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The Reaction Against Liberation Theology
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# : |
13587 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1988 |
1,527 Words |
| Author
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Robert Royal
Robert Royal is a vice president at the Center for Ethics and
Public Policy. |
Last year, after a trip to the Soviet Union, the prominent Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff remarked in a Sao Paulo newspaper: "It was a clean and healthy society. You never have the feeling for a moment of being persecuted, or even of being watched." Boff also told of an interview he had given to Izvestia, in which he had explained to Soviet readers "the new relationship we have established between Marxism and religion."
Boff's comments are almost a caricature of some of the worst elements of liberation theology. Many liberationists deny that they look to the USSR as a model or fail to see the dangers of totalitarianism. Contrary to widespread impressions, however, Boff's extremism is not even typical of the Catholic Church in his country, let alone in the rest of South America. While there are large leftist followings in Brazil, Chile, Peru, and elsewhere, some countercurrents have also emerged; others that have been there all along have grown stronger.
Brazil is the largest South American country and stands a good chance of becoming a significant world power in the coming decades. What happens in Brazil has strong echoes elsewhere in the continent. Leftward-tending Brazilian theologians like Leonardo Boff, his brother Clodovis, and Hugo Assmann have exerted a strong influence in intellectual circles. One Brazilian bishop has even called on theologians to adapt Karl Marx's ideas to Christianity in the same way that medieval theologians adapted Aristotle's.
But in the day-to-day life of the church, reality tends to intervene, and democratic sentiments show themselves to be more common than might be expected. Liberation
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