an important issue. Some may rightly say, “When the Pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the Church”. I say this to you with regret: many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God. My predecessors acknowledged this, CELAM has said it, and I too wish to say it. Like Saint John Paul II, I ask that the Church “kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters”. I would also say, and here I wish to be quite clear, as was Saint John Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.

I also ask everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike, to think of those many bishops, priests and laity who preached and continue to preach the Good News of Jesus with courage and meekness, respectfully and pacifically; who left behind them impressive works of human promotion and of love, often standing alongside the native peoples or accompanying their popular movements even to the point of martyrdom. The Church, her sons and daughters, are part of the identity of the peoples of Latin America. An identity which here, as in other countries, some powers are committed to erasing, at times because our faith is revolutionary, because our faith challenges the tyranny of mammon. Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus. This too needs to be denounced: in this third world war, waged peacemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is taking place, and it must end.

To our brothers and sisters in the Latin American indigenous movement, allow me to express my deep affection and appreciation of their efforts to bring peoples and cultures together in a form of coexistence which I would call polyhedric, where each group preserves its own identity by building together a plurality which does not threaten but rather reinforces unity. Your quest for an interculturalism, which combines the defense of the rights of the native peoples with respect for the territorial integrity of states, is for all of us a source of enrichment and encouragement.

3.3. The third task, perhaps the most important facing us today, is to defend Mother Earth. Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin. We see with growing disappointment how one international summit after another takes place without any significant result. There exists a clear, definite and pressing ethical imperative to implement what has not yet been done. We cannot allow certain interests – interests which are global but not universal – to take over, to dominate states and international organizations, and to continue destroying creation. People and their movements are called to cry out, to mobilize and to demand – peacefully, but firmly – that appropriate and urgently-needed measures be taken. I ask you, in the name of God, to defend Mother Earth. I have duly addressed this issue in my Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.

4. In conclusion, I would like to repeat: the future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize. It is in their hands, which can guide with humility and conviction this process of change. I am with you. Let us together say from the heart: no family without lodging, no rural worker without land, no laborer without rights, no people without sovereignty, no individual without dignity, no child without childhood, no young person without a future, no elderly person without a venerable old age. Keep up your struggle and, please, take great care of Mother Earth. I pray for you and with you, and I ask God our Father to accompany you and to bless you, to fill you with his love and defend you on your way by granting you in abundance that strength which keeps us on our feet: that strength is hope, the hope which does not disappoint. Thank you and I ask you, please, to pray for me.

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