tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34346296.post6699642583467944224..comments2023-12-25T23:40:17.701-05:00Comments on Confessions of a Carioca: Liberation Theology RevisitedDaniel Martinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15980949721733826978noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34346296.post-75756858493700992222011-09-19T16:16:29.992-04:002011-09-19T16:16:29.992-04:00Bishop Martins, your reflection on liberation theo...Bishop Martins, your reflection on liberation theology is well worth reading. I wrote a long comment, but when I hit preview, my comment disappeared, and I don't have the heart to try to say it all again. <br /><br />In brief, as I see it, liberation theology is only retro insofar as the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and the long tradition of the church are retro. Christians have not always practiced the principles of liberation theology well, but they are surely nothing new.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero" rel="nofollow">Roman Catholic Abp. Óscar Romero</a> expressed my view far better than I ever could in the following excerpt from one of his prayers:<br /><br /><i>It helps, now and then, to step back<br />and take the long view.<br />The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,<br />it is beyond our vision.<br /><br />We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of<br />the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.<br />Nothing we do is complete,<br />which is another way of saying<br />that the kingdom always lies beyond us.<br /><br />No statement says all that could be said.<br />No prayer fully expresses our faith.<br />No confession brings perfection.<br />No pastoral visit brings wholeness.<br />No program accomplishes the church's mission.<br />No set of goals and objectives includes everything.<br /><br />This is what we are about:<br />We plant seeds that one day will grow.<br />We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.<br />We lay foundations that will need further development.<br />We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.<br /><br />We cannot do everything<br />and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.<br />This enables us to do something,<br />and to do it very well.<br />It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,<br />an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.<br /><br />We may never see the end results,<br />but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.<br />We are workers, not master builders,<br />ministers, not messiahs.<br />We are prophets of a future not our own<br />Amen</i>June Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01723016934182800437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34346296.post-62843657788725479532011-09-18T11:30:53.534-04:002011-09-18T11:30:53.534-04:00If I may ask, did they offer a definition of justi...If I may ask, did they offer a definition of justice? It seems that justice is something of the undefined - even inarticulate - promised land of materialist 'theology'. There is a rich heritage of Western thought on the meaning of justice, beginning with the ancients - Plato and Aristotle in particular, neither of whom are widely read today - and working itself up into the present. If Liberation Theology is the means to a more just society, what is the end (telos)? Not to show my Aristotelian bias, but should not the end at least shape the means? I cannot help but think that Liberation Theology has it backwards: a focus on the means, which it seeks to develop, without any consideration of the end. It thus yields a genuine utopianism in the worst sense, in which utopia is the happy place that is no place, existing time out of mind, and therefore without description. But being without description, it is also without language and therefore cannot be thought - meaning that the means cannot be shaped by the end, but only by the will of one who uses the empty signifier 'justice'. So what <i>is</i> the just society?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com