218 Chapter 9
Church in Miramar in a weekly demonstration of public opposition.
Their routine has been to dress in white for mass and then walk the
avenues outside, eventually gathering in a nearby park while they pray
for the release of their husbands. Yet, no church officials have ever
participated in the processions of the Ladies in White. Fr. De la Vega
states what has become an oft repeated phrase by church officials to
those who would beckon the Cuban Catholic Church to use its institu-
tional autonomy to help organize dissident activities against the
Cuban government: “The church cannot be an alternative political
party in Cuba. The church is positioned between two camps—those
that live here and don’t accept the official ideology and the church in
exile, which says that we don't come out strongly enough against the
state. But they are there and we are here.”^12 The Cuban Catholic
Church has not worked to build any political organizations itself, and
it does not endorse the organizations that may be built by its faithful.
The association of the church with opposition groups remains sym-
bolic, even though these groups may be predominantly populated
with individuals bred from within the church’s temples. However, as
adamant as church leaders are about refusing to become political fig-
ures, they forcefully argue that the Catholic laity must themselves be
politically active. Church leaders feel they are endowed with a special
responsibility to help develop a politically conscious citizenry, a
responsibility that was neglected prior to the 1986 ENEC conference.
The Cuban Catholic Church does not aim to be the voice of the
opposition—but it does want to form and inform those who would
become that voice.
Formally and publicly, the Cuban Catholic Church strives to main-
tain a cordial relationship with the Cuban government. Describing the
nature of church-state relations, Mons. José Félix Pérez Riera, former
Adjunct Secretary of the COCC, used very dry, stark terms, never
flowering over the coldness that exists between the two entities:
“Relations are formal, in order, and they are functioning. They cover
administrative aspects, which may have to do with the restoration of- Fr. Fernando De la Vega, interview by author, Havana, Cuba, 2006.