Word: marxists
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...discusses the controversy over his writings that virtually paralyzed the deliberations of his country's 54-member Episcopal Conference for 13 months. Father Gustavo Gutierrez, 56, is a psychologist and author of the 1971 seminal work A Theology of Liberation, which critics have said is imbued with Marxist concepts. Says Gutierrez: "I preach the gospel, nothing else...
...many, it is the duty of Christians to support the rights of the poor and oppressed. But among its extreme proponents, liberation theology has been used as an apologia for revolutionary upheaval in the Third World that strives to link the imperatives of Christian charity with the dictates of Marxist class struggle...
...theology. In the '70s, as armed insurrection and military dictatorship spread across Latin America, liberation theology took on a more explicitly political dimension. The radical fringe of liberation theology eventually seemed to find its model of change in the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution. Priests and Catholic laymen united with the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas to overthrow Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In the ensuing euphoria of the Sandinista triumph, the Rev. Paul Schmitz, a U.S. priest who is now a bishop in Nicaragua, declared that the country "is a laboratory for all of Latin America...
...Puebla, Mexico (the scene of the newly elected John Paul's first visit to Latin America), the assemblage followed the Pope's lead in striking a careful balance in defining Catholic activism. While endorsing a strong mandate for church involvement in social issues, the Puebla conference condemned Marxist strategies and cautioned priests to "divest themselves of all political ideologies...
Similar diplomatic considerations may have played a role in the publication in early September of a 36-page Ratzinger "instruction" on liberation theology, castigating those forms of the doctrine that "uncritically borrow Marxist ideas." The report promised a companion document that would deal with the "great richness" of the theme of liberation for church life and doctrine. The study has not yet appeared, and Rome has reportedly found the subject more complex than initially expected...