Church does not seek old privileges, Jesuit leader says

By Gerardo Arreola

From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

HAVANA – Cuba’s Catholic Church is not looking to regain its privileges of the past but hopes that its faithful will have a space in a pluralistic society, said Jorge Cela, who this month assumes authority over the Jesuits in Latin America.

Among Cuban Catholics “there is a desire to regain the social space, which doesn’t mean a privileged social space but an egalitarian one,” Cela said. They want “to participate like Christians, like all other citizens, and give the Church a chance to make itself felt.”

Cela, 71, Superior of the Society of Jesus in Cuba, was just named chairman of the Conference of Provincial Jesuits of Latin America, based in Rio de Janeiro. One of the figures with the greatest intellectual renown in the region’s Catholic community, he directed the only national survey (1998-2004) made into that denomination on the island in the past half century.

 “In a way, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, says that everyone may believe in whatever they want, but I don’t think there is an acknowledgment of the plurality of beliefs within the social framework,” he said. “That is the road, I think. What’s being said is ‘Let us acknowledge the diversity of beliefs within the Cuban social framework […] not only individually, in the private, personal environment, but also in the social environment.’”

–A public functionary can declare himself Catholic, for instance?

– That is becoming easier. Also, access to studies. To express oneself as a citizen in public activities, in the media, and have a presence like any other citizen, that’s the social space we’re asking for. I think that it is very significant that the Church is not thinking about returning to the past, to the spaces of privilege…

–Are you referring to the 1950s?

–Yes. That did not appear in the survey and there were questions that asked specifically about it. “Do you think that the Church should have more power, or do you think that the Church should be more open to participation?” Almost no one answered that it should have more power […] History dismantled many things that the Church had. In other countries, some people would like to dismantle everything [the Church] has. Here, it happened that we were dismantled. This way, we can start from the bottom.

In the Catholic Church, during the construction of socialism in Cuba (1994), Raúl Gómez Treto came to the conclusion that in the 1950s that institution “enjoyed preferential treatment” vis-à-vis other denominations and had “a unique social, economic and political weight.” With a clergy of mostly conservative Spanish priests, it owned four seminaries, more than 200 schools, three universities, more than 40 shelters, eight hospitals and dozens of other institutions. In 1956, out of 6 million inhabitants, 72 percent described themselves as Catholic.

After the 1959 revolution, almost all Church goods were seized and the State assumed total control of education and health care. Some Catholics went over to the opposition, some bearing arms; some priests and religious people were expelled and some left on their own. Part of the clergy encouraged emigration, in concert with the United States, and the Church shrank on the island.

–In contrast with that period, it seems that now the Church stresses its nationalist attitude.

–That’s not new in the Church. Of course, Cuba was a colonial country and the Church came here during the colonization. But from earliest days there were figures in the Church that displayed – along with a very strong nationalism – a very strong ecclesial presence, too.

From the earliest days, there were tensions within the Church for precisely that reason, because of national pressures of independence. The Church has many figures who built much of the Cuban nationality. It could never be said that the Church identified with the United States or with foreign governments. One might say that some priests did, under certain circumstances, but [the tendency] was not very significant.

–Were those specific instances?

–I believe yes. Evidently, there were sectors that supported the Revolution with great force from within the Church. In the 1960s, when nobody was talking about a dialogue between Marxists and Christians, the declaration of Marxism provoked the strongest tensions. It wasn’t a matter of the Church being linked to the United States or Spain.

Cela said that, in the conflict, some people “had to decide between leaving the Revolution or leaving the Church in some manner,” although the desire for “a social presence” of Catholics persisted.

Now the government is returning the clergy’s belongings. When the survey was made, it was estimated that little more than 1 percent of the population (110,000 out of 11 million inhabitants) went to Sunday Mass. In the past decade, that number increased “slowly,” Cela said. “The Cuban people are very religious. After all, they have the Spanish and African traditions, both with a strong religious bent,” even though it’s not expressed in an ecclesial organization.

The Jesuit stressed that a greater freedom to express popular religiousness is evident, as shown by the 16-month journey (2010-2011) of the Virgin of Charity, when even the smallest towns held massive demonstrations.

While the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998 was “a key moment” in the improvement of the Church’s relations with the State (which “have strengthened” in recent years), Benedict XVI’s visit in three weeks “will go farther down that road.”