From CNA

Caracas, Oct 26, 2007 / 10:41 am (CNA).- The vice president of the Bishops’ Conference of Venezuela, Archbishop Roberto Luckert, has called on the leader of the National Assembly, Cilia Flores, to clarify what the definition of the State and the government is according to Chavez’s proposed constitutional reform. If the two concepts are confused, the archbishop said, “then we are dealing with a Caribbean version of the French sun king (Louis XIV), in which the State was the king. Likewise, in this reform it would seem the State is Hugo Chavez.”

Archbishop Luckert said the Chavez reforms would make Venezuela a Socialist state, in contrast to the federal and democratic state established by the previous constitution. He warned that the model for this new state is Cuba, but he said Venezuelans would not allow themselves “to be trampled like Cuba was, because they came out of the Batista dictatorship only to fall into Fidel’s. We still have a little bit of freedom to discern, to choose a different Venezuela because we do want a different one, but one that is under democracy and not repression,” he said.

The archbishop said Venezuelans should learn from the example of Cuba, which he called “a failed island” which young people seek to escape from, “because they are not happy with that system and the repressive oppression of that nation.”

The Catholics in Venezuela have been increasingly targeted by Chavez’s regime with one archbishop warning that Chavez’s regime will cause a civil war in future as the people becoming increasingly oppressed:

Konigstein, Sep 4, 2007 / 10:49 am (CNA).- The Venezuelan government is increasingly interfering with Catholic education, leading to divisions across the country and possibly paving the road for a civil war.

A Catholic priest and headmaster of a Catholic school in Venezuela has expressed his fear that the government will confiscate Church schools and health facilities as part of its nationalization program of the education and health systems.

He also cited that his activity in the school is increasingly threatened. The state has increasingly been exerting influence on the subject matter of the teaching, he alleged, adding that the schools were now compelled to use state-approved teaching materials and indoctrination was constantly on the increase.

Just as prolific, are deliberate campaigns to denigrate the Catholic Church in the public mind. The government has continued to vilify and attack the Church in the person of her representatives, the bishops and priests, the priest told the international Catholic pastoral charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The state was adopting an “increasingly aggressive tone,” he said, and there was a “dramatically deepening gulf between the Church and the government.”

According to him, the divisions in Venezuelan society between opponents and supporters of the policies of President Hugo Chavez have never been as profound as they are today. A division in society is never good, he said, but if such a situation were to grow worse, and people were to become too impatient, it could even degenerate into a civil war, he explained. But even without such an extreme outcome, he still believes that difficult times are coming to Venezuela and to the Catholic Church in this country.

The Church has been targeted because of their official position of opposing totalitarianism and Marxism. A brave position to take, but as Chavez’s neo-Communist economic policies take their inevitable toll the government will be looking for enemies to distract people from how quickly the tin pot dictator is running their country into the ground.

The Catholics don’t need more enemies, the Church in Iraq is under siege, Catholics and other Christians continue to be terrorized by Muslims in Gaza and Christians in Egypt have said their religious freedom is being withheld from them.

Some good news for my Catholic friends though, three Irish Anglican Churches have petitioned to join the Holy See. Seems they are fed up with the liberal politics passed off as theology in much of European protestantism.

If only they’d become Americans, we could really get excited.