Radical Marxist Priest Ernesto Cardenal to Speak at Xavier U: Catholic Students Ask Why

By William Stover

April 14, 2011

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An older Che Guevara? No. It's Fr. Ernesto Cardenal. (Photo: Roman Bonnefoy)

On April 16th, Xavier University in Cincinnati will welcome Father Ernesto Cardenal, a noted Liberation Theologian, Marxist politician and rebel against Papal authority. Father Cardenal will be reading poetry of his own composition, included a poem inspired by Darwin titled "The Origin of Species," in the campus Bellarmine Chapel.

The presentation is annouced here.

Besides his dissident theological opinions, Father Cardenal also worked closely with the avowedly Marxist and patently anti-Catholic Sandinista revolutionary movement in Nicaragua. His exploits, including the founding of a revolutionary commune, which was later converted into a communist guerilla force,¹ garnered the attention of the Sandinista leadership. After the successful revolution, he was appointed to the position of Minister of Culture in the newly-formed Sandinista regime.

The question remains: Why is this man being invited to a Catholic university?  What possible reason could there be?

Both Socialist & Catholic?
Impossible.

According to Xavier University, "his (Father Cardenal's) involvement with the Sandinista movement in his home country have informed his writing and political activism." Perhaps this is so, but the question arises: of what have they informed him? Clearly not of sound Catholic doctrine, since he has remained a staunch advocate of Socialism, which, according to Pope Pius XI, can never be reconciled with true Catholicism.²  Furthermore, Liberation Theology, which Fr. Cardenal embraces, has been repeatedly censured both by the Holy See,³ and also by then-Cardinal Ratzinger,⁴now Pope Benedict XVI.

Why then is this Socialist poet being heralded at a Catholic university? Xavier University would do well to recall the words of Pope Leo XIII: "The harvest of misery is before our eyes, and the dreadful projects of the most disastrous national upheavals are threatening us from the growing power of the socialistic movement."⁵  Xavier University must decide between Catholicism or Socialism, for "no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist."⁶

Register your peaceful protest today.  Contact:

Xavier University
Fr. Michael J. Graham, S.J., President
3800 Victory Parkway
Mail Location: 4511
Cincinnati, OH 45207
Phone: (513) 745-3502
Email:  graham@xavier.edu

Footnotes

1. Manzar Foroohar - The Catholic Church and social change in Nicaragua (1989) p. 170 [back]
2. Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, n. 120 [back]
3. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on certain aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation'",(September 13, 1984) and "Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation" (April 17, 1986) [back]
4.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Liberation Theology: Preliminary Notes" [back]
5. Encyclical Graves de Communi Re, January 18, 1901, n. 21 [back]
6. Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, n. 120 [back]