Prophets and Populists: Liberation Theology, 1968-1988Author(s): Jeffrey L. KlaiberSource: The Americas, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Jul., 1989), pp. 1-15Published by: Academy of American Franciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1007391Accessed: 11/10/2010 05:19

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PROPHETS AND POPULISTS: LIBERATION THEOLOGY, 1968-1988

Although liberation theology may still be considered a "current

event," nevertheless, given its very evident and widespread impact on Latin American Christianity and elsewhere, it seems fairly safe

to state that it is the most important theological movement which has emerged in Latin America in the four centuries since evangelization. Many authors would further contend that liberation theology symbolizes the coming of age of the Latin American church: from a peripheral, somewhat dormant and intellectually dependent church to one which actively con- tributes to Catholic and Protestant thought throughout the world.' For this reason alone, without mentioning the many political ramifications of libera- tion theology, it merits attention as one of the key themes in Latin American church history. The aim of this article is threefold: to briefly outline the origins and development of liberation theology; to examine the different ecclesial, social and political factors which influenced its development, and finally, to indicate what direction liberation theology seems to be taking currently.

Before going to the origins, however, it is well to make an important distinction: between liberation theology as an intellectual current and the dynamic grassroots church movement which has sprung up throughout Latin America in the wake of Vatican II and the bishop's conference at Medellin. Liberation theology as a school of thought consists of a relatively small group of well-known theologians and a more larger group of lesser- known academicians and intellectuals who disseminate the basic ideas of the former in universities, seminaries and church circles. Although there is no "official" list, most surveys of mainstream liberation theologians will include the Peruvian diocesan priest, Gustavo Guti~rrez; the Jesuits, Juan Luis Segundo and Juan Carlos Scannone, from the Southern Cone; Segundo

SFor general accounts of liberation theology and the progressive church, see Edward L. Cleary, Crisis and Change: The Church in Latin America Today (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985); and, Philip Berryman, Liberation Theology (New York: Pantheon Books, Random House, 1987).

I

2 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Galilea, a Chilean diocesan priest; the Brazilians, Hugo Assmann and Leonardo Boff; in El Salvador, the Jesuit, Jon Sobrino; in Costa Rica, the Chilean-born Pablo Richard; among the Protestants, Rubem Alvez, a Bra- zilian, and Jos6 Miguez Bonino, an Argentinian. The Belgian priest, Jos6 Comblin, was one of the original thinkers along liberation lines and the Argentinian layman, Enrique Dussel, has written much in the area of the history of liberation in Latin America.

Beyond this small group of intellectuals, who make up an elite within the church, there are thousands of more ordinary church-going Latin Amer- icans, principally from the middle and lower classes, who participate ac- tively in different church groups and organizations. For these Christians, who constitute what may be termed the "church movement," liberation theology is not perceived so much as a cluster of well-defined ideas to be fought for and defended, but rather as a symbolic banner which expresses in a general way their basic aspirations and expectations. Under this banner are to be found persons of the most diverse cultural and intellectual back- grounds: middle class university students, professors and politicians, who have a relatively sophisticated grasp of the main lines of liberation the- ology; lower class urben catechists in Sio Paulo or Lima who may have only the vaguest notion of what lay behind the polemic between Cardinal Ratzinger and Leonardo Boff; and highland peasants in Ecuador or Peru who enjoy listening to Gustavo Guti6rrez, but whose concept of liberation theology is more like to be an original mixture of biblical liberation themes and traditional popular religiosity. These widely diverse groups all share a common sympathy for liberation theology, but they do not necessarily sub- scribe to all of the ideas of the theologians, and more to the point, many may not even understand the implications of some of the basic theses of liberation theology, much less the nuances between the lines.

In this sense, it would be quite erroneous to presume that the stream of articles and books produced by the theologians represents the worldview of thousands of Christians in Latin America, who otherwise consider them- selves very much a part of the progressive church. There is, therefore, no direct equivalency between liberation theology and the progressive church: the latter is a much wider and more complex reality which includes the former. There exists, for example, a moderate sector among the progres- sives which rejects the political right but which also maintains a critical distance from liberation theology. Finally, there are many brands of libera- tion theology within Latin America, which vary from author to author and from region to region.

For their part, the liberation theologians are conscious of this distance between themselves and the ordinary people. Indeed, most of them believe

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 3

that the principal aim of their whole intellectual enterprise is to enter the minds and hearts of the poor of Latin America and to speak in their name. In the early sixties the theologians began their mission as lonely "prophets": thinkers with new and exciting ideas, but with few people to hear them. As the church movement grew, fanned by the changes set into motion by Vatican II and most of all by the spirit of Medellin, the theolo- gians set out in quest of the people, and in the process they have nuanced many of their ideas, rejected others and adopted a more pronounced pas- toral stance. By the late eighties most liberation theologians have become "populists": thinkers more attuned to the needs and expectations of the grassroots than to their own original abstract and utopian visions. Liberation theology in its current state can be conceived, therefore, as a meeting of the minds of two radically different cultural worlds within the same Latin American continent: the avant-garde intellectuals, on the one hand, and on the other, the newly politicized and socially awakened lower and lower middle classes who make up what the intellectuals call the "people."

As a group, the liberation theologians were influcenced by the same forces and currents that combined to produce Vatican II. In this sense, the Latin Americans were not significantly different, at least in their initial for- mation, from their European counterparts. Most are from the urban middle classes and some participated in Catholic Action. Almost all of them at one time or another studied in one of the centers of the Catholic intellectual renovation following World War II: the University of Louvain, Belgium, the Institute Catolique of Paris, the Jesuit Faculty of Theology at Lyons, or the universities of Innsbruck or Munich. Father Gustavo Guti6rrez is fairly representative of the group as a whole. Born into a lower middle class family in Lima, he studied medicine at San Marcos National University. At the same time he participated in Catholic Action and became president of the Catholic Center of Barranco, Lima. From his Catholic Action days he was significantly influenced by two men who were both precursors of the socially progressive church in Peru: Jos6 Dammert, later bishop of Caja- marca, and C6sar Arr6spide, longtime lay leader of Catholic Action.

In 1950 Guti6rrez decided to become a priest, and after a year at the seminary of Santiago, Chile, he studied philosophy at the University of Louvain. Between 1955 and 1959 he pursued his studies in theology at the Faculty of Theology in Lyons, France. During those years he lived and breathed the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of a European Catholicism in full renovation and in search of a deeper dialogue with the modern social sciences, and even with certain currents, philosophies and ideologies still condemned or viewed with suspicion by the church: Marxism, freudianism, the different theories of evolution, etc. At the University of Louvain, Father

4 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Guti6rrez did his licentiate in philosophy on Freud. The theologians he studied were the leading progressive luminaries of the day: Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Christian Duquoc, Edward Schillebeeckx, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, etc. At Lyons he studied privately under Henri de Lubac, who like his fellow Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin, was not permitted to teach in public.2 Most of the other Latin America liberation theologians fit the same general profile. Leonardo Boff, after initial priestly studies in Brazil, ob- tained his doctorate in theology in Munich. Juan Luis Segundo studied at Louvain and Paris. Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest-revolutionary who was killed in 1966, though not strictly speaking a theologian, was a class- mate of Guti~rrez at Louvain University.3

Given this common European background, it is not surprising that the liberation theologians all relied heavily upon their European mentors in the beginning. Indeed, a frequent criticism of liberation theology, and Gu- ti6rrez' first work, was that, in spite of their claim to be forging a new Latin American theology, they were really restating the ideas of their teachers in a different way. Nevertheless, Europe was a necessary stage in their develop- ment. Vatican II, in which the ideas of the European theologians came to fruition, paved the way for liberation theology. The Christian-Marxist dia- logue, for example, far from being an aberration of Third World theolo- gians, was an officially approved move in Europe, inspired by the spirit of Vatican II, before it became popular in Latin America.

If Vatican II was the catalyst, then Latin America in the sixties was the cauldron in which liberation theology was forged. The young thinkers re- turned to a continent experiencing the winds of revolutionary change in the wake of Fidel Castro and a wave of rising expectations fanned by the Alli- ance for Progress. In almost all universities and intellectual circles Marxism was in the ascendancy. Particularly in vogue, too, was dependency theory, as expounded by Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, which traced a cause and effect link between the development of the First World and the under- development of the Third World. Indeed, dependency theory is a helpful key to grasp the essential notion behind liberation theology. Liberation the- ology conceives the history of Third World peoples not so much as a slow

2 Private interview with Father Gustavo Gutidrrez, Lima, March 21, 1983. On the evolution of Father

Gutidrrrez' theology, see Roberto Oliveros, Liberaci6n y teologia: ginesis y crecimiento de una re- flexidn (1966-1976), 2d. ed. (Lima: Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1980); and Miguel Manzanera, Teologia y salvacidn en la obra de Gustavo Gutidrrez (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 1978).

3 On Camilo Torres and Gustavo Guti6rrez, see John William Hart, "Topia y Utopia in Colombia and Peru: The Theory and Practice of Camilo Torres and Gustavo Guti~rrez in Their Historical Contexts" (PH.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1978); on Segundo, see Alfred T. Hennelly, Theologies in Conflict: The Challenge ofJuan Luis Segundo (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979).

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 5

move up from underdevelopment, but rather like the children of Israel leaving Egypt, as a march toward freedom from the First World, economic imperialism and multinationals, and from the forces within-local oligar- chies, the military, ignorance and apathy, etc.-which hold the people in a state of servitude. It was in their own latitutde, and especially in dialogue with dependency theory and Third World Marxism, that liberation theolo- gians began moving significantly away from and beyond their European counterparts. Furthermore, throughout the whole Third World the concept of wars of national "liberation" had acquired a preeminence in Marxist thought that displaced classical European Marxism. In this context, a "the- ology" of liberation was an imaginative concept that appeared at a most propitious time. In Petropolis in 1964, at a meeting of theologians orga- nized by Ivan Illich, Guti6rrez presented his views on theological reflection on "praxis," In other meetings-Havana, Bogota, Cuernavaca-the makers of liberation theology grew to know each other and acquired a dis- tinct group identity. The actual term, "liberation theology," was coined almost simultaneously in different places and in different moments. In the northern Peruvian fishing city of Chimbote in 1968 Guti6rrez delivered a talk with the title, "Toward a Theology of Liberation," to the newly formed progressive priest's organization, ONIS. That same year in St. Louis the Protestant theologian, Richard Shaull, delivered a paper at the annual CICOP (Catholic Inter-American Cooperation Program) entitled, "A Theological Perspective on Human Liberation."4 But it was Gutidrrez' book with the title, A Theology of Liberation: Perspectives, published in 1971 which consecrated the term and made the concept a topic of debate in Catholic and liberal Protestant intellectual circles in both the First and Third worlds.

In addition to the political events of the sixties and seventies, there were certain specifically church trends that also favored the liberation theology movement. In the thirties and forties the different Catholic Action groups that sprang up throughout the continent produced a core of militant priests and laypersons who sought to bridge the widening gap between the secular world and the tradition-laden Latin American church. Some of these leaders, such as Jackson de Figueiredo in Brazil or Jos6 de la Riva-Agitero in Peru, saw Catholic Action primarily as a means to combat liberalism, Communism and Protestantism. But others, inspired by the writings of Jacques Maritain, went on to become the founders of the different Christian

4 Liberation theology became the principal subject of the annual CICOP meeting in 1971: see, Thomas E. Quigley (ed.), Freedom and Unfreedom in the Americas: Toward a Theology of Liberation (Washington: Latin American Bureau, U.S. Catholic Conference, 1971).

6 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Democratic parties in Latin America and the modern progressive church. In Chile, Eduardo Frei began as a lay leader in university circles and Jos6 Dammert in Peru, main organizer of that country's first Social Week (1959) and currently bishop of Cajamarca, was an active member of Catholic Ac- tion in Italy. He also influenced Gustavo Gutirrrez, who was president of a Catholic Action group before becoming a priest.5

In the sixties the university subdivisions of Catholic Action, such as the JUC (Catholic University Youth) in Brazil or the UNEC (National Union of Catholic Students) in Peru, went through a radicalization process.6 These groups readily embraced liberation theology because it provided the intel- lectual bridge they sought to cross over to the new left that rose up in the wake of the Cuban revolution. In Peru many of the leaders of the "Catholic left," which wields considerable influence in the coalition of socialist and Marxist parties that make up the parliamentary left, received their initial formation in the UNEC or in the Christian Democratic party. In the case of these middle class university-trained Catholics, their move to the left was inspired by the church's own social teachings and not by their reading of Marx.

Another important church factor was the combined crisis of the priest shortage and the population explosion. These two crises led many bishops to try out innovative pastoral experiments that would have long-range con- sequences for the church. In Brazil, for example, many bishops of the poorest dioceses in the late fifties began sending out lay catechists to aban- doned parishes or setting up radio schools that emphasized learning to read and write. The Christian groups which these experiments spawned became the forerunners of the "Ecclesial Base Communities" which now number some 80,000 and include some two million Brazilians, principally from the lower classes.7 In the late seventies certain conservative bishops of Latin America brought into question the concept of a "popular church" because it seemed to foster the creation of a separatist lay church in opposition to the

5 Jeffrey Klaiber, "The Catholic Lay Movement in Peru: 1867-1959," The Americas XL (October 1983): 164.

6 See Emanuel de Kadt, Catholic Radicals in Brazil (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); Henry Landsberger (ed.), The Church and Social Change in Latin America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970); Frederick Turner, Catholicism and Political Development in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971).

7 On the origins of the "ecclesial base communities" in Brazil, see Marcello Azevedo, Comunidades eclesiais de base de inculturagdo da fe (Sio Paulo: Edig6es Loyola, 1986); Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916-1985 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986). See, also, the delightful account by Jane Kramer, "Letter from the Elysian Fields," The New Yorker, March 2, 1987, pp. 40-73.

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 7

bishops. But in Brazil it was the bishops who created the "popular church" and conferred upon it full legitimacy from the beginning. In almost every part of Latin America the church met the priest shortage and the population explosion by sending out teams of priests, sisters and lay volunteers to at- tend to the needs of the inhabitants of the favelas, callampas or barriadas that were springing up everywhere. From the very beginning of these settle- ments the church became a focal point for community organizing, which included such varied activities as mediating in conflicts between different neighborhood groups, joining in a march to the Ministry of Housing to demand power lines for the barrio, or organizing clubs for mothers and the youth. Even running a mother's club in a squatter village is an activity fraught with social and political implications. The topics to be discussed, usually under the supervision of a woman religious, will typically range from better baby care to machismo and womens' rights in society. In this context of massified and dehumanizing poverty, only a theology that em- phasized creative community organizing could respond adequately to the felt needs of the people.

The cycle of military takeovers in the sixties and seventies (Brazil and Bolivia in 1964; Argentina in 1966; Peru in 1968, and Chile in 1973), as well as repressive forces that extralegally attacked the church in certain other countries that were nominally "democratic," formed the immediate background in which liberation theology grew to maturity. In almost every case (the Argentinian hierarchy was noticeably silent during most of the military rule) the official church adopted a line of resistance and opposition to harsh national security states which violated human rights on a regular basis.8 Peru was an anomaly among these regimes. The Peruvian military that seized power in 1968 openly sought the church's legitimization for their reforms, which by and large the church provided.9 In all of these situations, liberation theology became the banner that united Christians, both Catholics and liberal Protestants, in a common struggle for justice and human rights.

In the middle of these social and political crises of the seventies, libera- tion theology itself underwent a major transformation. The change within liberation theology was so significant that Juan Luis Segundo refers to the "Two Theologies of Liberation." The first theology was that which was born in the sixties and decisively influenced the bishop's conference of Me-

8 On the church in Brazil under the military, see Mainwaring; for Chile, see Brian Smith, The Chilean Catholic Church (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

9 See Thomas J. Maloney, "The Catholic Church and the Peruvian Revolution: Resource Exchange in an Authoritarian Setting" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1978).

8 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

dellin in 1968. That conference, as Segundo notes, was largely the work of university-trained intellectuals who were steeped in Marxism and who were highly critical of popular religiosity.10 The first liberation theology quite clearly revealed its European secular theology biases. The decisive factor which transformed liberation theology was the rise of an authentic popular movement throughout Latin America which forced the theologians to rethink many of their original assumptions. Increasingly, the workers, cam- pesinos and youth who participated enthusiastically in the Ecclesial Base Communities, or the Indian catechists in the Andes, responded to the theo- logians and formulated their own interpretations of religion and social change. By the late seventies and early eighties most liberation theologians had changed or revised some of their earlier stances and added entire new dimensions to their original insights.

Two important examples that underline this shift are the Christian- Marxist dialogue and the prevailing views of popular religiosity. In the early sixties most radicalized Christians considered Catholic social doctrine to be out of tune and embraced many elements of Marxism. In the back of their minds was the belief that they should be prepared to take an active role in the Marxist-inspired struggles for liberation that would soon engulf most of Latin America. But these secular-minded Christians, like most leftist leaders at the time, had little contact with the poor themselves; who were often the subject of, but rarely the participants in, these intellectual discus- sions. Furthermore, most sociologists and anthropologists, Christian or not, viewed Latin America's popular religiosity as a symptom of social "alien- ation," and therefore little more than an "opium of the people." As priests, religious women and lay volunteers, however, began working with the newly politicized poor in the squatter settlements or in the Andean high- lands they discovered that many of their original notions were either naive or superficial. The poor who had gone through the experience of political awakening made their own new syntheses of religion and justice. In many cases they used traditional symbols, taken from their own popular religi- osity, to espouse a modern justice cause, such as the Chicano farm workers in the United States who carried the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe in their marches. On the contrary, materialistic Marxism has made little headway among these non-university poorer classes. Indeed, in almost every situation in which Christians, whether from the lower or the middle classes, have fought for justice, from Nicaragua to Brazil, their main inspi-

1o Juan Luis Segundo, "The Shift Within Latin American Theology," lecture delivered at Regis College, Toronto, March 22, 1983; and, "Two Theologies of Liberation," The Month (October 1984): 321-327.

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 9

ration has been a Christian view of society, not Marxism. In the revolution

against Somoza, Chistians used symbols taken from their local religiosity to motivate themselves in the movement.1' The conclusion for the liberation

theologians was obvious: the key to reach the masses of Latin American was not Marxism, but the very popular religiosity that they had initially viewed so skeptically.

A brief overview of the theological production of Guti6rrez and Boff will also highlight this shift in direction. Though still the classic work in the field, A Theology ofLiberation, seems to be less a reflection on the reality of Latin America than a dialogue with Europe on America. But in his later works Gutirrrez delves more deeply into the history, culture and spiritual mentality of his own hemisphere. Especially in The Power of the Poor in History (1979) he emphasizes the Latin American context of his theology.12 If his first work could be considered a type of "political-pastoral" the- ology, two later works clearly represent a "pastoral" theology, that is, inspirational commentaries on the Bible intended to encourage believers who live in conditions of poverty and violence to continue to believe and to have hope: We Drink From Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (1983) and, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (1986).13 In both works he stresses the prayful and long-suffering spiritua- lity of the poor in Latin America. Finally, as part of his quest to discover the roots of liberation theology in America, for a number of years Father Guti6rrez has been preparing a major work on the theology of Bartolom6 de las Casas.

If Guti6rrez is a theologian of a people on the move, Leonard Boff has paid more attention to the phenomenon of the popular church, especially the base communities. In his first works the Brazilian Franciscan analyzes the major themes of fundamental theology-Christ, grace and faith-from the perspective of liberation theology. But in 1977 he shifted emphasis to the novel experiment occurring in Brazil and produced, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church.14 In 1981 he published Church,

" See Philip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolu- tions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1984).

'2 The Power of the Poor in History (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1983). The original version in Spanish, La fuerza histdrica de los pobres, was published in Lima in 1979 (Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones).

'3 We Drink from Our Own Wells (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1984) appeared originally in Spanish under the title, Beber de su propio pozo: En el itinerario espiritual de un pueblo (Lima: Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1983). "In 1988 Gutidrrez published the second edition of A Theology of Liberation (Orbis Books)."

14 Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church (London: Collins Liturgical Publica- tions, 1986). The original work in Portuguese was published in 1977 (Petropolis: Editora Vozes).

10 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Charism and Power: A Radical Ecclesiology, in which he strongly criticizes archaic and authoritarian structures in the Catholic Church that inhibit the

growth of the new church.15 This work, more than any other by the libera- tion theologians, became the principal target of the examination of libera- tion theology carried out by Cardinal Ratzinger.

In other parts, the liberation theologians stress themes with a particular relevance to their own local reality. in Central America Pablo Richard, a Chilean by birth, and the two Jesuits, Jon Sobrino and Xavier Gorostiaga, highlight the influence which the "utopian message" of the Christian base communities had on the revolutionary processes in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere.16 In all of these situations, the authors insist that they are not "inventing" a movement, but rather reflecting upon one which already exists. In this sense, the theologians have become populists because, as they claim, it is the ordinary believers in the base communities who provide the themes upon which to theologize. Though this claim is somewhat exag- gerated, it does reveal the growing strength of a popular lay church in Latin America. As the journalist Penny Lernoux noted, the bishop's conference of Medellin (1968), in which liberation theology made its debut on a conti- nental basis, was largely the work of an elite corps of theologians. By way of contrast, the next major bishop's conference, at Puebla, Mexico in 1979, reflected a wide consensus which grew out of a grassroots debate throughout all of Latin America.17

In September, 1984, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Congre- gation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a document which constituted the beginning of a formal inquiry into the orthodoxy of liberation theology. Ratzinger was moved in part by the complaints of many conservative bishops, especially the cardinal of Medellin, Colombia, Alfonso L6pez- Trujillo, who would have been pleased to see the entire liberation theology movement condemned. But Ratzinger was also motivated by another, and

perhaps weightier, reason: the growing popularity and acceptance of libera- tion theology, not only in Latin America and the rest of the Third World, but in the United States and Europe as well. Although the ensuing contro- versy which he sparked produced few substantially new insights, it was

'5 Church, Charism and Power: A Radical Ecclesiology. Toward A Militant Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1981). Translated from the Portuguese (Petropolis: Editora Vozes, 1981).

16 On the views of the Central American theologians, see George Irvin and Xabier Gorostiaga (eds.), Towards an Alternative for Central America and the Caribbean (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985); and the different issues of the Revista Latinoamericana de Teologia, published by the Centro de Reflexi6n Teol6gica of the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Sime6n Cafias, San Salvador.

17 Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 413-425.

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 11

important for another reason. As the Jesuit theologian Roger Haight ob- served, the Ratzinger versus liberation theology polemic constituted a de- bate between the "Center" and the "Periphery," that is, between Europe, the traditional center of western culture and thought, and the newly emerging Christian churches in the Third World.'"

What began as a tense confrontation ended as a fairly reasonable dialogue as both sides ceded a bit and revised their original perspectives of the other side. This shift in perspectives can be observed in the history of three docu- ments: the first Ratzinger document, Instruction on Certain Aspects of "Liberation Theology" (March, 1984), a document of the Peruvian bishops on the same subject (October, 1984), and a second Ratzinger document, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (March, 1986). The first Ratzinger document, although it accepts a type of liberation theology, rather indiscriminately accuses most forms of liberation theology of re- ducing Christianity to Marxism. The accusation was based upon several fundamental misconceptions: that liberation theology represents a uniform pattern from Nicaragua to Peru and Brazil; that it proposes to create a pop- ular church in opposition to the official church; that it constitutes a sort of political theology designed to mobilize people against dictators and unjust economic structures; and, finally, that it is a thinly veiled religious legitimi- zation of Marxism.

By the time of the second Ratzinger document almost all of these views had been considerably modified and nuanced. Immediately following the first document, Ratzinger requested the Peruvian bishops to conduct an ex- amination of liberation theology, perhaps with an eye toward putting things in order in the very country where liberation theology had arisen. The Peru- vian bishops were also busy preparing for the papal visit scheduled for Feb- ruary, 1985. On two different occasions Pope John Paul II conferred with delegations of Peruvian bishops, and in so doing very clearly influenced the agenda to be included in their own document. In contrast to Ratzinger's document, the statement of the Peruvian bishops was much more positive toward liberation theology. It was also a model of didactic clarity as it explains for the benefit of the ordinary layperson which precise elements of Marxism are incompatible with the Christian faith and why.19 In the mean- time, both Gustavo Guti6rrez and Leonardo Boff were consulted by their respective local hierarchies and by Ratzinger himself in Rome. In January

'8 Roger Haight, "The Liberation Theology of the Centre" Grail: An Ecumenical Journal (Canada), 2(September, 1986): 23-32.

9 Documento de la Conferencia Episocpal Peruana sobre la teologia de la liberacidn (Lima: Edito- rial Salesiana, 1984).

12 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

and February of 1985 the Pope was received by enthusiastic crowds in Ven- ezuela, Ecuador and Peru. That same year Boff was "silenced" by Rome for a period of a few months while his ideas were being reviewed. From all parts of Latin America the other liberation theologians fired off essays in defense of Boff and their brand of theology.20 Finally, in March, 1986, Ratzinger produced his second Instruction. A far more positive and bal- anced document than the first, it strongly underlines man's quest for freedom in history as a major Christian pursuit. While the German cardinal did not come to grips with the reality of the Third World, at least he laid the basis for a continuing dialogue with the liberation theologians.

What the official examination clarified was that a general condemnation of liberation theology would have gone against good historical and theolog- ical sense as well as the social teachings of the Catholic church itself. In the first place, it became clear that there were many different currents within liberation theology and what occurred in Nicaragua could not be taken as a norm for either Peru or Brazil. In Peru, for example, Gustavo Guti6rrez (who was never silenced) has always favored close ties wth the hierarchy and avoided inner church confrontations. Also, the main interest of Boff and Guti6rrez has been pastoral theology, not galvanizing the people to revolution. Furthermore, many would argue that liberation theology, in- stead of favoring a conversion to Marxism, has actually become an alterna- tive for Christians who might otherwise have been so tempted. But most

important, not only has liberation theology not given rise to an independent popular church, but, as in the case of Brazil and Peru, it has actually served to generate new life in the official, albeit renovated church. For millions of

poor in those and other Latin American nations, the church has won a new credibility that it had steadily been losing before. The liberation theology controversy passed from public view quite suddenly, but the long range impact of this exchange between Rome and the Third World on the church will be important. The liberation theologians quite clearly established the

right of liberation theology to exist, although in the process they were also

obliged to distinguish more sharply between what they propose and Marxism. Rome spoke and the "periphery" listened. But the periphery also

spoke and Rome, too, listened.

In the short span of time since it first appeared, liberation theology has

20 For defenses of liberation theology, see Juan Luis Segundo, Theology and the Church: A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church (Minneapolis: A Seabury Book, 1985); and Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Liberation Theology: From Confrontation to Dialogue (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1986).

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 13

exercised a considerable and creative influence on the entire Christian world and set into motion certain intellectual trends which have already become the subject of interest for many authors. In the first place, "reli- gion" has been rediscovered as a vital force in Latin American social and political life. Although religion and popular religiosity are far wider themes than liberation theology, the latter current is the nerve center of progressive or "revolutionary" Christianity in Latin America. Secular scholars have learned to take theology seriously as an "independent variable," along with major political and social themes, in order to understand what is happening in most of Latin America.21 At the same time, liberation theology has reo- pened the Christian-Marxist dialogue, but this time the debate has shifted from Europe to America and the rest of the Third World. But the terms and the background of the dialogue, or debate, are radically different. Grassroots Christian communities in Latin America have been influenced by Marxism, but they in turn have also conditioned the political atmosphere from Nicaragua to Brazil.22 The papal visits have also had their impact on popular sentiment. More and more it is fashionable in leftist circles to cite the Bible and papal social encyclicals. To refer to oneself as a "Christian socialist" is quite respectable, whereas to be known as "a classical" (hard- lined and presumably atheistic) Marxist is less popular.

Certain authors have underlined the link between the liberation theology movement, the growth of the Christian base communities and the rise of a politically conscious popular movement throughout Latin America.23 The Christians on the popular level, armed with liberation theology, lend both religious motivation and ethical guidance to the popular movement. In this sense, liberation theology contributes to the democratization process throughout Latin America by strengthening community ties and reinforcing civic consciousness. Critics, of course, claim that liberation theology really facilitates the spread of Marxism.24 But defenders point out that liberation theology aims to awaken the poor to the dangers of any form of political manipulation, whether from the right or the left.

21 See, especially, Daniel H. Levine, Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Levine (ed.), Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

22 See Anselm K. Min, "The Vatican, Marxism and Liberation Theology," pp. 439-455, and Ken- neth Aman, "Marxism(s) in Liberation Theology," pp. 427-428, in: Cross Currents 34(Winter 1984-1985).

23 See Charles A. Reilly, "Latin America's Religious Populists," in Levine (ed.), Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America, pp. 42-47.

24 Among notable critics of liberation theology are Michael Novak, Will it Liberate? Questions about Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1986); James V. Schall, Liberation Theology in Latin America (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982). For a more complete list of both the defenders and the critics of liberation theology, see Ronald Nash (ed.), Liberation Theology (Mott Media, Inc., 1984).

14 LIBERATION THEOLOGY

The seeds of liberation theology have been carried to every Third World country where there is a significant Christian population. Many Christians who rebelled against Marcos in the Philippines were influenced by the liber- ationist mentality. Indeed, one of the major themes for future exploration is the unity of mind and purpose which liberation theology has conferred upon Third World Christians in general.25 In the First World, liberation theology has notably influenced the black and feminist movements.26 It has even entered into the categories of progressive mainstream American Catholics who are sensitive to social and Third World issues.27 Finally, liberation theology has also served as an ecumenical bridge between social-minded Catholics and liberal Protestants in both the First and Third Worlds.28 Both groups find dialogue among themselves far easier than with their conserva- tive co-believers. In Latin America, many Protestants of the historical churches who cooperate with the Catholic church find little common ground to share with the growing and politically conservative fundamentalist "sects."29

The Ratzinger document of 1986 officially put an end to the liberation theology controversy. But both the controversy and the movement are very much alive. In Brazil the editorial house Vozes has begun the publication of the first of 50 books in a general collection on liberation theology: the col- lective efforts of nearly the same number of theologians from all over Latin America. The volumes will be published simultaneously in Portuguese and Spanish. Very clearly, progressive Christians in that continent will have no lack of theological literature to guide them in the near future.

But liberation theology cannot be adequately understood solely as an in-

25 See Theo Witvliet, A Place in the Sun: An Introduction to Liberation Theology in the Third World

(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985). 26 See Rosemary Ruether, Liberation Theology: Human Hope Confronts Christian History and Amer-

ican Power (New York: Paulist Press, 1972); Letty M. Russell, Human Liberation in a Feminist Per- spective: A Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1973); Sharon Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985).

27 For two works which attempt to forge a theology of liberation for North Americans, see Brian Mahan and L. Dale Richesin (eds.), The Challenge of Liberation Theology: A First World Response (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981), and Roger Haight, An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Libera- tion Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1985).

28 For a survey of liberation theology from a Protestant perspective, see Esther and Mortimer Arias, The Cry of My People: Out of Captivity in Latin America (New York: Friendship Press, 1982); Jos6 Duque, La tradici6n protestante en la teologia latinoamericana (Costa Rica: DEI, 1983); Samuel Escobar, La fe evangdlica y las teologias de la liberacidn (El Paso: Casa Bautista de Publicaciones, 1987).

29 On the relations between the historical churches and the "sects," see Hans-Jiurgen Prien, La his- toria del cristianismo en Amdrica Latina (Salamanca: Ediciones Sigueme, 1985), especially pp. 1093-1117. The original version of this work appeared in German in 1978.

JEFFREY L. KLAIBER 15

tellectual movement. For the millions of newly politicized Christians throughout Latin America, ideas alone do not inspire them, but rather cer- tain men, women and symbols that incarnate and express those ideas. In the past 25 years or more the progressive church of Latin America has given rise to a number of popular "heroes" among two classes of men not usually considered for that honor: bishops and theologians. In central America the people speak of "San Romero," an affectionate reference to Oscar Ro- mero, the archbishop of San Salvador who was assassinated in 1980.30 In all of Latin America and beyond Helder Cimara is a revered symbol of non-violent resistance to dictatorship. Other "hero bishops" to be included in the list are Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider of Fortaleza, Brazil, Pedro Ca- saldiliga in the Brazilian Amazon and Leonidas Proafio of Riobamba, Ecuador. Women religious, too, some of whom have suffered martyrdom, have become models for lower class women everywhere in Latin America.31 Both Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Guti6rrez command a fol- lowing of admirers among the poor in their countries. According to some definitions, these theologians and church leaders may still be considered "prophets." But in their search for the "people," most have also become "populists": grassroots thinkers and pastors, closer to the mainstream, less demanding, more critical of their own short-comings and more open to out- side comments. In so doing, they have also guaranteed a permanent place for their theology in universal Christian thought.

Catholic University JEFFREY L. KLAIBER, S.J. Lima, Peru

30 See James R. Brockman, The Word Remains: A Life of Oscar Romero (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1982).

31 On modern martyrs and the cult to contemporary religious figures in Latin America, see Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People, especially, pp. 463-470; Martin Lange and Reinhold Iblacker, Witnesses of Hope: The Persecution of Christians in Latin America (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980); and Donna Whitson Brett and Edward T. Brett, Murdered in Central America: The Stories of Eleven U.S. Mission- aries (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988).