Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cvw@alice.att.com Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Liberation theology Message-ID: Date: 8 Dec 89 08:09:23 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 25 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu If you want a recent assessment of liberation theology, you could look at an essay by Arthur F. McGovern, S.J., "Liberation theology adapts and endures," *Commonweal* 116(19), 587-590, November 3, 1989. But the thread of liberation theology came up in a discussion of when Joseph Ratzinger "turned" from being a "liberal" to being a "conservative," and it seems to me that attributing this "turning" to liberation theology says more about the person making the claim than about Cardinal Ratzinger. From what I have read of Ratzinger's theological work, it is clear that he is well acquainted with modern ideas (such as democracy, due process, and individualism), and he is not relentlessly negative in his treatment of them. But whatever his intellectual prowess may be, his identity as a Roman Catholic comes first, and he is obviously distressed when "liberals" try to read these modern ideas into the long record of official Roman Catholic teaching. That is, he is not opposed to reconciling the good in modern ideas with official R.C. teaching, but you should expect him to be might cautious about it! Chris Van Wyk