Fifty years have passed since the publication of the work of an ecclesial movement that achieved great social prestige throughout Latin America. A movement whose repression by the Catholic Church itself has decisively marked the religious, social and political history of the countries in the region, opening the way for evangelism. The book “Theology of Liberation. Perspectives”, by the Peruvian priest, philosopher and historian Gustavo Gutiérrez, marked an era and became the reference text for thinking about Latin American Catholic progressivism.
The theologian was the voice of a feeling of denunciation and renewal that spread among the Latin American curia, challenged by poverty and violence in the region. A sentiment that became evident in the Second Conference of the Latin American Episcopate (CELAM), held in Medellín in 1968, which was a critical review of the reality of the Church on the continent, in the light of the Second Vatican Council.
It was in Medellín that Liberation Theology (TL) was consolidated and the Latin American Church became aware that it also had to contribute to theology from the daily experience of the communities. TL erupted with proposals for a new way of being church in which the poor were no longer seen as those who would “inherit the kingdom of heaven”, since their own earthly misery is the cause of a “structural sin” that it has become a system that institutionalizes injustice.
God’s option for the poor is not only a thesis for the salvation of the soul in the hereafter, but it also demands freedom from oppression in the present. The fact that these theses were based on dialectical materialism and the analysis of the social sciences of the time meant that methodology was confused with the message, and the circumstantial with the permanent, setting off all the anti-communist alarm signals.
The Roman Curia and the military establishments of the United States and almost every country in Latin America were determined to eradicate this phenomenon, leaving countless martyrs in our countries: Romero, Ellacuría, Gerardi, Espinal, Rosales, Mackinnon, Poblete, Hubert Guillard and many others.
The institutional siege of persecution ended, the Vatican quickly intervened in CELAM, appointing as its secretary a young and very conservative Colombian bishop who became the most ardent inquisitor against progressivism. The foundations were thus laid for an efficient correctional triangle: López Trujillo/Ratzinger/Wojtyla. The Colombian repressing from the Latin American space, the German from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Polish from the chair of Peter.
Rome’s systematic reaction to TL, as a matter of internal discipline, meant a great effort to purify ecclesial circles, while abroad the problems of social exclusion that are the real source of evil continued to grow.
In the heat of the social struggles of the 1980s, religious had to do their pastoral work under constant threat. Some radicalized and took up arms, joining various rebel groups, and this served as an excuse to intensify their persecution.
While liberation theology lost all institutional legitimacy and was treated as the unwanted child of the Second Vatican Council, its favorite son, ecumenism, made strong inroads into the legitimization of evangelism. The reunification agenda of Christianity meant that evangelical groups were no longer labeled by Rome as “followers of the Protestant heresy” but rather as “brothers in the faith”.
This legitimation process took legal form in the 1990s, when the new or reformed Constitutions in Latin America protected religious freedom as a fundamental right guaranteed against the State and private individuals. Once this protection was achieved, religious action quickly became politicized and the Christian churches suddenly changed their position. Considering politics as a corrupt activity, they became actively involved in it. First by supporting traditional electoral formations and later with their own movements and candidates.
So they became the emerging actor in our democracies. The popular sectors that years before had begun to harbor an organizational and liberating hope in the Base Ecclesiastical Communities found themselves adrift and, meanwhile, evangelism penetrated into the slums and villages with assistance and spiritual support, carrying a message to the poor and making them strong where the state was absent.
Currently, about 20% of Latin Americans belong to an evangelical church, yet nearly half of these people are born Catholic. The exponential growth of Pentecostalism shows that the poor opted for a more personal relationship with God that would give free play to the mystical and spiritual dimension that inhabits the Latin American peoples.
With its enormous success, today’s so-called “Prosperity Theology” puts into question yesterday’s option for the poor in TL. For God does not want his children to be poor; poverty here is a symptom of a spiritual problem and not the consequence of structural exploitation.
The religious practice of these poor people is not centered on social liberation, but on individual prosperity, which is perfectly compatible with neoliberalism. Some temples and pastors display their ostentation and opulence, and churches have great freedom to mobilize resources. We witness the construction of a new transnational religious corporatism held by media conglomerates and unquestionable political power. Nothing could be further from the liberating gospel of the committed Latin American theologians of the 1970s and 1980s.
During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict 16, this movement was contested, denying a great opportunity for a more spiritual contact between the Church and social reality. Many poor people fled to Pentecostal churches. But as the causes that gave rise to it were not eliminated, TL could not be eliminated either. Her intellectual work and strategies for action are the foundation upon which other critical theologies, such as those that respond to the cry of women and the cry of the land, are based today.
Today, the first Latin American pope, who witnessed this pastoral work firsthand, brings a change of attitude to Rome. Francisco came to call for a “poor church among the poor”, recognizing the value of struggles, unlocking causes of beatification like that of Monsignor Romero, and showing his support for the charismatic wing of Catholicism. However, the poor have already made their choice, they have traded liberation from the system for prosperity in the system. May God have mercy on the poor.
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