The Communist Clergy: Liberation Theology (2/5)

The Communist Clergy

2/5

Liberation Theology

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“The theologians are becoming Communists and the Communists are becoming theologians” – Cuban dictator Fidel Castro



The Second Episcopal
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II, addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. It is this Council where a section of the traditionally traditionalist Christian clergy officially started moving to the Left in the political spectrum by adopting socialism, some going as far as to adopting ''radical'' views. These Leftist Bishops soon met at Medellín, Colombia in Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America in the year 1968. They issued the manifesto of a church committed to a much-needed, long-delayed "social transformation" of Latin America.


The Medellin document spoke of 'External Neocolonialism', alluding mostly to the USA, hence they called it externality. Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalisation and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country. The document spoke of the countries which produce raw materials, particularly the ones dependent on singular major export (like Ethiopia-Coffee beans), always remain poor, while the industrialized countries enrich themselves by robbing them. The language was political, bordering on revolutionary, and very far left from what the Vatican's position.


What is Liberation Theology?
Britannica defines Liberation theology as a religious movement arising in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism and centred in Latin America. It sought to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. Liberation Theology revolves around - poverty, dependency, exploitation, conscientization, and revolution.



Father Segundo, an Uruguayan liberation theologian went as far as to claim that socialism constitutes the highest real value, at the ''theological crux", reducing the Gospel to ''no value at all.'' Liberation theologians claim all four Gospels are equally communist. Defenders of liberation theology maintain that most libertarian clergymen are neither atheist nor materialist, and they are generally careful to avoid or to modify concepts of class hatred, violence and ''class struggle.'' They claim they are merely raising the awareness of the structural causes of poverty and their faith commitment leads them to use the insights from Marxist critiques of society.



How does the Vatican feel about it?
A Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest named Gustavo Gutiérrez was the founder of a progressive movement within the Catholic church, known as Liberation Theology. There were suspicions that Gutiérrez was being investigated for Marxism by Pope John Paul II’s doctrinal czar Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict. The current Pope Francis (First Latin American pontiff and a Liberation Theologian) did a striking salsa move towards the Left. He brought the Far-Left political tenets of Liberation Theology to the fore, particularly by his pronouncements against the blight of poverty and the dangers of capitalism.



The Vatican is the chief guardian of the Catholic faith. Taking a political position by super-institutions like the Vatican will result in the defeat of the democratic institutional checks and balances. The presiding Pope during the Second Episcopal Conference in Medellín was John Paul II. He was a secular man in private despite being a traditionalist authoritarian Pope in office. He strictly maintained that religion must transcend politics, thus he opposed Liberation Theology vehemently. Many Leftist Bishops claimed that they would not reduce everything to revolutionary praxis to no avail until 2015, until Pope Francis.



Q - Why is Liberation Theology wrong?
A crucial condition for genuine liberation is that no one group of men gains all power over politics, economics, morals and culture. The hard-earned separation of systems serves a purpose, it provides liberation. As the world proves more often than not, theological states are far from liberty. It is also wrong because -

(1.) Liberation Theology is divisively political. It is centred around socialism perched on the slippery slope called Marxism. The logical fallacy of slippery slope says that what one generation accepts provisionally hardens into icy dogmas for a next-generation brought upon nothing else.
(2.) It has no theory of wealth creation. Nothing is said about creating new wealth, about invention, about entrepreneurship. Government is the possessor of the red tape.
(3.) It supports the abolition of private property. This notion recurs as the crucial theme of virtually all liberation theologians. Most tend to have a naive faith in socialism, despite scores of socialist experiment failures around the world since 1945.
(4.) Most Liberation Theologians are so intent upon revolution against the injustice that they give no thought to the shape of the institutions of political economy they intend to put in place after the revolution.
(5.) Liberation theology gains its excitement from flirting with Marxist thought and speech, and from its hostility to the dominance of the geographical global North.


Q - How does Bharat affect Liberation Theology?
Liberation Theology encounters two solid cultural problems here in India.

1. India has long emphasized personal, familial piety, but not much social action or public responsibility. Majority of Bharat worships family values. A large section believes that the idea of an ideal society resembles the Ramayana's Ramrajya. Bharat possesses a better organised Liberation Theology theory with some millennia under its belt. We call it the Avatar concept and it is one of those universal theories which know no barriers, even in a red-taped society like Bharat.
2. The poor in Bharat are strangely both the most oppressed and the most religious. Happily, it is still the poor who think of Gods more frequently. Sadly, poverty makes Bharat vulnerable, which allows missionaries to operate with impunity. This is where Bharat must bring laws to check External Neo-colonialism led by missionaries.