Rather than repeat the success it had in Poland against the Communists, the Catholic Church in Cuba caves in again to Castro’s pressure: Onward Christian Cubans
To appreciate just how worried Raul Castro is about the staying power of the Cuban dictatorship, look no further than the silencing last month of the small Catholic magazine, Vitral, by a newly anointed Cuban bishop. There can be little doubt that in shutting down Vitral the Church has yielded to state pressure.
Catholics, working in dissident groups such as the Christian Liberation Movement led by Oswaldo Paya, are a clear and present danger to the regime and, despite a harsh crackdown on them since 2003, are showing no signs of retreat. The magazine is a symbol of this unyielding dissent and thus it has to go.
What is more troubling for Catholics, both inside and outside the country, is what the gag order says about the Church’s leadership, which has long been accused of preferring collaboration over confrontation with the dictatorship. Considering what happened in Poland, many had hoped the Church might lead the Cuban people to freedom. But now Catholics on the island are expressing a painful sense of betrayal. Whether out of fear of or sympathy with the regime, the Church seems to have capitulated.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady explains on video what the Cuban Catholic dissidents are fighting for.
“Conservative Credits” Press Release
Urban Infidel took pictures of the Salute to Israel Parade
Teaching for Social Justice, pdf file, via Larwyn,
For a sampling of the many guises social justice teaching takes, we can start with a little show and tell from the nation’s largest public school district.
The Katrina Monologues
On a Friday night in October, 2006 I attended a public meeting of a three-year old organization called the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). About 80 public school teachers from all grades were gathered at Kimball Hall on the NYU campus in Greenwich Village to discuss current approaches to social justice teaching. One of the central motifs of this discussion was how to subvert the official curriculum mandates of New York City’s Department of Education. NYCoRE’s official slogan — “The struggle for justice does not end when the school bell rings” – was displayed on the literature, posters and the T shirts available for sale at the meeting. Posted on the walls of the room were inspirational quotes by some of NYCoRE’s educational heroes, including Che Guevara and Marxist historian Howard Zinn. “It’s not possible to be neutral in the classroom,” proclaimed the quotation from Professor Zinn. “I as a teacher don’t want to collaborate with whatever is happening in the world. I want myself as a teacher and I want you as students to intercede in whatever is happening in the world.” Also distributed at the meeting was an iconic photograph from revolutionary Cuba’s mass literacy campaign, cited by one of the evening’s speakers as an exemplary progressive education program.
How Britain Encouraged Radicalism And Terrorism – Part One of Four
Today’s Blog Talk Radio podcast has been cancelled. Roger has a work emergency and I have to go to the dentist.
But listen to last week’s podcast with Judith, Mary, Noah and Ben – Judith has pictures
