“Liberation” For All, Even Benny

Today’s New York Times reports that Pope Benedict XVI met with Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and greeted a crowd of 30,000 at a stadium where the predominantly young Brazilians chanted “Yes to life! No to abortion!” before the Pontiff arrived.

It all sounds very positive, and if this helps to propagate the faith, all the better. However, I have some concerns, as you may have expected.

Though the Times article notes that Benny and Lula (sounds like a burlesque act) talked about protecting the environment, I sincerely hoped His Holiness told Brazil’s president in no uncertain terms to keep his mitts off the Amazon rainforest. I’m also glad that the Vatican appears to have backtracked somewhat from its statement that Mexican politicians who voted to legalize early-term abortions had automatically excommunicated themselves.

My biggest concern, though, as noted in this Times story which preceded Pope Benedict’s visit to Brazil, is the Vatican’s silence (for the moment) on the Liberation Theology movement (this link provides more, including this excerpt)…

(Liberation theology is) a school of thought among Latin American Catholics according to which the Gospel of Christ demands that the church concentrate its efforts on liberating the people of the world from poverty and oppression.

The Times story from May 7th notes the following concerning the recent history of the movement…

In the past, adherents stood firm as death squads made scores of martyrs to the movement, ranging from Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, killed in 1980 while celebrating Mass, to Dorothy Mae Stang, an American-born nun shot to death in the Brazilian Amazon in February 2005. Compared to that, the pressures of the Vatican are nothing to fear, they maintain.

“Despite everything, we continue to endure in a kind of subterranean way,” said Luiz Antonio Rodrigues dos Santos, a 55-year-old teacher active in the movement for nearly 30 years. “Let Rome and the critics say what they want; we simply persevere in our work with the poor and the oppressed.”

What is the problem that the Vatican has with this movement? The Liberation Theology article notes the following…

Liberation theology stirs Christians to take seriously the social and political impact of Jesus' life and death but fails to ground Jesus' uniqueness in the reality of his deity. It claims he is different from us by degree, not by kind, and that his cross is the climax of his vicarious identification with suffering mankind rather than a substitutionary death offered on our behalf to turn away the wrath of God and triumph over sin, death, and the devil. A theology of the cross which isolates Jesus' death from its particular place in God's design and shuns the disclosure of its revealed meaning is powerless to bring us to God, hence assuring the perpetuity of our theological abandonment.

I am hardly a Catholic scholar and certainly not in the same league as the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on this. However, I cannot possibly understand how the Vatican can demean the relevance of this movement given its goal of advocating for those who have nowhere else to turn.

I can’t think of anyone who believes what I do and does not adhere to the notion that everything we endure on this earth is part of the trial we face to assure our place in Heaven one day. But until we get there, how can we justify ignoring what I believe is our apostolic call on behalf of those Our Lord ministered for during his time on earth?

(Yeah, I know this is heavy stuff for a Friday and I haven’t bashed Bush yet today, but give me time.)

Update 5/15/07: Is Benny trying to get "the flock" out of here? - :-).