Liberation Theologians Use Crisis to Attack

Never let a good crisis go to waste. Donna Freitas who writes for On Faith as The Stubborn Catholic believes that now is the time for feminists and liberation theologians to strike:

As the Catholic hierarchy sweats in the harsh glare of media scrutiny, as they backpedal about investigations into past and current abuse, and get defensive in all the wrong ways, the question “Should the pope resign?” is valid — the man at the top has been harboring criminals. There is no defense for this. There is no defense for those who shuffled around priests known to be guilty of rape and assault and other forms of abuse, be you the pope, a bishop or cardinal.

But now is also a moment with extraordinary potential for grassroots reform in the Catholic Church, and Catholic theology offers a powerful history and tradition of ground-up resistance and civil disobedience in its feminist, womanist, mujerista, and liberation theologies.

So what can these theologies offer in response to the abuse crisis?

Well, they call for no less than a revolution…But liberation theologies speak directly to us, the marginalized Catholics, and provide us frameworks to move from disgust, dismay, paralysis, and disempowerment toward transformation and change.

And if the vast majority of us are now the disenfranchised, it is from this place that we can begin to remake the church. The Vatican is so embattled and its power undermined by the scandal that the center of the Catholic Church has shifted sideways as a result–if we claim it from this place on the margins. If we speak in large numbers from this place as Catholics who are the Church.

We have strength in numbers. There are far many more of us than them. And liberation theologies empower the average Catholic to enter into theological discourse. They take theology from the hands of the few, from the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops, and put the task of theology into our hands. They anchor the Catholic Church in the laity and its ordinary priests and nuns, effectively dismantling the hierarchy’s power and redistributing it on a grassroots level, where it obviously belongs if the hierarchy’s behavior tells us anything at all.

When I used to think of liberation theology I always thought of Christians toppling third world governments. I guess I was stupid. Maybe they were always really interested in toppling the Church.

And remind me, did Jesus give Peter the keys or did he say “”I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven to you, you batty moonbat columnist; and whatever idea pops into your head is cool with me.”