From: Cgastbook 
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 15:41:54 EST
Subject: [Atheist] re: AANEWS for December 14, 1997
Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com)
Sender: owner-aanews@listserv.atheists.org
Reply-To: cg@atheists.org
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                        THEISTWATCH SHORT SHOTS
   One danger in "giving religion an expanded role in public life" is
that secular values -- like individual responsibility and free choice
-- may fall victim to paternalistic concerns about protecting people
from their own folly, or enjoying the benefits of their own
achievements.  This writer has long argued that deep within the breast
of just about every religious zealot and prelate is a longing for the
halcyon times of the medieval ages, when "everyone had their place" in
a carefully structured and static social hierarchy which, naturally,
included a high niche  for clergy.  This might well account for some
of the incredibly adroit skills which religious groups have manifested
in managing to accommodate the most dictatorial of regimes.
   The Vatican's relationship with Eastern block and Communist nations
will no doubt be a focus of historical excavation long after Carl
Bernstein's "Pontiff" hits the Book of the Month club or goes out of
print. Before and during the second World War, for example, the papacy
took a zigzag course in its relationships with fascist regimes; it
managed to agree to a Concordant with Benito Mussolini, carefully
tested the waters with Adolph Hitler before deciding to throw nominal
support behind the western allies, hoarded gold from the Holocaust in
the Balkans, capitalized on the cold war which it managed to cast as a
Manichean battle between "godless communism" and something else, and
finally worked in concert with like-minded western interests to drive
a few wedges into the crumbling walls of the Soviet Empire.  No sooner
had those eastern masses, though, freed themselves from a cabal of
commissars and begun to exercise "freedom," than the church was
expressive its deep misgivings about the problematic nature of
democracy and human rights.  When abortion restrictions were loosened
in Poland and churches rebuffed in their efforts to seize control of
entire national educational systems, stern papal warnings and pastoral
letters from bishops began pouring forth, insisting that "freedom
comes with responsibility," and that "liberty is not license."
   Simply put, the clerical view of "freedom" is vastly different from
the Enlightenment notion which emphasizes individual rights, personal
autonomy and freedom from religious intrusion.
   All of which is why the Vatican seems to be doing in Cuba, one of
the few remaining citadels of Marxist orthodoxy, what no CIA agent or
even reformed Soviet-turned-Russian apparatchik could dream of --
penetrate and influence the leadership of that island redoubt.  Pope
John Paul will be visiting Cuba on January 21-25, 1998; already, the
Vatican embassy in Washington has persuaded Mr. Clinton and the State
Department to ease some  regulations pertaining to travel to Cuba so
that the American emigre-faithful can catch one of the spectacular
open masses for which the peripatetic pontiff has become renowned.
But there is more to the tale.
   We now learn that during El Presidente Castro's jaunt through the
Vatican two months ago, the tough talking Communist Party chieftain
was asked by papal authorities  to declare December 25 as an official
holiday.  It's not clear whether Castro will oblige after all these
years, having abolished Christmas in 1962 because it was supposedly
interfering with the sugar cane harvest.
   The harvest isn't much better, Cuba isn't much more diversified,
and Castro desperately needs a friend in high places, especially if he
wants to end the long standing U.S. economic embargo.  Imagine what
Microsoft and Disney could do for this impoverished nation just 90
miles from our shore?  If anyone can finesse this deal, it has to be
Pope John Paul II.
 * SLMR 2.1a * HEADLINE: PLANE TOO CLOSE TO GROUND, CRASH PROBE TOLD
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