Chavez renews conflict with Venezuelan bishops

[M-Dent]

Chavez renews conflict with Venezuelan bishops

Caracas, Jul. 4, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has renewed his attacks on the country’s Catholic hierarchy, saying that the Venezuelan bishops’ conference had misled the public by criticizing his plans for constitutional revisions.

“It saddens me to see these bishops from our Catholic Church lie,” Chavez said during a July 3 television address. “They are either ignorant, perverse, or perverts.”

Some Catholic leaders are worried the reform could infringe on freedoms, and earlier Tuesday Monsignor Roberto Luckert — one of Chavez’s most outspoken critics — told Globovision TV he believes Venezuela is headed for “a military autocracy.”

Chavez rejects allegations that he is a threat to democracy, but he has raised concerns by saying he wants to be president until 2021 or beyond, and proposing indefinite re-election as part of the forthcoming reform.

iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/03/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Catholic-Church.php

 

[WanderAimlessly]

You can guarantee a Soviet style persecution of the Church is coming in Venezuela.

 

[JimG]

Quote:
Chavez rejects allegations that he is a threat to democracy, but he has raised concerns by saying he wants to be president until 2021 or beyond, and proposing indefinite re-election as part of the forthcoming reform._________________
If President Bush or any other American president were to make such a statement, the world would be outraged, but it seems to be taken as normal for Chavez.

 

[M-Dent]

any other American president were to make such a statement, the world would be outraged, but it seems to be taken as normal for Chavez.

Well, not sure normal and Chavez belong in the same sentence.

He’s invented his own twisted version of Jesus Christ and then seems to wonder why the Catholic Hierarchy need to correct him?

Behind Mr Chávez as he spoke was a 10-metre-high close-up of his own face and hands, reminiscent of a bishop blessing his flock. Along with the mounting personality cult is a change of language. The president sneered at those, including Catholic church leaders, who have wondered aloud what his much-trumpeted plan for “21st century socialism” really consists of.

The bishops, he said, should read Marx, Lenin and the Bible. “Christ was an authentic communist, anti-imperialist and enemy of the oligarchy,” he said. He added that he himself had been a “communist” since at least 2002 (at the time he claimed to want to “improve capitalism”.) It is the first time that he has publicly assumed that description. He signed off with a slogan (“fatherland or death, we shall prevail”) coined by his friend, Cuba’s Communist president, Fidel Castro.

economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8522131

 

[WanderAimlessly]

Well, not sure normal and Chavez belong in the same sentence.

He’s invented his own twisted version of Jesus Christ and then seems to wonder why the Catholic Hierarchy need to correct him?

Actually, I think it is just a revival of the “liberation theology” heresy which is Marxist in nature.

 

[JimG]

One thing that has always puzzled me about communist leaders in general is their verbosity. Both Chavez, and Fidel in his healthier days, have been prone to give speeches which last for hours on end, leading to deadening of the brains of the captive audience.

Has no one ever taught them the virtue of brevity?

 

[WanderAimlessly]

One thing that has always puzzled me about communist leaders in general is their verbosity. Both Chavez, and Fidel in his healthier days, have been prone to give speeches which last for hours on end, leading to deadening of the brains of the captive audience.

Has no one ever taught them the virtue of brevity?

It seems to go for all extremem Socialists (witn Communism is the most extreme). Hitler was the same way. Deadening the brain is the way they get people to follow them mindlessly

 

[Jaypeeto4]

We need to pray for Venezuela in general, and for the Catholics of Venezuela in particular. The last thing we need is another Communist thug running the show in this hemisphere.

And we should pray for Nicaragua, too.
Daniel Ortega has been governing this time around as a
moderate – so far – but what is worrisome is in his foreign policy, he is buddying up to all the bad guys - North Korea,
Iran, Cuba, Venezuela. In Ortega’s favor, he has gone out of his way to have good relations with the Church so far this time around and has become 100% Pro-Life. But I fear his previous
inbred communist beliefs from his younger days as
a dictatorial caudillo, may re-emerge – God forbid !! –
if Chavez prevails in tyrannizing Venezuela. So let’s pray
for Daniel Ortega’s soul, and for the people of Nicaragua.

Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+

 

[Pondero]

Has anyone asked themselves the question of what business is it of the USA what Chavez gets up to. Couldn’t be the oil could it ?

Chavez was fairly elected as President so what is the problem?

 

[Jaypeeto4]

Chavez was fairly elected as President so what is the problem?

HITLER was “fairly elected,” too, so what’s the problem???

The issue is NOT “oil,” as Chavez is perfectly content to finance his regime by selling gazillions of gallons of his CITGO gasoline in the United States with no interruption.

The “problem” is that Chavez is a man who believes in violent revolution “without borders,” is enacting tyrannical laws in Venezuela, has destroyed freedom of the press in that country,
is using nonsensical pretexts to attack the Catholic Church, which he intended to attack ANYWAY the minute he came into power, and is financing leftist dictatorships and aligned himself with dangerous states like Iran and North Korea and now has announced he is a Communist (as if we didn’t know already).
The “problem” is that communism, in power, and with billions of oil revenue behind it, is absolutely tyrannical and brutal, and that is exactly the regime Chavez is building in Venezuela step by giant step, and now plans to stay in office another 16 years.

If you don’t have a “problem” with that,
then you have a REAL problem.

 

[M-Dent]

In another defiant gesture against the democratic and spiritual sensibilities of the people of Venezuela, its ruler, Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez Frías, has determined that after August 5th, when the government takes over the management of the hospital in Maracaibo, its name will be changed from Hospital Virgen de Coromoto to that of Argentinean guerrilla fighter, Ernesto Che Guevara, who executed hundreds of Cubans in Havana. As everyone knows, Guevara was a fundamental factor in the entrenchment of the fierce Marxist-Leninist tyranny of Fidel Castro.

–
the name of the hospital be changed but also, what is even worse, the venerated statue of the Virgen de Coromoto has been taken away from the entry to that hospital and it will be replaced by a bust of Guevara. That bust could be placed in a house where terrorism and the totalitarian doctrine of Marxism-Leninism are promoted, but never in a hospital and, even less, replacing the Virgen de Coromoto.

---

Everything seems to indicate that significant sectors of the people of Venezuela are aware of the serious problem that they face with the dictatorial behavior of the present regime. This justifies the hope that the democratic determination of that people will prevail. The youth of Venezuela, especially, have shown, upon the recent confiscation of RCTV, that they have the will to fight to prevent the anti-democratic outrages of the lieutenant colonel.

diariolasamericas.com/news.php?nid=32305

 

[Jaypeeto4]

Thanks for your very informative post, Michael.

That’s what people don’t realize:
we have a dangerous, expansionist Communist regime in Venezuela that is providing training grounds for guerillas
and, unlike Castro’s Cuba, has unlimited oil wealth at it’s disposal to make trouble all throughout this hemisphere, and a leader,
Comrade Hugo Chavez, who has every intention - and now boldly even says so publicly- of doing just that.

We cannot sit by silently while Latin America’s oldest successful democratic republic is destroyed by a Marxist Leninist megalomaniac intent on causing trouble throughout Latin America.
The very least we can do, as Americans, is REFUSE
to purchase CITGO gasoline, for we are paying this man to do his dirty work.

Chavez is not a mere social reformer aiming at elevating the lifestyle of the poor. I would have NO PROBLEM with THAT.
He has USED the plight of the poor as a pretext for creating an antiGod totalitarian regime. The man is a monster.

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+

 

[Pondero]

Jaypeeto4:

You can’t compare Hitler with Chavez. Hitler took over Austria, attacked Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, invaded North Africa, Greece and was about to attack the United Kingdom too. That is why we ( as an ex Brit) were at war with Hitler’s Germany.
Chavez’s crime is that you call him a Communist. Others including the reference to him in Wikipedia call him a “democratic socialist.” There is a difference.

I just can’t see him being as dangerous to the USA as Stalin was during the Cold War.

In any case he was probably a baptized Catholic although I have found no reference material that says so. I agree that the Bishops should be treated by more respect by Chavez, and that the Catholic Church in Venezuela should be free to worship and free from persecution.

 

[Jaypeeto4]

I most certain CAN - accurately - and WILL compare Chavez with Hitler and Castro.

I am not accusing Chavez of being a communist.
He SAYS he is. And he is attacking the Catholic church and wiping out all of Venezuela’s long held democratic freedoms.
And he is using his oil money to support terrorist groups and makes no bones about it.

There is nothing “democratic” about this man or his intentions.
He tried to seize power in a bloody coup attempt in the early
1990’s and was imprisoned for it. Let’s see, who else tried
a putsch some years before he came to power ??? His first name was Adolf.

Chavez is destroying democracy in Venezuela and consolidating his totalitarian regime piece by piece. When he has finished, democracy in Venezuela will be dead. Freedom of the Press already is. When he has finished his consolidation, he will do like Castro tried to do and try to spread Marxist revolutions throughout Latin America. With one difference. Castro only had sugar and coffee to export. Chavez sits on billions and billions of dollars in oil revenues, which he will use to export his Marxist style rule around Latin America. He is by no means a democratic socialist. Francois Mitterand was a Democratic socialist. Chavez is a tyrant. Whoever wrote that in Wikipedia is either engaging in wishful thinking OR a deliberate attempt to deceive the public.

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+

 

[Pondero]

Let us hope you are wrong Jaypee4.

On April 11, 2002 a military coup toppled Chavez and Pedro Carmona, chairman of Venezuela’s largest chamber of commerce was installed as President. This man dissolved the legislature, the Supreme Court, the attorney General’s office, the national electorial commission and suspended the constitution.

Chavez was returned to power two days later. What was Chavez’ “crime”. He had tried to relieve the sufferings of the poor who comprise 80% of Venezuela’s population.

 

[M-Dent]

Chavez would have been best served learning and absorbing the warnings of Pope Leo XIII

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

RERUM NOVARUM

 

[Pondero]

I am not at all sure that Hugo Chavez is trying to do away with all private property, nationalizing an oil company is not the abolition of all private property. Having lived through the Nationalization process in the UK, when the road transport, electricity, the railways and the coal industries were nationalized I know what it is all about. It has its good points and its bad points.
Some things the state is better at than private enterprise, some things it is not.

None of these things contradict what was said in Rerum Novarum,as private property of the individual shareholder in most cases was left untouched, houses were still owned by the individual, and there were a lot of council houses owned by local government, I know that as I lived in one of them, It was I believe the only way forward at the time as Britain was practically bankrupt after WWII.

Now, having met some Venezuelian men who visited my in-laws in Canada, I realized they had their own homes, and had had a university education. They didn’t talk at all about Chavez, and in any case I didn’t speak Spanish or Portuguese.

I don’t know how the Chavez situation is going to work out, but I notice a lot of scare-mongering by some on this board about his intentions. Quite frankly I don’t believe all the US propaganda.

 

[JW10631]

What US propaganda?

Chavez has aided and abetted the FARC, the Marxist terrorists in Colombia. Colombian bounty hunters have captured FARC leaders in Caracas.

The guy makes friends with Castro and the nutjob running Iran who wants to build a nuclear bomb.

 

[Pondero]

What US propaganda?

Chavez has aided and abetted the FARC, the Marxist terrorists in Colombia. Colombian bounty hunters have captured FARC leaders in Caracas.

The guy makes friends with Castro and the nutjob running Iran who wants to build a nuclear bomb.

Now what were Columbian bounty hunters doing in Venezuela, I wonder? Do bounty hunters have the right to go into foreign countries and get their prey?

 

[JW10631]

Colombian bounty hunters were in Venezuela tracking and capturing a known terrorist operative given cover by Chavez.

It’s so sad that Chavez gets a pass for his support of terrorists.
Maybe if the FARC kidnapped or killed a family member or friend people would think differntly about Chavez.