Origins and Tenets of Liberation Theology

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Origins and Tenets of Liberation Theology

• Jack Baker

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Origins

• Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965
• Specific conciliar and post-conciliar documents
• Gaudium et Spes
• Populorum Progressio
• Pacem in Terris

http//www.vatican.va/archive/hisatican_council/
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Meetings

• Theologians
• 1965 Argentina
• 1968 Peru
• 1968 Colombia
• Church hierarchy
• Latin Am. priests 1967
• Medellin Conference 1968
• Puebla Conference 1979

www.worldtravelguide.net/navigate/region/sam.asp
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Gustavo Gutierrez
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Action and Faith

• The first step is action
• Action first, theology second
• Orthopraxyright practice
• Action is Gods will

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Here and Now

• Heaven and earth as one world, not two
• Action now is salvific
• Heaven is a life in the beyond that devalues the
  present life

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The Church in the World

• Meet the poors needs
• Push for structural changes
• Speak out against injustice
• Heavenly and earthly role

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Preference for the Poor

• Evangelization of the poor is a sign of Christs
  mission
• The poor are any forgotten, oppressed, and
  abandoned people
• We prefer the poor because God first did so
• Listening to the poor

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Integral Development

• Persons, not just souls
• Move from less-human to more-human
• More-human means possession of necessities, end
  to social injustice, increased peace and faith
• Three levelspolitical liberation, liberation in
  the course of history, liberation from sin

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Integral Development

• Self-determination
• Basic human rights
• Liberation from sin

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Sin as Social

• Sin is a social,
• historical fact
• Oppression, slavery,
• exploitation
• Move from individual
• and interior to societal
• and structural

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Rejection of the Past

• Against theory of developmentalism
• Embraces dependence as the Latin American reality
• Any theory must acknowledge that the region has
  had to develop with an already established global
  system

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More Rejection

• Against capitalism as a system
• Favors capital over labor
• Consumptionist tendencies need revision

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Marxist Collectivism

• Transformation of the private property system
  and end to private possessions
• Socialized wealth and established socialism
• Break from the Church hierarchy

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Final Rejection

• Rejects all previous theology
• Emphasis on action, not explanation
• Remake the whole of theology
• Latin American, not European

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Since Pope John Paul II

• Reduced to intellectual curiosity
• Church leaders reclaimed ideas
• Liberation deals more with sin and
• satan
• Preference for the poor has always
• been there
• All humanity is poor because of sin
• Heaven is more important than now

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Noticeably in Retreat

• Too many philosophical contradictions
• Pope John Paul II made it part of his war on
  secularism
• Appointed Latin American bishops of his own mind
• Closed Secretariats of Justice and Peace or
  else pushed out any liberationists

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Near the End?

• 1970s literature remains the standard
• Has moved away from socialism, Marxism,
  dependency theory
• Devotion to Mary
• Now valuing traditional views