Reflecting on Liberation Theology, Pope Emeritus Benedict said...
“Both in Europe and in North America, it was common opinion that it was a support to the poor and, therefore, that it was a cause that surely needed to be approved,” he explained.
However, “it was an error,” stated the retired pontiff, adding that, “Poverty and the poor were, without a doubt, set at the center of the Liberation Theology, yet in a very specific perspective...It was said that it was not a question of help or of reforms, but rather of the great upheaval from which a new world would spring.”
Observing how “the Christian faith was being used as a motor for this revolutionary movement, transforming it into a political force,” Benedict explained that “A falsification of the Christian faith needed to be opposed precisely for the sake of the poor and in favor of the service rendered to them.”
Drawing attention to John Paul II's experience with Marxism in Poland, which Benedict referred to as “the godmother of liberation theology,” the retired pontiff emphasized that it was “on the basis of his painful experience,” that made it “clear to him that it was necessary to fight that kind of ‘liberation.’”
Read the rest here. May God protect the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI.
2 comments:
A Pope, in season and out of season. I'd almost forgotten what it's like to hear a pope make sense.
We must all take Matthew 25 : 41 very seriously indeed, bearing in mind that it refers to the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked and so on.
The state of poverty per se is different. The Church actually recommends it and Christ Himself adopted it and expected his followers to do so. I have noticed, over a number of years now, that so many of the poor, just as soon as they are able to, happily swop poverty for acquisition, indulgence, avariciousness etc, and rarely opt for a holy state of poverty as did St Francis.
The concept that poverty, as such, must be eliminated at any cost - but not wealth, of course, since it is by the avariciousness of the many that the few become very wealthy - is a distortion of Christianity.
So,Liberation Theology is not the only recent distortion of Christianity. We can add debt-financed affluence to it!
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