By Savi Hensman
Ekklesia News Service, March 14, 2008
In October 2007 a priest was convicted of complicity in 7 murders, 31 cases of torture and 42 kidnappings. Christian Von Wernich had been chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force in the years of Argentina's military dictatorship from 1976-1983. For his role in the ‘dirty war’ in that period, when many opponents of the regime ‘disappeared’ and were never seen again by their loved ones, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Roman Catholic church, like many other Christian denominations and faith communities, has long made clear its opposition to human rights abuses. How, then, did a priest end up in the dock for such grave crimes? Why, when clergy have been called to account by their bishops or even the Vatican for comparatively minor matters, was action not taken at the time? And are their lessons to be learnt by people of faith?
A church of the powerful
A clue, perhaps, lies in the position of religious institutions in society. Where these are favoured by the privileged and powerful, and derive benefits from this position, they may come to identify with their wealthy patrons and supporters. Religious leaders may then find it difficult to recognise and challenge abuses, especially when victims are relatively poor and unimportant, or are portrayed as threatening social and economic systems in which faith-based institutions have thrived.
Amidst struggles between wealthy landowners and businessmen on the one hand and those seeking a better deal for peasants and workers on the other hand, communism was seen by Argentinian church leaders as a major threat. In the 1960s Cardinal Caggiano wrote that Marxism was born of the negation of Christ and his church, ‘put into practice by the Revolution’, and of the need to ‘prepare for the decisive battle’ though the enemy had not yet ‘taken up arms’. He helped to create a course in which students from the military studied a quotation from the fifteenth-century bishop of Verden: ‘When the existence of the Church is threatened, it is no longer bound by the commandments of morality. When unity is the aim, all means are justified: deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison and death. Because order serves the good of the community, and the individual has to be sacrificed for the common good.’
The whole story may be read here
Savitri Hensman was born in Sri Lanka. She works in the voluntary sector in community care and equalities and is a respected and widely published writer on Christianity and social justice. An Ekklesia associate, Savi is author of the recent 'Binding the Church and constraining God' (http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6737), 'Anglicans need deep learning not cheap victory' (http://ekklesia.co.uk/node/6478) and ‘Re-writing history’, a research paper on the row within global Anglicanism: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/research/rewriting_history
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