AMERICAN BISHOPS
2007-07-17.
Oswaldo José Paya Sardiñas, Minervo Lázaro Chil Siret, In the Name of
the Coordinating Council, Christian Liberation Movement
YOUR VOCATION IS LIBERTY
Gal 5, 13.
Dear Latin American pastors:
Welcome to our homeland.
This gathering of bishops from Latin America is taking place in a
country that has been seen for very long and by many people as only a
symbol. This symbol varies significantly depending under which prism it
is seen.
For many, Cuba has been a sanctuary of their ideology, while an entire
people have been stifled and shackled in the name of this ideology.
For others, Cuba has been an ideal of liberation, while for Cubans
themselves liberty has been their most denied and most coveted right for
many decades.
For others, it has been a border from which to act out a confrontation
with the North, while we Cubans only want to live with dignity, as an
independent and free nation, but in peace with all people, including our
neighbors to the North.
For others, Cuba has been a hopeless nation, because it supposedly
accepts the reality of totalitarianism, yet our people have not stopped
loving and generating good acts that can not be erased, and have never
chosen to live in this system without rights that has been imposed upon it.
Others speak about the Cubans inside and those on the outside, as if
there were two Cuba's, without understanding that separation and exile
have been the most painful punishments inflicted upon the Cuban people,
precisely because we are all only one people, inseparable and
indivisible, with only one heart, and the same pain and the same hope,
children of the same mother, the Virgin of Charity.
I hope for us to no longer be seen through any prism that skews reality;
but rather to be seen directly, which would reveal that that we are not
a revolution, nor a symbol, nor a culmination of an ideology, or an
experiment, nor a boundary of history, but rather:
More than eleven million human beings, God's children, and for this
reason we are entitled to our rights.
We are God's children and that is why we have the same vocation of love,
brotherhood, justice, peace and freedom as all human beings and all the
peoples of the world.
Our Church and all the Christians in Cuba, of all denominations, have
been treated in the same way, almost always judged and pointed out by
many. We do not boast about the power that we have never had, nor
sought, but of the persecution that we have endured.
Persecution in the midst of silence, the absence of solidarity and even
the justification and complacency of some. Among them, those who with
their theories and even their theology, have excluded from the reach of
liberation those of us who are subjected to oppression in the name of
Marxist ideology or the "revolution."
Others continue to do the same, in other latitudes and meridians, in the
name of their ideologies.
We have been like a spectacle to the world. But Jesus Christ liberates
us all and the Gospel does not exclude anybody. God does not deny anyone
freedom and dignity, but gives His love to all, believers and
non-believers.
Our society suffered and continues to suffer the perverse attempt at
forced de-Christianization, which began under the motto "religion is the
opium of the masses." But the people discovered that those who want to
expel God from history and from our lives, are only disloyally creating
a culture of fear and an environment that is propitious to the
establishment of a form of slavery.
From the Gospel we have learned that the Church can not silence its
prophetic voice when men and women are oppressed and when they are
denied their rights and freedoms.
Christians must not keep silent and neither should all the victims, who
are the first to be called upon to reclaim their own rights and in this
way, as Pope Juan Paul II announced; "become the protagonists of their
own history." This is liberation.
We proclaim a truth: The Church in Cuba, oppressed as are its people and
small, in the midst of persecution, interferences, and a multitude of
threats and pressures from political power, faithful to Jesus Christ,
has always evangelized and it has always provided shelter for those that
do not have shelter.
For a long time now in Latin America, the people have sought a more just
order that allows for the marginalized multitudes to attain a more
dignified life and changes have been achieved through civic means and
not through violence.
But if in the name of social justice and the redemption of the poor,
citizens are stripped of or denied liberty of expression and other civil
and political rights, the people are instead drawn into a pitfall in
which the rights through which they could earlier decide democratically
the changes they wanted have been taken away.
When this happens, as it has in Cuba, the poor no longer have a voice,
not even with which to proclaim that they are poor. Democracy is not
real if it is not able to build justice. And justice is not truly
present, nor can it be achieved, if the civil rights and freedoms of the
citizenry are denied.
Today, many of our Cuban brothers are imprisoned unjustly for
proclaiming and defending the rights of Cubans, for promoting dialogue
and reconciliation, for promoting peaceful changes so that the laws
respect the rights of all Cubans, inspired by a Cuban priest, a role
model because of his holiness and patriotism, who was known as Father
Félix Varela.
These prisoners are confined along with common prisoners, under inhumane
conditions, and have suffered severe deterioration of their health. From
the prisons, they are a testimony of the presence of Jesus Christ in
their lives, which have been dedicated to the liberation of their people
through love.
Our prison brothers and all of us, during these days, will pray for you
and with you, our Latin American pastors, so that your Thirty-first
meeting is also illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
Today our people are sentenced to the doctrine which proclaims that the
only alternative to this order is death. In this way, they try to close
the doors of the future with a fatalistic wall of hate and fear.
Nevertheless, what prevails in the hearts and minds of Cubans, and we
believe in that of all Cubans, of all political positions and
experiences, is the desire for changes, for reconciliation, for healing
through forgiveness, for looking ahead and building peace, as free men
and women.
We will do it, we will build a more just, more fraternal and more humane
society, by taking everything good that has been created through love,
and putting behind us what divides us, what oppresses us and what denies
us our rights. We can only achieve it as our apostle José Martí said:
"with all and for the good of all." This is liberation.
Liberation cannot be from hate, or with hate, cannot be through denying
your neighbor, or excluding any human being, but only through love and
through recognizing in every Cuban, in every human being, a brother.
It is toward this path that our movement works, in the midst of
persecution, for a National Dialogue, for the legal recognition of all
rights for all Cubans and for National Reconciliation.
Our people are not immersed in the shades, but know that the light
exists and are walking towards its encounter. It is God's light, which
illuminates hearts, which is the source of hope and liberation for all
Cubans.
Your vocation is liberty, and for the same cause, ours as well.
Havana, July 10, 2007.
http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=10865
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