SYMPATHETIC TO CHÁVEZ, A NEW CHURCH DRAWS FIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/americas/01venez.html?
_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[POSTER'S NOTE: The article refers that the break-away church takes
Msgr. Romero as inspiration; in general, the article poses the
perennial question of the proper relationship between faith and
political power.]

CABIMAS, Venezuela — From a makeshift chapel in a schoolhouse where a
portrait of President Hugo Chávez and revolutionary slogans from his
government adorn the entrance, the bishops of the new Reformed
Catholic Church of Venezuela welcomed congregants to Sunday Mass.

Missionary Bishop Simón Alvarado, 39, strummed a guitar and led the
small congregation in singing hymns. Bishop Coadjutor Jon Jen Siu-
García, 37, preached a sermon on assisting the poor while his wife,
Hiranioris Calles, 24, smiled at him from her seat on a white plastic
chair.

"The church of Rome is fearful that it could lose more priests like
us," Bishop Siu-García said. He is the son of immigrants, a Cantonese
father and Colombian mother, who settled in this gritty city on the
edge of Lake Maracaibo. "And it should be afraid, given its level of
scandal over internal abuses and hypocrisy in combating poverty."

The defection of a handful of priests and their formation of the
Reformed Catholic Church, a breakaway church openly sympathetic to
Mr. Chávez's government yet oddly allied with conservative Anglicans
from Texas, has raised the ire of Roman Catholic leaders in
Venezuela. Since its founding in June, the infant church has fueled a
fresh debate over the interplay of religion and politics in one of
Latin America's most secular nations.

"What they want to do is put an end to the Catholic Church, but they
have not succeeded," Archbishop Roberto Luckert, one of Mr. Chávez's
most strident critics in Venezuela's Roman Catholic hierarchy, said
in a radio broadcast denouncing the new church.

He was scathing in his criticism of the church. "They get dressed up
as priests, conduct baptisms and confirmations — all paid for by the
government — while the people go hungry," he said.

The leaders of the Reformed Catholic Church, however, say their new
church represents a fusion of the best of Anglican and Roman Catholic
traditions. And though they adamantly deny receiving financing from
Mr. Chávez's government and insist that their church has no political
affiliation, they do profess solidarity with Mr. Chávez, who has
repeatedly clashed with the Roman Catholic hierarchy since rising to
power a decade ago.

"I share the revolutionary project of President Chávez, since it is a
socialist and humanist project for the masses," said Enrique
Albornoz, a former Lutheran minister who is principal bishop, the top
leader, of the Reformed Catholic Church. The church says it has about
2,000 members in Cabimas and in other oil towns in Zulia, Venezuela's
most populous state.

At first glance, Zulia might seem an unlikely origin for such a
breakaway church, imbued as the new church is with liberation
theology, the school of thought that shook the Roman Catholic Church
in Latin America in the 1960s by advocating political activism to
bring justice to the poor.

Governed by an opposition leader who ran against Mr. Chávez for
president in 2006, the western state of Zulia remains a bastion of
conservative opposition to the central government. Many of its
residents are wary of redistributing wealth from the oil fields
around Lake Maracaibo to poorer parts of the country.

But Zulia itself is a study in contrasts. It is home not only to rich
cattlemen and oilmen but also to the places that actually produce the
oil, like Cabimas and other cities. In those precincts, grinding
poverty persists 10 years into Mr. Chávez's rule and, with it, a
fierce debate over social justice.

"Chávez is carrying out the work of God, and I hope our priests here
do the same," said Janeth Vicuña, 54, a housewife who attends the
services of the Reformed Catholic Church. "The old Catholic Church
claims to work on behalf of the needy, but what have they done for us
in all these centuries?"

That kind of challenge has periodically shaken Venezuelan politics
since the 19th century when the dictator Antonio Guzmán Blanco
confiscated much of the Roman Catholic Church's property and tried,
unsuccessfully, to create a national church independent of Rome.

Venezuela emerged from that conflict as one of Latin America's most
secular countries, along with Uruguay and, in past decades, Cuba
under Fidel Castro.

"This is yet another poke in the eye to the Venezuelan Catholic
Church," said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Catholicism in Latin
America at Virginia Commonwealth University.

But the Anglican Communion, with about 77 million members, has
refused to recognize the Reformed Catholic Church, despite its avowed
embrace of Anglican traditions.

Instead, the fledgling new church, in search of credibility, secured
the endorsement of a splinter group, the Conservative Anglican Church
of North America. The group, part of which operates from Texas,
disagrees with the liberalism of the mainstream Episcopal Church,
which approved an openly gay bishop in 2003.

"We do not extend the privilege of inclusion lightly," said A. Dale
Climie, a Conservative Anglican archbishop who is based outside
Houston. "The Roman Catholic authorities decided the best way to
belittle them is to claim some sort of link to Chávez."

The Reformed Catholic Church does not ordain female or openly gay
bishops or allow gay marriage. "But we are not homophobes, since our
services are open to anyone," Bishop Siu-García said.

While the bishop and his colleagues talk of expanding not only in
Venezuela but also to neighboring countries, Roman Catholic leaders
have stepped up their criticisms of the organization. Cardinal Jorge
Urosa, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Caracas, denounced it as "a
kind of chicken soup, a tossed salad, something that will not have
any internal coherence."

While the leaders of the Reformed Catholic Church praise Mr. Chávez's
antipoverty programs, they are hesitant to discuss why poverty
remains so common in Venezuela at a time of record oil prices. And
they merely smile when asked about Mr. Chávez's religious thinking,
like his assertion that Jesus was the first socialist.

"We never said we're the church of Chávez," Bishop Siu-García
said. "But we just happen to share many of the same ideas as our
president."

Bishop Alvarado, one of the Roman Catholic priests who formed the new
church, said a source of inspiration was Óscar Romero, a crusading
archbishop in El Salvador who was killed by a right-wing death squad
in 1980 after working to empower the poor during that country's civil
war.

Apparently the new church is liberating in more ways than one. In
June, after 10 years as a Roman Catholic priest, Bishop Alvarado
celebrated a church wedding with Astrid Torres, 23, his former
assistant, with whom he has an 11-month-old daughter. "I'd say that
50 percent of Catholic priests in Venezuela secretly have wives,"
Bishop Alvarado said.

He added, "It is our quest to free the poor from the yoke of others
while having a fulfilling life of our own."