(LifeSiteNews) — The Social Debt Observatory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina has updated the figures of the Argentine tragedy. According to the prestigious organization, 55.5 percent of the country’s inhabitants are poor and 17.5 percent are indigent. The country has been plunged into misery; some 24 million people are affected by this condition. The Argentinean people are suffering in their majority – and dramatically in the most indigent. I present two images of what they suffer: a cartonero walking several kilometers because the drop in consumption no longer leaves cartons which constitute that person’s livelihood, and a child rummaging through a mountain of garbage to rescue some usable leftover food.

What can the Church do? Through Caritas it provides emergency relief in soup kitchens and picnic areas. One necessary activity would be to prepare many young people by teaching them some trade: bricklayer, electrician, painter, which would allow them to get a job if the activity recovers, or at least do something part-time. In fact, I am told that there are no longer any skilled people for these tasks. When I was a student, there were many industrial colleges – as they were called – where people graduated with degrees in different specialties. At that time there was the concrete possibility of having a job. Today, however, one of the factors of the economic crisis is unemployment.

The current government has focused on macroeconomic problems, which does not imply alleviating the suffering of the population. In the field of education, the issue of secondary school repetition, which has been introduced in the province of Buenos Aires, is being discussed at the moment. Strictly speaking, what should be discussed is the “middle school” system that can only exhibit failures. This is a cultural problem of the utmost urgency.

The Church must offer answers in the integral sphere of culture as well as solutions to the educational crisis. In its history there are such answers that must be suitably updated. One example is the protagonism of the Salesians, and in other times, the formation of young people for the trades.

However, what is noticeable is the politicization of the ecclesiastical function. One major scandal was registered at the parish of the Holy Cross in the city of Buenos Aires. This parish, run by the Pallottines, was a pioneer of the leftist orientation in the 1970s. A horrible crime took place there as well, namely the murder of several members of the religious community. Now we see that this orientation has become the identity of the parish.

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On Sunday, June 9, the tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, a Mass turned into a political hoopla against President Javier Milei. This profanation had an idolatrous feature: a statue of the late Nora Cortiñas, of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, occupied a place in the presbytery, and the devotion of the faithful was directed to her. The Archbishop of Buenos Aires excused himself from intervening with the canonical sanctions corresponding to the sins committed, claiming that this parish is under the jurisdiction of the religious congregation. In reality, it is subject to the external order – the care of the sacraments and the orthodoxy of preaching and catechesis under the authority of the archbishop. The sin of scandal has also been committed, which has been highlighted by the media and on social networks. The situation is very serious.

Another scandal identifies the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge García Cuerva, as the protagonist. It is about a meal held inside the Metropolitan Cathedral. An enormous table was set up in the central nave where many people were seated as diners. It was an expressly prepared profanation of the sacred place, as if it were an idolatrous replica of the Eucharist. It sends the message that “there is no sacred place” and “there is no distinction between sacred and profane.”

This issue has been professed by progressive sectors for years. I can offer a case in which I myself intervened as a protagonist. At a plenary assembly of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, one bishop argued precisely for this indistinction of orders, i.e., there is no sacred place, no sphere distinct from the worldly order. I asked for the floor and argued that “if a caveman, at the origin of humanity, heard the sentence pronounced by this bishop, he would be scandalized, since men have always admitted the existence of a sacred realm, that of the gods. The denial of this sphere, separated from the world, is equivalent to the denial of God and of the religious order.”

Monsignor García Cuerva should clarify his position on these two situations as Archbishop of Buenos Aires: what happened in the parish of the Holy Cross and the meal in the Cathedral Church, the latter of which involves him personally.

These cases show the advance of progressivism in the Argentine Church. It is striking that the ecclesiastical authorities are not paying attention to the numerous critical voices complaining about deviations from the Catholic religion – and that they are affecting the reality of the Church, precisely at a time when the Supreme Pontiff is Argentinean. I suppose that the two cases I have mentioned are well known in Rome.

+ Héctor Aguer
Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata
Buenos Aires, Wednesday, June 12, 2024