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.c The Associated Press
By JOHN RICE
HAVANA (AP) -
Catholic lay worker Dagoberto Valdez publishes a little magazine - page by
photocopied page - and talks about sometimes sensitive issues here: democracy
and human rights.
It's a small example of the liberty - and the limits to it - that the
Catholic Church has gained in Cuba over the past few years. It's also a sign of
what the church might do if it gains more as a result of Pope John Paul II's
visit here.
Valdez so far has run along the limits. He lost his job as an agronomist in
Pinar del Rio about two years ago.
"They told me at my work that I could not continue in that job if I
continued editing Vitral,'' he said.
He now rises before dawn to accompany farm workers into the countryside,
helping harvest palm tree stalks before returning at night to work with the
church - which has not received permission for a printing press.
Yet Communist Party members - along with protestants and non-believers - are
among the 2,500 people who have attended workshops at Valdez's Catholic Center
for Civil and Religious Rights.
"It is a first example to demonstrate ... that plurality is possible,''
he said while taking part in a practice run for Sunday's papal Mass at Havana's
Revolution Plaza.
"It is not just the theory of democracy, but the practice,'' Valdez
said. Hymns from a massed church choir echoed across the plaza beneath a vast
painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that towers over a site better known for
gatherings of Communist Party faithful.
That vast painting will vanish when the pope goes home. Will the new
openness and cooperation with the government vanish with it?
Cuba's culture minister, Abel Prieto, a member of the Communist Party's
elite Political Bureau, expresses optimism that churches and the government can
thrive together.
"We could have a strategic alliance in the field of issues of an
ethical character, of a moral type,'' Prieto told The Associated Press this
week.
Prieto noted the government is worried by problems such as prostitution and
corruption.
"I would say that the church ... could move in the same way as the
communists in Cuba'' to attack such ethical problems, Prieto said.
President Fidel Castro himself suggested a "strategic alliance'' with
Christians during a visit to Chile in 1971.
But Christians here have not always found Castro's Communist Party a willing
ally.
In the early 1960s, church schools were closed. Christians were banned from
the party, from key jobs, from journalism, from some university departments.
Those who prosthelitized too openly could find themselves in jail. Church
organizations withered.
That has begun to change in recent years under a government that has grown
in confidence after decades in power - one which also needs allies following the
collapse of its Soviet-bloc allies.
Cuba's bishops have pushed to expand their liberty because the church has a
social message that cannot be limited to Sunday Mass.
The church already sponsors a large charity operation through Caritas. There
is a budding Catholic workers organization and an anti-abortion movement.
Catechism classes have sprung up at churches across the island.
Prieto, who has been a voice for relatively open debate within his party,
thinks officials can cooperate with the churches on issues such as church
magazines and events.
Catechism classes are fine, he says, though the state considers public
education something that "strategically we have to maintain under state
control.''
He also said that the church should stress patriotic, anti-imperialist
values. While the pope is stressing Catholic patriotism on this trip, his
interpretation of it may not always agree with that of the Communist Party.
And freedom of debate will surely stop where officials believe it harms "national
unity'' in the face of a hostile United States.
AP-NY-01-24-98 0350EST |