Liberation Theology Today

By Fr. Olek Stirrat

Introduction

Ecclesial grammar today is shaped by terms such as inclusivity, diversity, the “spirit,” and “being pastoral.” At times, these terms have arisen through the unconscious adoption of the framework of liberation theology, particularly its Marxist flavor. One may find a politicization of the faith through praxis, an exclusive focus on the pastoral dimension of the faith, the paradigm of the people of God as the primary prism through which to view the Church, and an elusive understanding of the spirit. While not as explicit as in times past, the use of this approach to theology is wending itself back into Catholic academia—and at times can even be heard from voices within the hierarchy. It is worth examining its history and practical impact.

History

Two watershed moments in the 20^th century shaped the origins of the liberation theology movement. First, the Second Vatican Council with its exhortation for aggiornamento, meaning a rearticulation of the Gospel in the modern context, and second, the “Second General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America held at Medellin in 1968, which applied the teachings of the council to the needs of Latin America. The movement has since spread also to other parts of the world.”¹ Even though the melting pot of different theologies of liberation manifested in Latin America, many of the ingredients came from Germany, since many of the intellectual heavyweights who developed these theologies were educated in Germany.² This German grounding of liberation theologies was intimately fused with 20^th Century German political theology. The expression “‘political theology’ (of which the theology of Johann-Baptist Metz is the flagship), was coined to express a theological reaction to the individualism of existential theology and it thus sought to underscore the public, societal, and political dimensions of the Christian faith.”³ There is a link here, albeit from different perspectives, of both political theology and liberation theology in that both are opposed to individual existentialism and propose a collective-social grounding to reality. Regarding preferred philosophers, the existentialists would see Nietzsche as more prophetic. In contrast, liberation theologians would believe that Marx was a more perceptive analyzer of the social situation.⁴ The focus on the communal dimension, through the Marxist prism, is revealed through the prioritization of praxis, to which we will now turn.

The Priority of Praxis

For Marx, contemplation must be overcome by revolution since “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”⁵ Here we find the prioritization of praxis over theoria. Orthopraxy replaces orthodoxy as the criterion of truth. Truth is not so much discovered as made. The paradox is, however, that the alleged priority of praxis over theory is itself an idea. The justification for the focus on praxis may be expressed as follows. There is an intolerable situation of injustice that requires immediate action. The type of action required is deduced from a scientific analysis of poverty, which is provided for by Marxist dialectical materialism. The Marxist theories of praxis are rooted in the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, which holds that class conflict is the dynamic of human history and that the economic substructure determines the ideological superstructure.⁶ The problem with this type of thought is that it is rooted ultimately in violence. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in her document “Instruction on Certain Aspects of Theology of Liberation” of 1984, put it in the following manner:

For the Marxist, the ‘praxis’, and the truth that comes from it, are partisan ‘praxis’ and truth because the fundamental structure of history is characterized by ‘class-struggle’. There follows, then, the objective necessity to enter into the class struggle, which is the dialectical opposite of the relationship of exploitation, which is being condemned. For the Marxist, the truth is a truth of class: there is no truth but the truth in the struggle of the revolutionary class. The fundamental law of history, which is the law of class struggle, implies that society is founded on violence. To the violence which constitutes the relationship of the domination of the rich over the poor, there corresponds the counter-violence of the revolution, by means of which this domination will be reversed.⁷

We see this class-struggle, while obviously not violent, being played out in the Church between the people and the hierarchy, between the clergy and the laity. Members of the hierarchy are associated with the bourgeoisie and thus are the oppressors who need to be opposed, even by certain members of the hierarchy. There is also a “disastrous confusion between the ‘poor’ of the Scripture and the ‘proletariat’ of Marx.”⁸ Marx believed that religion at its best was the opium of the people and hence an illusion. He thus focused on the political more than the spiritual. This trend may be seen in areas of the Church today with their hyper-focus on the practical, namely social justice, political reform, and bureaucratic transformations.

Exclusively Pastoral

Another way of expressing the priority of praxis over theoria in an ecclesial context is the exclusive focus on the pastoral devoid of any connection to doctrine. A pastoral focus without any doctrinal context turns the Church into another not-for-profit. Pope Francis has warned about this, saying that the Church is about Christ and is not a non-profit government agency.⁹ The sole focus on the pastoral also reduces religion to social ethics. In her “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation,” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith comments,

The feeling of anguish at the urgency of the problems cannot make us lose sight of what is essential nor forget the reply of Jesus to the Tempter: “It is not on bread alone that man lives, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; cf. Deuteronomy 8:3). Faced with the urgency of sharing bread, some are tempted to put evangelization into parentheses, as it were, and postpone it until tomorrow: first the bread, then the Word of the Lord. It is a fatal error to separate these two and even worse to oppose the one to the other. In fact, the Christian perspective naturally shows they have a great deal to do with one another.¹⁰

A pithy slogan adopted by Marxist liberation theologies that encapsulates the focus on the pastoral at the expense of the doctrinal is “Work Boots Not Books.”¹¹ Within this context, “being pastoral” is often code for being political or horizontally focused. There is a shift of focus away from the conversion of one’s heart to the transformation of political and social structures.

The Spirit

This connection of politics and history brings us to another characteristic that is pertinent today in ecclesial conversations, namely the domain of the Spirit. The question that occupies my mind, however, is which spirit? The Holy Spirit or Hegelian spirit? Hegel’s absolute spirit refers to the process through which alienation is overcome. This can tap into that deeply felt sense of indignation at injustice, which must be rectified. Thus, the focus on the spirit is deeply aligned with the motivations that underpin liberation theology. The alienation that poverty brings must be overcome. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is Jesus’ Spirit. One cannot separate Jesus from the Holy Spirit. He is the one who breathes on the Apostles, he is the one who sends them the Holy Spirit, not to teach them new things, but to remind them of everything he taught (cf. John 14:26). In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit always comes about within the context of a relationship: the relationship between Jesus and his Apostles and, ultimately, the relationship between The Father and the Son. As Archbishop Anthony Fisher has commented within the context of the synod on synodality, “The Holy Spirit is Christ’s Spirit. He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and so he is only ever going to be saying things that are consistent with what Christ has revealed to us in the apostolic tradition…. [Proposals] radically at odds [with tradition] … that’s not of the Holy Spirit because we cannot have Christ and the Holy Spirit at war with each other.”¹²

The deep connection between Jesus and the Holy Spirit may also be seen through a phenomenological lens: breath (Greek: pneuma) leads to the word (Greek: logos)—“The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said…” (Genesis 1:2–3). Further, it is the logos that takes on flesh, not the flesh that dissociates itself from the word. The return to the spirit devoid of the flesh is a temptation to decenter the logos and make the spirit free floating. Some believe that logos cannot be instantiated, or at least that it cannot be reduced to a particular instantiation. This tendency moves beyond Jesus and grounds much of religious pluralism today.

The reduction of the spirit to an abstraction and to time itself are signs of the Hegelian spirit. Truth becomes subject to time and circumstances, and God is identified with history. This is tantamount to saying that theology has been emptied of its theological reality.¹³ One of the theological minds behind this shift is the 12^th-century Italian mystic Joachim of Fiore.

Joachim of Fiore

According to Lateran IV, Joachim “clearly protests that there does not exist any reality which is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit-neither an essence nor a substance nor a nature.”¹⁴  It goes on to say that Joachim “professes… that such a unity is not true and proper but rather collective and analogous, in the way that many persons are said to be one people and many faithful one church, according to that saying: Of the multitude of believers there was one heart and one mind, and Whoever adheres to God is one spirit with him.”¹⁵ It is important to recognize the faultline his thought introduced. The mystical basis for his teaching is the understanding of the eternal Gospel referenced in Revelation 14:6. The problem with this apocalyptic reading of the Book of Revelation is that it discredits the very content of the Book of Revelation, namely that it is from the very outset a “Revelation of Jesus Christ,” (Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,Revelation 1:1), not a revelation about what will happen in the year 1260! More concretely, the problem with Fiore was that he was unable to distinguish person from nature in the Trinity and thus undermined the unity of the Trinity. At a fundamental level, this signifies a move toward multiplicity at the expense of unity. This division in the Trinity is resurfacing today, with the Spirit opposed to the Father and the Son. The Spirit is leading us into a new “age,” described as “a third period… the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, a new dispensation of universal love, which will proceed from the Gospel of Christ, but transcend the letter of it, and in which there will be no need for disciplinary institutions.”¹⁶ This narrative undermines the unity of God, expressed through the unity of his plan throughout salvation history. It is a movement to get beyond Jesus, a move to get beyond the Church and sacramentality. In some ecclesial circles today, there is a desire for the division between the hierarchy and laity to be overcome by moving into the new age of the spirit, beyond ecclesial institutions.

Prophecy

Interestingly, in his recent message for the World Day of Prayer for the care of creation, Pope Francis referenced Joachim of Fiore as a figure to emulate, particularly his prophetic inspiration. The pontiff commented that “Joachim of Fiore, the Calabrian abbot who, in the words of Dante Alighieri, ‘was endowed with a spirit of prophecy’. At a time of violent conflicts between the Papacy and the Empire, the Crusades, the outbreak of heresies and growing worldliness in the Church, Joachim was able to propose the ideal of a new spirit of coexistence among people, based on universal fraternity and Christian peace, the fruit of a life lived in the spirit of the Gospel.”¹⁷

This prophetic emphasis is central for various liberation theologies as they are “centred on narrative and prophetic texts which highlight situations of oppression, and which inspire a praxis leading to social change.”¹⁸ Thus the Exodus becomes a paradigmatic event for theologies of liberation.

The Exodus is the fundamental event in the formation of the chosen people. It represents freedom from foreign domination and from slavery. [One must remember, however,] that the specific significance of the event comes from its purpose, for this liberation is ordered to the foundation of the people of God and the Covenant cult celebrated on Mt. Sinai. That is why the liberation of the Exodus cannot be reduced to a liberation which is principally or exclusively political in nature. Moreover, it is significant that the term ‘freedom’ is often replaced in Scripture by the very closely related term, ‘redemption’.¹⁹

Thus, theologies of liberation become problematic when these three elements of liberation from slavery, formation of a royal people, and establishment of a covenantal cult are separated. To put it another way, problems arise when the prophetic is separated from the kingly and priestly. If the prophetic focus is exclusive, it may relegate the priestly and royal dimensions to the dustbin of history. The Old Testament prophetic institution is conducive to liberal theology since the prophets called out injustices, particularly those committed against the poor, widows, and orphans. It becomes problematic when we see Jesus as being only another prophet, undermining his priestly and kingly role, resulting in the paschal mystery as an optional extra. The reading of the signs of the times then, ceases to be an exercise in reading the present moment through the prism of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and rather in applying from Scripture that which justifies one’s own perspective. As a result,

faith in the Incarnate Word, dead and risen for all men, and whom “God made Lord and Christ” is denied. In its place is substituted a figure of Jesus who is a kind of symbol who sums up in Himself the requirements of the struggle of the oppressed. An exclusively political interpretation is thus given to the death of Christ. In this way, its value for salvation and the whole economy of redemption is denied.²⁰

Thus the resurrection of Christ is read symbolically as a process of liberation. This tendency is then carried over in how one sees the Church and sacramentality. The Exodus doesn’t become a symbol of baptism but of liberation. The principal model of the Church becomes the People of God in contrast to her sacramentality as a sign pointing toward Christ. In other words, “Sacramentality, which is at the root of the ecclesial ministries and which makes of the church a spiritual reality which cannot be reduced to a purely sociological analysis, is quite simply ignored.”²¹

Conclusion

Many of the instincts which liberation theology proposes are right and just. Correctly understood it exhorts theologians and believers to deepen biblical themes of justice “with a concern for the grave and urgent questions which the contemporary yearning for liberation, and those movements which more or less faithfully echo it, pose for the Church.”²² What we need now is to be aware of the theological faultlines which have a Marxist scent and underpin certain strands of liberation theology. One must appropriately align the pastoral dimension of the faith with doctrine; be attentive to the voice of the Holy not Hegelian spirit—the Holy Spirit who is always the Spirit of the Father and the Son; and finally appreciate the sacramentality of the Church and the world, as well as the indispensability of the incarnate Jesus Christ for our salvation.

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Fr. Olek Stirrat, born in Poland, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Adelaide. He was ordained in 2022 and is currently ministering in South Australia.

1. “Interpretation of the Bible in the Church: Full Text,” Catholic Resources, 2024, accessed September 21, 2024. See also “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of  Liberation,’” The Holy See, 3,2.

2. André-Vincent, “Les Théologies de la liberation,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique (February, 1976), p. 110. See also Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), pp. 167–168.

3. F. Schüssler Fiorenza, “Political Theology: An Historical Analysis”, Theological Digest 25:4 (1977), p. 329.

4. Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), p. 168.

5. Karl Marx, Thesis 3, Theses on Feuerbach, original version [1845], vol. 5 of Marx and Engels Collected Works (NY: International Publishers/Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), p. 3. Future references to the Collected Works will be abbreviated as MECW.

6. M. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims: Towards a Theology of Social Transformation (New York: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 69–71.

7. “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation,’” The Holy See, 8,5–6.

8. Ibid., 10.

9. CNA/EWTN NEWS, “Pope: The Church Is about Christ; It’s Not an NGO,”  National Catholic Register, December 4, 2014, accessed September 21, 2024.

10. “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation,’” The Holy See, 6,3.

11. Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), p. 184.

12. Staff Writers, “Holy Spirit and Christ Cannot Be ‘at War’ in Synod Proposals: Archbishop Fisher,” The Catholic Weekly, 23 Oct. 2023, accessed September 21, 2024.

13. See “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of  Liberation,’” The Holy See, 9:4-5.

14. “Fourth Lateran Council : 1215 Council Fathers,” Papal Encyclicals, 11 Nov. 1215, 2.

15. Ibid.

16. Catholic Encyclopedia, “Joachim of Flora,” New Advent, 2023, accessed September 21, 2024.

17. Pope Francis, Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, The Holy See, September 1, 2024, 3.

18. “Interpretation of the Bible in the Church: Full Text,” Catholic Resources, 2024, accessed September 21, 2024.

19. “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of  Liberation,’” The Holy See, 4,3.

20. Ibid., 10,11–12.

21. Ibid., 10,15.

22. Ibid., 4,1.