Christia
liberatio Am THE POPE's visit to Chile in Apri in the Catholic Church today. religious orders — such as Andre police in 1985 in his home in the taken a stand on the side of
In spite of this, and the fact tha
(moderately) opposes the dicta called on Christians to seek rec
Pinochet and on t
While in the past the Church i appearance of being a homoge clearly no longer corresponds t country, we find diametric
For example, in Argentina, by I condoned the misdeeds of t dictatorship. Today, it is play "forgiveness" for the criminals in against the "real danger" fa Likewise, in Colombia, the Churc the oligarchical system, which it and the struggle against atheisti in Brazil, after 1970 the Church d today it continues to support w and the movement of the p MICHAEL I
LATIN AMERICA • LIBERATION THEOLOGY ity and in Latin rica istrated well the contradictions ne priests and members of rlan, who was murdered by the ntytown of La Victoria - have poor and the exploited. e Chilean religious hierarchy ship, His Holiness the Pope illation. He smiled equally on adversaries. atin America could give the us and monolithic body, this day's reality. From country to opposed orientations. omplicit silence, the Church egime during the military the role of the apostle of e army and mobilizing its troops g the country - divorce! emained tied body and soul to itimizes in the name of religion mmunism. On the other hand, unced the military regime, and rs' struggles for higher wages ants demanding land. VY
In the context of the innovation that followed Vatican II, all of this ferment finally shook up the church throughout the continent. At the Medellin conference of Latin American bishops in 1968, new resolutions were adopted for the first time denouncing "institutionalized" violence and proclaiming solidarity with the people's aspiration for "liberation from all servitude."
This process of radicalization - which was uneven and had its ups and downs — that was to lead to the development of liberation theology did not originate in the top echelons. It was not a maneuver by the hierarchy. Nor did it come exclusively from the popular base. Rather, it moved from the periphery to the center of the institution. The social categories or sectors that were the breeding grounds of renovation were all in a way marginal or peripheral to the institution.
Lay movements the first to radicalize
The first to move were the lay movements — Acción Católica, the JUC, JOC [Christian Young Workers], the people's education movements, the Christian peasants' movements and so forth. They were followed or accompanied by lay experts working for the church (sociologists, economists, urban planners), foreign priests (notably French and Spanish, or Basques) and members of the religious orders — Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Maryknolls [Catholic Foreign Ministry of America], Assumptionists and so on.
Little by little, a part of the diocesan clergy and some bishops were caught up in the radicalization. So, at the start of the 1960s, a growing number of Christians were joining actively in the people's struggles, reinterpreting the Gospels in the light of these practices, and sometimes finding in Marxism an alternative to prevailing injustice.
Similar phenomena developed in other regions of the third world, and even in Europe and the United States, but on a much smaller scale. The exception was the Philippines where there was a mass movement [see page 18].
Latin America is par excellence the Catholic continent. The great majority of the population is immersed from birth in Roman Catholic religious culture. But at the same time it is the weak link in the Catholic chain, because the increasing economic dependence and mass poverty, the deepening of social contradictions and the victory of the Cuban revolution have given rise to a wave of popular struggles and attempted revolutions that has not ceased from 1960 until today. It was in these conditions that breaks would occur, and that a whole section of the church would come over to the cause of the poor and their fight for liberation.
Vatican II undoubtedly contributed to this evolution, but not directly because the
Council's resolutions did not go beyond modernization, aggiornamento, a liberal opening. But by shaking the old dogmatic certainties, this opening made the Catholic culture permeable to new ideas and to "external" influences. In opening to the modern world, the church could no longer avoid the social conflicts afflicting this world, notably in Latin America.
It was in this context that many church intellectuals in Latin America - Jesuit theologians, lay experts, students — finally became attracted, like most intellectuals on the continent, by Marxist analyses and propositions
Liberation theology did not create this change; it is the product of it. More precisely, it is the expression of a whole social movement reflecting the involvement of Christians in neighborhood associations, unions, peasant leagues, people's education centers, in left political parties and in revolutionary organizations. This movement, which might be called "Liberation Christianity," appeared in the 1960s, well before liberation theology. But the latter, by giving it a legitimacy and a doctrine, helped to spread and advance it.
By the end of the 1960s, the theme of liberation began to occupy the minds of the more advanced theologians, who were dissatisfied with the prevailing "developmental theology. "But it was in 1971, with the publication of the book by Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian Jesuit and former student at the Catholic universities of Louvain in Belgium and Lyon in France, that liberation theology really emerged.
A profound challenge to church doctrine
In this work, entitled Liberation Theology - Perspectives, Gutierrez advanced a certain number of challenging ideas that were to profoundly shake up church doctrine. First of all, he stressed the need for breaking with the dualism inherited from Greek thought. There were not two realities, a "temporal" and a "spiritual" one, or two histories, one "sacred" and the other "worldly." There was only one reality, and it was within this human and temporal history that redemption, the kingdom of God, had to be achieved.
It was wrong to wait for salvation to come from on high. The biblical exodus showed us "humanity forming itself through a historical political struggle." It thus became the model for a salvation that was not individual and private, but communal and "public."
What was at stake was not the souls of individuals as such, but the redemption and 1. Since they refused to yield to the Vatican's demands that they leave their govermental posts, these three priests were suspended a divinis by Rome in January 1985. On the church in Nicaragua, see /V 97, April 21, 15 November 23, 1987 • International Viewpoint
LIBERATION THEOLOGY • LATIN AMERICA liberation of an entire people. In this perspective, the poor were not objects of pity or charity but the subjects of their own liberation. The church had to cease to be a part of the system of domination. Following the great prophetic tradition and Christ's example, it had to take on the powerful and denounce social injustice. What did this mean for Latin America? According to Gutierrez, the poor people of the continent were "in exile on their own soil," but also "in exodus toward their redemption." Rejecting desarrollismo, "which has become simply a synonym for reformism and modernization" - that is, for limited, timid and ineffective measures that would only aggravate dependence — the Peruvian theologian proclaimed unhesitatingly:
"Only the radical destruction of the present state of affairs, a deep-going transformation of the system of ownership, the coming to power of the exploited class, a social revolution, will put an end to this dependence. Only this will make it possible to go over to a different kind of society, a socialist society. "2 Continent-wide meeting of
Christians for Socialism
This was a much more radical position than what was advocated at the time by the dominant currents in the Latin American
Shortly after, in April 1972, the first continent-wide meeting of the Christians for Socialism movement was held in Santiago, Chile. It was inspired by two Chilean Jesuits — the theologian Pablo Richards and the economist Gonzalo Arroyo - and supported by the Mexican bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo. This ecumenical movement, including both Catholics and Protestants, pushed the logic of liberation theology to its conclusion, that is, to an attempt to make a synthesis between Marxism and Christianity. This soon got them banned by
The 1972 conference's final resolution proclaimed their support for the struggle for socialism in Latin America. One of the paragraphs of this document explained the dialectical relationship between faith and the revolution in the following way:
"The real and living presence of faith in the heart of revolutionary practice produces a fruitful interaction. Christian faith becomes a critical and dynamic leavening for the revolution. It reinforces our struggle for a total liberation of society rather than for a mere transformation of the economic
"Thus, through committed Christians, the faith makes its own contribution to building a society qualitatively different from the present one and to the burgeoning of 16 the new human being. But revolutionar commitment also has a critical and moti. International Viewpoint • November 23, 1987
O HY vating function for Christian faith. It criticizes the open or subtle forms of complicity between the faith and the dominant culture throughout history....Committed Christians become intensely aware that the needs of revolutionary practice...oblige them to discover the central themes of the ideological message.
"A real part in the process
of liberation"
"The real context for a living faith today is the history of oppression and the struggle for liberation and against oppression. In order to place ourselves in this context, however, we have to take a real part in the process of liberation by joining parties and organizations that are authentic instruments for the struggle of the working class. "3
At the Latin American bishops conference in Puebla in 1979, there was a real attempt at a crackdown. CELAM, the organizer of the meeting, banned liberation theologians from participating. Nonetheless, through the intermediary of some bishops, they exerted a real influence on the debates.
The resulting compromise was summed up by the famous formula "the church's preference for the poor," which was ambiguous enough for each current to interpret it to suit itself.
Finally, in 1981, the Brazilian Franciscan theologian Leonardo Boff set the cat 2. G. Gutierrez, Théologie de la libération — perspectives, Brussels, Lumen Vitae, 1974, pp.39-40 3. Christians and Socialism. Documentation of the Christians for Socialism Movement in Latin America, New York, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1975, p.173.
LATIN AMERICA • LIBERATION THEOLOGY among the pigeons with his book Church, charisma and power. In it he condemned the authoritarian power system in the church; the intolerance and dogmatism of institutions such as as Holy Congregation for Doctrine and Faith (former Holy Office of the Inquisition); the "Christian cult of the papal personality," which he compared to that of the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party; and the opportunism of the church as an institution toward the victors, whoever they might be. This iconoclastic work got him silenced for a year by
Trying to meet the challenge, Rome responded in 1984 by an Instruction on some aspects of "liberation theology" signed by the Holy Congregation for Doctrine and the Faith led by Cardinal Ratzinger. It denounced liberation theology as a new heresy based on the use of Marxist concepts. The reaction of the Latin American theologians and of important sections of the church, notably in Brazil, forced the Vatican to throw off some ballast.
In 1985, a new and more positive Instruction appeared. It was entitled "Christian Liberty and Liberation," and borrowed some themes of liberation theology, but "spiritualized" them by stripping them of their revolutionary social content. Parallel to this, there was a certain retreat on the part of several Latin American theologians, whose writings became more moderate or less marked by Marxism. It was a real political and spiritual confrontation, a decisive one for the future of the church. But neither of the two players wanted to take the risk of provoking a break or a schism.
Whatever the outcome of this battle, liberation Christianity, with the assistance of committed theologians, has already profoundly shaken up not only religious life but also society and politics in Latin America.
Burgeoning of Church Base Communities
In the church, the great change has been the burgeoning of the Church Base Communities (CEBs), especially in Brazil, where they embrace several million Christians, but also, on a lesser scale, throughout the continent. Base communities are small groups of people in the same poor neighborhood, shantytown, village or rural area who meet regularly to read the Bible and discuss it in the light of their own experience of life. Gradually, these debates and activities have broadened, generally with the help of progressive clerics, and they have begun to take on social tasks — literacy courses, forming cooperatives and various kinds of mutual aid.
Frequently, the CEBs coordinate their activities and give rise to social movements - struggles for housing, electricity and water in the shantytowns, struggles for land in the countryside. And in certain cases, the experience of these struggles leads to politicization and to several leaders or members of the CEBs joining class-struggle parties or revolutionary fronts.
The experience of the CEBs has given a new quality to the social and political movements that they have fostered — roots in the daily life of the popular strata and in their concrete concerns, an encouragement to self-organization at the base, as well as a distrust of political manipulation, electoral verbiage and state paternalism. This has sometimes had a negative side-effect, a radical "basism" leading to a rejection of theory and to hostility toward the vanguard groups. There is a debate over these questions among the theologians.
Role of Christians has been decisive
In any case, several of the new mass movements that have developed over the past ten or fifteen years in Latin American have their origins in liberation Christianity. This is true particularly in Brazil. The movements in defence of human rights, the neighborhood committees, the trade-union oppositions, the landless peasants' movement and finally the Workers' Party (PT) itself have derived a good part, if not the bulk, of their cadres, members and mass support from the CEBs, the church's parishes and the radicalized Christian
The Christians' role has been decisive not only in the social and political movements but also, in Central America, in the revolutionary movements. In Nicaragua, the base communities, the Delegates of the Word (community leaders charged with administering the sacraments), the Revolutionary Christian Movement, the Solentiname Community founded by Ernesto Cardenal and the Center for Education and Agricultural Advancement have been among the Sandinistas' main social bases.
Several commanders of the revolution, such as Luis Carrion, a member of the National Leadership of the FSLN, came from these Christian movements. The case of Father Gaspar Garcia Laviana, who joined the guerrillas in 1977 and fell in battle in December 1978, is relatively exceptional.
But many priests and members of religious orders, in particular Jesuits such as Fernando Cardenal and Maryknolls such as Miguel d'Escoto, supported the FSLN and helped in bringing about its victory in
In El Salvador, it was the Christian Peasants' Federation (FECCAS), which was set up in the 1970s with the encouragement of the progressive clergy, that formed the mass base of the Farabundo Marti National
Front (FMLN) in the
In the cities, Christian activists coming from the base communities are numerous among the leaders of the people's organizations and the victims of the military repression, such as Juan Chacon, one of the five Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) leaders murdered in 1980.
In Guatemala, the moving testimony of Rigoberta Menchu is representative of a series of native communities converted to the revolutionary cause by liberation Christianity, even if for the moment the massacres perpetrated by the armed forces have managed to block this process of radicalization.4
For a long time, the problem of an alliance with the so-called Christian left sectors has been part of the tactical concerns of the workers' and Marxist movement in Latin America.
During his trip to Chile in 1971, Fidel Castro talked about the possibility of moving from a tactical to a strategic alliance between Marxists and Christians. However, today, after the Central American experience and also to a certain extent the Brazilian one, it is no longer necessary to talk in terms of an alliance but rather of organic unity. In fact, Christians are already an essential component of the revolutionary movement and even of its Marxist
Theoretical challenge of
Marxist Christianity
There could be long arguments about the philosophical enigma, or theoretical challenge, that Marxist Christianity represents from the standpoint of dialectical materialism. What counts is what happens in the real world, and the Marxist Christians exist. This is an undeniable social and political fact. Not only do they exist, they often bring a moral sensitivity to the revolutionary vanguard, an experience in "grassroots" work among the people and a utopian vision that can only enrich it.
What attracts radicalized Christians to Marxism is not only its scientific value as an analysis of reality but also and above all an ethical rejection of capitalist injustice, an identification with the cause of the op pressed and an active participation in their revolutionary struggle for emancipation.
Of course, only a minority have been able to cross this threshold. The possibility for masses of Christians following this example depends also on the attitude of nonbelieving Marxists, on whether it is open or
Whatever the results of the Vatican's current offensive against liberation theology, and it cannot be excluded that it will score some points, the position of Christians in the class battlefield in Latin American will never be the same as it was before the emergence and flowering of liberation Christianity. * 4. Rigoberta Menchú is a Guatemalan Indian peasant who saw her entire family massacred by the army. She wrote a book describing the development of the peasble repression in the years of the dictatorship. November 23, 1987 • International Viewpoint
LIBERATION THEOLOGY • PHILIPPINES