The following article is adapted from
John Horvat’s foreword for the book Liberation Theology: How Marxism Infiltrated the Catholic Church written by Julio Loredo de Izcue.
✧ † ✧
Many look at liberation theology as a Latin American phenomenon that need not concern Americans. In 1971, Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian theologian, released the movement’s seminal book, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, which claimed to represent “the cry of the people.” These ideas spread rapidly and then reached their peak in the seventies and eighties when they inspired the popular movements and basic Christian communities in left-agitated Latin America.
Get the book now! Liberation Theology is now available for $19.95. Click here to get your copy now.
In 1984 and later in 1986, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) condemned certain aspects of liberation theory, especially its use of Marxist analysis. Afterward, the movement slowly faded, and the more progressive elements in the Church moved on to environmentalism, homosexuality, race and other leftist causes.
However, liberation theology never disappeared. It is not over. Many are now surprised to see that it is having a worldwide resurgence. It shows up in places like President Joe Biden’s Oval Office in the form of a bust of Cesar Chavez, the California farmworker agitator. It shows up in President Biden’s inaugural address. The president’s words, “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,” is an echo of the more famous “the cry of the poor, the cry of the earth” from Leonardo Boff, a leading liberation theologian and a friend of Pope Francis. It is said that he was consulted during the writing of the encyclical Laudato Si’.
Indeed, liberation theology is off the back burner and into the headlines, where it enjoys the favor of the media and liberal establishment. Its message has come charging back with more radicalized doctrines and applications. Thus, Liberation Theology: How Marxism Infiltrated the Catholic Church could not be timelier.
Like Father Gutiérrez, author Julio Loredo de Izcue is a Peruvian. He has studied Latin America’s problems firsthand and has lectured on the Catholic left and liberation theology for over forty years. Currently living in Italy, where he is the president of the Italian Association of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), Mr. Loredo is a well-known writer, speaker, and commentator on Church affairs.
Get the book now!
Liberation Theology is now available as for $19.95.
Click here to get your copy now.
Mr. Loredo understands that liberation theology is built on powerful myths that, once debunked, render it much less dangerous. He also knows its points of vulnerability that allowed him to deliver a stunning broadside against this theological current that threatens the Church.
Readers of this book will learn four important lessons that will help them understand better this theology that may soon be coming to a parish nearby.
The first one is that liberation theology is not theology. The body of work related to liberation theology would place it more in the fields of political philosophy and sociology. Its Marxist analysis, and especially its class struggle dialectics, has caused immense damage throughout the world. Its use of the ‘theology’ label and vocabulary makes it more dangerous since it relies upon people’s goodwill toward religion.
Resorting to such sociological sources is tragic, considering the Church’s vast treasury of social teaching based on the writings of saints, doctors, and theologians. Unlike the Church—which promotes love of neighbor and social harmony for the love of God—liberation theology excludes all supernatural means of dealing with misfortune and poverty. Moreover, liberation theology is rooted in egalitarianism and fueled by hatred, not love. Liberation theology also lacks originality as it recycles old philosophical errors, changing only the exterior packaging.
Get the book now!
Liberation Theology is now available as for $19.95.
Click here to get your copy now.
The second lesson is that liberation theology is part of a process. The author is well trained in the school of historical analysis of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. The noted Catholic thinker taught that historical currents follow processes that are not always clear to ordinary laymen. However, a careful look at a current will reveal the origin of the error. At times, an evil may seem to disappear, then suddenly reappear, fortified and worse than ever. Once seen as a process, however, such currents are easier to refute.
Thus, Mr. Loredo shows that liberation theology did not suddenly appear on the horizon. Readers of this book will find the process meticulously traced in its development from theological and sociological currents after the French Revolution and the advance of liberalism. He cuts to the root of where liberation theology originated.
Yet another lesson comes through the author dispelling the myth of liberation theology being a purely Latin American phenomenon that sprang from the cry of the people. The real story is more complex and less dramatic. The origins of this ‘theology’ are much more based on European theological currents than the reflections of villagers in the Andes. Highly educated priests and laymen formulated its doctrines, not the poor subjected to its process of “conscientization.”
The final lesson is that liberation theology threatens us here in America. This theology has found its way into the American context. It has long infiltrated Hispanic Catholic communities and parishes in the United States. Catholic leftists like Dorothy Day and others saw liberation theology as inspiration for their activism. In addition, many liberation theology theories that applied only to the poor are now used for identity politics and the present “woke” revolution.
Get the book now! Liberation Theology is now available for $19.95. Click here to get your copy now.
American readers will appreciate the exhaustive research that will allow them to see liberation theology in this new light. As with all cancerous movements inside the Church, the whole Church is affected. The movement has metastasized and can be found everywhere in the Church now, especially under the reign of Pope Francis.
Readers need to be aware that the final goal of liberation theology is not to introduce another manner of looking at problems inside the Church. Its worldview excludes all others. The goal is to transform the Church, her structures and doctrines into a new church and religion. That is why it is so dangerous.
Like all things leftist, the author shows that liberation theology will harm the people it claims to help. The poor are the victims of this strange theology. Mr. Loredo recalls the metaphor that liberation theology is a lead-filled life jacket for the poor. Indeed, it drags them to destruction. Its proposed political structures impoverish nations and consign the poor to abject misery.
This book comes at the right time for Catholic American readers. It will prove useful for those seeking to understand the crisis in the Church. By pointing out liberation theology’s origins, core beliefs, and ruinous goals, Mr. Loredo arms readers to oppose it better. However, the author’s supernatural spirit also points to the need to resort to God and the Blessed Mother. They are the key to crushing this terrible heresy.