[Sca-cooks] Bread and wine in the Catholic church

Ana Valdes agora158 at gmail.com
Sun May 21 16:35:19 PDT 2006


What a sweet story! By I am going now to add a little turbulence to
the list with a little own personal story showing the other side of
the Catholicism, the one I don't want to accept.

Nobody at the list know me or the reasons why I live in Sweden. I came
here as political refugee in the late 70, after a four years jail
sentence in my homeland, Uruguay. My life is easy to explain: 11 years
in the cloister, 2 years in the student movement fighting against the
military dictatorship, four years in jail and now 28 years in exile.
Sorry if I violate some etiquette including controversial political
issues in the list.
This is the reflexion I posted to a list discussing human rights issues:

"I was 19 years old when I was tortured, in Uruguay, at that time one
of South America's most 'exemplary' countries, with a long tradition
of democracy and legality. Uruguay was then a country with a small
army and without any military conscription.

We were tortured by people we knew. I was raised in a family with
several members in the military. I was beaten and tortured by friends
of my uncles and my cousins.

Some years ago, I went to church in Spain and confessed (I am a
freelance Catholic, I accept some aspects of the Church and its
doctrine, but about others I am critical or skeptical). I didn't know
the priest was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic right-wing sect who
supported Franco and Pinochet. He asked me why I have not been in
confession for so many years, so I told him briefly about my four
years in jail, and my exile in Sweden. He asked me how I felt about
the men who interrogated me. I was a bit struck by his question … up
until that time, I had not given them much thought. Yet he insisted,
and so I said "Today, I am not sure how I feel. I can accept that many
of them believed they were right, and that torture or pressure were
only methods to gather information, but …" He interrupted me and said:
"But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save
your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly
to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from
the devil, and from Marxism." Torture is still in my body as a memory
and as a trace. It's still a challenge for me to discover the reasons
why friends of my uncles, and good Catholics, could torture and kill,
and still go to church on Sundays.

Ana


On 5/22/06, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> On May 21, 2006, at 5:32 PM, Ana Valdes wrote:
>
> > I am raised in a cloister, German nuns from Bavaria are not to joke
> > with :(
> > One of the nuns was my old aunt, my uncle was professor at the same
> > school, all my elder female cousins were raised there.
> > My cousin is a bishop in the catholic church.
> > I met some of the nuns last year, when I was back for a short visit to
> > Montevideo.
> > They and my bishop cousin asked me, "Ah, Ana, how about your
> > practising catholicism today?".
> > I answered them "I am a freelance catholic today :)"
> > Ana, defending my right to choose to pick the things from Catholicism
> > I want and discard the others
>
> Heretic ;-)
>
> My German nun story concerns my uncle Jim, who could easily have
> walked right out of a Damon Runyon story and who, as a young man, was
> a dead ringer for James Cagney. One of his many business ventures
> over the years was the ownership of a cigar shop and newsstand in New
> York's Grand Central Station, and somehow, under circumstances that
> never became clear, he had adopted (for lack of a better term) a nun
> who had come to Grand Central Station to beg for alms from passersby
> (I still occasionally see them doing this, silently praying with a
> little tin cup in front of them) to rebuild her convent which had
> been destroyed by Allied bombers during the Second World War.
>
> My uncle decided it would be a good idea to inform hundreds of his
> friends and business associates (many of whom were Jewish) that
> Sister Maria (or whatever her name was) was taking bets on that
> afternoon's races at Belmont Park. Some bought the story and gave her
> money. Many didn't, thought it was funny, and gave her money. Some
> figured, "Hey, how could it possibly hurt to have a little old German
> nun praying for me?" (This sentiment was substantially echoed many
> years later by New York City mayor Ed Koch, when asked why he was
> being so hospitable to a delegation led by Mother Theresa.)
>
> Of course, it then became necessary to smuggle the suitcase
> containing the $40,000 US Sister Maria had collected in her capacity
> as bookie to the stars back to Germany. Naturally, my uncle _also_
> knew all the customs agents by their first names, and hustled the nun
> and her suitcase through customs, insisting that Sister spoke no
> English and had nothing to declare. "But Mr. Dearing! That is untru-
> mphmphmph!" [Hand over nun's mouth.] "Yes, Sister doesn't speak a
> woooooord of English..."
>
> Yeah, Uncle Jim probably belonged in jail, but he definitely made the
> world a more interesting place.
>
> Adamantius
>
>
>
> "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
>     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
> Holt, 07/29/04
>
>
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>


-- 
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part
limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to
achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in
itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
-- Albert Einstein



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