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Liberation Theology and the Holy See: A Question of Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Aidan Nichols O P
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I The Holy See’s critique of liberation theology

In its document Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’ the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith not only accepts but welcomes the advent of a ‘theology of liberation’, seen as a theological exploration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a ‘message of liberty’ and as ‘liberating power’. The CDF finds fault, therefore, not with the project but with its execution, not with liberation theology as such but with the structure and content of a significant proportion of the liberation theology currently being written. Just how much a significant proportion might be is impossible to determine. On the one hand, some writings of the more extreme members of the school offer the most complete textual confirmation of the portrait by the CDF. Thus in a work put into English in 1977 we read that a theology which accepts the truth of historical materialism (i.e. classical Marxism) will ‘assume his (Marx’s) theory completely in order to see what sort of faith , if any, is possible on that basis’. A moderate liberationist, Gustavo Gutierrez, admits in the preface to a work by a more radicalised colleague thast it would be ‘disingenuous’ to deny the danger of reductionism of just the kind now identified by the CDF. On the other hand, the genre of the document is not textual description so much as logical or conceptual projection. That is, it appears to be concerned with the end-state to which a consistent application of the principles involved in current liberation theology would lead, rather than with a description of a representative mean in the present state of liberation theology.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 65 , Issue 773 , November 1984 , pp. 452 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’ (Vatican City 1984). Introduction.

2 Ib. III. 1–4; VI. 7–10.

3 A. Fierro, The Militant Gospel (London 1977), p. 382.

4 In H. Assmann, Practical Theology of Liberation (London 1975), p. 20.

5 See e.g. J. Kübel, Geschichte des katholischen Modernismus (Tübingen 1909), p. 170; M. Petre, Modernism. Its failure and its fruits (London 1918), p. 115.

6 Cf. J. Andrew Kirk, Liberation Theology. An Evangelical View from the Third World (London 1979), pp. 143–203.

7 Adapted here is some material presented by me in ‘Theology of Liberation: Analysis of the Document’, The Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, Briefing XIV. 20 (7.9.1984), pp. 4–8.

8 Liberation theology would benefit from an encounter with the account of ‘experience’ and ‘tradition’ found in H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (London 1979, especially pp. 323–325.

9 Y.M.-J. Congar, OP, ‘Théologie, Histoire de’, in Dictionnoire de Théologie Catholique XV, 1, 341–447.

10 J. Pelikan, Historical Theology (London 1971).

11 See G.A. McCol, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century. The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York 1977).

12 J.L. Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Dublin 1977).

13 B. Lonergan, Method in Theology (London 1972). Much of the criticism to which this remarkable work has been subjected turns on the desirability or otherwise of formulating a single (albeit allegedly ‘transcendental’ or transcategorial) method in theology. See A. Nichols OP, ‘The Theological Method of Bernard Lonergan and the Counter-Claims of a Theory of Paradigms’ in Angelicum (forthcoming).

14 The pervasiveness of Hegel's influence on contemporary theology, Catholic as well as Protestant, is increasingly recognised. For an early statement, see H. Küng, Menschwerdung Gottes. Eine Einführung in Hegels theologisches Denken als Prolegomena zu einer künftigen Christologie (Freiburg 1970), pp. 13–37.

15 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’, op.cit. X. 1.

16 Ib. VI. 8.

17 J. Andrew Kirk, op. cit. p. 35.

18 H. Assnrann, Opresión-Liberoción: desafio a los cristianos (Montevideo 1971), p. 141, cited in Kirk, op.cit. pp. 36–7.

19 J.L. Segundo, op.cit. Chapter 1.

20 E.g. J. Miranda, Marx and the Bible (New York 1974), p. xvii.

21 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’, op. cit. X. 1.