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.”
April 9, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Liberation Theology is heretical. That's why Pope John Paul II publicly rebuked the leader of the Liberation Theology "Catholic" movement during his visit to South America (I believe it was S.A., correct me if I'm wrong?)
And no, there aren't more liberation theologians than there are orthodox Catholics. It's just that they have nothing to do in the Church but whine, so they'd like to get greased.
Come to think of it, if you took the Catholic Church right out of it, this would sound like a speech from 'the Fuhrer' himself B. Hussein Obama! It reads like a segment from "Audacity of Hope".
April 9, 2010 at 3:10 pm
For an always nuances, always beautiful analysis, here is then-Cardinal Ratzinger on Liberation Theology: http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/ratzinger/liberationtheol.htm circa 1984
April 9, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Duhh…I meant NUANCED
April 9, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Interesting. There's a whole lot of "we" in Ms. Frieta's screed. "We can begin to remake the Church … We claim it … We have strength in numbers … We are living in a different world …". Change in HER church seems to be motivated by public opinion and personal desire.
But there's nary a mention of the breath of the Holy Spirit, which moves and stirs the Catholic Church as it has for 2000+ years.
Let us pray.
April 9, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Liberation Catholic: oxymoron.
April 9, 2010 at 3:53 pm
The is so sophomoric that it boggles the mind with its adolescent rebelliousness and hackneyed language. Catholics like all people have to deal with the difficulties and joys of each day and not with some drippy neo-Marxist tossing out bits of bombast from her soapbox.
April 9, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Kim Luisi- the link you provided doesn't work. Does anyone else have the proper link that that analysis by Cardinal Ratzinger?
April 9, 2010 at 4:55 pm
We have strength in numbers. There are far many more of us than them.
She's delusional. There are plenty of lukewarm Catholics to be sure, but the dissenters are dinosaurs who are not replacing their numbers. The average layman need only look at a someone like Bp. Weakland, and conclude the solution to the crisis isn't more like him. Or one could simply look at the Diocese of Rochester, poster diocese of progressive fluff, see that they are not ordaining anyone until 2014 (assuming everything goes as planned, and that's a BIG assumption), and realize that this isn't a growth movement. When the laity can be bothered at all about the faith, it is skewing orthodox.
April 9, 2010 at 4:59 pm
The most disturbing part of this to me is the pedophilia isn't likely to be a large number of the total infractions by these priests. How many pedophiles do you know? Is it likely that there are substantially more in the priesthood? Priests are probably about like the general population – lots of heterosexuals, a few homosexuals, and the odd pedophile now and then. So if there are only a few pedophiles in the priesthood, there are probably lots and lots of heterosexuals and homosexuals. They probably also constitute the largest number of sexual relationships within the priesthood. In short, I wouldn't bet that more than 30 % or so a priests are actually celibate. Imperfect human beings. Like the rest of us.
April 9, 2010 at 5:03 pm
She said past and current abuse. Nice slip in. What's the current abuse again?
April 9, 2010 at 5:05 pm
She actually gets PAID for writing drivel like that?
April 9, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Mary Ellen:
It should work. Just copy and paste it into your browser. Here is the link again: http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/ratzinger/liberationtheol.htm
April 9, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Dear Sir I cannot find the novena for the Pope
April 9, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Novena for the Holy Father is at Knights of Columbus site. kofc.org
April 9, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Some people just don't get it. I wish they'd stop trying to change the Church and focus instead on changing themselves.
April 9, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Patty, you're a bit off, but correct in spirit. Liberation Theology doesn't have a "leader", as it is not an order. The event you are referring to is when in 1983 JP II visited Nicaragua (in Central America) which was then run by the Marxist Sandinista government (with 5 Jesuit priests serving in it) and at war with the US-backed "Contra" rebels. When JP II got off the airplane, Father Ernesto Cardenal (one of the Jesuit priests serving in the government) knelt to kiss his hand. JP II jerked it away and scolded him, wagging his finger in front of the world and cameras.
Later that visit, JPII gave an outdoor mass, and Father Ernesto Cardenal as well as Daniel Ortega, the president of the Sandinistas, had rigged the crowd to chant revolutionary slogans over JP II's speech. They even put recordings on loudspeakers and drowned out his microphone, while they casually looked on to the crowds, smirking. JP II finally lost it, raised his fist and shouted "Meskito Power!" referring to a group of separatist coastal Indians, which further enraged the spanish-speaking crowd.
This was not a high-point for the church. JP II should have admonished Father Ernesto IN PRIVATE and not used the moment as a photo-op. And of course a Jesuit priest's #1 obligation SHOULD BE loyalty to the magesterium, which unfortunately is now the exception and not the rule.
April 9, 2010 at 8:02 pm
There is no such thing as Liberation Theology. There are instead theologies of liberation. Some are downright heretical, some heterodox, but some are quite orthodox. By some definitions, Pope John Paul II was an adherent of a theology of liberation because of his efforts to unseat the structure of oppression that was Communism.
I think that uncritical condemnations are unhelpful, because to condemn all theologies of liberation, we have to condemn orthodoxy and we miss a potentially rich theological insight.
That being said, my experience has been that most people who proclaim Liberation Theology fall into the heterodox or heretical camps.
April 9, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Wine – there is absolutely a "Liberation Theology". It has many books and courses tought on it (I am a victim of it as I had a Jesuit education). There are certainly many strains and schools of thought on it which as you point out range from the orthodox to the heterodox. But at its core, it relies on "the people" and not the hierarchy, which in many cases it openly shuns unless they are on board with the program.
April 9, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Why don't they just call themselves what they are: Protestants!
April 9, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Early Riser,
Perhaps it is just a matter of semantics. I say that there is no such thing as Liberation Theology because the various theologies of liberation are more diverse than similar and many are mutually exclusive. You can talk about schools or stains, but I think this terminology fails to capture the true diversity.
At their core, they are a confederation of ideologies joined by the concept that the conquering of sin requires the dismantling of the structures of sin that lead, among other things, to oppression. That is the only real connecting fiber. Honestly, not even the Gospel, Jesus or even God are common elements. The more Marxist theology of liberation is, by far, the most common and the one that most people are probably familiar with, but those Marxist/Socialist/Populist elements are not common to all theologies, are not the connecting fiber.
If there were more uniformity among the various theologies of liberation, I might be able to get on board with the semantics of Liberation Theology. But there isn't, so I can't. As long as JPII can be seen as a textbook example of one theology of liberation and a mortal enemy of another, saying Liberation Theology just doesn't seem to work.