Monday, April 22, 2013

Primarily

Most students of Liberation Theology are familiar with the Jesuits, primarily because Gustavo Gutierrez, father of modern Catholic liberationism, comes from that order. The works of other Jesuit advocates widely read in the United States include Juan Luis Segundo’s five-volume A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity and Arthur F. McGovern’s Marxism: an American Perspective. McGovern, a Jesuit professor at the University of Detroit, contends that much diversity exists among liberation advocates in regard to their commitment to Marxism. He does not, however, deny that they derive their insights from overtly Marxist critiques of society. Catholic Liberation Theology has posed such a significant threat to U.S. policy at home and abroad that the Reagan White House launched a campaign in 1984 to educate U.S. Catholic bishops against Marxist ideology. That campaign helped conservative critics of the U.S. Catholic Conference disseminate their message to the hierarchy
Link (here)

7 comments:

alleline said...

Fr. Gutierrez is a Dominican!

Anonymous said...

Gustavo Gutierrez is a Dominican. Arthur McGovern has been dead for over a decade.

Bamfylde said...

Gutierrez is not and has never been a Jesuit. He was a secular priest who later joined the Dominicans

Anonymous said...

Guttierez is a domenican priest not a jesuit

Anonymous said...

Fr. McGovern's (RIP--he died about ten or so yrs. ago) did acknowledge the connection--but he was careful to note that Marx's analysis of the workings of capitalism are not at odds with many of the Church's encyclicals and pastoral letters on the economy and workplace rights.

Qualis Rex said...

Matthew 7:16 "by their fruits shall they be known". Liberation Theology has been a disaster in Latin America by every measure; in some countries like Guatemala, nearly half the population is now Protestant/heretic. Why? By and large it is due to liberation theology for two reasons; a) the perpetrators of it sought to deemphasize the traditions of the church and the role of the clergy making it into a very Protestantized version b) Reagan (as mentioned) saw it as a threat and sponsored Protestant missionary activity through the CIA (remember Iran-contra?) to convert Latin Americans to a more US-friendly version of Christianity. Way to go, Libbies-- you have broken the back of the church in Latin America (and I'm sure that was the real goal all along).

Anonymous said...

Liberation theology was one of the bright spots in LA--the hierarchy, long dominated by the elite, alienated so many of the poor.