MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Catholic Church admits values of Liberation theology, “free of ideological influences”

Pope Benedict XVI as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never accepted liberation theology concepts

The values of the Liberation Theology remain valid but the task of decoupling the option for the poor from ideological influences remains incomplete, said Brazilian Archbishop Joao Braz de Aviz of Brasilia, head of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

“The preferential option for the poor is an evangelical option that depends mostly on our salvation. Such a construction by the liberation theology was a sincere and responsible attitude of the Church to address the vast phenomenon of social exclusion”, said the bishop in an interview with the Vatican’s “L’Ossevatore Romano”.

Joao Braz Aviz recalled that the Holy See under Pope John Paul II supported the Liberation theology arguing “it was not only useful but also necessary”.

However the head of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life remembered the two Vatican instructions in the eighties, “corrected issues linked to the use of Marxist methodology to interpret reality and everyday life”.

“I believe the theological commitment to dissociate the option for the poor from a liberation theology ideologically dependent, has not been sufficiently completed as Pope Benedict XVI has warned recently”, pointed out the Brazilian bishop.

Liberation theology was born in Latin America but the Vatican immediately feared that the danger of theologians’ attempts to advance in the ‘liberation’ of the poor could be inspired in Marxists ideas contrary to the Christian message.

Following on a first Vatican instruction from then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (November 1984) that warned about the dangers of “doctrine deviations”, a second instruction underlined the validity of the “preferential option for the poor” and of a “liberation theology” free of ideological elements foreign to the Christian message.

Ratzinger was always been contrary to the Liberation theology, and as Pope Benedict XVI, when he visited Brazil in 2007 argued that “changes in the political situation of Latin America also propelled substantial changes in that doctrine”.

Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. It has been described by proponents as “an interpretation of Christian faith through the suffering of the poor, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor”, and by detractors as Christianized Marxism.

Although liberation theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. Liberation theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in that region.

The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, who wrote one of the movement's most famous books, A Theology of Liberation. Other noted exponents are Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, and Juan Luis Segundo from Uruguay.