Posted on 05/08/2015 12:34:46 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
It used to be that just saying the words “liberation theology” around Catholics was enough to start a schism-level fight, or at least raise a red flag in Rome. The theological movement that focused on the poor emerged out of the church’s social justice ferment in the 1960s, but it was always viewed by conservatives as an irredeemably Marxist version of the gospel.
Worse, they said it was a tool of Soviet communists who were using the Roman Catholic Church to foment revolution in Latin America and beyond, and at the very height of the Cold War. The 1978 election of John Paul II, a Polish pope from behind the Iron Curtain who knew the Soviet menace all too well, followed by the election of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president in 1980, marked a turning point in the battle.
Reagan and John Paul helped spell doom for the Soviet empire, and the pontiff waged a decades-long campaign inside the church—helped by his doctrinal chief, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI—to quash liberation theology and silence its most ardent supporters.
Today, however, it’s a wholly different story—and to listen to Father Gustavo Gutierrez, the Dominican priest from Peru who is known as the father of liberation theology, one might wonder what all the fuss was about.
(Excerpt) Read more at uscatholic.org ...
If it looks like a Marxist and talks like a Marxist...
Bkmrk.
I agree. There are two cites from conservatives, one is a serious, legitimate question, one is a serious challenge of the origins of his theology. In both cases he is dismissive and ridiculing. I am struggling to remember exactly, but it seems like there is a book out there somewhere that advocates making fun of your political opponents...hmmmmmm, I just can’t remember who wrote it....
I have no problem with a poor church, but I find the idea of a poor church for the poor to be abhorrent. I don’t like a white church for whites, or a black church for blacks or any kind of identifying of the Body of Christ into specific groups. Besides, the rich have a tough enough time entering as it is, and need all the help they can get.
Agree. Gutierrez and co. are interpreting the Gospels through the lens of current economic, social and political conditions at the expense of Revealed Truth and in essence, are transforming "the poor" into little golden calves.
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