Medellín and Liberation Theology

On 24 August 1968 Paul VI, on what he called the first personal visit of a pope to Latin America, opened the second general conference of the continent’s bishops in Bogotá (Paul VI, Homily at Bogotá (24 August 1968), opening paragraphs). He told them that the church could not stand with structures that hid and favoured grave and oppressive inequalities. He also said that neither hatred nor violence was the strength of Christian charity, and he ruled out atheistic Marxism, systematic rebellion and bloodshed as paths to social renewal (Paul VI, Homily at Bogotá (24 August 1968), third part, on social questions).

The conference’s conclusions, sixteen documents named for Medellín, set out to read the transformation of Latin America in the light of the Second Vatican Council. The introduction speaks of a continent longing for liberation from every servitude and compares its hope to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (Medellín Documents (1968), Introduction 4–8). The document on justice calls the misery of whole groups an injustice that cries to heaven. It says that God sent his Son to free all people from the slaveries to which sin subjects them, among them hunger, misery and oppression, and that what is distinctive in the Christian message is not directly its call to change structures but its insistence on conversion, which then demands that change (Medellín Documents (1968), Justice 1–3). The document on peace says that in many places Latin America lives in a situation of injustice that can be called institutionalised violence, and also, in words it marks as a quotation, that violence is neither Christian nor evangelical (Medellín Documents (1968), Peace 15–16). The document on the poverty of the church distinguishes poverty as want, which is an evil, from spiritual poverty and from poverty freely taken up in solidarity, and asks that the church’s efforts give effective preference to the poorest (Medellín Documents (1968), Poverty of the Church 4, 9).

The theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez of Lima, who had been closely involved in the conference (University of Notre Dame Archives, Gutiérrez Collection (GGT), biographical note), took up the word in an article of 1970, “Notes for a Theology of Liberation”, which cites the Medellín documents repeatedly. Theology, he wrote, is critical reflection on the church’s presence and action in the world; it comes second, after commitment (Gutiérrez, Notes for a Theology of Liberation, pp. 244–245). “Liberation” was a better word than “development” for peoples who were poor because they were dependent and oppressed. It had three levels: the political liberation of oppressed peoples and classes, humanity’s liberation through history, and liberation from sin (Gutiérrez, Notes for a Theology of Liberation, pp. 247–248). To do nothing for the oppressed, he argued, was to act against them (Gutiérrez, Notes for a Theology of Liberation, p. 254). The poor of his day were the oppressed and marginal, and the church could preach spiritual poverty only by making itself poor in protest against poverty (Gutiérrez, Notes for a Theology of Liberation, pp. 260–261).

In 1984 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, with the approval of John Paul II, issued an instruction on the subject (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Nuntius conclusion and signature). It called “theology of liberation” a valid expression (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Nuntius III, 4) and said its purpose was limited: to warn against certain forms of that theology which used concepts borrowed from Marxist thought without enough criticism. This, it said, was no disavowal of those who respond to the preferential option for the poor (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Nuntius Introduction). Its objections were that such theologies took class struggle as the law of history, merged the history of salvation with secular history, and confused the poor of Scripture with Marx’s proletariat. It speaks of “theologians of liberation” in general and names none (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Nuntius IX, 1–3, 10).

A second instruction followed in 1986, to be read together with the first (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Conscientia 2). It affirms the church’s love of preference for the poor (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Conscientia 68), rejects class struggle as a theory and what it calls the myth of revolution (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Conscientia 77–79), and says that a theology of freedom and liberation is needed (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Conscientia 98).