We knew that the hurricane had caused a great deal of damage, and currently, Catholic Relief Services and Caritas are both collecting funds for the clean-up in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the dictator Fidel Castro has once again refused aid from the United States and Europe, spewing his usual diatribe of stupidity and abuses against humanity.
My uncle, Emilio Aranguren, is the bishop in the Archdiocese of Cienfuegos.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented and personally dangerous interview through Radio Paz (a division of Paxnet out of the Archdiocese of Miami - check it out sometime) made a personal appeal for aid on behalf of the suffering people in his diocese, people with whom he has a personal relationship, as the clergy in Cuba must act truly as shepherds at all times.
The situation he describes is dramatic -- homes have no roofs, crumbling walls have fallen, killing people, government crops are ruined, and more tragically, what little gardens were kept to supplement an already depleted food store are also ruined. In the next few days, I would expect the effects of poor hygiene and contaminated water to dramatically increase the effects of injuries, leading perhaps to more deaths.
The medical situation is bleaker still, as Cuba is always in a chronic state of poor medical resources. There are simply no medicines, no resources with which to treat the symptoms that are surely arising as I write. Something as simple as pedialyte here, which we take for granted, is unheard of there. A need for anitbiotics will surely arise as well.
She could be exagerating the situation. Then again she might not be. I guess this thing called Communism just never got the kinks worked out of it.
Once upon a time Bishop Fulton J. Sheen used to give talks on Communism. He once said that Marx was proven false long ago. The main fact that religion still exists in Cuba, and did in Russia, Poland and elsewhere is evidence of that.
You see Marx claimed that religion was merely a product of a Capitalist society based on private property. If private property was eliminated, or so Marx's theory went, then religion would disappear.
Communism eliminated private property in Russia. So Bishop Sheen looked at Russia, and saw that there was burgeoning christian underground. Hence his conclusion that Marx was full of something else.
Events in Poland over the last century proved Bishop Fulton J. Sheen right.
Sometimes I think the eventual collapse, if ever, of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, may come about with some help from a higher power.
Tip o' the hat to Relapsed Catholic.
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