Gustavo Gutierrez
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P. is a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as the founder of Liberation Theology. He holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He has been professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe. He is a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, and in 1993 he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government for his tireless work. He has also published in and been a member of the board of directors of the international journal, Concilium.
He has studied medicine and literature (Peru), psychology and philosophy (Leuven), and obtained a doctorate at the Institut Pastoral d'Etudes Religieuses (IPER), Université Catholique in Lyon.
The founder of liberation theology, he was born in Peru, and spent much of his life living and working among the poor of Lima.
In September 1984, a special assembly of Peruvian bishops were summoned to Rome for the express purpose of condemning Gutiérrez, but the bishops held firm.
Gutiérrez's groundbreaking work, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation (1971), explains his notion of Christian poverty as an act of loving solidarity with the poor as well as a liberatory protest against poverty.
According to Gutiérrez true "liberation" has three main dimensions:
First, it involves political and social liberation, the elimination of the immediate causes of poverty and injustice.
Second, liberation involves the emancipation of the poor, the marginalised, the downtrodden and the oppressed from all "those things that limit their capacity to develop themselves freely and in dignity."
Third, Liberation Theology involves liberation from selfishness and sin, a re-establishment of a relationship with God and with other people.
Liberation theology and Gutiérrez have both been the subjects of repeated Papal scrutiny. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation was reviewed directly by then-Cardinal Ratzinger and found to contain ideas which, in the view of conservative Catholics, were disturbing. Although Gutiérrez himself was not censured, many other liberation theologians received Papal censure. Because of the perceived connection between followers of Liberation theology and leftist groups like the Sandinistas many liberation-minded clergy were killed in Central American countries during the 1980s, most notably, Archbishop Oscar Romero.
“If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.”
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
“The theory of dependence will take the wrong path and lead to deception if the analysis is not put within the framework of the worldwide class struggle.”
“There are not two histories, one profane and one sacred, 'juxtaposed' or 'closely linked.' Rather there is only one human destiny.”
“Man is saved if he opens himself to God and to others, even if he is not clearly aware that he is doing so. This is valid for Christians and non-Christians alike -- for all people. . . . We can no longer speak properly of a profane world. A qualitative and intensive approach replaces a quantitative and extensive one.”
“The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.”
“The Exodus from Egypt, the home of sacred monarchy, reinforces this idea [desacralization of creation]: it is the 'desacralization' of social praxis. . . . In Egypt, work is alienated and, far from building a just society, contributes rather to increasing injustice and to widening the gap between exploiters and exploited.”
“The God of Exodus is the God of history and of political liberation more than he is the God of nature.”
“[Neighbor is] not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.”
“Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.”
“But there is one thing that is privileged to be a paradoxical sign of God, in relation to which men are able to manifest their deepest commitment -- our Neighbor. The sacrament of our Neighbor!' -- Congar”
“History is no longer as it was for the Greeks, an anamnesis, a remembrance. It is rather a thrust into the future.”
“Since the Enlightenment, the political order is an order of freedom. The political structures are no longer given, previous to man's freedom, but are rather realities based on freedom, taken on and modified by man. . . . This new definition of politics carefully distinguishes between state and society. The distinction . . . allows us to differentiate between the public sphere of the state of the Church (or the combination of them) as powers from the public sphere 'in which the interests of all men as a social group are expressed.”
“We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon.”
“The unqualified affirmation of the univeral will of salvation has radically changed the way of conceiving the mission of the Church in the world. . . . The work of salvation is a reality which occurs in history.”