Is This Rome Event Trying to Revive a Liberation Theologian?

Catholic News Agency ^ | 11/12/15

[marshmallow]

Rome, Italy, Nov 12, 2015 / 03:18 pm (CNA).- Spanish liberation theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino, whose works were censured by the Vatican nearly a decade ago, is slated to take part in an event this Saturday at Rome's Urbaniana University.

The gathering is aimed at republishing the "Catacombs Pact," a document signed after the Second Vatican Council by various future members of the Marxist school of thought. It was condemned in 1984 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed at that time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Fr. Sobrino, a Jesuit priest born in Spain in 1938, had his works censured by the congregation in 2007. After six years of analysis of his works - "Jesus the Liberator, A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth" and "Christ the Liberator - A View from the Victims" - the Vatican held them to be contrary to Catholic doctrine.

The Holy See warned at the time that in both works "various erroneous or dangerous propositions that can cause harm to the faithful" had been found.

That same year, theologian Donato Valentino on Vatican Radio also outlined Fr. Sobrino's problematic theological stance, particularly when it came to the divinity and incarnation of Christ.

Fr. Sobrino wrote that in the New Testament, the divinity of Jesus is only present in "seed form." He also suggested that there are two subjects in Christ.

"The result," Valentino warned at the time, "is it's not clear that the Son is Jesus and Jesus is the Son."

While the Vatican's 2007 statement recognized that Fr. Sobrino demonstrates in his works a concern for the poor, something shared "certainly by the entire Church" - it also said that "this option is not exclusive" and therefore "the Church cannot express herself through reductive sociological or ideological categories, that would..............

[ETL]

Liberation Theology and the KGB

Jay Richards | February 2, 2010

The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez's Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.

Marxist regimes obviously benefited from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.

A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In "The Church in Revolution," Chapman, "a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency," argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy's second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.

Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America-and the Vatican's struggles with it-and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn't establish its truth or falsity. Still, it's interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.

Unfortunately, this isn't just history. Chapman concludes ominously:

"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB's headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.

A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, "liberation theology is alive and well." The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/

************************************************************

More on Liberation Theology and the Soviets
Catholic News Agency ^ | 5/15/2015 | Alejandro Bermúdez

If the Soviet bloc wasn't the mother of liberation theology, it was certainly a sinister stepmother, enlisting Catholics in a geopolitical cause and inviting them to sell their souls for funding and support.

Only the naive can disregard the mountain of evidence connecting liberation theology with Soviet action in the region.

(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...

[ETL]

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama's pastor in a heated interview about his Church's teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090321190904/http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
__________________________________

Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090321190909/http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD

************************************************************

Re: James Cone, founder of "Black Liberation Theology":

SEAN HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.

HANNITY: But I'm a - reverend

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
______________________________________

The Black church and Marxism: what do they have to say to each other
by Cone, James H. 1938- . Harrington, Michael 1928-1989

https://archive.org/details/TheBlackChurchAndMarxismWhatDoTheyHaveToSayToEachOther

[ETL]

From Aug, 2014...

Pope Francis lifts 29-year suspension on Liberation Theology icon [Miguel D'Escoto Brockman]

By Josephine Mckenna | Religion News Service
August 4, 2014

VATICAN CITY — Continuing a bid to revive a movement that was sidelined by his predecessors, Pope Francis has reinstated a Central American priest who was suspended by the Vatican in the 1980s for his involvement in the political activities of Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista movement.

The Rev. Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, 81, was suspended from his duties by St. John Paul II and recently wrote to Francis asking for that order to be revoked so he could celebrate Mass again before he died.

D'Escoto and three other dissident priests were suspended in 1985 for defying a church ban on clergy holding government jobs. The Sandinistas, who supported the "popular church" of liberation theology, overthrew the pro-American regime of Anastasio Somoza in 1979. D'Escoto served as Nicaragua's foreign minister from 1979 to 1990.

(snip)

"During the 1970s, Father d'Escoto became engaged in politics in Nicaragua," the Maryknoll statement said. "He joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a political party that overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and established a revolutionary government."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/pope-francis-lifts-29-year-suspension-on-liberation-theology-icon/2014/08/04/9e1ed562-1c13-11e4-9b6c-12e30cbe86a3_story.html