Posted on 04/24/2005 1:23:57 PM PDT by JesseHousman
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger enforced the church's opposition to liberation theology in Latin America. That is prompting concern in the region now that he is Pope Benedict XVI.
priest in Brazil
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger enforced the church's opposition to liberation theology in Latin America. That is prompting concern in the region now that he is Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict XVI is provoking deep concern among local priests throughout Latin America because as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he cracked down on the Marxist-tinged liberation theology movement that emphasizes ministering to the poor as the church's top priority.
''There's a lot of pessimism out there,'' said the Rev. Jorge Alvarez-Calderón, a parish priest in the Lima shantytown of San Juan de Lurigancho.
With the support of Pope John Paul II, Ratzinger silenced one liberation theology priest for 11 months, called others to Rome to determine whether they had veered too far to the left and issued a 1984 instruction that criticized many of its principles.
''In the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s, many missionaries came to the conclusion that missionary work, that is, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was no longer appropriate today,'' Ratzinger told a group of bishops in 2002, according to London's The Guardian newspaper. ``They thought the only thing that still made sense was to offer help in social development. But how can positive social development be carried out if we become illiterate with regard to God? Gospel and social development go together.''
SOFTER VIEWS
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Pope John Paul II and Ratzinger seemed to soften their anti-liberation theology line.
Like Pope John Paul II, Ratzinger has spoken eloquently of the church's role in assisting the poor. In a 1986 trip to Lima, for example, he spoke movingly to a group of shantytown priests about a meeting earlier that day with a religious woman dying of cancer, said the Rev. Eugene Kirk, who still works in Lima.
But some liberation theology priests have run afoul of Ratzinger for working for leftist governments -- the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, for example -- for emphasizing working directly with the poor over ensuring adherence to the church's teachings, and for espousing Marxist views.
''It's obvious that liberation theology has not been a favorite of Ratzinger,'' said the Rev. Charles Curran, a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who was fired from the Catholic University of America by Ratzinger for Curran's ``repeated refusal to accept what the church teaches.''
The German-born Ratzinger enforced the church's traditional doctrine for 24 years under Pope John Paul II. That put him directly at odds with liberation theology, which got its voice in 1968 when Latin American bishops called for the church to have a ''preferential option for the poor'' and denounced ''institutionalized violence'' and other social ills.
Hundreds of nuns and priests moved their schools and health clinics from comfortable neighborhoods to big city slums.
Robert Singelyn, for example, moved from Detroit to a shantytown in Recife, Brazil, and exchanged his priest's cross and collar for the ordinary clothes and sandals worn by his parishioners.
''Liberation theology offers a biblical reflection on what's happening in people's lives,'' Singelyn said in a phone interview. ``It's not the teaching of ancient truths. God is a present reality.''
HOME IN BRAZIL
No Latin American country felt the sting greater than Brazil, the home of more Catholics than anywhere else in the world and where liberation theology flourished in response to widespread poverty and the military government's heavy-handedness in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The Vatican denied promotions to bishops who identified with the poor far more than following church doctrine, such as Helder Camara of Recife, said the Rev. José Oscar Beozzo, director of the Center for Evangelizing Services and Popular Education in So Paulo.
Beozzo added that the Vatican also relegated popular liberation theology bishops, such as Ivo Lorscheiter and Luciano de Almeida, both of whom were elected president of the Brazilian Bishops Conference, to remote dioceses for straying too far from the orthodox line.
''Ratzinger doesn't like our church,'' Beozzo said.
HARD LESSON
Leonardo Boff learned that lesson better than anyone else.
Boff was a Franciscan priest and leading proselytizer of liberation theology. He wrote 60 books that criticized the lack of democracy within the Vatican, its distance from the people and the use of big cars and palaces by bishops whom Boff described as ``appearing to the poor as if they are on the side of the oppressors.''
Ratzinger had championed Boff's work years earlier, but in 1984, he summoned the Brazilian priest to Rome for a four-hour meeting to discuss his book, Church, Charisma and Power.
A year later, Ratzinger ordered Boff not to discuss his work publicly for 11 months and removed him from the editorial board of Vozes, Brazil's Catholic magazine and publishing house.
Boff resigned as a cleric in 1992 and now teaches at a state university near Rio de Janeiro. ''In his interventions involving sexual morality, the role of women in the church and the situation of homosexuals, he has shown a hard line without compassion,'' Boff wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
LEADING AUTHOR
The Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, often called the intellectual author of the movement for his 1971 book, The Theology of Liberation, was also summoned to Rome, but he escaped any kind of punishment. So did the Universidad Centroamericana, a seminary in El Salvador that taught liberation theology.
''We were inspected like so many other seminaries,'' said Dean Brackley, a professor of theology and ethics there. ``But we received a clean bill of health.''
Brackley said he believes that even if Ratzinger wanted to clamp down on liberation theology, he would have trouble doing so because today it is less overtly political and more focused on empowering women, combating racial discrimination and attacking environmental racism.
The Rev. Kevin Burke, who teaches at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., said he thought Ratzinger might present a broader perspective now that he is Pope Benedict XVI.
''It's a different job,'' Burke said. ``The pope has a pastoral responsibility. I know people who know him, and they say he's a good man.''
Ah, good old liberation theology! The good Maryknoll priests, et al, sowing the seeds of communism South of the border.
Good! Shape up or ship out!
Amen.
Considering the fact that the new pope has openly condemned marxism (by name no less), its pretty clear he is hostile to marxism, its theories and ideology (he actually referred to it as an evil), so yea, he's going to want to cleanse the church of this bastardization of doctrine.
I wonder if the aforementioned Rev. Charles Curran is a Jesuit (or former Jesuit). I think he may have been the President of my college many years ago.
Jolly Good! I am happy any time when commies pretending to be priests shiver in their frocks. They day that this Marxist scource departs the Church will be a happy one, indeed.
so would the Church be in favour of a "liberation" theology that favoured Western style democracy as opposed to Marxism
or do they prefer that poor people stay poor, is that God's will or something
I also understand that criticism that it appears the higher echelons of the church are content to live in luxury whilst allowing many millions of their subjects to wallow, I don't think Jesus would approve at all, governments do this too but they don't have a "higher duty"
actually if you look at what Jesus says, I suspect he would be a non secular Marxist type,
I mean that bread and fishes trick, I could see how some priests got the notion for the liberation theology
Capitalism must be tempered by ethics, morality, and conscience.
Great! Let's hope B-XVI shakes the trees! Whatever falls out can just rot.
Liberation theology amounts to trading in your Christianity for Communism. It involves violence, hatred, revolution, and class warfare. There's a lot of injustice in Latin America, but Communism is not the best way to deal with it.
There is nothing quite like a German for discipline and good administration.
This is a quote about liberation theology from an interview with Cradinal Ratzinger in 1984:
"It is painful to be confronted with the illusion, so essentially un-Christian, which is present among some priests and theologians, that a new man and a new world can be created, not by calling each individual to conversion, but only by changing the social and economic structures. For it is precisly personal sin that is in reality at the root of unjust social structures. Those who really desire a more human society need to begin with the root, not the trunk and branches, of the tree of injustice."
I chose that quote only because it is in a book on my desk. There are many fine discussions and analyses of the topic in Benedict's writings on the subject.
Somebody please tell the Miami Herald to delve beneath the surface.
That's an oversimplification. The Church is also convinced of the urgent need of ministering to the poor. See Mother Teresa and the Daughters of Charity.
Liberation theology goes much further than that. The problem with liberation theology is that it de-emphasizes personal sin, the need for sanctifying grace, the goal of eternal salvation and reduces the Church's mission solely to that of a political movement. Furthermore, in true Marxist style, it advocates the overthrow of "unjust" social "structures" and regards the deprivation of worldly material goods as the ultimate sin.
In short, it takes a real Christian concern and focuses on it exclusively to the detriment of other aspects of the Christian mission while proposing a false solution.
"The Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, often called the intellectual author of the movement for his 1971 book, The Theology of Liberation, was also summoned to Rome, but he escaped any kind of punishment. So did the Universidad Centroamericana, a seminary in El Salvador that taught liberation theology. "
And another one of these clowns was Colimo Restrepo Torres who became the head of the ELN or National Liberation Army in Colombia. The ELN is a terrorist group that did/does kidnappings and murders. I learned about this joker in one of my university classes where they praise him to the skies. At a California Socialist University of course.
Hmmm! Preists who become communists or communists who become preists? I've often wondered!
Ken Lay has nothing to do with capitalism - that's the leftist spin. He's a good old fashioned snake oil salesman and influence peddler. Had he been willing to compete honestly in a capitalist marketplace, Enron wouldn't have collapsed. He tried to cheat, got caught, and destroyed his company.
"actually if you look at what Jesus says, I suspect he would be a non secular Marxist type,"
Couldn't have said it better myself. Ayn Rand pointed out a long time ago how Christianity and modern capitalism are incompatible. Give the poor my jacket and the shirt off my back? Yeah right, get a job you losers.
Then again, I guess back in Jesus's day everyone smelled like a homeless person ...
"Jolly Good! I am happy any time when commies pretending to be priests shiver in their frocks. They day that this Marxist scource departs the Church will be a happy one, indeed."
He should round up a possee for a 21st century Inquisition and blitz through the US and South America to weed out pedophile priests and communists in robes.
"The Church is also convinced of the urgent need of ministering to the poor."
The poor don't need "ministering," they need to take some personal responsibility. Blessed are the poor? I grew up poor and let me tell you there is nothing "blessed" about it. If heaven did exist, do you think Jesus will make all those "blessed" homeless take a shower before they stink up the place?
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