__________________________________________________________________ Armando de la Torre The Wordly Failures of Liberation Theology “ A specter was haunting America … the specter of the Theology of Liberation … ” This paraphrase of one of the initial statements of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 comes to my mind readily , as I try to summarize the present bankruptcy of a theory which threatened to revolutionize Latin America once more in the late seventies , and contaminated increasingly larger segments of the Catholic clergy in the United States as well . There were several doctrinaire political movements of presumed Christian inspiration grouped under the term “ theology of Liberation ,” which had in common a curious and unprecedented blend of solid philosophical , and even theological , contemporary thought , and a Hegelian ( and increasingly Marxist ) analysis of society and history . Roughly , one can distinguish three main lines of thought , all grouped under the heading of the ambiguous term “ Liberation ”: The second : the Brazilian Hugo Assmann put forth the exact opposite , which barely disguised militant Marxist thought under superficially-taken religious terms . The third , the best known stream of Liberation Theologians , headed by Father Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru , followed closely by the Brazilian brothers Leonardo and Clodoveo Boff , Franciscan priests , and Father José Luis Segundo , of Uruguay . 1 1 Bibliography on this issue grows by leaps and bounds . Some of the main works are the following ( in Spanish ): I . Ellacuría , “ Tesis sobre la posibilidad , necesidad y sentido de una teología latinoamericana ,” in Teología y Mundo Contemporáneo : Homenaje a K . Rahner en su 70 cumpleaños ( Cristiandad , Madrid 1975 ), pp . 325-350 ; J . C . Scannone , “ Teología de la Liberación ,” in C . Floristán and J . J . Tamayo , Conceptos Fundamentales de la Pastoral ( Ediciones Cristiandad , Madrid , 1983 ); Gustavo Gutiérrez , Teología de la Liberación ( Lima , 1970 ); Hugo Assmann and Franz Hinkelammert , La Idolatría del Mercado ( Seminario , San José , Costa Rica ); Hugo Assmann , Teología desde la praxis de liberación : Ensayo teológico desde la América dependiente ( Sígueme , Salamanca , 1976 ); C . Boff , Teología de lo político , sus media- The first , most eloquently advocated by Cardinal Pironio , and the closest to the traditional point of view , equates “ libera- Armando de la Torre es Director de la Escuela tion ” with the cleansing of the soul of sin , Superior de Ciencias Sociales , Universidad the latter being the root of all human mis- Francisco Marroquín . ery in the Pauline interpretation . __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 27

__________________________________________________________________ In this short essay , I will try to analyze Gutiérrez ’ work , which I consider to be the most representative . But before going into a more detailed discussion of his thinking , I wish to offer some preliminary considerations which might give Anglo-Saxon Catholic observers of Latin American society a better understanding of the evolution of the so-called “ Theology of Liberation .” Since roughly the mid-sixteenth century , Latin America had depended on Europe — and to a lesser extent on the United States during the last fifty years — for the growth and vitality of its religious ciones ( Sígueme , Salamanca , 1980 ) and Comunidad eclesial-comunidad política : Ensayos de eclesiología política ( Vozes , Petrópolis , 1978 ); L . Boff , Teología desde el cautiverio ( Indo-American Press Service , Bogotá , 1975 ), Jesucristo y la liberación del hombre ( Cristiandad , Madrid , 1981 ), La fe en la periferia del mundo : El caminar de la iglesia con los oprimidos ( Sal Térrea , Santander , 1981 ), Iglesia , carisma y poder : Ensayos de eclesiología militante ( Sal Térrea , Santander , 1982 ) and Eclesiogénesis : Las comunidades de base reinventan la iglesia ( Sal Térrea , Santander , 1980 ); J . Bonino , La fe en busca de eficacia : Una interpretación de la reflexión teológica latinoamericana ( Sígueme , Salamanca , 1977 ); A . López Trujillo , Teología liberadora en América Latina ( Paulinas , Bogotá , 1978 ) and Liberación marxista y liberación cristiana ( BAC , Madrid , 1974 ); José Sobrino , Cristología desde América Latina : Esbozo a partir del seguimiento del Jesús histórico ( CRT , México , 1977 ), Jesús en América Latina : Su significado para la fe y la Cristología ( Sal Térrea , Santander , 1982 ) and Resurrección de la verdadera Iglesia : Los pobres , lugar teológico de la eclesiología ( Sal Térrea , Santander , 1981 ); S . Torres ( ed .), Teología de la liberación y comunidades cristianas de base ( Sígueme , Salamanca , 1982 ); Comisión Teológica Internacional , Teología de la liberación ( BAC , Madrid , 1978 ). life . Spanish missionaries , as eager and hardworking as they were to win souls for God , brought with them a Europeancentered vision of the Catholic world , which accounts for the Spanish traditional lack of trust in native Americans until well into the nineteenth century . This ethnocentric attitude was passed on to the children and grandchildren of the Conquistadores , who were expected to live and behave as native Spaniards in a foreign land , and more often than not failed to live up to these expectations . Therefore , the Catholic Church in Latin America has been to a certain extent bereft of a native inborn dynamism to sustain its growth with its own human resources . This is apparent still in the inordinately high percentage of foreignborn priests and nuns at the service of the local Catholic hierarchy . The Church was seriously wounded by two historical upheavals : one , the expulsion of all Jesuits from the lands subject to the Bourbon kings between 1764 and 1773 , which robbed the Catholic community of Spanish-speaking America of thousands of their most energetic and successful spiritual leaders and missionaries . The other , at the beginning of the 19 th century , was the violent separation from the mother country of almost all its Spanish provinces in America ( Cuba and Puerto Rico were exceptions until 1898 ). The hostile anticlerical animus of the French Revolution greatly influenced the Latin American movement towards independence from Spain ( especially under the aegis of secret freemasonry ), and certainly did not strengthen the position of the Church in the newly sovereign nations . This latter situation was compounded by the refusal of the Popes to name new __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 28

__________________________________________________________________ bishops for almost a third of a century after independence from Spain , under the pretext that as the Pope recognized the already fictitious suzerainty of the Spanish crown over these lost lands , any bishop named by him would still be considered bound by an oath of loyalty to the kings of Spain . Due to this policy , the Church suffered varying degrees of persecution under the governments of the self-styled “ liberal ” republican parties in different parts of Latin America , and did not start to make a comeback until the beginning of the 20 th century . The colonial Spanish heritage can boast of some truly magnificent accomplishments , but it also left behind a feeble rate of growth in native priests and members of religious orders , an unhealthy reliance on those coming from abroad for spiritual nourishment , and a rather languid and superficial religious life among the masses of peasants and urban workers . This sorry history explains to some extent the impact that a few bright and enterprising native priests , such as the ones mentioned above , had with their “ Theology of Liberation ” among the least educated of the laymen ( usually to be found among the fast reproducing working class members of society ). This impact very easily spilled over into violent and subversive action , more often in the rural areas ( as in the Mexican uprisings during the second decade of the 20 th century ), while more recently ( in Nicaragua , for example ) even posing a serious threat to the chain of command of the official hierarchy of the Church , through the multiplication of “ comunidades de base ”— community cadres — often , particularly in Brazil , in a mood defiant of the same hierarchy . Also to be taken into consideration is the fact that violent politics — or whatever goes under this guise — loomed unfortunately larger than ever in Latin America since Fidel Castro took over power in Cuba in 1959 . Presently , it is receding , but varieties of populism ( Venezuela under Chávez ), narco-guerrillas ( as in Colombia ) might trigger a resurgence in political violence at any moment . One important reason for all this is traceable to the enormous growth of the public sector in almost all the Latin American countries since the end of World War II . Many large enterprises were transferred over to the governmentrun sector , and a hemorrhage of regulations fell on the private sector while at the same time taxes were being raised everywhere . Another reason , closely linked with the first , was the advent of the so-called “ dependency theory ,” the only genuine Latin American “ contribution ” to the explanation of their well known poor rate of economic growth since the mid sixties as compared to the “ Asian tigers ” in the Pacific rim ( Hong Kong , Taiwan , Japan , South Korea , Singapore , Malaysia , and Thailand ). This theory was built up in the early fifties , particularly by the Argentine Raúl Prebisch and his associates at the Economic Commission for Latin America ( CEPAL ), the regional branch of the United Nations , headquartered in Santiago , Chile . It rested on a wrong reading of the terms of trade between more developed and less developed economies ( understanding as such those which export mainly manufactured goods and those which export raw materials , respectively ). This theory , which runs parallel to the one suggested by Lenin thirty years ear- __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 29

__________________________________________________________________ lier , starts from the assumption that the world capitalist system entails a developed “ center ” ( the United States , Western Europe , Japan ) and the exploitation of a backward and underdeveloped broad “ periphery ” ( mainly former European colonies in Africa , Asia , and to a lesser extent Latin America ). At certain points this “ macro ” view overlaps and reinforces the interventionist , authoritarian , and “ caudillistic ” trends among Latin American “ strongmen ”, and as such is felt to be by their mass constituencies in closer accord with Latin American idiosyncrasies . No mention is made , by liberation theologians who took over this approach , of the free price system as a means of information for producers and consumers about the most rational allocation of resources ( by definition always scarce ), nor of the “ micro ” principle of marginal utility , or of the law of decreasing productivity . None among them showed any understanding of the nature of credit , capital , savings , investments , and particularly profits . They evidently were not acquainted with the key role of the entrepreneur among the other factors of production ( land , labor , capital ), and still less with competitive business ethics . None quoted recent trends in economic thought , like the school of rational expectations or the economic analysis of public choice . They were , for all theoretical purposes , economic illiterates . For them , politics is a struggle over power between classes intent on exploiting each other . But the Kingdom of Heavens must resemble a classless society . Therefore , given that the wave of the future (“ a providential sign ”) pointed to an unavoidable triumph of socialism , and even of communism , Christians should join forces with all those proletarians organized to depose the dominant bourgeoisie , even , if necessary , by violent means , and suppress the root of all social evils : private property . One more point of importance : the Catholic Church has recently been undergoing its most serious crisis since the Protestant Reformation . For thirty-five years , the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council has been widely and severely felt all over the Catholic world , but nowhere as strongly or anxiously as in Latin American . The doors suddenly were thrown open to the winds of change , in essence secular and humanistic , that had been blowing outside for so long . This shocked the rigid structure of the Latin American hierarchy to its foundations , almost as badly as when these countries gained their independence from Spain . French-speaking theologians , in particular , provided Latin American bishops and priests with the mental tools of critical analysis , which in the explosive atmosphere of post-Castro Latin America have proven to be fuses to time bombs . Together with the newly approved guidelines for the liturgy of worship and pastoral duties , new theological approaches to history , philosophy , and the social sciences flooded into Latin America . Many of these approaches have much in common with traditional Marxist dialectics and , by the same token , are completely foreign to the individualist and empirical philosophy upon which most of the democracies of the Anglo-Saxon societies have been founded . These radical winds of change had their official beginnings in the Gaudium et spes constitution on “ the Church and the World ,” issued by the Second Vatican __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 30