Attack against Church reveals lockstep Chavez political agenda, bishop says

Caracas, Venezuela, Jun 12, 2009 / 14:02 pm

said on Thursday that the new attacks by the government against the Catholic Church “reveals the intransigence of its political agenda.”

In response to Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami’s accusation that the Venezuelan bishops have become a “political party” that incites “hatred,” Bishop Perez Morales lamented that some in Venezuela “want us all not to just wear red t-shirts [like Chavez], but to have red minds as well, that everybody thinks like the president thinks.”

The bishop said statements by government officials are in line with the administration’s agenda, which is a totalitarian agenda similar to Castro’s Communist model.

With this kind of an agenda, anything that falls outside the official line is anathemized, condemned and labeled as false and evil. For this reason, unfortunately, I am not surprised,” he added.

Bishop Perez Morales rejected claims that the bishops are inciting hatred and said that during their recent visit to the Vatican, they discussed the political and social reality that Venezuela currently faces.

“In Rome they are aware of the official slogans being used in Venezuela, which is: Homeland—Socialism or Death. In Europe where they have experienced totalitarianism, Nazism, Communism and Fascism, they know what this means: it is practically putting the people in the position of either having to accept the agenda we are imposing on you or you will be condemned to death,” he explained.

Bishop Perez Morales reiterated that the verbal assaults expose “the fundamentalism of a political agenda that revives the outdated regimes that cause so much pain and tears last century and led to the extermination of peoples, to confrontations and to war.”

“According to this logic, statements by officials are only natural and coherent, unfortunately,” he said. “God willing the situation will change and there will be an openness to tolerance. We are in the 21st not the 16th century,” he chided.