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CUBA-VALDES Nov-12-2004 (730 words) xxxi
Cuban dissident sees church role in shaping Cuba's future
By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Catholic Church needs to help Cubans form civic organizations independent of the government so that people can participate in shaping the future of their country, said a leading Cuban dissident.
The current Cuban society is in its "terminal phase" with a deteriorating economic and political situation, said Dagoberto Valdes Hernandez, director of the Center of Civic and Religious Formation of the Diocese of Pinar del Rio, Cuba.
The communist government of 78-year-old President Fidel Castro is ruling through authoritarian means rather than with policies and programs, he said.
"The church has to offer places for people to meet and animate them through preaching, through its social and charitable works, through education," he told Catholic News Service.
Valdes gave two talks in Washington during a Nov. 10-11 visit to receive an award from the American Center of Polish Culture for his promotion of human rights in Cuba.
Valdes is also editor of Vitral, a quarterly cultural magazine published by the Pinar del Rio Diocese. "Vitral" is the Spanish word for "stained-glass window."
Currently, church-state relations in Cuba are stable but need to be improved, he said.
Catholics are free to worship, but the church lacks the freedom to act out its faith in society, he said.
"The Catholic Church has been like manna in the desert" during Cuba's totalitarian era, giving people a nongovernmental place from which to examine national issues, especially human rights, he said.
This church role has to grow if civic organizations and institutions are to develop, he said. These civic organizations are vital if Cubans are to have a voice in the nation's future and define what democracy means in Cuba, he said.
More important than who will succeed Castro is the type of society that will emerge, he said. Castro has ruled Cuba since leading a 1959 revolt against dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The answer is not returning to the "old regime," he said. "We can't go back to the discredited political models before 1959 or to the models of traditional political parties. Otherwise, history will repeat itself."
Cubans need to invent a new style of party politics where "power is seen as a search for the common good and social justice," he said.
Valdes cautioned against automatically looking to electoral politics as the key to a future democracy. He said electoral politics are open to the corruption, nepotism and favoritism of previous Cuban elected governments.
He also cautioned against trying to build a future Cuban democracy by first improving the economy through free-market capitalism. This opens the door to the dangers of materialism where the well-being of the individual is not at the center of policy-making, he said.
A major problem facing Cubans now is that under Castro civil society -- civic groups financially and politically independent of the government -- were eliminated, said Valdes.
This means that the government has ruled directly over the lives of Cubans without intermediary social buffer organizations, he said.
"We have to work to weave a social fabric so that when power changes it doesn't fall again directly over the people," he said.
If there is to be real change in Cuba, "power has to move from the state to civil society," he said.
Developing a sense of sharing, participation and teamwork among citizens is crucial, he said.
"Otherwise, the children of the next political generation will ask daddy, the state, to give them everything; or, if this fails, ask mommy, the church, to give them everything," he said.
All Cuban churches must realize that they are part of society and work to develop civic organizations, he said.
Some church leaders do not believe this, claiming that the church is a supernatural organism, he said.
"The church is supernatural in terms of belief, but as a group it forms a part of society," Valdes said.
On Nov. 10 the American Center of Polish Culture presented Valdes with the Jan Karski Award for his "valor and compassion" in fighting for Cuban human rights.
Karski was a member of the Polish underground opposed to Nazi rule during World War II. He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto and a German concentration camp and later carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly unbelieving world.
Karski lived in the United States after the war and taught at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington. He died in 2000.
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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