From wikipedia about Liberation Theology (excerpts)
（https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology）
・Liberation theology is an interpretation of Christian theology which emphasises a concern for the liberation of the oppressed.
・The best-known examples of liberation theology come from the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s among individuals such as Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay and Jon Sobrino of Spain, who would popularize the phrase the "preferential option for the poor". The Latin American context would also produce Evangelicals such as C. René Padilla of Ecuador, Samuel Escobar of Peru, and Orlando E. Costas of Puerto Rico in the 1970s, who called for integral mission, emphasizing both evangelism and social responsibility. A recent anthropological study describes how indigenous women and men mobilized via liberation theology to successfully impede a planned Panama Canal expansion project.
・Theologies of liberation have developed in other parts of the world such as Black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea.
Latin American liberation theology
・Latin American liberation theology met opposition in the United States, which accused it of using "Marxist concepts", and led to admonishment by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican rejected certain forms of Latin American liberation theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin; and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations from the arrival of Pizarro onward.
History
・A major player in the formation of liberation theology was the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM). Created in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, CELAM pushed the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) toward a more socially oriented stance. However, CELAM never supported liberation theology as such, since liberation theology was frowned upon by the Vatican, with Pope Paul VI trying to slow the movement after the Second Vatican Council.
・More or less at the same time as the initial publications of Latin American liberation theology we also find voices of Black liberation theology and feminist liberation theology as well.
・Thus, the 1979 Puebla Conference was an opportunity for orthodox bishops to reassert control of the radical elements, but they failed. At the Puebla Conference, the orthodox reorientation was met by strong opposition from the liberal part of the clergy, which supported the concept of a "preferential option for the poor." This concept had been approved at the Medellín conference by Ricard Durand, president of the Commission about Poverty.
・Pope John Paul II gave the opening speech at the Puebla Conference. The general tone of his remarks was conciliatory. He criticized radical liberation theology, saying, "this idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive of Nazareth, does not tally with the Church's catechesis"; however, he did speak of "the ever increasing wealth of the rich at the expense of the ever increasing poverty of the poor," and affirmed both the principle of private property and that the Church "must preach, educate individuals and collectivities, form public opinion, and offer orientations to the leaders of the peoples" towards the goal of a "more just and equitable distribution of goods".
Theology
・Liberation theology could be interpreted as an attempt to return to the gospel of the early church where Christianity is politically and culturally decentralized.
・Liberation theology proposes to fight poverty by addressing its alleged source, sin. In so doing, it explores the relationship between Christian theology (especially Roman Catholic) and political activism, especially in relation to social justice, poverty, and human rights. The principal methodological innovation is seeing theology from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. For example, Jon Sobrino argues that the poor are a privileged channel of God's grace.
・Some liberation theologians base their social action upon the Bible scriptures describing the mission of Jesus Christ, as bringing a sword (social unrest), e.g., Isaiah 61:1, Matthew 10:34, Luke 22:35–38 — and not as bringing peace (social order). This biblical interpretation is a call to action against poverty, and the sin engendering it, to effect Jesus Christ's mission of justice in this world.
・Gustavo Gutiérrez gave the movement its name with his book A Theology of Liberation (1971). In this book, Gutiérrez combined populist ideas with the social teachings of the Catholic Church. He was influenced by an existing socialist current in the Church which included organizations such as the Catholic Worker Movement and the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, a Belgian Christian youth worker organization. He was also influenced by Paul Gauthier's The Poor, Jesus and the Church (1965).
・Gutiérrez also popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor", which became a slogan of liberation theology and later appeared in addresses of the Pope. Drawing from the biblical motif on the poor, Gutiérrez asserts that God is revealed as having a preference for those people who are “insignificant", "marginalized", “unimportant", "needy", "despised", and "defenseless". Moreover, he makes clear that terminology of "the poor" in scripture has social and economic connotations that etymologically go back to the Greek word, ptōchos. To be sure, as to not misinterpret Gutiérrez’s definition of the term "preferential option", he stresses, "Preference implies the universality of God’s love, which excludes no one. It is only within the framework of this universality that we can understand the preference, that is, 'what comes first'."
・Gutiérrez emphasized practice (or, more technically, "praxis") over doctrine. Gutiérrez clarified his position by advocating a circular relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis seeing the two as having a symbiotic relationship. Gutierrez' reading of prophets condemning oppression and injustice against the poor (i.e., Jeremiah 22:13–17) informs his assertion that to know God (orthodoxy) is to do justice (orthopraxis). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), however, criticized liberation theology for elevating orthopraxis to the level of orthodoxy.
Another important hallmark for Gutiérrez's brand of liberation theology is an interpretation of revelation as "history". For example, Gutiérrez wrote:
History is the scene of the revelation God makes of the mystery of his person. His word reaches us in the measure of our involvement in the evolution of history.
Gutiérrez also considered the Church to be the "sacrament of history", an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, thus pointing to the doctrine of universal salvation as the true means to eternal life, and assigning the Church itself to a somewhat temporal role, namely, liberation.
Practice
One of the most radical aspects of liberation theology was the social organization, or reorganization, of church practice through the model of Christian base communities. Liberation theology strove to be a bottom-up movement in practice, with biblical interpretation and liturgical practice designed by lay practitioners themselves, rather than by the orthodox Church hierarchy. In this context, sacred text interpretation is understood as "praxis". Liberation theology seeks to interpret the actions of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the poor and disadvantaged. By approaching theology "from the perspective of the poor", Liberation Theologians believe that they can turn the poor who are "the object of church teaching to the subject of church action" (Edward Russell). In Latin America, liberation theologians specifically target the severe disparities between rich and poor in the existing social and economic orders within the nations' political and corporate structures. It is a strong critique of the various economic and social structures, such as an oppressive government, dependence upon First World countries and the traditional hierarchical Church, that allow some to be extremely rich while others are unable to even have safe drinking water.
Vatican reaction
Joseph Ratzinger
In March 1983, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), made ten observations of Gustavo Gutiérrez's theology, accusing Gutiérrez of politically interpreting the Bible in supporting temporal messianism, and stating that the predominance of orthopraxis over orthodoxy in his thought proved a Marxist influence. Ratzinger objected that the spiritual concept of the Church as "People of God" is transformed into a "Marxist myth". In liberation theology he declared, the "'people' is the antithesis of the hierarchy, the antithesis of all institutions, which are seen as oppressive powers. Ultimately anyone who participates in the class struggle is a member of the 'people'; the 'Church of the people' becomes the antagonist of the hierarchical Church."
Ratzinger did praise liberation theology in some respects, including its ideal of justice, its rejection of violence, and its stress on "the responsibility which Christians necessarily bear for the poor and oppressed". He subsequently stated that no one could be neutral in the face of injustice, and referred to the "crimes" of colonialism and the "scandal" of the arms race. Nonetheless, media reports tended to assume that the condemnation of "liberation theology" meant a rejection of such attitudes and an endorsement of conservative politics.
In 1984, it was reported that a meeting occurred between the CDF and the CELAM bishops, during which a rift developed between Ratzinger and some of the bishops, with Ratzinger issuing official condemnations of certain elements of liberation theology. These "Instructions" rejected as Marxist the idea that class struggle is fundamental to history, and rejected the interpretation of religious phenomena such as the Exodus and the Eucharist in exclusively political terms. Ratzinger further stated that liberation theology had a major flaw in that it attempted to apply Christ's sermon on the mount teachings about the poor to present social situations. He asserted that Christ's teaching on the poor meant that we will be judged when we die, with particular attention to how we personally have treated the poor.
Ratzinger also argued that liberation theology is not originally a "grass-roots" movement among the poor, but rather, a creation of Western intellectuals: "an attempt to test, in a concrete scenario, ideologies that have been invented in the laboratory by European theologians" and in a certain sense itself a form of "cultural imperialism". Ratzinger saw this as a reaction to the demise or near-demise of the "Marxist myth" in the West.
Throughout the 1990s, Ratzinger, as prefect of the CDF, continued to condemn these elements in liberation theology, and prohibited dissident priests from teaching such doctrines in the Catholic Church's name. Leonardo Boff was suspended and others were censured. Tissa Balasuriya, in Sri Lanka, was excommunicated. Sebastian Kappen, an Indian theologian, was also censured for his book Jesus and Freedom. Under Ratzinger's influence, theological formation schools were forbidden from using the Catholic Church's organization and grounds to teach liberation theology in the sense of theology using unacceptable Marxist ideas, not in the broader sense.
Towards reconciliation under Pope Francis
According to Roberto Bosca, a historian at Austral University in Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio (later Pope Francis) had "a reputation as an opponent of liberation theology during the 1970s" but he "accepted the premise of liberation theology, especially the option for the poor, but in a 'nonideological' fashion." Before becoming Pope, Bergoglio said, "The option for the poor comes from the first centuries of Christianity. It's the Gospel itself. If you were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the Church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyist. The Church has always had the honor of this preferential option for the poor...At the Second Vatican Council the Church was redefined as the People of God and this idea really took off at the Second Conference of the Latin-American bishops in Medellín." Bosca said Bergoglio was not opposed to liberation theology itself but to "giving a Catholic blessing to armed insurgency", specifically the Montoneros, who claimed liberation theology as part of their political ideology. Blase Bonpane, a former Maryknoll father and founding director of the Office of the Americas, said "The new pope has not been comfortable with liberation theology."
On September 11, 2013, Pope Francis hosted Gutiérrez in his residence, leading some to comment that this was a sign of warming relations between the hierarchy and liberation theologians. The same month, L'Osservatore Romano published an article praising Gutiérrez by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Müller. On January 18, 2014, Pope Francis met with Arturo Paoli, an Italian priest whom the Pope knew from Paoli's long service in Argentina. Paoli is recognized as an exponent of liberation theology avant la lettre and the meeting was seen as a sign of "reconciliation" between the Vatican and the liberationists.
Miguel d'Escoto, a Maryknoll priest from Nicaragua, had been sanctioned with an a divinis suspension from his public functions in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, for political activity in the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Pope Francis lifted the suspension in August 2014, in response to a request by d'Escoto.
At a 2015 press conference in the Vatican hosted by Caritas International, the federation of Catholic relief agencies, Gutiérrez noted that while there had been some difficult moments in the past dialogue with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, liberation theology had never been condemned. Although he saw an increasingly clear emphasis on Church teachings on the poor, he did not consider that liberation theology was undergoing a rehabilitation, since it had never been "dishabilitated".
Accusations
Communist era general of Romania's secret police, Ion Mihai Pacepa, claims that KGB created liberation theology. Commentators have suspected these claims are exaggerated.
Palestinian liberation theology
Palestinian liberation theology is an expression of political theology and a contextual theology that represents an attempt by a number of independently working Palestinian theologians from various denominations—mostly Protestant mainline churches—to articulate the gospel message in such a way as to make that liberating gospel relevant to the perceived needs of their indigenous flocks. As a rule, this articulation involves a condemnation of the State of Israel, a theological underpinning of Palestinian resistance to Israel as well as Palestinian national aspirations, and an intense valorisation of Palestinian ethnic and cultural identity as guarantors of a truer grasp of the gospel by virtue of the fact that they are the indigenous inhabitants of the land of Jesus and the Bible. The principal figure in Palestinian liberation theology is the Anglican cleric Naim Ateek, founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
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