This is a continuation of the previous blogs (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20170703)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20170704)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20170706)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20170708). They are excerpts. (Lily)
The Vatican Confronts Liberation Theology
More directly threatening to Latin American liberation theologians was a series of investigations and public statements (“Instructions”) by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Leonardo Boff had already been subject to two investigations of his orthodoxy, in 1976 and again in 1980; but during the 1970s the Vatican was usually content to leave the matter to the Latin Americans. When Joseph Ratzinger, former Archbishop of Munich and a widely-published theologian, took over as prefect of the Congregation, the Vatican began to take a greater interest in the subject.
Boff himself initiated action on his writings in 1982 when he sent the Congregation his reply to an investigation of his book Church: Charism and Power by the archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro, headed by the conservative Cardinal Eugenio Sales. Two years later (the Vatican moves slowly) Cardinal Ratzinger sent Boff a letter criticizing his “ecclesiological relativism” and his “sociological” analysis of the church as an institution engaged in production and consumption. When Ratzinger summoned Boff to Rome for a “conversation” on the subject, the Brazilian Basic Communities rallied to his defense and were reported to have sent 50,000 letters of support to Rome. Boff arrived in Rome in September 1984, accompanied by two fellow Franciscans, Cardinals Lorscheiter and Arns. In April 1985 it was announced that his religious superiors had been requested to impose “obsequious silence for a convenient time” on the friar — meaning that he could not publish, preach, or give interviews. But he did not retract his views. Less than a year later, the sentence was lifted. Boff continues to function as before: writing, teaching, and editing an important Brazilian theological journal.
In April 1983, Ratzinger also sent the Peruvian hierarchy a list of “observations” on the writings of Gustavo Gutierrez. The Peruvians were divided on whether to take action against Gutierrez. In response to the Vatican criticism, Gutierrez produced an article entitled “Theology and the Social Sciences,” in which he denied favoring a synthesis of Marxism and Christianity, cited church documents on the existence of class conflict in Latin America, and argued that liberation theology’s attempt to make use of the social sciences was only in its initial stages. Gutierrez also cited passages from his original writings critical of “historical socialism,” quoted his favorable reference to the Prague reforms of 1968, and argued that it was not up to theology to propose specific political solutions. Although the Vatican pressed on, when the 44 Peruvian bishops came to Rome as a group in October 1984, they issued a generally-worded statement which could not be interpreted as a condemnation of Gutierrez. (See the New York Times, October 10, 1984.)
The Peruvian bishops announced their support of the Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in early September. The document had been prepared because of Cardinal Ratzinger’s concern with the danger to Catholicism posed by certain versions of the new theology. Ratzinger’s concerns on this score were already known. He had published in Chile and Italy a private memorandum that linked liberation theology with neo-Marxism, the politicization of Christianity, and the advocacy of an alternative vision of the structure of the church (“ecclesiology”) from that of Catholicism. (See The Ratzinger Report, Ignatius Press, 1985.) The memorandum limited its criticisms to those (unspecified) theologians who had “made the Marxist analysis their own”; but as noted earlier, it described them as posing “a fundamental threat to the faith of the Church.” The 1984 Instruction toned down this wording, speaking of the “risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and Christian living, that are brought about by certain forms of liberation theology, which use in an insufficiently critical manner, concepts borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought.” (Again neither the Marxist nor liberation writers are specified.) The Instruction attacked the liberationists for accepting Marxism’s “false claim to be scientific,” supporting violence, and politicizing the Gospel and the Church.
The 1984 Instruction promised a second statement on the broader theme of Christian freedom and liberation. Eighteen months later, after what were rumored to have been several revisions at the pope’s behest to give it a more positive tone, The Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation was published in April 1986. While it denounced those who propagate “the myth of revolution,” it admitted that armed struggle might be resorted to “as a last resort to put an end to an obvious and prolonged tyranny.” The Instruction generally took a much more positive approach to liberation theology, being particularly favorable to the Basic Christian Communities “if they really live in unity with the local Church and the universal Church,” and to theological reflection developed from particular experience “in the light of the experience of the Church itself.” Rather than the controversial term, “option,” it endorsed the “preferential love for the poor” by the Church, and called for a “Christian practice of liberation,” based on solidarity (against individualism) and subsidiarity, the initiative and responsibility of individuals, and intermediate communities (against collectivism).
The second Instruction was greeted very favorably by the liberation theologians. Gutierrez said. “It closes a chapter, a new more positive period is beginning.” But what really overjoyed the liberationists was a papal letter sent to the Brazilian hierarchy — who had consistently supported the liberation theologians — which was written following a two week visit by the Brazilian bishops to Rome in March 1986. In that letter, after reasserting the church’s identification with “the poor, the suffering, and those without influence, resources, or assistance . . . with a love that is neither exclusive nor excluding, but rather preferential,” the pope referred to the two Instructions published “with my explicit approval.” Further, he endorsed the Brazilian effort to find responses to the problems of poverty and oppression that are “consistent and coherent with the teachings of the Gospel, of the living tradition, and of the ongoing magisterium (teaching) of the church. As long as this is observed, we are convinced, we and you, that the theology of liberation is not only timely but useful and necessary . . . . May God help you to be unceasingly watchful that a correct and necessary theology of liberation can develop in Brazil and in Latin America.”
Cardinal Ratzinger is said to have described his efforts in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as a “restoration” in the church. His critics argue that this means turning the church back to the period of centralization and authoritarianism before the Second Vatican Council. Ratzinger himself prefers to see his goal as curbing extremist tendencies which have emerged since the Council, and he points out that he attended the Council as an advisor to Cardinal Frings of Munich, who was one of those most active in promoting its reforms. However one interprets the Cardinal’s intentions, the result of the Vatican’s confrontation with the liberation theologians has not been a repudiation of their theology but its incorporation in modified form within the mainstream of theological discussion. The modifications include an abandonment in practice of its initial emphases on the class struggle, the near-inevitability of violence, and the rejection of “reformism” — all of which characterized the period of lyrical leftism from the later 1960s to the mid-1970s.
The more biblical and spiritual orientation of contemporary liberation theology is evident in the latest book by Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink From Our Own Wells (1984). The title itself is taken from the spiritual writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The book is filled with biblical references; the class struggle, dependency, and Marxism are not even mentioned. The main themes of the book are a criticism of “individualism” and “spiritualism,” and a call for social involvement and an awareness of the spiritual dimensions of bodily existence. Gutierrez quotes from St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 25 (“I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink”) to argue for “a new approach to the human body” and for “concern for the material needs of the poor.” It is true that traces of the old revolutionism remain in his quotations from the writings of Christian guerrilla fighters, but the basic message of the book is the Christian duty to take action in community to help the poor. As Gutierrez notes, his thinking along these lines had already been anticipated in a section of A Theology of Liberation.
More striking is the transformation of the thinking of Hugo Assmann, often regarded as the most radical of the liberation theologians. In a paper delivered in 1985, Assmann seems now to equate revolution with democracy. Arguing that the Left is aware “that they must now reestablish their organic relation to the popular majorities which never understood their abstract revolutionism,” he asserts that “many of them have begun to understand that democratic values are revolutionary values.” (See “Democracy and the Debt Crisis,” This World, Spring/Summer 1986.) While Latin America is now dominated by “an absolutely savage and inhuman form of ‘capitalism’ . . . no socialism exists presently or around the corner.” “Real revolutionaries [Assmann writes] have learned to value democratic participation and the authentically popular movements (and) are no longer interested in chaotic social explosions . . .” Instead of the Manichaean dualism of “certain leftist circles” that engage in “divinization or demonization” it is time to develop “a spirit of openness to negotiate minimal consensus . . . .”
Does this mean that liberation theology has become deradicalized, in a way that is parallel to the deradicalization of social democracy in Western Europe? In a way it has, since the emphasis has shifted from conflict to negotiation, from the class struggle to solidarity with the poor. Yet the change is also a recognition that theologians seriously interested in the empowerment of the poor and oppressed should look for ways other than revolution to do so. While the revolutionary fervor of the early seventies has died down, there is still a strong strain of anti-capitalism in the liberationist writings. However, the main emphasis is upon the second theme in liberation theology, learning from and promoting the self-learning of the poor.
Once their revolutionism was tempered, liberation theologians found it easier to become part of the mainstream of Catholicism, which had always had an anti-capitalist strain and from early Christian times had thought of itself — in theory, if not in practice — as a church of the poor. This left only the problem of the liberationist theories of church organization. But even here, due to the organizational reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council, the liberation theologians were not that far out of line with the mainstream. They had never in fact rejected the hierarchy; they tended rather to accept it in theory, but de-emphasized its importance in relation to the communitarian aspects of Christian tradition. Now they have discovered that the bishops of Brazil (the world’s largest Catholic country) are increasingly favorable to their work. They have initiated, with the approval of a number of Brazilian bishops and religious. superiors, a fifty-volume series of theological expositions which will attempt to develop their theology in greater detail. If past experience and public statements are any indication, the volumes devoted to the structure of the Church will argue for the necessity of both hierarchy and people, rather than for conflictual “popular” vs. “institutional” church models.
(To be continued.)
