Theology and the church: a response to Cardinal Ratzinger

Theology and the Church: A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church by Juan Luis Segundo

Liberation theology is a highly complex and often misunderstood topic, especially for those with less than a professional or academic interest in the Church. For the average member of the Catholic faith, the term "liberation theology" is layered with many different variations in meaning and overtone, from extreme visions of an armed Marxist rebellion to the simple giving of charity and maintaining an awareness of social injustice. The realities of what theologians and scholars are referring to when they discuss liberation theology is, if anything, even more complex than this view, and only slightly better defined. Disagreements concerning the proper perspective and derivation of liberation theology and its appropriateness in Catholic doctrine has formed one of the central conflicts in Church theology, politics, and practice in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Juan Luis Segundo's Theology and the Church: A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger and a Warning to the Whole Church does an excellent job of articulating the perspective of the liberal theologists of Latin America as the ideology was understood at the time of his writing. In a measured yet unequivocal tone, Segundo lays forth both the social and the doctrine-based imperatives for liberation theology and social activism on the part of the Church. His book, as the title implies, is a direct response to Cardinal Ratzinger's (now Pope Benedict XVI) condemnation of liberation theology, or at least of certain aspects of the ideology and doctrinal interpretation. The book does not read as a defense of certain tenets of liberation theology, however, so much as an attack on Ratzinger's interpretation of the theology.

Segundo makes this clear very early on in the book, acknowledging that while Ratzinger's "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation'" "means to respond for the good of the Church," Ratzinger fails to accomplish a fully lucid and meaningful interpretation of true liberation ideology because he focuses on "the negative and only the negative" in warning against a rising current of opinion, rather than systematically analyzing and understanding the basic tenets of the theology (Segundo 22). This argument provides one of the great strengths of Segundo's book; he does not merely attempt to define and defend liberation theology, but rather levels a direct response to the most recent official attack on the growing strand of theological and political thought in Latin America that is both more comprehensive and more persuasive than Ratzinger's text.

Despite the fact that he is responding to a doctrine released by an official body of the Church, Segundo's stance is strangely and powerfully on the offensive. He is not attempting, that is, to defend the principles of liberation theology so much as he is attempting to dismantle the reasons liberation theology is objected to by the Catholic Church. His use of specific claims of Ratzinger's "Instruction" from which to draw general proofs and concepts regarding the incompleteness of the Church's stance is especially persuasive, as it makes a direct point-by-point comparison of liberation theology and the Church's stance possible while at the same time serving as a comprehensive analysis of and argument for liberation theology as Segundo understands it and hopes to see it manifested politically and socially in the world at large and Catholicism particularly.

In arranging his argument in this way, Segundo is quite cleverly and effectively exploiting a distinct advantage that he holds over Ratzinger. While Ratzinger was forced to respond to a growing yet still largely misunderstood social movement and current of theological thought, Segundo was presented with a distinct and, at the time, definitive explanation of the Church's position on the issues. His basic allegation, that Ratzinger and thus the Church misunderstand both liberation theology and the doctrinal interpretations that have led to its formulation, is foundational in Segundo's argument and in procuring this advantage. Ratzinger was essentially forced to respond to generalizations, and Segundo is able to point out how these specific generalizations are incorrect or incongruent.

In this way, Segundo's greatest strength in this text is also its weakest, when examined with full analytical scrutiny. In his own definition and defense of liberation theology, he focuses only on one specific text and set of arguments against the ideology; by discounting Ratzinger's "Instruction" as a fundamental misinterpretation of the theology and its origins and relationship to Catholic doctrine and dogma, Segundo precludes the notion of engaging in a meaningful debate with the Church or its officers regarding the theology of liberation. That is, rather than acknowledging that there might indeed be discrepancies between contemporary Church doctrine and the beliefs held by liberation theologists, Segundo effectively dismisses Ratzinger's "Instruction" as inherently wrong. He is careful to lay out his reasons for this assertion, to be sure, including a reexamination of certain texts and passages, but the result is a dismissal rather than a debate.

This could very well be Segundo's intention with the book, of course, as liberation theology essentially presumes its own obviousness in a proper reading of the Bible and Church doctrine. The force of social justice rather than social peace that Jesus represents according to many passages in the Bible are cited as reasons to establish more firmly the theology of liberation. By not even entertaining the though of a different "truth" to be derived form these passages, Segundo is perhaps not being disingenuous, but simply strict and undemocratic in his reading -- which is indeed a hallmark of rigorous theology, perhaps especially in the Catholic Church. Though his reasoning and argument are somewhat weakened by this tactic, then, the strength of his argument in a theological rather than a political context (in the former of which Segundo's argument must, ultimately, necessarily be understood) is actually increased by his supreme allegiance to his own interpretation.

Segundo's argument is strengthened further still by his historical analysis of hermeneutic interpretation. Establishing that human context is decidedly not the same, Segundo contends that modern theology must take into account the vastly different peoples and histories that the church now encompasses and bears responsibility for. Despite the universality of Church doctrine, he seems to argue, there will not be a universally accepted ranking of priorities or of the context in which Church doctrine is to be interpreted. Again, Segundo makes explicit reference to Ratzinger's "Instruction" in developing this argument, point out flaws in its interpretation of liberation theology precepts and pointing out Biblical passages for references of the true ideals of the theology.