Church’s laity rejects dissidents’ charges

(Text of article in Espacio Laical (Lay Space), a magazine of the Lay Council of the Archdiocese of Havana, titled “Mediation Will Have To Follow Its Unswerving Course.” It was written by the Council’s directors and translated by The Miami Herald’s Cuban Colada.)

Last Friday, Aug. 20, a letter from a group of Cuban dissidents addressed to Pope Benedict XVI was made public. In it, they expressed their disagreement with the actions taken by the Catholic Church in Cuba in favor of political prisoners.The undertaking assumed by Cardinal Ortega, with the unqualified support of all the Bishops, was branded by this opposition group as “lamentable and embarrassing.” They ended their letter by requesting the termination of an alleged “political support” by the Bishops to the Government of our country.

The criticism leveled in this document, because of its background assumptions and serious objections to the intentions of the Episcopate, is the most serious public attack against our Bishops since the publication of the pastoral letter “Love Hopes for Everything,” in 1993.

The efforts undertaken by the Catholic Church in Cuba do not represent an act of support or legitimization of any temporal, government or opposition power. It has been an evangelical endeavor that has sought, as far as possible, the mitigation of pain and suffering of a group of Cubans who were in prison, as well as their families.

On the other hand, if our Episcopate can display its credentials about something it is of having maintained over many years its independence and autonomy from power centers inside and outside Cuba. Many of us Cuban Catholics are proud of that.

Those who have written to the Pope complain that the Bishops did not include in their agenda a “conciliation” of the interests “of the peaceful dissidents and the compatriots in exile” on one hand and the Cuban government on the other, as the best solution to solve national issues.

That political formula for a deal between the parties is a gross simplification of the Cuban reality, and of its possible universal solution, which is much richer in nuances, social actors involved and proposals that emanate from our civil society.

But also, a process of “conciliation” between Cubans does not depend essentially on the will of the Church, but on the attitudes of the political actors involved, who must relinquish their claim to annihilate each other.

It is striking that it is the radical opposition – which has never worked in the construction of a scenario for a possible political dialogue with the Cuban government (rather, quite the contrary) – that reproaches the Church for doing so. To assume attitudes that encourage dialogue and consensus among nationals involves not only the Government but also and especially those who oppose it.

Nobody is entitled to ask his adversary for what he himself is incapable of giving. It is commendable to struggle to broaden the spaces of freedom, but freedom has an objective, which is the realization of human kindness. Therefore, any struggle that does not imply a methodology that takes this virtue into account may be questioned.

The delivery of this letter to the Papal Nuncio’s office in Havana on Friday must be seen in the context of a campaign to torpedo the efforts undertaken by the Cuban Church. According to sources close to the domestic dissidents, the “initiative” for a letter signed by Cuban oppositionists and directed the Holy Father was conceived outside Cuba, and we are assured that it was conceived as a fuel to delegitimize the current process.

Cuban forces based inside and outside our geographical boundaries, connected to international political networks have sought to show that the release of political prisoners has been the result of “international pressure” and “the struggle” of the internal dissident movement, not of the moderation and willingness to dialogue between social and political actors.

It is possible that that pressure had some influence. Nevertheless, it would be naive to think that this has been its efficient cause. The pressure has been there for more than 50 years and has failed to change anything. This letter responds to the politics of hate, which distorts the country’s internal reality by presenting it as a binary scenario of good and evil, eclipsing the nuances necessary to describe, with a minimum of seriousness, the complex social and political processes that currently take place in Cuban society.

The sectors that aspire solely and simply to overthrow the Cuban government cannot and should not be those who hold in their hands the future of Cuba. To avoid at all costs the realization of this reality is the task of the national players. To continue to shape and articulate the debate in Cuban society regarding democracy, economic reform, social justice, national sovereignty and reconciliation among Cubans is, now more than ever, a strategic task. Achieving this goal will be possible if the actors in civilian society, all across the political spectrum, engage more and more in this endeavor and if the Government has the ability to include them in efforts to rearticulate the consensus among all Cubans.

To facilitate the attitudes that make this reality possible can be a task of the Catholic Church; however, it will not be effective without a willingness by the most diverse national sectors to come together. This is an issue that requires joint reflection and analysis. That is why in the next issue of Espacio Laical we have decided to convene a group of valuable analysts, on the island and the diaspora, to analyze in depth the current negotiation process between the Church and the Cuban Government, the current political situation in the country, retracing the path of Church-State relations that has enabled us to arrive at the current scenario, as well as its future prospects.