What's "Liberation Theology" anyway?

[4_Legs_Good]

I keep hearing about it all the time.

david

[Matilda]

1. It referred to grass-roots participation of priests in Latin America

in the day-to-day struggle of the peasants to survive their
exploitation by landowners and corrupt politicians.

In the 50s and 60s especially, Liberation Theology became very
strong, and particularly involved the Jesuits, who followed the
call of their Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, to become involved in
the struggle for social justice. They formed farming co-operatives,
and encouraged the people to fight for the rights, very often
joining them in sometimes armed struggle. In many places, the
priests joined with humanist and socialist movements, even local
Marxist groups to further the cause of the peasants against their
right-wing repressive governments, often risking, and sometimes
losing their lives in the process. In Nicaragua, one priest was
even a member of the Sandinista Government when it came to power.

John XXIII and Paul VI had no problem with the movement, but JPII
was totally against it, and gradually managed to stamp it out.

I'm sure there's lots I don't know, but that's a kind of thumbnail
sketch.

[Princess Turandot]

2. I would imagine that the Marxist aspect of it..

which I had the impression was more than just sporadic involvement, would have hit too close to home for JPII to want anything to do with it.

[Matilda]

3. Yes, it was the Marxist element that most bothered him.

I found it more worrying that a priest should be part of a
government - I do believe in separation of church and state,
and while I'm comfortable with priests working to change a
bad government, they should never be part of one, whatever
it's philosophy.

I don't really think alliance with Marxists is as bad as alliances
with right-wing fascists, but John Paul seemed to be quite
comfortable with dictatorships as long as they didn't interfere
with the Church. Because as we've seen, that was the end result
in places like Nicaragua, and JP never had a word of complaint.

[Princess Turandot]

5. Was it wrong for him to be opposed to the

Communist governments of Eastern Europe, whose roots grew out of Marxism?

He seemed to me to be concerned about a number of people whom I sincerely doubt he was hoping to convert to Catholicism, such as the various citizens of the Middle East. And since Catholics do not subscribe to the'Rapture', I doubt that was to keep the Holy Land safe for the second coming.

[hedgehog]

4. I thought it was stamped out in the 80's.

Reagan's government was dead set against it and labeled all involved as communists. I know John Paul II wouldn't even meet with Oscar Romero. I've wondered if some people took that snub as a sign that there would be no repercussions from the Vatican when Romero was murdered. Now I'm wondering who was involved in snubbing Romero. Did John Paul even know he was there? What's really puzzled me is that apparently some (many?) of the Latin American Cardinals are advocates of Liberation Theology. Does anyone have better information on these topics?

[Matilda]

6. I guess to Raygun anyone to the left of Atila the Hun was a communist.

A Google search threw up quite a bit of info, but here's a good
site - the intro sums it up in a nutshell, but there's heaps more
information going into greater detail below:

http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/liberati.htm

Much more complex than I imagined, and very interesting.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. It says that the church must stand up for the poor, kind of like this:

"Injustice reigns when, within the same society, some groups hold most of the wealth and power, while large strata of the population cannot decently provide for the livelihood of their families, even through long hours of back-breaking labor in factories or in the fields. Injustice reigns when the laws of economic growth and ever greater profit determine social relations, leaving in poverty and destitution those who have only the work of their hands to offer."

"Being aware of such situations, the church will not hesitate to take up the cause of the poor, and to become the voice of those who are not listened to when they speak up, not to demand charity, but to ask for justice. . . Because the land is a gift of God for the benefit of all, it is not admissible to use this gift in such a manner that the benefits it produces serve only a limited number of people, while the others -- the vast majority -- are excluded from the benefits which the land yields."

"The landowners and the planters should therefore not let themselves be guided in the first place by the economic laws of growth and gain, nor by the demands of competition or the selfish accumulation of goods, but by the demands of justice and by the moral imperative of contributing to a decent standard of living and to working conditions which make it possible for the workers and for the rural society to live a life that is truly human and to see all their fundamental rights respected."



Pope John Paul II, "To the People of the Sugar Plantations," Bacolod, Negros, Republic of the Philippines, 1981


The owners of the sugar plantations were really angry with John Paul's words -- they had expected support for their feudal management methods.

[struggle4progress]

8. Read Gustavo Gutierrez for the basic ideas, carefully nuanced.

Throughout the 1980s, Maryknoll did a good job of publishing material related to the preferential option for the poor.