Pope Francis: ‘Liberation Theology Was Good for Latin America’
by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.Jan 27, 2017
In a controversial interview, Pope Francis has publicly defended Liberation Theology, calling it a “positive thing” in Latin America.
In his lengthy interview last week with the leftist Spanish daily El País, the Pope said that “Liberation Theology was a good thing for Latin America,” but also recognized that it had “deviations” that needed to be corrected.
The part of Liberation Theology that “opted for a Marxist analysis of reality was condemned by the Vatican,” Francis said.
“Cardinal Ratzinger issued two instructions when he was Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith,” he continued. “One very clear one about the Marxist analysis of reality, and the second picked up positive aspects.”
“Liberation Theology had positive aspects and also had deviations, especially in the part of the Marxist analysis of reality,” he said.
The two Vatican documents cited by the pontiff were Libertatis Nuntius, issued in 1984, and Libertatis Conscientia, released just two years later, in 1986.
Libertatis Nuntius addressed “developments of that current of thought which, under the name ‘theology of liberation,’ proposes a novel interpretation of both the content of faith and of Christian existence which seriously departs from the faith of the Church and, in fact, actually constitutes a practical negation.”
“Concepts uncritically borrowed from Marxist ideology and recourse to theses of a biblical hermeneutic marked by rationalism are at the basis of the new interpretation which is corrupting whatever was authentic in the generous initial commitment on behalf of the poor,” the instruction continues.
The document also noted that in “certain parts of Latin America,” the recognition of injustice “is accompanied by a pathos which borrows its language from Marxism, wrongly presented as though it were scientific language.”
The letter also said that certain Christians, despairing of every other method, turned to a Marxist analysis, “especially in Latin America.”
The 1986 text was issued as a complement to the first one, and sought to “highlight the main elements of the Christian doctrine on freedom and liberation” as a corrective to the errors of Liberation Theology brought out by the prior instruction.
In a striking revelation in 2015, the highest ranking Cold War defector asserted that the KGB had created Liberation Theology, exporting it to Latin America as a means of introducing Marxism into the continent.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector.” During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what the agency described as “an important and unique contribution to the United States.”
He is reported in fact to have given the CIA “the best intelligence ever obtained on communist intelligence networks and internal security services.”
“Liberation theology has been generally understood to be a marriage of Marxism and Christianity. What has not been understood is that it was not the product of Christians who pursued Communism, but of Communists who pursued Christians,” Pacepa said.
In his role as doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger referred to Liberation Theology as a “singular heresy” and a “fundamental threat” to the Church.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/01/27/pope-francis-liberation-theology-good-latin-america/
____________________________________________
Liberation Theology Activist: Pope Francis Is One of Us
by Stefan FarrarDecember 27, 2016
BERLIN (ChurchMilitant.com) - The main figurehead of liberation theology in the 1980s is praising Pope Francis, and criticizing the signatories of the recently sent dubia.
Leonardo Boff, a main proponent for liberation theology in Brazil throughout his life, gave an interview to the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in Berlin, which was published on Christmas.
Boff entered the Franciscan order in 1959 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1964, where he became a controversial figure with his prominent advocacy of left-wing causes. During his priesthood, he became a vocal critic of capitalism and a strong proponent of liberation theology.
Liberation theology is a religious movement that offers a Marxist understanding of poverty and oppression, and which had its start in South America in the 1960s. One KGB defector who later converted to Catholicism claimed it was a movement created by the KGB and spread by willing South American bishops. ...”
Lots more at link...
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/liberation-theology-activist-pope-francis-is-one-of-us
_______________________________________________________
Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.comMonday, 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.
______________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile:
LIBERATION THEOLOGY
“...liberation theology’s real creator was the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence and domestic security agency, the KGB.Patriarch Kirill, who today heads Russian Orthodox Church, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent some 40 years promoting liberation theology.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet-bloc official ever to defect to the West, writes: “Liberation theology has been generally understood to be a marriage of Marxism and Christianity.
What has not been understood is that it was not the product of Christians who pursued Communism, but of Communists who pursued Christians....
Its genesis was part of a highly classified Party/State Disinformation Program, formally approved in 1960 by KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and Politburo member Aleksei Kirichenko, then the second in the party hierarchy after Nikita Khrushchev.”
Adds Pacepa: “In 1971, the KGB sent Kirill — who had just been elevated to the rank of archimandrite — to Geneva as emissary of the Russian Orthodox Church to the World Council of Churches.... Kirill/Mikhailov’s main task was to involve the WCC in spreading the new liberation theology throughout Latin America.
In 1975, the KGB was able to infiltrate Kirill into the Central Committee of the WCC — a position he held until he was “elected” patriarch of Russia, in 2009.
Not long after he joined the Central Committee, Kirill reported to the KGB: ‘Now the agenda of the WCC [World Council of Churches] is also our agenda.’”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=2990
____________________________________________
August, 2006
North Korea Builds an Orthodox Church
The first-ever Russian Orthodox church will open in Pyongyang, North Korea this weekend.It’s an odd project considering that freedom of religion exists almost exclusively on paper in the closed communist country.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il is supposed to be a communist atheist.
So why has he made promoting the Russia Orthodox Church his latest pet project?
On August 13, the country’s first Orthodox church is to be opened in the capital city of Pyongyang.
Russian Metropolitan Bishop Kyrill, second in command within the Church after the Patriarch, will travel to Pyongyang to christen the new house of worship. ...”
_______________________________________________________
The Russian Orthodox Church is a member of the (communist) World Council of Churches
https://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/russian-orthodox-church____________________________________
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (WCC)
- Long-time proponent of Liberation Theology
- Infiltrated by the KGB during the Cold War
- Funded Marxist insurgent groups throughout the world
- Calls for capitalism’s “reform” according to socialist principles
[lots more at link...]
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7514