Liberation Theology

Question 1

What is Marxism?

Answer 1

Forms basis of Communism.
Karl Marx.
Believe religion is the ‘opiate’ of the people used for social control.
View corporate capitalism as making workers merely a ‘cog in the machine’.

Question 2

What does Liberation Theology focus on?

Answer 2

Orthopraxy (right action first) rather than Orthodoxy (right belief).

• Focuses on the poor and exploitation.

Question 3

Examples of disproportionate wealth:

Answer 3

1% of the worlds richest are on target to control 2/3 of worlds wealth by 2030.

Question 4

Where did Liberation Theology begin?

Answer 4

Began 1964, Catholic theologians met in Brazil.
Wanted to act.
Two leading members- Jon Sobrino and Gustavo Gutierrez.

Question 5

When a person becomes aware of power structures in society:

Answer 5

Paulo Freire
‘Conscientisation’.

Education transforms society.

Question 6

What does Liberation Theology promote?

Answer 6

• The Kingdom of God (this world made anew, to work for in THIS world).
• Not Heaven.

Question 7

How does Gutierrez think LT happens?

Answer 7

• Social and economic, we need to recognise the poverty is caused by US.
• Then you are liberated from sin when you solve the problem.
• Practice and THEN gaining faith in God.

Question 8

Where does Marxism come in?

Answer 8

‘The more humans have the power to control the world, the more they feel they are not in control’.

‘The Communist Manifesto’ and ‘Das Kapital’ reflect this.

Question 9

When does Capitalism happen?

Answer 9

When a surplus is produced, fractures in classes.
Feudal lords own the land so can sell the surplus.
Serfs don’t own the land so have to give the surplus to the feudal lords.

Subservience is a problem to Marx, the serfs can never break free, no matter what money they make, always have to give it back.

Question 10

How does Marx describe work?

Answer 10

A ‘living death’.

Have to choice to work or you will die.
Constantly trapped in the system.

Question 11

Examples of a Capitalist system:

Answer 11

Rana Plaza
1100 dead.
2013.

People used as a means to an end through globalisation.

Question 12

What did Marx predict?

Answer 12

People would push back against capitalism.

TRUE- 1905 Revolution. Bloody Sunday 22 January.

Question 13

How is everyone part of the supply chain?

Answer 13

We all buy products making us happy, disregarding who made them.

Question 14

Where did the revolution Marx had predicted occur?

Answer 14

Latin America.

This is where Liberation Theology steps in.

Talking of stories like the Rich Man and Lazarus doesn’t do anything to help.

Orthopraxy is what is needed.

Question 15

What does being a Christian require for Gutierrez?

Answer 15

• Being political- ‘I came to bring a sword not peace’, Jesus executed for political reasons.
• Church needs to act as a voice for the exploited.
• Ignore initial doctrines of Sola Scriptura until people’s lives are changed for the better.

Question 16

Accepting the inequalities:

Answer 16

Structural Sin.

Question 17

Why is Gutierrez cautious with LT?

Answer 17

Marxism despises Christianity.
- ‘Opiate’ of the people.

• Only things they are endorsing about Marxism is its understanding on action and capitalism.

Just calls these ‘methodological pointers’.

Question 18

What did LT conclude from Marxism?

Answer 18

A socialist society is better than a Capitalist.

Question 19

Fitzgerald:

Answer 19

Calls Capitalist leaders ‘professed Christians’, emphasising the irony.

Somewhat Bonhoeffer’s idea of Cheap vs Costly grace.

Question 20

Arrupe

Answer 20

Preferential option for the poor.
Argues:
- Bible shows preference to those marginalised (eg Bartimaeus).
- Jesus associates himself with the poor (by the way he dresses).

Question 21

Segundo:

Answer 21

Church ‘intends to struggle’ for thee ‘rights of mankind, especially the poor’.

Question 22

Preferential option for the poor:

Answer 22

• Urges people to defend and liberate the poor.

Question 23

Pope and POFTP:

Answer 23

Pope John Paul II in encyclical- talked about the ‘primacy in the exercise of Christian charity’.

Talks about importance of Charity.
Thinks it can promote growth in community.
BUT, the Catholic Church is hugely wealthy- indulgences?

Question 24

Why does Pope John Paul II lose influence in terms of preferential option for the poor?

Answer 24

Says that this poverty is ‘spiritual poverty’ as well as economic poverty.

Highlights sovereignty of orthodoxy.

Consumerism fills a ‘spiritual void’, no focus on people in real poverty?

Question 25

Pope Francis:

Answer 25

2013, challenges Pope John Paul II, should reduce Church’s wealth to fit with the poor.

Said ‘realities are more important than ideas’.

Reduces his ‘papal luxuries’.
Said he would go by bus, so has a normal car rather than a fancy car.
ORTHOPRAXY.

Question 26

Catholic Church responds to LT:

Answer 26

• Concerned that it was too heavily focused on Marxism.
• Cardinal Ratzinger said the church was focused on the poor but would do so using its own means.
• Marxism is ‘inherently Unchristian’.

Question 27

Criticisms to LT:

Answer 27

• Kloppenburg said it emphasises structural sin over personal sin. Also thinks salvation will come through God, we do not need to liberate. Theology and politics incompatible, but Jesus very political?
• McBrien, LT only takes some aspects of the Bible. Ignores other kinds of oppression like sexism and racism. YET, isn’t the Church imperative to silencing women?
• Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith says ‘no separation of the parts of this epistemologically unique complex is possible’- the idea that Catholicism and Marxism are incompatible.

Question 28

Weaknesses of LT:

Answer 28

• Is there nothing good for those who die in the struggle?
• Marx is the ‘opiate of the masses’.

Question 29

Jesus’ teachings about wealth:

Answer 29

‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God’.
Matthew 19:24.