I’ve written some posts on religion lately. One on faith, one on the fruitlessness of arguing about religion, one on science and God. Now we move over to intraparty fights. A priest and a torturer are both Christians, and they each have a reading of scripture. Who’s right? Alberto Manguel takes us to the scene:
In 1967, when I was in my fifth year of high school, a military coup took place in Argentina … What followed was a wave of human-rights abuses such as the country had never seen … Among the thousands kidnapped and tortured was a priest, Father Orland Virgilio Yorio. One day, Father Yorio’s interrogator told him that his reading of the Gospel was false. ‘You interpreted Christ’s doctrine in too literal a way,’ said the man. ‘Christ spoke of the poor , but when he spoke of the poor he spoke of the poor in spirit and you interpreted this in a literal way and went to live, literally, with poor people. In Argentina those who are poor in spirit are the rich and in the future you must spend your time helping the rich, who are those really in need of spiritual help.’
Before encountering the torturer’s gloss, I’d heard it before from American evangelicals, the sort of people who surround the rich and uncaring Donald Trump in the oval office and lay their approving hands on him. Is Donald Trump a Christian? He is if he says he is. Has he ever said he is?
source:
A History of Reading
by Alberto Manguel
1996. Penguin Books, New York
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