Just about everything stated above was outrageous. Liberation theology is about Liberation. The name says it all. Liberation from poverty, slavery, and social oppression. In my view, it shows Catholicism at its sublime best, and I speak as someone most of whose friends are Catholic. Marx was certainly inspired, as RD says, by the early Christian church. Engels himself drew this connection very clearly. With respect to Jesus, he was both an enemy of the rich "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven", cognizant of the need for reform in this world "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", and, when all else had failed, for revolution: "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword...."
And before you accuse me of selecting quotations selectively, you can spare your breath. I anticipate that. Suffice it to say, in response, that when the Argentine Generals tried to crack down on Liberation Theology they were forced to engage in the most transparent contortions of the gospel, arguuing literally that when Christ said to minister to the poor, he actually meant the spiritually poor, and that the spiritually poor are actuially the rich, hence churchmen should devote all their tiem to teh rich. Who is twisting the sense of the Gospel now?
Nort beinga Christian, I can't be a liberation theologist (I suppose) however I do subscribe to the Hindu equivalent, of which the most noted proponent was a Mr M.K. Gandhi, among others. So LT is a lie? You sound like the worst of the Trotskyists, who say exactly the same thing in their complacent, condescending atheism. LT is a lie? tell that to Oscar Romero, or to M.K. Gandhi, or to the Buddhist monks who died in Vietnam or Burma. tell that to millions of Nicaraguan peasants or to the starving Brazilians who were brought succor by the compassionate wing of the Church.
yes, Marx was an atheist, as was Engels. pure Marxism is an ethestic doctrine, as you stated. what the hell does it matter? Economic communism has nothing to do with atheism. You can agree with teh economic proposals of Marx, as I largely do, while disagreeing with the metaphysics. Most truly religious groups have always been communist. see the early Catholics, the Puritans, the Sangha, etc. To say that communism is an atheistic doctrine is therefore baseless. as for communism being "brutal", I believe that has been sufficiently refuted by logical argument on the part of me, Lark, RD, SDF, and plenbty of others, as well as by several millenia of history. If you choose to be blind to the fact and indulge your own prejudices, there is nothing anyone can do.
Lark, have you anything to add? You are more the expert on this subject than me.
-NJ
None.
