Monday, June 11, 2007

Read Palabra Nueva

If you read Spanish, it’s well worth checking out a magazine that I have picked up for years in Havana: Palabra Nueva, the magazine of the Havana Archdiocese. It covers politics, culture, history, faith, and more. The current issue includes a piece on the construction of a Russian orthodox church on the Avenida del Puerto. It also includes an interesting essay on the social and economic problems that everyone agrees need to be fixed – and on the need to find a Cuban way to address them. The author, Orlando Marquez, reacts to those who drop in occasionally, instructing Cubans what they need to know and how they need to act, before they return to their hotels, their homes, and their Barcaloungers:

“In numerous meetings with people of various latitudes…not a few refer to the case of the Church in Poland, an example from which, they say, 'we should learn.' While I well understand their ignorance about the history of Cuba and its Church, I can only ask myself which electrode is loose in their head, blocking them from reasoning that Cuban is not Poland, and Cubans are not Poles.”

Alongside, I have added links to the magazine and to the website of the Cuban Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

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