Sacro y Profano - La teología de la liberación hoy - Dr. Enrique Dussel

Father Francis has shown openness and reconciliation with Catholic progressivism, liberation theology today I am Bernardo Barranco and this is sacred and profane Father Francis wants a poor church among the poor, he has endorsed it in his speeches in which he emphasizes social inequality and in his desire to reform the aristocratic Roman curia, the father does not want a self-referential church but one that goes out to the peripheries of societies and that is why he has launched various signs of reconciliation with the Catholic progressivism that in Latin America receives name of liberation theology reflection of faith that highlights and rescues the Christian message liberation theology is an important pastoral and theological social movement of the church in Latin America that flourished as a result of the conciliar renewals in the 60s of the century past and considers the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez as his father and the Brazilian Leonardo Boff as one of its greatest exponents under the military dictatorships in Latin America' these groups suffered strong repression there were great figures who are still remembered with veneration and respect for their determined commitment as Hélder Câmara in Brazil Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero in El Salvador and in Mexico Don Samuel Ruiz García Bishop of San Cristóbal Casas who is a prominent representative of that generation under the influence of the Cold War both Washington and the Roman Curia viewed with distrust the movement with which they had a Marxist infiltration in the pontificate of John Paul II, a disciplinary movement was imposed against the sympathizers of liberation theology, a process of internal repression took place with the marginalization of theologians, the appointment of conservative bishops and the blockade of pastoral trials in the popular sectors, being Latin American, Father Francis knows this whole trajectory very well and has given signs that he wants to take up part of this Latin American social gospel.

Father Francis has surprised the world not precisely because he is a Latin American father but through their gestures and then their words they have been showing new attitudes in the life of the church, the choice of the name Francis, the renunciation of luxuries and, above all, the expressions of wanting to be a poor church among the poor are very important elements that denote a closeness or an opening to a Catholic progressivism that until a few months ago was thought to have been repressed and to talk about the whole issue of liberation theology I have the honor of introducing Dr.

Enrique Düssel, thank you very much, Dr. Dulce, for being here. As you know, he is the rector of the autonomous university of Mexico City and has a doctorate in different disciplines such as history, theology and philosophy, and above all he is one of the founders of this Latin American thought, as you can see, Dr. Enrique Düssel, well, these pronouncements that he is making Father Francis, I do believe that Father Francis has disconcerted many because he is not a theologian like the previous one who has resigned but rather he is a pastor and as a pastor who does not have someone over him who can now set limits for him, it seems that his spontaneity has emerged from in a very creative way when he was archbishop in some Latin American country in Buenos Aires, for example, he was still a man, we would say, respectful of certain habits, but now freed from all that quasi-bureaucratic way of being in the church, he has uncovered an unexpected attitude, but not theological but pastoral.

What happens is that in Latin America, already 40 years old, an extremely creative theoretical thought has emerged that was repressed by the official church but that justifies the pastoral attitudes that he takes in such a way that it is not a miracle to understand that the father has In liberation theology, a theoretical explanation of his attitudes, which is why the carnal miller, who is today, we would say, the inquisitor because he is in the congregation of faith, presents Gustavo Gutiérrez, the creator of liberation theology in Rome' which Of course, Christians or rather Catholics on the right are a little disconcerted, but I believe that the genius of this father is that he is spontaneous, very confident in what he does, but what may be somewhat populist is based on a long pastoral tradition in such a way that it gives pointed out but with a thread because the thing continues and does not stop raising new developments liberation theology the possibility of opening up to reconciling he already did it with Gustavo Gutiérrez he has a sense of affection with Leonardo Boff but before going to those topics I would like him to define for us what It is the theology of liberation.

I was recently in Rabat, Morocco, in an inter-philosophical meeting with Chinese Hindu Muslim Arabs, also from Latin America, and it caught my attention that a professor from Jordan told me that we are not so interested in the philosophy of liberation. What interests us is the theology of liberation. I said it was notable, but I also said that we should also understand that theology is explaining the cause of poverty as a structural sin, that is, it is a theology that starts from everyday life with methodology. from the social sciences, even from psychoanalysis, from the entire most critical decolonial episteme and knows how to do theology in such a way that it has managed to fill a void on the left, the rather secular and Zante left, saying that religion is opium, distanced itself from the popular African Muslim imagination.

Chinese Hindu, the Chinese are deep down cabalists and Buddhists and Confucians or from Latin America, that is to say that the popular imagination is religious and the left then lost due to a certain secular vision, penetrating is imaginary, theology and liberation can enter there as far as it goes alter benjamin says it is a materialist messianism, messianism because it has a mystique but materialist in the sense that it covers or thinks of human needs as ethical demands if someone is hungry you have to feed them if someone is based in the Arabian desert you have to give them a drink if Someone is naked, you have to dress them if they don't have to put up a house and someone will say, well, those are the material needs, they are the genetic criteria, the founder of Christianity for the final judgment is a messianic materialism, very good, thank you, sweet doctor, we are on the subject of theology and liberation today you have just heard for more pastoral more open to the popular world of the poor and precisely rehabilitate what theology and liberation is or you can rehabilitate precisely because it penetrates that popular world what the author calls that imaginary let's take a break are you in sacred and profane Enrique Düssel is with us to help us understand theology and liberation and above all with the openings that Pope Francis Enrique has shown in the history of Latin America - what theology has meant of liberation and many people may think that liberation theology is something like a spontaneous fruit but it is very distant if we were to think about its contemporary origin, see for example in France there were priests who in Hitler's concentration camps celebrated their mass with the wine and bread of the concentration camp I worked in Israel in the areas with one of them inserted in the Palestinian media and they talked about a complete revision of Christianity and they talked about the church of the poor for the poor is this current in America 'Latina' will once again be a process of its own since Bartolomé de las Casas, colonialism had been criticized, the Spanish empire had also been criticized in that tradition in the 20th century thanks to the social sciences, thanks also to the commitment of youth in the revolutionary movements from Cuba From then on there were many young Christians who committed themselves to the process of social change but the traditional vision of Christianity did not work for that type of historical commitments, many times until they became real guerrillas and then the Christian faith had to be reformulated from its origins, that is, from the times when Christians faced the Roman Empire and died in the circuses and did not justify the domination of the empire from Charles and Constantine onwards that we call Christianity, but liberation theology is a rethinking of the Christian experience from its origins and from its Latin American origins today at the level of the most cutting-edge critical science there were undoubtedly great characters in the chamber theologians as important as Gustavo Subtle that you have made references and there is a whole generation of pastors of very committed people but in the end it does not give us much time it would be really interesting to talk about all the points but tell us Enrique about what liberation theology is today, that theology that made economic criticism of capitalism and also criticism of the structure of the church in situations of dictatorship, for example the case of the Romeros motion that He criticized the military who told them to stop torturing and was murdered on the altar.

A liberation theologian, who himself represents the great movements, later began to diversify into all levels of domination, for example indigenous liberation theology, and began to develop a whole new discourse theology of feminist liberation theology that criticizes white racism with respect to the mestizo at and above all in the forum and then many theologies emerge that think about non-traditional and critical Christian commitment in all social movements in such a way that Some believed that liberation theology had disappeared because the military dictatorships attacked it directly. There have been more than 3,000 Christians who died in Salvador, Guatemala, Dina, Chile and everywhere else, or say people are at risk, but it is not just the social movements. but all types of oppression that can now develop relevant discourses for their groups.

That is a great fruitfulness. It has given Christian theology enormous vitality and today it is already limited by movements, for example, Muslims, by movements that are also Taoist and Buddhist, for example in Thailand and in other parts, Enrique, you have told us a little about the history, everything about the roots and what it is today, how it has diversified into liberation theology, but it must also be said that liberation theology was strongly repressed not only by dictatorships. but also by the church itself and it was greatly diminished. Tell us briefly how this operation took place and why.

It is a very precise story. In 1972, from Rome, I would say there was a coup in the Latin American church. There was a Colombian cardinal who distinguished himself by persecuting liberation theology in all areas, professors in seminaries, great leaders and it was really persecuted by the conservative church but at the same time by military dictatorships because the military dictatorships tried to repress the people in the name of Western and Christian civilization, then what they found most What bothered them were Christians who could be critics of capitalism and of the dictatorships themselves who died in their hands, often tortured by the dictatorships.

There is a Latin American martyrology more numerous than the number of Christians who died in the repression of the Roman Empire because in the Roman Empire two hundred Christians died in the circuses here there were thousands in the period from 64 to 84 it was a theology repressed by the dictatorial political power and by a conservative church that is now disconcerted because suddenly the dad says this is simply possible and the The church has to be a church of the poor and for the poor and if that is what liberation theology had always said and that is why it was persecuted, there is no doubt that the conservative sectors are disconcerted today because the coordinates are changing and the dad is showing important openings but we are going to continue with the topic of liberation theology future perspectives let's make a cut you are in the sacred ah theology and vibration is a very current topic and the presence of

enrique

dulce helps us understand and deepen what What does it mean?

We have seen its history, we have seen the elements of repression, its nature, but Enrique probably needs to delve deeper into the current narratives, what these narratives of liberation theology could be. The interesting thing is that at the beginning, the commitment to poor schemes was thought of. Economics was a criticism of a structure of international domination that was based on the theory of dependency and on the inspiration of a critical economy and this also scandalized many because the church had not touched the economy from a point of view the theology was spoken of. of an international structural sin, national and in the company, but quickly, for example, a discourse of theological feminism emerges, the liberation of women, and then I know what machismo confronts, but a very old machismo because it comes from millennia, our fathers, but the father is also the mother.

You can say that it was a metaphor for the fertility of the creator and then there is a criticism of machismo but then other theologies emerge, not only white feminist theology but also that of color and not only that of color but gloomy and at the same time that which is marginal. then theological feminism begins to have many variants, the same thing will be said in other fields where there is also domination, the indigenous field, for example, Indian theology, which is a very interesting topic, Enrique, there are many experts who raise the influence of Argentine theology on the father.

Francisco If the Argentine liberation theology followed a somewhat different aspect than the Peruvian one, for example Gustavo tu Tierra or the Brazilian Voice or the Mexican one, it was also much more articulated with the popular movements, it was a more cultural theology of thedomination and he warned about the issue of precisely, as I said at the beginning, the symbolic religious imagination of the people and placing himself from there puts the people in motion, that is, talking about liberation from a purely political point of view often moves us to the people, but if one takes his Bible that of the people and shows that there is a pharaoh in Egypt and at the time of the dictatorship the pharaoh was like a dictator and there was a slave people who were the people and a Moses who preached the organization of the promised land that the new systems People understood that speech perfectly because it was their own but it was now mobilized and allowed people to understand what was happening in salt.

For example, Rigoberta Menchú in Guatemala says when we discovered that we had to do it like Moses, which was to fight against the pharaoh to liberate towards the promised land. It was then a different interpretation of the Bible in the specific political situation Enrique Düssel finally what is your prognosis how do you visualize the presence of Francisco facing this Latin American Catholic progressivism in an important program in Mexico when he was elected I was rather pessimistic I simply said good Italian in argentina and therefore yes italy, but he has truly baffled, he is a much freer man, he is a man who has the ability to be coherent, the fact that he has not yet slept in the vatican, that he wears shoes like everyone else who has a car. second and not first, all of this is not, however, small signs, it is a gigantic sign that will be in Germany now, a bishop who has built a palace worth 30 million in past times would not have been touched because they had not touched on sexual or other problems while which has now been called into question because confronted with the poverty that the father preaches, his wealth is unbearable for the faithful themselves and for the church itself, I believe that he is establishing a process that is inserted within the renewal of the Latin American church, not any other It is not the same in Africa, Asia and Europe.

It is interesting to see how this story will continue. Well, very good. I thank you very much for your presence and for the effort you have made to be here with the audience of that profane cross. Thank you very much. I believe. that very new things are also expected for the church, simply the fact of vindicating the second Vatican council, the fact that the father is proposing, above all, a more pastoral opening that is more sensitive to the needs of the people, a father who breaks with all this ethical history and old curial structures of imperial powders closer to what the reality of each one is.

I imagine him with his tray, he is going to eat, no, no, with those big dishes, etc. I believe that important changes are coming and I believe that the Latin American church is leaving. I feel very comforted and very encouraged by the presence of Father Francis. I am very grateful for his presence and we have reached the end of a new broadcast of sacred and profane with interesting perspectives for the church on this continent. Thank you very much.