According to the bishops, the purpose of the initiative is to raise awareness about each biome, and promote respectful ties with life, the environment, and the culture of the people living in these biomes.

“This is precisely one of the biggest challenges everywhere on Earth, also because degradation in the environment are always accompanied by social injustice,” said Pope Francis in his message to Brazil.

The pope noted that the global challenge for preservation “faced by all of humanity,” requires the involvement of everyone along with the work of local communities.

In his view, the people native to each biome and those who live in them offer a clear example of how living with creation can be respectful.

“It is necessary to know and learn from these peoples and their relationship with nature. Thus, it will be possible to find a sustainability model that may be an alternative to the unbridled greed for profit which leaves natural resources drained and harms the dignity of the poor,” the pope argued.

In the view of the Archbishop of Brasília and CNBB head, Sergio da Rocha, no one should watch as a biome is destroyed, which is why the subject should not be left aside by the Church.

“There’s a lot to be done by everyone spontaneously, like changing our consumption patterns, the proper use of water and household garbage, but we need community initiatives which demand effective efforts from governments,” he said. “We need an economic model that doesn’t destroy natural resources,” he highlighted.

The foundation text for the 2017 Fraternity Campaign, with its motto “Cultivate and Guard Creation” tackles each one of Brazil’s six biomes, its features and significance, challenges and major initiatives already implemented for the defense of biodiversity and the culture of native peoples.

Among the actions proposed are the advancement of study and debates in public and private schools about the topic of the campaign.

According to CNBB, strengthening networks at all levels is also a way to bring about a new awareness and new practices in the defense of environments essential to life.

The text also draws attention to the need for the population to advocate zero deforestation for all biomes and their forest composition.

In the political arena, the campaign advocates the drafting of a bill banning the use of agrochemicals. “[The campaign] indicates that fighting corruption is a special way to avoid fraudulent bidding processes especially when it comes to floods and droughts, which end up becoming mechanisms for exploitation and the embezzlement of public funds,” CNBB declared.

In Brazil, the campaign is over 50 years old, and it is always launched after Carnaval, on Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins, a period during which the Catholic Church invites its faithful to do penance by praying, fasting, and doing charity.

ABr

After apparently overcoming military intransigence Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his National Program on Human Rights  now faces another formidable voice in the country’s politics: the Catholic church, disappointed with the abortion and gay marriage proposals.

The Brazilian Confederation of Bishops, CNBB, openly criticized the decriminalization of abortion, same sex civil marriage and the right for gay couples to adopt, all initiatives proposed by President Lula’s human rights initiative sent to Congressional consideration last December 21st.

The CNBB also criticized the proposal to eliminate all religious symbols from all public places, “an intolerant attitude” which pretends to ignore the long rooted historic traditions of Brazil, said the release announced Saturday and commented Sunday in all of the country’s Catholic churches.

The Catholic Church hierarchy describes the proposals as “elements of dissent” and said “time and dialogue” were needed to discuss them and thus build “participative democracy”, one of the terms used in the Human Rights Program.

The Human Rights program included all these issues and recommends the Brazilian Congress to draft bills on each of the controversial issues.

The program recommends the approval of legislation protecting the civil union of people of the same sex and the right to adopt for these couples.

It also suggests to the judicial branch that it campaigns to make magistrates more sensitive to the “prejudice” reactions to the adoption process by gay couples.

These issues are extremely sensitive for a very religious people with a conservative hierarchy, even when mores are quite lax.

This is the second hurdle with strong public opinion repercussion that the Lula administration had had to face with the program.

The most notorious was with the military who are opposed to the annulment of an Amnesty Law dating back to 1979 and which left out of the courts’ hook all those involved in human rights abuses including military, security forces and the insurgent Marxist oriented violent groups.

The Minister of Defense and the three Forces’ commanders threatened to resign in protest over a Truth Commission to investigate torture and disappearances committed during the 1964/1985 military dictatorship.

The military suggested that to be fair members of the “armed gangs” of the sixties and seventies should also face the Truth Commission. This was a particularly strong criticism since several of President Lula’s ministers and advisors, including cabinet chief Dilma Rousseff, hand-picked to be the ruling coalition’s presidential candidate, were effectively members of those groups combating the dictatorship.

Apparently the program in those specific areas is to be re-drafted in consultation with Defense and the 1979 Amnesty Law spirit stands.

Another group which has complained and is certain to have its voice heard is the farmers’ unions that question some of the “rights” guaranteed to peasants and small landowners, which are an invitation for “the landless to take over farms”.

Next October presidential elections will be held in Brazil and the ruling Workers Party with Lula has moved too far past the center, helping surface at least two left wing candidacies that pull votes out of his majority.

The Human Rights program according to Brazilian press analysts was launched to recall the Workers’ Party credentials as the main opponent to the Brazilian dictatorship.

Mercopress

Both the Catholic Bishop’s Conference (CNBB) and the OAB have volunteered to monitor the elections and provide centers for complaints as well as voter information and orientation.

"We have placed our facilities, one thousand lawyer offices, along with those of the Catholic church, totaling 10,000 parochial centers, under the orders of the Election Board (TSE)," declared Roberto Busato, the head of the OAB.

Busato went on to say that his organization is deeply concerned with campaign financing.

"We have decided to get involved. The people cannot just sit back and let NGOs and the TSE try to monitor the election," he said.

"We have not had election reform. The legislation we have is basically the same we had in the past. We must crackdown on the illegal use of economic power and illicit money in election campaigns."

ABr

The Maranhão Regional Labor Court imposed a fine of US$ 241.39 thousand (530 thousand reais) on the deputy, who is first secretary of the Chamber of Deputies’ leadership commission.

"It is a courageous step by the Labor Court system, following up on what inspectors caught in the act when they visited the properties," the friar told reporters in an interview.

He recalled that "there was a time when these occurrences did not even warrant legal proceedings." He pointed out, however, that even now the penalties do not correspond to what the law determines in cases of rural workers submitted to slave conditions:

"We have a hard time getting the courts to deal effectively with these violators. Nobody has ever been sent to jail for this crime, despite the fact that more than 18,000 workers have been rescued in the past ten years. Over 500 individuals responsible for abuses should have been convicted."

Deputy Oliveira issued a note, Wednesday, February 8, claiming that the sentence he received is unconstitutional, since degrading labor is "not covered in the labor laws."

For Brother Plassat, this argument "is a flimsy excuse, since the current version of Article 149 says that subjecting anyone to degrading labor conditions is considered slave labor. Degrading labor and slave labor are redundant."

The friar was referring to Article 149 of the Penal Code, which characterizes as a crime against individual freedom: "reducing someone to a status similar to that of a slave, whether it be by subjecting him to forced labor or a relentless work schedule, subjecting him to degrading labor conditions, or in any way limiting his freedom of movement in consequence of debts incurred with an employer or employer’s agent."

The penalty, according to the Code, is from two to eight years in prison and a fine, in addition to the penalty for having committed acts of violence.

The Land Pastoral Commission, which coordinates the Campaign to Combat Slave Labor, is associated with the Brazilian National Bishops Conference (CNBB).

Agência Brasil

The bill was drafted by a commission including members of the executive, lawmakers, and representatives of civil society. The bishops are preparing a letter to be delivered to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the members of Congress.

"We feel a solemn duty to manifest a commitment to life, a gift of God, and express total disagreement with bills that seek to decriminalize abortion," the text states.

The 1940 Penal Code, which is still in effect, considers abortion a crime under any hypothesis, except when the life of the expectant mother is at stake, or the pregnancy is the result of rape.

Only four countries in Latin America – Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Honduras – prohibit voluntary abortion under any circumstance. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, the practice is not subject to any restrictions.

The CNBB will orient the faithful to oppose the bill. "The bishops will pass the message along to the clergy and, through them, to the faithful. It is a process of permanent education," said the vice president of the CNBB, Don Antônio Celso de Queirós.

According to the US non-governmental organization, the Center for Reproductive Rights, more than four million women die annually in Latin America as a consequence of complications caused by abortions. This represents 13% of maternal mortality in the region.

A study released in September by the Brazilian non-governmental organization, Citizen’s Advocacy for Human Rights, indicates that the majority of women who suffer from complications or die in Brazil as a result of botched abortions are poor, black, and have little schooling.

For the Catholic Church, the one acceptable birth control method is education. The vice president of the CNBB said that "this is not a matter of the rights of women nor of the poor; there are many upper class people who have abortions."

A United Nations (UN) report issued last month contends that abortions performed in inadequate settings and complications associated with giving birth are the main cause of death around the world among young women between the ages of 15 and 19.

In the aftermath of the referendum on firearms, 300 referenda and plebiscite proposals are currently circulating in the National Congress. One of the themes is the legalization of abortion.

Don Geraldo Majella the president of the CNBB, says that the church does not concur with a referendum to consult the population on this issue. "Secondary rights may be placed in a referendum, not fundamental rights."

For Don Antônio Queirós, both the church and society are obliged to provide support to pregnant women. When asked about the expulsion of a pregnant girl from a youth group in the Mary Immaculate Church, in the satellite city of Guará II, in Brasí­lia, on the grounds that she was not a good example for the other adolescents, Don Antônio replied that he "would expel this priest from the ministry, because he didn’t understand anything. Over these people looms a grave risk of being condemned by God."

Agência Brasil

Unfortunately, the history of Catholicism in this country has historically involved condemnation of liberal democracy as well as of entrepreneurs as ‘parasites’ enriching themselves at the expense of the poor.

Regardless of current change in terms of ideological outlook, many Catholics of this country still retain the old distrust of individual liberty.

In colonial times, the usually corrupt and lax of morals Roman Catholic clergy enthusiastically supported the domination of sugar-planters. Priests were not only their main political allies, but also strong adherents of the slavery system as well.

This adherence was not only expressed by means of theological justification for slavery (they argued that Afro-Brazilians did not have human soul), as the Church itself was directly involved in the economic exploitation of its vast properties through the institution of slavery. In fact, the Catholic Church was the largest landholder and slave-owner back to those times.

After Brazil’s independence from Portugal, in 1822, the Catholic Church would be subject to direct control of the Brazilian Imperial government. There was much flaunting of independence from Rome.

The Vatican’s desire for direct line of authority to the Brazilian church was seen, not only by the government but also by most churchmen, as unduly interference by the Holy See in the affairs of the state.

When the Republic was proclaimed, in 1889, the Catholic Church was finally separated from the state and assured with a range of religious freedoms from political interference.

Ironically, Catholic radicals are now associated with radical political movements, for this Church has now acquired in Brazil a profoundly socialistic orientation.

For the elimination of ‘evils’ and ‘social contradictions’ that they see only in capitalism, many priests are entirely convinced that the current democratic system needs to be replaced by another constitutional structure that would allow the state to intervene in every aspect of our individual, social, political, and economic lives. The ideology to guide the functioning of this structure is based on Marxism, which is naturally far removed from authentic Christianity.

In Brazil, many Catholic theologians have advocated the totally false premise that personal freedom might be achieved through revolutionary socialism. The enormous quantity of revolutionary literature on liberation theology in this country clearly indicates the growing discussion of violence and revolution as class struggle analysis involving the glorification of the poor and vilification of the rich.

Since these theologians identify religiosity with class struggle, and the ‘poor’ with ‘revolutionary proletariat’, their basic struggle is therefore for the replacement of the current democratic legal order by violent means. Many priests in Brazil like to lament poverty but are eager to promote the economically destructive idea that owning property is sinful.

Influential members of the Catholic Church in Brazil have recently lobbied at the Vatican for the “important work that the base communities inspired by liberation theology are carrying out in the country”.

When the Pope John Paul II called friar Leornado Boff to explain his quite bizarre concept of an “ecclesiastical division of labour” in which the hierarchy of the church would engage itself in “the expropriation of the means of religious production from the Christian people”, two Brazilian cardinals supported him during the interrogation.

In 1987, the same Boff declared that communist regimes like the Soviet Union offered “the objective possibility of living more easily in the spirit of the Gospels and of observing the Commandments”.

Although the penetration of Marxist ideas in the Catholic Church might be justified on account of socio-economic exploitation, such Catholic priests are utterly blind to postulate the exchange of one kind of exploitation for another that is one thousand times worse.

According to Stephane Courtois, the editor of a fundamental book called Le Livre Noir du Communisme (“The Black Book of Communism”), at least 100 million people were killed by Marxist regimes only in the last century.

Therefore, disciples of Marx like Brazilian Catholic priests have been far more efficient at the ‘art’ of killing innocent people than at promoting any form of social justice.

From the standpoint of Realpolitik it is not a mistake to affirm that the class genocide promoted by Marxist regimes may be easily compared to Nazism’s race genocide.

And probably for this and several other reasons Adolf Hitler once declared at a famous speech in Munich that “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same”.

Recently, the Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CNBB) published a document which declares the Marxist-oriented liberation theology as not only timely but also “useful and consistent with the Gospel”.

If so, we might suggest that such ‘gospel’ is called ‘Das Kapital’ and has been written according to Karl Marx. For the role played by these Catholic priests and theologians very much resembles that of Father Gapon at the beginning of the Soviet Revolution.

In a few words, what these priests are doing is to gradually turn the religiosity of ignorant people away from real Christianity, as a Marxist strategy for the ultimate destruction in this country not only of the Catholic faith but also of democracy and the rule of law.

In a society which is overwhelming Catholic, both in culture and ‘spirit’, such infiltration in the Church constitutes a much serious menace for the already uncertain future of democracy in Brazil.

Augusto Zimmermann is a Brazilian Law Professor and PhD candidate for Monash University – Faculty of Law, in Australia. The topic of his research is the (un)rule of law and legal culture in Brazil. He holds a LL.B and a LL.M (Hons.) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and is a former Law Professor at the NPPG (Research and Post-graduation Law Department) of Bennett Methodist University, and Estácio de Sá University, in Rio de Janeiro. His email address is: augustozimmermann@hotmail.com.