The Vatican and the Liberation Theology movement
have made peace.
After all the condemnations in the 80’s, the
exaggerations and misunderstandings, the Church has finally granted the
Theology of Liberation movement full citizenship.
This peaceful
handshake is being witnessed within the context of the new climate set
by the Catholic Church’s first Latin American Pope and the resumption of
the bishop and martyr Oscar Romero’s beatification process.
The reconciliation process actually began towards
the end of Benedict XVI’s pontificate.
Indeed, it was Benedict XVI who
chose German archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller as his second successor to
the leadership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Ratzinger knew Müller well.
The archbishop had spent many a holiday
going to work with Latin American campesinos and also cultivated an in-depth dialogue with Peruvian Dominican priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Liberation Theology movement’s most important and influential theologian.
They both signed a book published in Germany in
2004. But Müller was just a German bishop at the time, he was not yet
the “custodian” of Catholic Orthodoxy.
The fact that this book has now
been published in Italy and is due to be presented by the two authors at
the Festivaletteratura literature festival in the Italian city
of Mantua this coming Sunday, means Müller – who now heads the
Congregation which back in the 80’s condemned some of the Liberation
Theology movement’s excesses – still considers his contributions to be
fully valid and current.
The Italian edition is entitled “Dalla parte dei poveri. Teologia della liberazione, teologia della chiesa”( “Taking the Side of the Poor - Liberation Theology” co-published by Edizioni Messaggero Padova and Editrice Missionaria Italiana, pp.92, Euro 15).
So this is not something that just happened, it is
a carefully thought out move which aims or at least intends to put an
end to past theological conflicts. Gutiérrez’s work in the days
Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
were examined for a long time without ever being censored or condemned.
In actual fact the Holy See only condemned Marxist
strains of Liberation Theology, not the entire movement.
In one of the
essays published in the book, Müller himself describes the political and
geopolitical factors which over the years came to condition certain
accusations made against the Theology of Liberation Movement, at a time
when a certain strain of capitalism felt itself to have gained the final
victory.
Not to mention the secret document which Ratzinger’s successor
also mentions in the book; that is the document which the Committee of
Santa Fé prepared for President Ronald Reagan in 1980, four years before
the Vatican issued its first Instruction on the Liberation Theology movement.
The document requested
that the U.S. government take aggressive action against the movement,
which was accused of transforming the Catholic Church into “a political
weapon against private property and productive capitalism.”
With the arrival of the Pope “from the other side
of the world” who has never been keen on ideologies and the intellectual
approach taken by a certain Marxist-inspired theology, but who was used
to visiting Buenos Aires’ slums unaccompanied in his days as archbishop
and who now speaks of “a poor Church for the poor,” the reconciliation
between the Vatican and the Liberation Theology movement is complete.
Now that the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
has put his signature beside Fr. Gutiérrez’s, this reconciliation is
confirmed.
This shows that in the Church, speaking of the poor is not
pauperism and condemning the injustices suffered by the weak does not
make one a Marxist, it simply means being a Christian.