Guayaquil, Ecuador, Aug 16, 2008 / 13:00 pm
The Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Rodriguez, defended the right of the Church to speak out on issues that affect society, in a reference to the imminent referendum on the new Constitution for Ecuador.
During a press conference before his talk on “The laity in public life” at the American Missionary Congress in Quito, the cardinal said, “The Church has always had the right to speak her opinion,” as “no issue related to citizenship is foreign to her. She has done so even in more adverse circumstances in Ecuador and that is nothing new,” he said.
He went on by explaining that it is “an unjust simplification” to say that there the “left-wing priests are with the people and the right-wing ones are with the elites.”
“We must remember that our people have a faith foundation that cannot be distorted or reinterpreted. Theology has its own field and you cannot have theology with Marxist categories,” he explained.
The cardinal noted that many who followed this line of thought ended up “abandoning the path, and it has made me sad because some have been priests and friends I have known.”
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