--- On Fri, 5/22/09, Sheldon <humanist.observer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well yes of course, but my comments were concerned with our
> attitude
> towards priests, of which I defended the radical priests
> against
> Wojtek's off the cuff remark about perverted priests.
> Sheldon
[WS:] By that logic, we should not make broad generalizations about the Nazi party, as not all the Nazis were murderous pigs.
The point is that the Catholic Church did more to screw up labor organizing than most other institutions, except perhaps the fascists with whom the Catholic Church was in cahoots. The encyclical Rerum Novarum directly targeted labor movement in an attempt to shield it from socialist influences. Following these directives, the Catholic Church n Europe (as well as in Latin America) set up fake labor organizations to split labor organizing and even excommunicated those who dared to join other unions. In the Netherlands, this led to the split not only in the labor movement but also in the service delivery sector into different "pillars" (catholic, protestant, and social-democratic.) In Spain and Portugal, it collaborated with the fascists to undermine labor. Ditto for Latin America.
And then there is anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe to which the Catholic clergy and church as an institution contributed more than their fair share. Much of it was another effort to split labor organizing and undermine socialist influence.
So if a few priests in Latin America acted like decent human beings and stood up against fascist dictators - that is all good and commendable, but let us not forget what the institution of the Catholic Church did to undermine socialism and labor organizing in general. If one were to name a single anti-labor and anti-socialist force except fascists, that "honor" would probably belong to the Catholic Church.
Wojtek