Liberation Theologies | Bibliography | Popes and Councils
Chapter 3: Popes and Councils. The Role of Rome in Liberation
Vatican II and Papal Encyclicals
94. Abbott, Walter M. and Joseph Gallagher, eds. Documents of Vatican II. New York: Guild, America, and Association Presses, 1966.
The best collection for Vatican II available in English. Presents all the texts for the entire council, including Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 99), with comments by respected theologians and scholars, among them Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, Avery Dulles, S.J., Donald R. Campion, S.J., R. A. F. MacKenzie, S.J., John Courtney Murray, S.J., Robert McAfee Brown, and Jaroslav Pelikan.
95. Alberigo, Giuseppe, Jean-Pierre Jossua and Joseph A. Komonchak, eds. The Reception of Vatican II. Matthew J. O’Connell, trans. Washington, DC: Catholic University, 1987.
An engaging collection of essays by Poltmeyer, Vaucelles, Galilea (on Latin American liberation theology), Gutiérrez (on the church and the poor), among others. Themes include the reception of the council among local churches, faith and history, preaching the Gospels, ecumenism, peace and war. Problem areas not yet implemented or resolved that the contributors address include collegiality, reform of canon law, clerical reform, and the liturgy as a communal expression. In chapter 16 (pp. 325-48) Daniele Menozzi reviews the “Opposition to the Council (1966-1984)” and focuses on the conservative opponents of the council’s tactic of following the letter of the wording included in the final documents as a concession to them that is outside the spirit of the council; while groups like communion and liberation seek confirmation in texts for positions developed independently of the council. In Chapter 17 Avery Dulles, S.J. reviews the gains consolidated by the Extraordinary Synod of 1985.
96. Dorr, Donal. Option for the Poor. A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
A survey of the church’s teaching on social justice, poverty and oppression.
97. Flannery, Austin, ed. Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Northport, NY: Costello Publishing; Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1975
English translations with some annotation. An appendix gives post-conciliar documents. Index.
98. —. Vatican Council II. More Postconciliar Documents. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1982.
These are grouped around the headings of Liturgy, Ecumenism, Religious Life, Ministry, Current Problems, and the Synod of Bishops. The last presents “Justice in the World” on pp. 695-710.
99. Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). See 94, pp. 183-316; 105, pp. 178-284.
Essential reading. This document defined the Catholic church and its relationship to the world in the late twentieth century and set off a revolution that is still being fought, and resisted, around the world. Its essential question is how the church may be of service to a world that has changed profoundly since the triumphalist First Vatican Council (pars. 2-3) and that it no longer seeks to control but to serve and to learn from. It thus overturns centuries of thinking that saw the Catholic church as the only vehicle of salvation, the only avenue for legitimate change, and its clergy and hierarchy the only agents of truth. In these elements it thrust responsibility upon the laity to “scrutinize the signs of the times” and to change the world according to gospel precepts and so gave the doctrinal underpinning for many elements associated with liberation theology.
Its major themes are “personalism” (pars. 12-22), the priority of the human being as the measure for all human institutions and, at the same time, an essentially social being; the implementation of justice in the world, the removal of obstacles to economic equality; and development (29-32).
The tone of the Constitution is a startling departure from the dualisms and fears of the nineteenth-century church and one whose themes were to become major concerns for all later liberation theology. It insists that we cannot ignore the salvation of the world while focusing on our own individual salvations, and that while progress is not the kingdom of God, it remains an essential concern of that kingdom (par. 39). It discusses the “people of God” as the true agents of change (11), Christian faith as liberation, both from sin (13) and from ignorance in the world (60-61); it stresses an integralism that joins both body and spirit as legitimate concerns for all Christians (14) and offers an “incarnationist” theology for this integralism (40-45, 58).
Among its economic themes it stresses that human dignity lies not in technology but in human interaction (23), that human society and nature is communitarian (24), that economic inequalities must be resolved (63), and it reiterates the Catholic doctrine of the common purpose of all created goods (66), even while acknowledging the proper limits of private ownership (71-73). The Constitution also firmly rejects the church’s connection to all forms of “Christendoms,” that is the association of Christianity with any particular form of government or political system (76), and thus marks the end of the Constantinian age that is an essential element to the ecclesiology of liberation theology.
100. Gremillion, Joseph, ed. The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching Since Pope John. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976.
Documents include Gaudium et Spes (99), Mater et Magistra (103), Pacem in Terris (104), Populorum Progressio (107), and the Medellin documents, among others.
101. Gudorf, Christine E. Catholic Social Teaching on Liberation Themes. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1981.
This is an excellent review of the topic. Part 1 surveys papal social teaching in the last century from Pius XI to Paul VI. Part 2 examines the theological methods in papal teaching and deals with the similarities and differences between liberation theology and current church teaching. Part 3 surveys thought on private property, 4 on Marxism, and 5 on women. A good bibliography, especially for its rather complete index of papal documents on these topics.
102. Henriot, Peter J., Edward P. De Berri, and Michael J. Schultheis. Catholic Social Teaching. Our Best Kept Secret. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.
This is a useful introduction to the tradition of Catholic social thought, primarily aimed at the student. It contains excellent outlines of the major social encyclicals of Leo XIII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, the U.S. and Latin American bishops.
103. John XXIII, Pope. Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress). See 105, pp. 44-116.
This papal encyclical was issued on May 15, 1961 to commemorate and to update the social encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno of 1931 and in an attempt to offer some guidance and prophetic insight into the damage caused by the unbridled economic systems of communism on the one hand and liberal capitalism on the other. It was met with wide enthusiasm, since it signaled the end of the church’s isolation from the modern world; in fact, it announced the church’s embrace of the world, its various currents and problems, and called on the church to take on a new role of service, not of authoritarian rule.
Several themes important for the development of liberation theology emerge from the letter: the social use of property, new norms for the use of private property that insure distribution, the role of the state as a positive force in economic life if it acts on behalf of social justice, the rights of workers, the concept of “subsidiarity” (that the state should not assume to itself what individuals acting individually and collectively can accomplish), new standards of economic justice and equality. These norms strike a careful balance between “development” in a technological sense and social progress that enhances human dignity.
The encyclical takes bold aim at the waste and over-consumption of the industrial world in the face of the needs of the Third World for simple subsistence and insists on the obligation to justice and humanity (par. 161). It condemns neocolonial forms of exploitation by the elites of these countries and their allies in the North (169-74), and stresses the Christian duty to contribute to civil institutions and to remove obstacles to human dignity. In this light, it emphasizes that individual humans are the foundation, cause and end of all human institutions (218) and stresses the importance of the lay apostolate: the primary role of the laity in informing society with Christian values and bringing about change (233-35). The laity, in fact, is enjoined to “observe, judge, and act” in accordance with circumstances and moral teachings (236). On the ecclesiological level, the pope emphasizes that both laity and clergy are ontologically equal: both are living members of the body of Christ (258-59).
104. —. Pacem in Terris. See 105, pp. 117-70.
While primarily devoted to the themes of peace as international order, the pope breaks new ground in moving away from the church’s “theology of war” and the just-war tradition and toward a theology of peace based on the Gospels and on the Christian tradition of active nonviolence and peacemaking. Thus peace becomes a work of justice as the individual is called upon to judge and to act. An essential document for all later liberation theologians
105. O’Brien, David J., and Thomas A. Shannon, eds. Renewing the Earth. Catholic Documents on Peace, Justice and Liberation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Useful collection of documents that are the ecclesiatical keystones for liberation theology, from John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra to Vatican II, the social encyclicals of Paul VI, Medellin, and statements by U.S. Catholic bishops. Includes good editions of Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress) on pages 44-116 (103), Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution) on pages 171-284 (99), Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples) on pages 307-46 (107), Octagesima Adveniens (Letter on the Eightieth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum) on pages 347-83 (106), Justice in the World, the declaration by the 1971 Synod of Bishops on pp. 384-408 (108).
106. Paul VI, Pope. Octagesima Adveniens. (A Call to Action; Letter on on Eightieth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum).
This was issued on May 14, 1971, on the eightieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Its essential theme is social justice (par. 1). Christian communities, the pope declares, must analyze their own situations and shed Gospel light on them (4). In this process the church acts as servant, at the service of all who seek justice (5).
The letter then reviews the changes in the modern world (pars. 7-17): new conditions of production, fairness of exchange, divisions of wealth, increased consumption, and the need of shared responsibility, urbanization, problems of youth and women (grouped together in par. 13), and of workers, discrimination and emigration.
The pope’s “call to action” then takes up the challenges (18-21): creating employment, caring for the environment (nearly twenty years before most other world leaders), distinguishing between true human liberty and that offered by competing ideologies, whether Marxist or liberal capitalist (26). While there is nothing inherently wrong with analyzing Marxist or capitalist thought for aids in analysis, the Christian must use discernment in borrowing methodologies (31-6). Bureaucratic socialism, technocratic capitalism and authoritarian democracy all offer false utopian visions and reveal the ambiguity of human “progress.”
True human progress must make way for greater justice, it must change attitudes and structures, “liberation,” it declares, “starts with interior freedom” (45). Nevertheless, this is the start, not the end of human life: involvement in politics is a Christian duty, and Christians should try to make political choices consistent with the Gospels (46). Ultimately, the “call to action” is to the laity to act after personal conversion and the realization that we all bear guilt for injustices (48) in our consumption habits, our life choices, our politics and our own drives. The pope concludes with a praiseworthy example: those worker priests who take on the life of the poor and oppressed to transform the Gospel into true justice.
107. —. Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples, March 26, 1967). See 105, pp. 307-46.
Condemned by the Wall Street Journal, which called its message “warmed-over Marxism,” this papal encyclical is the starting point of Latin American and other Third-World liberation theologies. Paul is careful to stress that the encyclical falls firmly within the Catholic tradition on social teaching but has been written to meet the realities of the increasing imbalance between the world’s wealthy and destitute. Building on Gaudium et Spes (see 99), he declares that the church has been founded to establish the kingdom of heaven here on earth and to “scrutinize the signs of the time.” It thus has a prophetic and a critical role, not one of lordship or domination. In fact, its truest social role is to press for integral development.
Several themes of the encyclical look forward to those of liberation theology, including the existence of oppressive social structures that insure the oppression and destitution of the many (21), the role of justice in giving the poor their due, even if this involves expropriation of immorally held private property (23-24), a new definition of “development” away from technological projects and toward the distribution of income and social planning (34) whose aim is an integral humanism. The pope calls on the wealthy, both nationally and individually, to turn superfluous wealth to the service of the poor and to turn the wealth of nations being spent on armaments and luxuries to the aid of the poor (49-51).
Peace is inextricably bound to social justice and the economic progress of all peoples, especially those of the developing world. “In fact, development is the new name for peace” (76-80). One cannot condemn violent revolution while not simultaneously condemning the violence of repressive injustice. Finally, the pope stresses that it is the role of the laity to implement change (81).
108. Synod of Bishops. Justice in the World. See 105, pp. 384-408.
As Paul VI’s pontificate progressed, many contradictory elements of the modern papacy came more and more to the fore. While the pope held rigidly to nineteenth-century definitions of clerical celibacy, birth control, and abortion; he took to heart, and in fact deepened, the most progressive calls of John XXIII and Vatican II, including the call for peace and justice and sweeping ecclesiatical changes, including the notion of collegiality – the shared responsibility for leading the church by the pope and the bishops. The 1971 Synod of Bishops is the outcome of many of these progressive trends so encouraged by Paul VI.
While the media latched on to the insistence on a celibate priesthood announced at the Synod, little attention was given its almost radical endorsement of justice for the Third World. Molded and inspired by the pope and the new majority of Third World bishops in attendance, its document, “Justice in the World,” overflows with the seeds of a barely emerging liberation theology.
After declaring that it is the duty of the church to scrutinize the “signs of the times,” the bishops cast their gaze on the serious injustice, domination and oppression that characterize most of the world. Their aim therefore is to reject fatalism and to seek the furthering of justice (Introduction). Liberation is clearly the theme of the letter. The bishops declare that “action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation” (p. 391).
The past twenty-five years have given rise to a great irony: despite the linkage of the world through communications and commerce, there has been a rise of oppression and of the “marginal” person. Ecological damage done by both capitalist and socialist systems has risen to a crisis, and gross imbalances between the haves and have-nots widen. In order to foster true development, we must remove the structures that stand in the way of the conversion of hearts and of overcoming marginalization. We must face the plight of migrants, refugees, the persecuted, those deprived of human and religious rights, victims of torture, political prisoners, and we must respect the “right to life” and rights to education and media access.
In Part 2 the prelates focus on the biblical message of liberation, of a God revealed as the “liberator of the oppressed and the defender of the poor” (p. 397). For its part, therefore, “the Church has the right, indeed the duty, to proclaim justice on the social, national and international level, and to denounce instances of injustice when the fundamental rights of man [sic] and his [sic] salvation demand it” (p. 399). Yet the pope and bishops are clear that the church’s role is not to act of itself and not to offer concrete solutions but to defend the fundamental dignity of the human person.
Part 3 therefore contains the call to action for Christians. Nonviolence is stressed as the Christian form of action. Yet for all its talk of external action, the Synod also turns an eye inward: to ecclesiastical structures. Justice and human rights must be respected within the church as well, it declares. The role of women must be expanded, while authority must be shared in the spirit of collegiality.
In the end the church must educate for justice (p. 401). The family and the community level are the keys to this education. The use of the liturgy, the sacraments, of catechesis are all endorsed as valid methods to teach justice and to “discover the teaching of the prophets.” Collegiality and ecumenism are both endorsed, as are international bodies, such as the U.N. and its commissions on human rights, economics, development, ecology and nutrition.
The letter concludes on an optimistic note, recognizing the role of the spirit in motivating all Christians and members of the “People of God” (p. 408). Its imagery is positive and feminine, almost mystical, in its sense of renewal: “The entire creation has been groaning till now in an act of giving birth, as it waits for the glory of the children of God to be revealed” (cf. Rom. 8:22) (p. 408). The document concludes with what is a full statement of the theology of liberation: “At the same time as it proclaims the Gospel of the Lord, its Redeemer and Saviour, the Church calls on all, especially the poor, the oppressed and the afflicted, to cooperate with God to bring about liberation from every sin and to build a world which will reach the fulness of creation only when it becomes the work of man [sic] for man [sic]” (p. 408).
109. Vorgrimler, Herbert, ed. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. Vol. 5: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. New York: Herder & Herder, 1969.
A companion to the documents of the council, including both detailed discussions of the political aspects of the council and of the doctrinal issues involved in each.
110. Walsh, Michael, and Brian Davies, eds. Proclaiming Justice and Peace. Documents from John XXIII to John Paul II. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1984.
Good editions of Mater et Magistra (pp. 1-44), Pacem in Terris (45-76), Gaudium et Spes (77-140), Populorum Progressio (141-64), Octagesima Adveniens (165-87), Justice in the World (188-203), Evangelii Nuntiandi (204-42), Redemptoris Hominis (243-61), Dives in Misericordia (262-70), and Laborem Exercens (271-311).
John Paul II and Liberation Theology
111. Baldwin, Louis. The Pope and the Mavericks. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988.
This is a journalistic, if unsympathetic, view of John Paul II. It examines the personality and background of Karol Wojtyla and his later dealings to silence Küng, Schillebeeckx, Curran, Gutiérrez, Boff, and Hunthausen, highlighting the role of Cardinal Ratzinger as a papal tactician. Baldwin treats the liberation theologians on pages 81-96. Fairly well researched for so popular a treatment. Penny Lernoux’s analysis of the papal “Restoration” is far broader and more compelling. See 120.
112. Commission Iustitia et Pax. The Social Teaching of John Paul II. Roger Hickel, S.J., ed. Vatican City: Pontifical Commission Iustitia et Pax, 1979-.
This multi-volume booklet series examines the pope’s thought on many areas. Volume 4 discusses the “theme of liberation” and notes how infrequently the pope had used the term at Puebla or in Poland.
113. Eagleson, John and Philip Scharper, eds. Puebla and Beyond. John Drury, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1980.
The best treatment of the council of Puebla, Mexico in 1979, which conservatives in the church had intended to mark the end of Medellin’s influence and of liberation theology. The council was attended by important clerics and laity from around the world, including such Latin American bishops as Oscar Romero and Helder Camara. Press attention focused on the debates between conservatives and radicals within and outside the council, especially since Pope John Paul II attended the meetings and confirmed its conclusions. To the surprise of conservatives, the pope actually endorsed the thrust of the church’s new “option for the poor” and for nonviolent change in Latin America, while he also applied its theory to liberation struggles in other parts of the world. As the result of a church council, the final document is now part of the official teaching of the Catholic church throughout the world.
The edition presents the entire final document, the pope’s major addresses, and commentaries by leading theologians and observers of the Latin American scene. The editors were largely responsible for bringing the works of Latin America’s liberation theologians to a North American audience.
114. John Paul II. John Paul II in Mexico. His Collected Speeches. New York: Collins, 1979.
The trip to Puebla, complete with color glossies. This looks like the coffee-table version of the Daughters of St. Paul edition. See 116.
115. —. On Social Concern. Sollicitude Rei Socialis. Encyclical Letter, December 30, 1987. Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1987.
The “Res Socialis” is the great bugaboo of the nineteenth-century papacy before Leo XIII and the master achievement of the twentieth-century papacy: the Social Question. Thus the “Res Socialis” is the human condition in the modern world and the church’s role in fostering social and economic justice as it attempts to make God’s kingdom a reality. “On Social Concern” may therefore be far too tame an English translation for the theme of this encyclical, which embodies most of the progressive social thinking of the popes of the last hundred years and expands upon these declarations in unambiguous terms.
The pope recognizes both the problems of the late twentieth century and endorses the church’s role in trying to guide Christians to face them. He also frankly acknowledges that these problems have become worse as a result of both the excesses of liberal capitalism the authoritarian planning of socialist countries, which destroys all initiative, and through the mistakes of the Third World itself. To the categories of oppression, marginalization and poverty the pope also adds his concern for the Fourth World: the discarded marginalized of the First and Second worlds whose misery stands out in even starker contrast to the the affluence around them.
Yet even this bold statement of the church’s social mission reflects the contradictions and ambiguities of this “Restoration” pope. John Paul wholeheartedly endorses the tradition of Populorum Progressio, yet he does so in terms that seem to water down the “option for the poor” to replace it with an “option or love of preference for the poor” (par. 42) that then becomes the “love of preference for the poor.” While he speaks of “liberation” his endorsement of liberation theology is qualified by the criticisms of his papacy bound up in Cardinal Ratzinger’s inquisitions and in the papal “Instruction” (46). While he calls on lay Christians, both men and women, to act in accord with the Gospels, it is clear that the “magisterium” will define what this accordance will be from on high. Little mention or praise is given to those Christians who have acted in base Christian communities.
After the difficult task of individual conversion away from sin, and the “structures of sin” that sinful individuals create on a global scale, comes the awareness of the need for solidarity, which is the Christian virtue of sharing the misery and the struggle of the marginalized and oppressed, a determination to commit oneself to the common good. Neither ideology nor the idolatry that competing political blocs espouse can bring this about. He stresses that nonviolence is the most potent force that the world has to bring about change and that Christians are bound to act, albeit nonviolently, to confront sinful structures that are corrupt or inefficient. Drawing on a long tradition of Catholic thought on property, the pope emphasizes that the goods of creation are meant for all, that private property is limited by the principle of social use, the “social mortgage.”
The pope concludes his letter with a call to integral development and full liberation: the development of the entire human being – both spirit and flesh – that guarantees or restores human dignity in the fulness of rights and duties. True peace, which is the justice and dignity of all people, must be won on a global scale, the scale that makes us all truly co-creators.
On the whole the papal letter is a clear victory for the progress of liberation and liberation theology in the church.
116. —. Speeches. Daughters of St. Paul, compilers and eds. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979-80.
These have been collected and translated from the pages of Osservatore Romano, the Vatican house organ. They include volumes on Puebla and Poland (1979), Africa (1980), Brazil and Africa (1980), and the Far East (1981). Much useful material for the student of his thought.
117. —, and others. Reflections on Puebla. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1980.
Essays by Julian Filochowski on Karol Wojtyla the man, Jon Sobrino on the significance of Puebla, Francis McDonagh on Puebla’s influence on Great Britain, and by John Paul II on evangelization and liberation, drawn from Osservatore Romano, in which he endorses Puebla’s view of liberation.
118. Johnson, Paul. Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982.
“Restoration” is used here in a positive sense: Johnson highly favors the Vatican’s attempts to turn back many of the trends in the church since Vatican II, yet he does so with ever the slightest trace of dry ambiguity so that his conservatism does not come across nearly as engagé as it truly is.
Chapter 8, “The Shadow of Heresy,” pp. 146-65, begins with a disparagingly offhand treatment of the work and importance of Congar, Danielou, de Lubac, Rahner and other major thinkers of Vatican II and turns into an apologetic for John Paul II’s silencing of Küng, Schillebeeckx, and the Dutch bishops.
Chapter 5, pp. 85-104, “The Temptation to Violence,” is a sleight of hand attack on liberation theology, Medellin and Puebla. As Johnson notes (pp. 89-90), “Latin American Catholic radicalism expresses itself in a variety of ways, but above all, in the institutional structure of the comunidades de base (basic Christian communities) and the philosophical system of ‘liberation theology’.” Johnson then proceeds to spell out the essentially hidden and political agenda of liberation theology and sees its origin in Germany “like most new theological ideas.” Metz, Rahner, Moltmann and Pannenberg, not the experience of the Latin American people, are responsible for the thought of the Latin America “theolibs.”
119. Küng, Hans, and Leonard Swidler, eds. The Church in Anguish. Has the Vatican Betrayed Vatican II? San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
A more scholarly approach to the papal “Restoration” than either Baldwin (111) or Lernoux (120) with essays written by most of the major victims and participants. Part I analyzes Karol Wojtyla and Cardinal Ratzinger. Part II then examines their victims: Küng, Pohier, Schillebeeckx, the Boffs, Curran, and religious and lay women. Part III looks at the American scene; while a fine essay by Norbert Greinacher looks at the motives and aims of the antagonists and defamers of liberation theology (pp. 144-62). Rosemary Radford Ruether examines the themes of John Paul II and the alienation of women (pp. 279-83). The volume also contains essays by Charles Curran, Eugene C. Kennedy, Andrew Greeley, the Boffs, Bernard Häring, and Robert McAfee Brown.
120. Lernoux, Penny. People of God. The Struggle for World Catholicism. New York: Viking Books, 1989.
This is a startling and eye-opening account of the “Restoration” currently being imposed upon the Catholic church worldwide. Lernoux’s book is a detailed narrative of the attempts of John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and an entrenched Curia to roll back the reforms of Vatican II, most especially in the realms of episcopal collegiality and the role of the laity in forming both praxis and doctrine in the modern church.
According to Lernoux, who writes in a style that is both journalistic and engaged, John Paul II had warned those who elected him in 1978 that “you do not know the kind of man I am.” Lernoux expounds, at great length and detail, John Paul’s deep devotion, personal charm, love of justice and peace, his commitment to the poor and his heart-felt condemnations of both communism and capitalism for their alienating structures. Yet Lernoux analyzes the model for all of John Paul’s activities and attitudes: the political and spiritual world of the church in Poland.
For John Paul II the entire world, and the Catholic church set aside from it, matches the Polish model: a church that must stress unity and obedience to the hierarchy as it fights a godless world and political system on behalf of the powerless, all of whom are faithful servants of the church, at least in public discourse. Once given this unquestioning obedience, the church can then champion all the causes dear to the heart of John Paul and the modern church, but only with the clear recognition that the pope is the absolute monarch and leader of world Catholicism.
John Paul’s campaign thus collides directly with the thrust and meaning of Vatican II and with progressive church people in the laity and hierarchy all over the world. The pope’s world is Eurocentric, it opposes all the ecumenism and multi-culturalism that Vatican II opened, it ignores the role of the laity in formulating church teaching and of the bishops as equal partners in evangelization, and it both fears and resents the modern world, its secularism, materialism, yet also its pluralism. Thus the pope’s model is that of the triumphalist, pre-Vatican II church of Pius XII and its successful battles against “modernism” and other forms of progressive thought and action.
In order to achieve his plans for “Restoration” the pope has employed various procedural and bureaucratic tools to stem the tide of change that Lernoux sees as inevitable. These include the revived power of the Inquisition (Congregation of the Faith) under Joseph Ratzinger, the division of once powerful archdioceses headed by church progressives such as Cardinal Arns in Sao Paolo in Brazil, disciplinary actions against such American progressives as Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, the appointment of conservative bishops when vacancies occur, the support of far-right and quasi-fascist “Catholic lay” groups, including the secretive Opus Dei. These not only provide a wealthy and influential support group for the Catholic right’s numerous publications attacking the reforms of Vatican II but also a fifth-column within the dioceses of the most progressive bishops that keeps up both internal criticism and supplies a reactionary Curia with a constant stream of letters impugning the orthodoxy and pastoral rectitude of progressive church leaders. The Vatican also entered into political alliances of convenience with the U.S. Reagan administration to further its authoritarian purposes in Central America and to gain support for its defiance of Communist authorities in Poland.
On the doctrinal level the pope’s chief targets have been the proponents of liberation theology, and here Lernoux’s crisp and succinct writing offers good introductions to the major confrontations between the pope’s men and the major liberation theologians, including Boff and Gutiérrez. Concluding sections deal with the situation in Central America, most especially Nicaragua.
121. Quade, Quentin L., ed. The Pope and Revolution. John Paul II Confronts Liberation Theology. Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1982.
Essays by Gutiérrez, Vree, Novak, James Schall, with writings and speeches by John Paul II. The book resembles an FBI firing range: we hang up the targets at a safe distance and then turn on the big guns. The book’s tone can be summed up as follows: “throughout Christian history, some Christians have sought to use religion for earthly ends….” With premises like these the conclusions are foregone: liberation theology is one such movement. Luckily, however, our current chief pastor has seen through the leftist priests of Latin America. The church may not become directly involved in the world. The laity’s job is to act, not theologize, and the clergy’s is to teach, not to become involved.
“When the clouds have cleared, this central fact should be apparent: liberation theology and its cousins are not religion but politics, a series of programs for the economic and political redemption of society” (p. 11).
122. Ratzinger, Joseph. Church, Ecumenism and Politics. New Essays in Ecclesiology. New York: Crossroad, 1988.
Essays on the nature of the church, its structure, the ecumenical scene, and the relationship of the church to the world. The essays may be new but the ideas contained in them are those of the medieval papacy. As in his inquisition against liberation theology, Cardinal Ratzinger sets up his answers as if they are questions and his foregone conclusions as if they were categories of intellectual discourse. His rhetorical false dichotomy, “liberation vs. Redemption,” is an example. Rather than inquiring how or whether “Redemption” takes on a fuller meaning in liberation theology – both a spiritual and a physical unity – Ratzinger begins his discourse with the type of dichotomies that liberation theology seeks to dissolve.
In another dichotomy of the “church” and the “people of God” we find the same attempt to present conclusions as the criteria for discussion. The church, Cardinal Ratzinger decrees, is not the people of God but the mystical body: it is an organization not of equals, as the “emotionalism” of the phrase “people of God” connotes, but of members of a body with a clearly defined head. Who, or more appropriately, what, is that head? Ratzinger clearly indicates his preferences: the hierarchy is no simple administrative body but a special sacramental order of being – ontological supermen if you will; and papal primacy is the core of the hierarchical church.
As in the rest of Ratzinger’s current corpus, liberation theology is condemned by insinuation and by the establishment of new categories, in this case by equation with “Marxist-inspired forms.”
123. —. “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation.” Rome: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1984.
Assumes immediately a sharp distinction between liberation from sin, which he asserts to be purely spiritual, and liberation from “servitude of an earthly and temporal kind.” Cardinal Ratzinger thus condemns a priori what he has set out to examine, since the unity of spiritual and temporal sin lies at the heart of liberation theology. One cannot speak of physical oppression, political tyranny, or economic exploitation without defining them as sins against God and humanity, the liberation theologians contend, yet Ratzinger would stress the pre-Vatican II assumption that one can be saved from sin individually and internally while one ignores the injustices and calamities of the world around.
Ratzinger does, however, then go on to examine the origins of liberation theology in the praxis of Latin America and the Third World, to review its biblical foundations, and the “voice of the magisterium,” that is the church’s own pronouncements, on the process of liberation as found in Mater et Magistra, Pacem in Terris, Populorum Progressio, and Evangelii Nuntiando.
Ratzinger then goes to what he considers the heart of the problem, the confusion among good-intentioned clergy and laity to adopt “Marxist” analysis to further the process of liberation. While many currents exist within Marxism, its “pure” form emphasizes “class-struggle,” and this is not compatible with Christianity. One must avoid treating Marxism as if it were a scientific analysis of reality and not simply a sympathetic language. Ratzinger rejects what he considers the fundamentally violent interpretation of class-struggle and implies that this colors all of liberation theology, although he is careful to note that it is explicit only in “certain of the writings.” He then goes on to stress that this identification is incompatible with Vatican II.
What also seems to disturb Cardinal Ratzinger is what he sees as a sinister perversion of Christian doctrine into a “real system” complete with a rival “church of the poor,” a rival liturgy of struggle, that rejects the true sacramental nature of the Eucharist, a questioning of the hierarchical structure of the church, and a “radical politicization of faith’s affirmations,” which is bad a priori.
Pure liberation theologians, he asserts, stress that whoever disagrees with them are members of the oppressor class. These people hold church social teaching in disdain, attempt a political re-reading of scripture, and make the kingdom of God an earthly goal. Even the assertions of complete faith in Christian creeds and doctrines espoused by the liberation theologians are mere shams, and the Jesus of struggle that they preach denies the Incarnate Word, “God made Lord and Christ.” True liberation is baptism, not “the political liberation of a people.”
In conclusion Ratzinger asserts that he is not for earthly oppression and calls on all clergy to dialogue with the “Magisterium of the Church,” to reject “blind” violence, to seek for the roots of injustice in the hearts of men, and to reject the temptation to seek solutions in structural change. He also dismisses base Christian communities as misinformed and ignorant (if only because they are composed of the laity, a lower form of existence), if “generous,” sessions in which these false doctrines are spread
By his stress on what he begins by saying are “certain aspects” of liberation theology – Marxism, class-division, violence, un-Christian Christologies – Ratzinger raises so many red herrings that the reader who is not also familiar with the basic texts of liberation theology will come away believing that these “certain aspects” are the root and heart of the theology. In fact, it is not entirely clear if this is not what the cardinal has in mind, or whether he himself has not fully understood the texts and intent of these works.
124. —. Instruction on Christian Freedom and Religion. March 22, 1986. Vatican City: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1986; reprinted in Liberation Theology and the Vatican Document, vol. 3. Perspectives from the Third World. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 1988.
While bearing the signatures of Cardinal Ratzinger and Alberto Bovone, titular archbishop of Caesarea in “Numidia,” the letter is apparently the work of John Paul II himself. It begins by declaring its inextricable link to the 1984 “Instruction” and by noting that both documents are to be read together as part of the papal Magisterium.
Liberation is defined primarily as liberation from sin, which is defined primarily as spiritual, inner and individual. The key text for the pope’s doctrine of liberation is found in paragraph 4: “the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32); and this encapsulates the papal position. For who, but the pope, and the Magisterium, declares the truth? And what other path to freedom than strict adherence to the dictates of Rome? Here we seem to have turned back not only from the liberation theology of Latin America but from most of the Western tradition since the close of the Middle Ages. And this, in fact, is the very truth of the document so constructed by the pope and cardinal.
The Renaissance, Martin Luther, the Enlightenment and the evil French Revolution are all to be regretted, though in slightly ambiguous terms, for bringing us “false freedom” (par. 6-13) and only new forms of oppression, the danger of total annihilation and new inequalities (14-16). Modern freedom is ambiguous at best (17-19). Instead, the pope preaches, freedom is not technological but is liberation from sin and evil. Modern progress will bring freedom only if tied to spiritual liberation (24).
Chapter 2 emphasizes that freedom is only relative: that “man” is not free in relationship to God. In this and in the subsequent sections the pope seems intent on returning the discussion of liberation back to the parameters of medieval scholasticism as he repeats for his modern audience medieval definitions of sin, alienation, idolatry and disorder.
Chapter 3 then tackles the question of liberation and Christian freedom. After reviewing the Old Testament (44-49), the pope declares that the Jewish people were saved from Egypt to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (44). In the New Testament we have Jesus’ proclamation of his mission, a standard foundation of liberation theology, reduced by the pope to the mission that “the poor have the good news preached to them” (50), again asserting the priestly nature of the Judeo-Christian tradition. “The heart of the Christian experience of freedom,” we are told, “is in justification by the grace received through faith and the church’s sacraments” (52), very “Lutheran” sounding for one who condemns the Reformation.
Freedom and liberation, as the pope seems to define them, are the deliverance from the world into the authoritarian bosom of priests. Human struggle is the fight against the slavery of sin (53). Love is the key to all human relationships. What the pope then concludes from this – in terms Oscar Romero was slain for having renounced – is that the rich are bound to do their duty of charity toward the poor (56). The chapter concludes with a note on Christian eschatology that clearly distinguishes what it considers illusory earthly hopes for a better life with the kingdom of the afterlife.
Thus the document attempts to use many of the standard liberation theology texts and the language of papal social encyclicals to bring the terms of discussion back to the level of pre-Vatican II: a spirituality that is divorced from the “world” and a piety that expresses itself solely on individualistic, inner terms.
Chapter 5 discusses the “liberating” mission of the church through a series of vague sections on the church’s social and economic concerns, but then launches off into a series of defensive attacks on vague enemies who infringe on the church’s teachings. Medellin’s “option for the poor” is watered down to “a love of preference for the poor,” which might as easily be understood as an intellectual and sentimental position of sympathy, not any real option (66). In fact, without exaggeration, this lies at the thrust of the pope’s thought. The poor are to be pitied and helped, not taught or encouraged to organize and to help themselves. They are to be the objects of charity, not the subjects of their own destiny (66-67). Another aspect of this new “love of preference” is a “detachment from riches,” not an actual rejection of them; and in fact Jesus taught the “sort of poverty, made up of detachment, trust in God, sobriety and a readiness to share.” Thus the pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, the former student of St. Bonaventure, do for liberation theology what earlier popes with Bonaventure’s help did to the social message of St. Francis and his strict followers: they have so internalized and spiritualized it as to make it socially meaningless to the masses of the real poor. The chapter concludes with an endorsement of base Christian communities, provided they remain under the control of the Magisterium, the hierarchy and the order of the church and sacraments, thus making them more parish auxiliaries than true communities of believers.
Chapter 5 reviews very superficially the social teachings of the church over the last century, rejecting class struggle, violence and any notion of “revolution,” stressing that reform is the only way. Violence in the just revolution, being a venerable church teaching, is admitted as a last resort. As in Sollicitude Rei Socialis, the pope concludes with a rapture on the Virgin Mary; yet here he transforms the Magnificat, Mary’s song of the humble turning the mighty from their thrones, and a favorite text of the liberation theologians and base communities, into a paean on Mariology, and of Mary as the “patient servant.” His ultimate conclusion is that the “sensus fidei,” the consensus of the faithful, must be turned away from the illusion of earthly change to a contemplation of Mary.
Thus the pope has coopted the images, texts, and areas of discourse of liberation theology to turn the social agenda of the church back to the era before Vatican II: to a world tightly controlled by the man at the top, to a humble flock of charitable rich and passive poor, to a church that dictates from on high and listens to no ignorance, wisdom, or independent thought from “below.”
125. —. and Vittorio Messori. The Ratzinger Report. An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison, trans. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985.
Essential reading into the mind of the grand inquisitor and future pope. Cardinal Ratzinger expounds his – and he would claim the magisterium’s – views on a wide variety of issues. These include the continued existence of heresy, the misinterpretation of Vatican II, the nature of the papal “Restoration” under John Paul II, the distortion of the meaning of the church by modern innovators; the supremacy of Rome in all things Catholic, the shattering of the traditional bonds of theology, catechesis, exegesis, Christology; the need to reaffirm the authority of the Father; the drift from liberalism to permissiveness; the natural subordination of women and the role model of Fatima; a reaffirmation of the anticorporal, ascetic nature of pre-Vatican II Catholic spirituality and of the body-spirit split that liberation theologians have rejected; the call for a restoration of some of the pre-conciliar liturgy; the necessity of reviving Catholic teaching on the devil, hell and purgatory, the angels and the whole host of spiritual weapons long held dear by ecclesial supremacists; a turn away from “modern” Christianity; a call for an adherence to his Instruction on Certain Aspects; a rejection of class struggle as a valid foundation for theology; and the centrality of European models of Christendom throughout the world.
126. Schall, James V., S.J. The Church, the State and Society in the Thought of John Paul II. Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982.
A volume in The John Paul Synthesis. A Trinity College Symposium. This is a deeply sympathetic analysis. Schall’s sources are almost exclusively primary: the letters, speeches and encyclicals of the pope, as is appropriate. But let the uninitiated beware. His bibliography of secondary works is another matter: Catholicism from an Anglican drawing room, addressing the problems that the modern church, including this pope, have tackled with enthusiasm with decades-old works on “society” by such noted intellectual conservatives from our grandparents’ generation as C. S. Lewis, Hilaire Belloc, Malcolm Muggeridge, Dorothy Sayers, and such modern conservatives as Michael Novak and the American Enterprise Institute. Barely a word is written on the problem and importance of liberation theology.
127. Williams, George Huntston. The Law of Nations and the Book of Nature. Collegeville, MN: St. John’s University, 1984.
This is a series of three essays on John Paul II’s Christian humanism, including a reflection on the pope’s Instruction on liberation theology and his alternative to the Latin American model.
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