"man transforms himself by conquering his liberty"

 More from the introduction to A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez


A reflection on the theological meaning of the process of the liberation of man throughout history demands methodologically that we define our terms.  The first part of this book is devoted to  purpose.  This will enable us to indicate why we pay special attention in this work to the critical function of theology with respect to the presence and activity of man in history.  The most important instance of this presence in our times, especially in underdeveloped and oppressed countries, is the struggle to construct a just and fraternal society, where people can live with dignity and be the agents of their own destiny.  It is our opinion that the term "development" does not well express these profound aspirations.  "Liberation," on the other hand, seems to express them better. Moreover, in another way the notion of liberation is more exact and all-embracing;  it emphasizes that man transforms himself by conquering his liberty throughout his existence and his history...

This is a fascinating concept so totally at odds with the "enlightenment" conception of humanity and which demonstrates how radically different liberation theologies view of human beings is from that of the inadequate and failed 18th century conception of "liberty."  That People would need not only to obtain liberty but to "CONQUER HIS LIBERTY THROUGHOUT HIS EXISTENCE AND IN HIS HISTORY" is the definition of a fully adult conception of freedom, not only from unjust external opposition but in opposition to the self-enslaving and blighting aspects of our own desires and personalities.  That is an entirely different view of "liberty" of freedom which is exactly NOT in line with the pop-culture or even the elite culture's view of human existence but which, in addition to "be agents of their own destiny," makes them responsible within such freedom to reject choices that would thwart or hamper or attack "a just and fraternal society," indeed, even those choices that would prevent or deconstruct such a society.  That is not only in line with the New Testament and the testimony about the teachings of Jesus, Paul, etc. but the description of the earliest Jewish Christian communities.  It is certainly informed by the long prophetic testimonies and declarations about the corruption of the Davidic-Solomonic regime as it forgot the Sinai-Deuteronomic elucidation of reality.

The modern concept of "development" takes as a given that "a rising tide raises all boats" as JFK put it, it doesn't notice that it's the pirate boats that prosper in such a tide of history.  It doesn't really care about that.  I mentioned a while back being dismayed when I heard the retired Representative Barney Frank speaking in favor of economic inequality as an engine of progress, clearly he was someone who bought into that conception of "development."  One which results in a world in which billionaires are a ruling class unto themselves, eating entire countries, even those which are supposed to have the strongest democratic institutions.  Some of those billionaires leading some of the strongest gangster-capitalist countries in the world, such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, using the American First Amendment as interpreted by Supreme Courts starting in the 1960s to attack and destroy America's merely liberal democracy.  Liberal democracy in this period exposed as doomed by such assumptions as that there is a right for the media to lie and that money is speech, thus giving billionaires billions of times more of that than those with nothing possess.  The very bases of 18th-19th and 20th century liberal democracy carries the poisons fatal to it.  We are not that far removed from Latin American in the 1970s under the yoke of American and European capitalism, we are all colonial subjects of the world-wide billionaire class and their owned and controlled media.

As pointed out in many posts here, Scripture presents a different and radically more effective idea of how to change things.

. . . The Bible presents liberation - salvation - in Christ as the total gift, which, by taking on the levels we indicate, gives the whole process of liberation its deepest meaning and its complete and unforeseeable fulfillment.  Liberation can thus be approached as a single salvific process.  This viewpoint, therefore, premits us to consider the unity, without confusion, of man's various dimensions, that is, his relationship with other men and with the Lord,  which theology has been attempting to establish for some time;  this approach will provide the framework for our reflection.

It is fitting, secondly, to show that the problem which the theology of liberation poses is simultaneously traditional and new.  This twofold characteristic will be more evident if we analyze the different ways in which theology has historically responded to this problem.  This will lead us to conclude that because the traditional approaches have been exhausted, new areas of theological reflection are being sought.  Our exclamation should help us remove the obstacles from our path and move ahead more quickly.  The second part of this work deals with that matter.  

The preceding analysis leads us to consider the "practice" of the Church in today's world.  The situation in Latin America, the only continent among the exploited and oppressed peoples where Christians are in the majority, is especially interesting.  An attempt to describe and interpret the forms under which the Latin American Church is present in the process of liberation - especially among the most committed Christian groups- will allow us to establish the questions for an authentic theological reflection.  These will be the first effots along these lines, the third part of this treatise is devoted to this atempt.

The previous remarks make it clear that the question regarding the theological meaning of liberation is, in truth, a question about the very meaning of Christianity and about the mission of the Church.  There was a time when the church responded to any problem by calmly appealing to is doctrinal and vital resources.  Today the seriousness and scope of the process which we call liberation is such that Christian faith and the Church are radically challenged.  They are being asked to show what significance they have for a human task which has reached adulthood.  The greater part of our study is concerned with this aspect.  We approach the subject within the framework of the unity and, at the same time, the complexity of the process of liberation centered in the salvific work of Christ.  We are aware, however, that we can only sketch these considerations, or more precisely, outline the new questions - without claiming to give conclusive answers.  

So much that could be commented on.

Last year I read an article about the billionaire financed "traditional-Catholic" fashion which, among other things, wanted to go back to using the old and awful Baltimore Catechism for instructing Catholics, both children and adults.  The article noted how such a notion was a call for the infantilization of Catholics.  I'm old enough to remember when the Baltimore Catechism was in use, how insulting and degrading it was due exactly to that infantlizing approach to catechesis.  The entire program of such "traditional-Catholicism" is  to move away from any intellectual engagement with the important questions of life into a "pray-pay-obey" regime favored by the right-wing Catholic hierarchy, so many of whom had little to no direct pastoral relationship to Catholics who lived lives under various yokes of oppression.  I remember some of my mother's cousins who watched the most effective conjurer of that stuff, the late Mother Angelica and her EWTN cultic TV network.  They longed for a return to the Church they knew from their time in Catholic schools in the 1930s, with masses in a language they didn't know, sermons about nothing much and the rote praying of the rosary.  They were old and childless and lived a life pretty much within the confines of other such people, resenting the influx of Latino people into their city, even though they were as Catholic as they were.  

I think in many ways the same problems that face the Catholic Church, a question of mature and active adult thinking and adult taking of moral responsibility is the same problem that is destroying American democracy.  Infantilization, whether through the old and lifeless forms of pre-Vatican II Catholicism or through the never really reformed aspects of our corrupt Constitution and the white supremacy that it was structured to protect and promote, it is an encouragement towards puerility and infantilizaiton, a seduction into that and the discouragement of adult facing of reality and moral responsibility.  I think the reality that that has been primarily discouraged through the libertarian wet-dream of the "free press" as defined by the American Supreme Court, the corrupt and morally depraved popular media whether in English, Italian, Spanish, etc. as it peddles fantasy and unreality and, yes, resentment, envy, hate, packaged for the easiest and most seductive sale is among those things which we will face and end as adults or watch the aspiration of egalitarian democracy melt and run through our hands no matter how hard we try to grasp it.