Firebrand swaps Marxism for quiet life in a convent

by **emad** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:09 pm

Firebrand swaps Marxism for quiet life in a convent From Richard Owen in Rome DON CAMILLO, it seems, has had the last laugh: a former communist mayor in Sicily has turned her back on politics to become a nun in a closed order. Maria Viglianti, a widowed mother of four, entered the Convent of the Visitation at Palermo this week with a new name, Sister Giovanna Francesca, after taking her vows before Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, the Archbishop of Palermo. Nuns in the convent take a vow of silence and spend their days in contemplation and prayer. The move has astonished those who remember Signora Viglianti as the highly vocal and militant left-wing Mayor of Castel di Lucio, a small mountain town near Messina. Signora Viglianti, was a schoolteacher who became a firebrand political activist in the 1980s, earning the nickname “La Pasionaria”. As mayor she led demonstrations against war, unemployment and poverty, and campaigned to stop the encroachment of buildings on a nature and woodland reserve. She even took on the Mafia, which she accused of siphoning off water supplies. Residents said that she was “always waving the red flag”, and remained a militant even when the Italian Communist Party mutated into the moderate Democrats of the Left in the 1990s. “Yet now she has said goodbye to the hammer and sickle and embraced the cross,” commented Il Giornale. Signora Viglianti’s children — Tiziana, Costanza, Felice and Salvatore — said that their mother had told them three years ago and that they had come to accept it. “We are proud of her,” Tiziana said. “She has led an exceptional life, and has now taken an exceptional step by becoming a nun.” Francesca Scudiscio, a left-wing Castel di Luccio councillor, said that she found Signora Viglianti’s behaviour incomprehensible. “We worked closely together for 20 years. We grew up together politically and shared the same convictions,” she said. “She had so much left to do, for her family and for the community.” Alessandro Giordano, another councillor, said that he had not yet come to terms with her choice. “I’m not judging her negatively — her decision must be respected. But I just cannot understand how someone who worked like a heroine for night and day for so many years to look after her sick husband and her children while also attending council meetings and engaging tirelessly in politics can do such a thing.” But Antonino Alberti, the present mayor, said that Signora Viglianti had made “a courageous choice”. He said that he had often clashed with her politically, “but I do not see any contradiction between her communist past and her Catholic present. I can see that both derive from her commitment to justice and equality and her concern for the poor and disadvantaged.” Signora Viglianti made no public statement before taking her vow of silence. Her children said she had explained that she “saw her life in terms of service, whether to the people or to God”. Tensions in Italy between the Left and the Church were immortalised after the Second World War by the writer Giovanni Guareschi in his wry tales of Don Camillo, a parish priest who is eternally — and often comically — at odds with the local communist mayor, Peppino. <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1833616,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/new...16,00.html</a>

by **emad** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 12:11 pm

The ultimate revenge, hehe?

by **proldic** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:32 pm

It just popped into my head for some strange reason, but with LaRouchian smears abounding in today's world, let's not forget "liberation theology": They Carried the Cross and the AK-47 for Marxist Revolution “The root of humanity's downfall and disgrace comes from the deliberate opposition to truth... This reality that has been intentionally deformed in our country throughout thirty-six years of war against the people. To open ourselves to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and all societies that seek to humanize themselves and to be free... Truth is the primary word, the serious and mature action that makes it possible for us to break the cycle of death and violence and open ourselves to a future of hope and light for all... Discovering the truth is painful, but it is without a doubt a healthy and liberating action.” - Archbishop Conedera of Guatemala XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX “He has anointed me and sent me to give the good news to the poor.” This is Christ’s mission, to take the good news to the poor, to those who receive only bad news, to those who are always trampled by the powerful, to those who watch pass by, out of their reach, the riches that satisfy others. The Lord comes for them, to make them happy and to tell them: Do not covet. Count yourselves happy and wealthy with the great gift brought to you by the one who being rich became poor to be with you. January 27, 1980 (ended minutes before he was murdered by the SOA-CIA) How beautiful will be the day when a new society, instead of selfishly hoarding and keeping, apportions, shares, divides up, and all rejoice because we all feel we are children of the same God! What else does God’s word want in El Salvador’s circumstances but the conversion of all, so that we can feel we are brothers and sisters? January 27, 1980 Poverty is a palpable reality in Latin America – the stamp that marks the great mass of people. At the same time, these masses are not only open to receive the Beatitudes and the Father’s predilection, but are capable of being the genuine protagonists of their own development. The poor are a sign in Latin America. The masses of our nations are poor, and for this reason they are capable of receiving God’s gifts. And, when filled with God, they are able to transform their own societies. February 17, 1980 The existence of poverty as a lack of what is necessary is an indictment. Those who say the bishop, the church, and the priests have caused the bad state of the country want to paper over the reality. Those who have created the evil are those who have made possible the hideous social injustice our people live in. Thus, the poor have shown the church the true way to go. A church that does not join the poor, in order to speak out from the side of the poor against the injustices committed against them, is not the true church of Jesus Christ. February 17, 1980 I told them at Louvain: Our world in El Salvador is not an abstraction. It is not an example of what is meant by “the world” in developed countries like yours. It is a world made up in the vast majority of poor and oppressed men and women. That world of the poor, we say, is the key to understand the Christian faith, the church’s activity, and the political dimension of the faith and the church’s activity. The poor are the ones who tell us what the world is and what service the church must offer to the world.February 17, 1980 Allow me, I said at Louvain, to speak for my people’s poor, as their representative, and explain briefly the circumstances and the activity of our church in the world where we live. I went on to tell them of what is happening to our church here in El Salvador and what we are doing. First, we become incarnate among the poor. We want a church that is really side by side with the poor, with the people of El Salvador. And as we draw near to the poor, we find we are gradually uncovering the genuine face of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh. We are getting to know closer at hand the mystery of the Christ who becomes human and becomes poor for us. What else does the church do here? It proclaims the good news to the poor, I said. I do not mean this in the demagogic sense of shutting the door on others. On the contrary. I do mean that those who have for centuries listened to bad news and lived even worse realities are now hearing from the church the word of Jesus: “The reign of God is near; it is yours! Blessed are you poor, for the reign of God is yours.” Hence the church has good news to proclaim to the rich as well; they are to turn to the poor and thus share with them in the riches of God’s reign that belong to the poor. Another thing that the church does in El Salvador, I said, is its commitment to defend the poor. The poor masses of our land find in the church the voice of Israel’s prophets. There are among us those who sell the just for money and the poor for a pair of sandals, as the prophets said. There are those who pile up spoils and plunder in their palaces, who crush the poor, who bring on a reign of violence while reclining on beds of ivory, who join house to house and field to field so as to take up all there is and remain alone in the land. These texts of the prophets are not distant voices that we read with reverence in our liturgy. They are daily realities, whose cruelty and vehemence we live each day. And therefore, I told them, the church suffers the fate of the poor, which is persecution. Our church glories that it has mingled the blood of its priests, its catechists, and its communities with that of the massacred people and has continually borne the mark of persecution. Because it disquiets, it is slandered, and its voice crying against injustice is disregarded. February 17, 1980 The church’s good name is not a matter of being on good terms with the powerful.The church’s good name is a matter of knowing that the poor regard the church as their own, of knowing that the church’s life on earth is to call on all, on the rich as well, to be converted and to be saved alongside the poor, for they are the only ones called blessed. February 17, 1980 Poverty is a force for liberation because, in addition to being an accusation of sin and a force of Christian spirituality, it is a commitment. Christians, this word is for me first of all. I must give an example of being a Christian. And it is for all of you, my brother priests, and for you, religious, and for all baptized people who call yourselves Christians. Listen to what the Medellín conference says: Poverty, as a commitment that takes on voluntarily and out of love the condition of the needy of this world, in order to witness to the evil their condition represents and to spiritual freedom from wealth, follows in this the example of Christ, who made his own all the consequences of the sinful condition of humans and, “being rich, became poor” in order to save us. This is the commitment of being a Christian: to follow Christ in his incarnation. If Christ, the God of majesty, became a lowly human and lived with the poor and even died on a cross like a slave, our Christian faith should also be lived in the same way. The Christian who does not want to live this commitment of solidarity with the poor is not worthy to be called Christian. Christ invites us not to fear persecution. Believe me, brothers and sisters, anyone committed to the poor must suffer the same fate as the poor. And in El Salvador we know the fate of the poor: to be taken away, to be tortured, to be jailed, to be found dead. Let whoever desires this world’s privileges and not the persecutions that come from this commitment listen to the awesome paradox in today’s gospel: “Blessed are you when people hate you and reject you and insult you and say you are evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, because your reward will be great in heaven.” With great joy and gratitude I wish to congratulate our priests. It is just when they are most committed to the poor that they are most defamed. It is just when they are most at the side of our people in their wretchedness that they are most slandered. I wish to rejoice with the religious men and women who have taken their stand with our people, even to the point of heroically suffering with them, and with the Christian communities and with the catechists who stay at their posts while cowards flee. Let those who would flee the effects of persecution, of slander, of degradation, listen to what Christ says this Sunday: “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you! That is what your ancestors did with the false prophets.” February 17, 1980 We are especially sorry today, when we most need it, to be without our radio station, YSAX, the instrument that carried God’s word forth from our Sunday Mass. As you all know, last Monday the transmitter was destroyed by a bomb set by an ultrarightist group. This new attack is a serious violation of freedom of expression. This attack is an attempt to silence the prophetic and pastoral voice of the archdiocese, simply because it is trying to be the voice of the voiceless, because it has reported the systematic violation of human rights, because it has tried to tell the truth, defend justice, and spread the Christian message. From the times of Jesus, that message has shocked the powerful. It shocked the powerful of his time but, as now, was listened to and accepted by the poor and simple. February 24, 1980 Moses commanded the citizens of Israel to take to the temple the first fruits of the harvest of their fields and to offer them to God with the following prayer, which contains Israel’s creed: Then in the presence of the Lord your God you will say: “My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt and settled there with a few persons. Then they grew into a great, strong, and numerous race. The Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, and imposed a harsh slavery on us. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors. The Lord heard our voice and looked on our oppression.” And it goes on to describe how he took them out of Egypt and through the desert to give them their own country, a promised land. Israel’s creed is pure history. It begins with the promise to the patriarchs – unbelievable promises. An old man is promised he will be father of a numerous people, although he is childless and sterile. A people that has increased under slavery is told by God that he will give it a land where milk and honey flow. And this people sets out for the promised land, and when the promise becomes a reality, the fruits of that land are offered as the sign that God has kept his promise. The offering is Israel’s Mass, like our own offering, where we give thanks for our land, for our country, recalling that God does not abandon the people. It is a beautiful creed. The Israelites did not have an ethereal faith, like many Christians who think that speaking of things like this gets the church involved in politics. Israel’s faith was the faith of its political life. Faith and political life were turned into a single act of love for the Lord. Their political life breathed God’s graces and promises. And the God of all peoples, the God of El Salvador as well, must be such a God, one that illumines political life also. He is the one who gives us our farmlands, and he is the one who wants land reform. He is the one who wants a more just distribution of the wealth that El Salvador produces. It is not right that some fill up their coffers and the people are left without the gifts of God that he has given for the people. Israel’s creed was inspired by the Holy Spirit, who gives unity to all of Israel’s history. The Bible, which is the history of Israel’s people, is like the Holy Spirit’s own book. Although it was written by persons of different centuries and cultures, the Holy Spirit is the author of those pages of Israel’s history that make up the Bible, a model for the histories of all peoples. All of our peoples should read the Bible and learn from it the relationship of faith and politics. The Bible is the text from which to learn how to live that wonderful relationship between faith and political life. When the Holy Spirit brings Israel’s times to their fullness and Christ is born through the Holy Spirit, this Christ begins to form a new people. We Christians are that people, and we as a people that arises are the work of the Holy Spirit. God works out the history of salvation in each people’s history. Each people is different from every other, and no imperial power may interfere to influence our people’s way of being. The God of the great empires is the God who demands justice of the powerful in them and defends the poor of their people. He has plenty to do there. And the God of our impoverished peoples is also constructing the history of salvation, with El Salvador’s history and not with artificial histories. History made alive by the Holy Spirit provides, in the resurrection, a wonderful incentive for the Christian people. The Spirit who raised up Christ has provided in the risen Christ a model for history. Towards the resurrection all histories must march. They must provide persons who will rise to freedom after living the way of the cross – indeed, to a freedom to be enjoyed on this earth, but that will not be definitive until we enjoy it in the fullness of God’s kingdom. That does not mean that we are going to leave the people’s liberation for the other side of death. The risen Christ belongs now to present history, and he is the source of human liberty and dignity. ...The dynamiting of YSAX is only a symbol. It shows that the oligarchy, seeing the danger of losing the complete domination they have over investment and over agricultural exports, as well as their near-monopoly of land, are defending their selfish interests – not with arguments, not with popular support, but with the only thing they have. They use their money to buy weapons and pay mercenaries who massacre the people and strangle every lawful cry for justice and freedom. And that is why they have murdered so many peasants, students, teachers, laborers, and other members of organizations.February 24, 1980 Let us see to it that Christ is in the midst of our people’s political movement. This is the hour of political programs for El Salvador. The pastor’s mission, the church’s mission, is not to enter into competition by proposing one more program. Rather, with the autonomy and freedom of God’s children offered by the gospel, our mission is to indicate what may be good in each program in order to encourage it, and what may be bad in any program in order to remove it.March 2, 1980 The church in Latin America has much to say about humanity. It looks at the sad picture portrayed by the Puebla conference: faces of landless peasants mistreated and killed by the forces of power, faces of laborers arbitrarily dismissed and without a living wage for their families, faces of the elderly, faces of outcasts, faces of slum dwellers, faces of poor children who from infancy begin to feel the cruel sting of social injustice. For them, it seems, there is no future – no school, no high school, no university. By what right have we cataloged persons as first-class persons or second-class persons? In the theology of human nature there is only one class: children of God. March 2, 1980 Let us not think that our dead have gone away from us. Their heaven, their eternal reward, makes them perfect in love; they keep on loving the same causes for which they died. Thus, in El Salvador the force of liberation involves not only those who remain alive, but also all those whom others have tried to kill and who are more present than before in the people’s movement. March 2, 1980 The great need today is for Christians who are active and critical, who don’t accept situations without analyzing them inwardly and deeply. We no longer want masses of people like those who have been trifled with for so long.We want persons like fruitful fig trees, who can say yes to justice and no to injusticeand can make use of the precious gift of life, regardless of the circumstances. March 9, 1980 Nothing is so important to the church as human life, as the human person, above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed.Besides being human beings, they are also divine beings,since Jesus said that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God. March 16, 1980 Those who think that my preaching is political, that it incites to violence, as though I were the cause of all the evils in the land, forget that the church’s word does not invent the evils in the world; it casts a light on them. The light shows what is there, it does not create it. The great evil is already there, and God’s word wants to undo those evils. It points them out, as it must, for people to return to right ways. March 16, 1980 At this time, when land in El Salvador is the object of conflict, let us not forget that the land is closely tied to God’s blessings and promises. Israel now had its own land. “I will give you all this land,” God had told the patriarchs, and after the captivity, led forth by Moses and Joshua, here was the land. And so they celebrated a grand thanksgiving rite, Israel’s first Passover. It is a call to us to celebrate, with equal gratitude, adoration, and acknowledgment, the God who saves us. God has brought us too out of bondage. The God we put our hope in for our liberations is the God of Israel, the God who today receives the celebration of the first Passover. There is a theological meaning in the bond between reconciliation and the land. I want to emphasize this idea because it seems to me very appropriate. Not to have land is a consequence of sin. Adam leaves Paradise as a man without land. It is the effect of sin. Now, with God’s forgiveness, Israel returned to the land. They ate ears of grain from their own land, the fruits of their land. God gave his blessing in the sign of the land. The land contains much that is of God. That is why it groans when the unjust monopolize it and leave no land for others. Land reform is a theological necessity. A country’s land cannot stay in a few hands. It must be given to all, and all must share in God’s blessings on the land. God in Christ dwells near at hand to us. Christ has given us a guideline: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat.” Where someone is hungry, there is Christ near at hand. “I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.” When someone comes to your house to ask for water, it is Christ, if you look with faith. In the sick person longing for a visit Christ tells you, “I was sick and you came to visit me.” Or in prison. How many today are ashamed to testify for the innocent! What terror has been sown among our people that friends betray friends whom they see in trouble! If we could see that Christ is the needy one, the torture victim, the prisoner, the murder victim, and in each human figure so shamefully thrown by our roadsides could see Christ himself cast aside, we would pick him up like a medal of gold to be kissed lovingly. We would never be ashamed of him. How far people are today – especially those who torture and kill and value their investments more than human beings – from realizing that all the earth’s millions are good for nothing, are worthless, compared to a human being. The person is Christ, and in the person viewed and treated with faith we look on Christ the Lord. March 16, 1980 ...Even in the criminal realities of our land Christ is present, rejecting all that...That is why we must speak of it here. March 16, 1980 I feel more pity than anger when they insult me and slander me. I feel pity for those poor blind people who can’t see beyond the person. Let them know that I hold no animosity, no grudge. Those anonymous letters that come don’t offend me with all their raging, nor what is said through other means or lived out in the heart. It’s not a pity of superiority, but a pity of thankfulness to God and of prayer to God: Lord, open their eyes. Lord, let them be converted. Lord, instead of the bitterness of hate that they live in their hearts, let them live the joy of reconciliation with you. March 16, 1980 I have no ambition for power, and so with complete freedom I tell the powerful what is good and what is bad, and I tell any political group what is good and what is bad. That is my duty. March 23, 1980 God’s program to liberate the people is a transcendent one. Transcendence gives liberation its true and definitive dimension. I suppose I repeat this idea too much, but I will keep on saying it. In wanting to give immediate solutions to immediate problems, we run the great danger of forgetting that immediate solutions can be mere band-aids and not real solutions. A genuine solution must fit into God’s ultimate program. Whatever solution we may decide on – for better land distribution, for a better management of money in El Salvador, for a political arrangement suited to the common good of Salvadorans – will have to be found always in the context of definitive liberation.March 23, 1980 --Archbishop Oscar Romero No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends

by **Gouda** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:25 pm

amen.

by **Rigorous Intuition** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:10 pm

Father Ernesto Cardenal, told in the mid-70s: <img src="http://www.getreligion.org/archives/ErnestoCardenal.jpg" style="border:0;"/> <a href="http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/WiseMen.htm" target="top">The Wise Men</a> We were in the church. I said by way of introduction that Matthew's words, "in the days of Herod the King," tell us that Jesus was born under a tyranny. There were three Herods; or, as we might say in Nicaragua, three Somozas: Herod the elder, Herod his son, and a grandson Herod. Herod the elder, the one at the time of Jesus' birth, had ordered two of his sons to be strangled on suspicion of conspiracy, and he also killed one of his wives. At the time of Jesus' birth he killed more than three hundred public servants on other suspicions of conspiracy. So Jesus was born in an atmosphere of repression and terror. It was known that the Messiah was going to be king, and that's why the wise men arrived asking for the king of the Jews, meaning the Messiah. Then to Jerusalem came wise men from the East saying: "Where is the King of the Jews that has been born? For we saw his star in the East And we have come here to worship him." Laureano said: "I think these wise men shit things up when they went to Herod asking about a liberator. It would be like someone going to Somoza now to ask him who's going to liberate Nicaragua." Another of the young men: "The way I figure it, these wise men were afraid of Herod and didn't want to do anything without his consent." Tomás Peña: "They went to ask him for a pass..." The same young man: "They probably went first to consult Herod because they were afraid of him, and all those people of Jerusalem were filled with fear when they heard talk of a Messiah, just like Nicaraguan people are afraid when they hear talk of liberation. The minute they hear that young people want to liberate those of us who are being exploited, they begin to shake and be afraid. When they hear people say that this government must be overthrown, they shake and are afraid." Adán: "It seems to me that when those wise men arrived they knew that the Messiah had been born and they thought Herod knew about it and that the Messiah was going to be a member of his family. If he was a king, it was natural that they should go to look for him in Herod's palace. But in that palace there was nothing but corruption and evil, and the Messiah couldn't be born there. He had to be born among the people, poor, in a stable. They learned a lesson there when they saw that the Messiah had not been born in a palace or in the home of some rich person, and that's why they had to go on looking for him somewhere else. The Gospel says later that when they left there they saw the star again. That means that when they reached Jerusalem the star wasn't guiding them. They'd lost it." Félix: "They were confused. And it seems to me that since they were foreigners they didn't know the country very well, and they went to the capital, where the authorities were, to ask about the new leader." When Herod the king heard this he was very troubled, and all the people of Jerusalem also. Oscar: "I figure that when Herod found out that that king had been born he was furious because he didn't want to stop being the ruler. He was as mad as hell. And he was already figuring out how to get rid of this one like he had got rid of so many already." Pablo: "He must have felt hatred and envy. Because dictators always think they are gods. They think they're the only ones and they can't let anyone be above them." Gloria: "And he was probably afraid, too. He had killed a lot of people not long before, and then some gentlemen arrive asking where's the new king." Félix: "He surely must have put all his police on the alert. I think that's what the Gospel means here: 'He was very troubled.'" One of the young people: "And the Gospel says that the other people of Jerusalem were also troubled. That means his followers, the big shots, like the Somoza crowd. Because for them it was very bad news that the liberator was arriving. But for poor people it was great news. And the powerful people knew that the Messiah had to be against them." Old Tomás Peña: "That king who ruled that republic with a firm hand - he ruled a million people or however many there were then - he didn't allow anyone to say anything he didn't like. You could only think the way the government wanted, and they surely didn't allow any talk about messiahs. And they must have been annoyed when outsiders came talking about that, as if they were talking about a new government." Manuel: "The people had been waiting for that Messiah or liberator for some time. And it's interesting to see that even out of the country the news had got around that he had been born, and these wise men found out, it seems to me, from the people. But in Jerusalem the powerful were entirely ignorant of his birth." Then the king called all the chiefs of the priests and those who taught the law to the people, and he asked them where Christ was going to be born. Felipe: "The clergy are summoned by a tyrant who has killed a lot of people. And the clergy answer the call. It seems to me that if they went to his palace it's because they were his supporters, they approved of his murders. Just like today the monsignors who are supporters of the regime that we have. It means that those people were like the people we have today in Nicaragua." They told him: "In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet." Don José: "They knew he was going to be born in a little town, among the common people. But they were in Jerusalem, visiting with the powerful and the rich in their palaces. Just like today there are a lot of Church leaders who know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and every year they preach about this at Christmas, that Jesus was born poor in a manger, but the places they go to all the time are rich people's houses and palaces." When they saw the star again They were filled with joy. They went into the house; they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and worshipped him. Then they opened their boxes And they gave him presents of gold, incense, and myrrh. Tomás: "They come and open their presents - some perfumes and a few things of gold. It doesn't seem as if he got big presents. Because those foreigners that could have brought him a big sack of gold, a whole bunch of coins, or maybe bills, they didn't bring these things. What they brought to him were little things...That's the way we ought to go, poor, humble, the way we are. At least that's what I think." Olivia: "It's on account of these gifts from the wise men that the rich have the custom of giving presents at Christmas. But they give them to each other." Marcelino: "The stores are full of Christmas presents in the cities, and they make lots of money. But it's not the festival of the birth of the child Jesus. It's the festival of the birth of the son of King Herod." Afterwards, being warned in a dream that they should not return to where Herod was, they returned to their country by another way. Tomás: "The wise men go off by another route. He inspired them not to inform on him, because he was already a fugitive. He made them see they shouldn't go back the same way. It was better to go another way. Already defending his body. At least that's what I think." Felipe: "By now they were like fugitives too. They went off by another way like they were fleeing. And I think that if they'd returned to the capital they'd have been killed." Alejandro: "Well, the liberator was born in an atmosphere of persecution, and those who come to see him are also persecuted. The people must have kept the secret..." Olivia: "The truth is that ever since he was at his mother's breast he had the rich against him. When she was pregnant Mary had sung that her son was coming to dethrone the powerful and to heap good things upon the poor and to leave the rich without a single thing. And from his birth they pursued him to kill him, and then he had to flee in his mother's arms and with his papa..." Gloria: "Those common people had a hope now. And as soon as they found out he'd been born they felt happy. The neighbors all knew. That star, maybe it was the townspeople talking, and it got to the wise men." Chael: "Those wise gentlemen found something they weren't expecting - that the liberator was a poor little child, and besides, a little child persecuted by the powerful." Laureano: "The ones who were persecuting him were the rulers. He was a guy that was coming to change everything, coming to make everybody equal, coming to liberate the poor and to take power away from the rulers because they were shitting everything up. And that's why the powerful went after him to kill him." Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rigorousintuition>Rigorous Intuition</A> at: 10/20/05 5:14 pm

by **banned** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:02 am

I read those books as a child and loved them! If you get a chance to read them, do, although I don't know how much appreciated they would be in today's cynical world. I also wanted for a very little while to be a nun, even visiting a convent school I thought I might want to go to, till, luckily, I remembered I was an atheist. Thank you for a really interesting article! my only carp is, the Mayor was Peppone. Peppino was the farmhand on "The Real McCoys". Copyediting is a lost art.)

by **emad** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:34 am

...et cum spiritu tuo x

by **banned** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:48 pm

Ominous nabisco. Et cockadoodledoo.

Firebrand swaps Marxism for quiet life in a convent

Firebrand swaps Marxism for quiet life in a convent

'Vigilante' politics never the same again?

Re: 'Vigilante' politics never the same again?

Re: 'Vigilante' politics never the same again?

A "sermon" from my favourite Sandinista,

Te amo Don Camillo!

Thankx y'all....semper vobiscum

Or as we used to say in Catholic high school...

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