From: People For Peace
Voices of Justice for Peace
Regional News

BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
MONDAY, JULY 9, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday appointed a liberation German theologian, Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, previously the bishop of Regensburg, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, raising him to the dignity of Archbishop.

[2 images]Inset- from left to right- Archbishop Müller talking to journalists concerning sexual abuse and celibacy- Dominican Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez-the founder of liberation theology/ File

At 64, Bishop Müller is faced with a lot of challenges, ranging from overseeing a continuing investigation of the social justice work of nuns in the United States as well as the handling of clerical sexual abuse cases.

He replaces Cardinal William J. Levada, 76, the highest-ranking American in the Vatican hierarchy, who is retiring. He was more of an executor, whereas Müller, because of his own theological training and experience, is more in sync with Ratzinger according to Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert. Ratzinger held the post for 25 years.

Archbishop Müller is not only a long time friend of the pope he oversees the Benedict XVI Institute, which is publishing a 16-volume “Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Liberation Theology is a movement that grew in Latin America in the 1980s, a movement Benedict harshly criticized for its Marxist leanings when he led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Archbishop Müller is not only co-author of a book with the Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian priest considered the founder of liberation theology he hosted the pope’s 2006 visit to Regensburg, where Benedict delivered a speech in which he outraged Muslims by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who connected Islam with violence.

Another challenge Müller will be faced with is the overseeing talks with the Society of St. Pius X, a group that split from the Vatican to protest the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s-range of religious social activism: from liberation theology and feminist religion to ecotheology and peace activism.

By virtue of his office, Müller will also be the president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and the International Theological Commission.

Although the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, spent much of his tenure at the congregation battling liberation theology, arguing that it misinterpreted Jesus’ preference for the poor into a call for rebellion, Father Gutierrez denied that liberation theology had ever reduced Christianity to politics or had ever embraced doctrinaire Marxism.

Like Benedict, Pope John Paul II made a number of statements criticising aspects of liberation theology that use Marxist principles to analyse political and social problems. He also warned priests against taking part in politics despite the fact that his pronouncements on economic justice and human rights are largely consistent with liberation theology.

Although the Vatican does not feel comfortable with liberation theology, theologians who support the movement argue that liberation theology should not be a threat to the Vatican since it interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions.

It has been described by proponents as “an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor’s suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor”, and by detractors as Christianized Marxism.

Further more, liberation theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in Latin America and the rest of other regions. In other words, liberation theology could be interpreted as a western attempt to return to the gospel of the early church where Christianity is politically and culturally decentralized.

It is drawn from the fact that Christ the Savior liberates the human race from sin, which is the root of all disruption of friendship and of all injustice and oppression.

Drawing from the biblical motif on the poor, Gutierrez asserts that God is revealed as having a preference for those people who are “insignificant,” “marginalized,” “unimportant,” “needy,” despised” and “defenseless.”

Born in Mainz, Germany, Dec. 31, 1947, archbishop Müller became a priest in 1978 and served in his native diocese as a chaplain and high school religion teacher. With degrees in philosophy and theology, he was a professor of dogmatic theology in Munich from 1986 to 2002.

During a 2010 conference in Rome marking the Year for Priests, he told reporters it was “stupidity” to believe that celibacy causes clerical sexual abuse, and he said that any priest who sexually abuses a child has placed himself outside of the priesthood, even before the church acts formally to dismiss him.

Concerning the church’s teaching against women’s ordination, he explained in a speech in 2002 that the Catholic Church does not profess that “men are superior to women,” but emphasized that Christ chose only men as his apostles.

His main task will be to promote the doctrine of the faith, and not only for its protection but also the promotion of theology and its basis in Revelation, to ensure its quality, and to consider the important intellectual developments on a global scale. This is because Revelation must always be associated with the intellectual developments of the time, the sociological changes, the thinking of people.

The Congregation has also the task of supporting the pope in his Magisterium on the emphases he makes in his proclamations. It is about a right understanding of the nature and mission of the Church; about finding the right balance between shutting out the world and adapting to it – so that we can truly serve the world in the name of Jesus Christ.

It emphasizes the fact that everyone who calls himself or herself Catholic, will also have to keep the principles of the Catholic faith given to us in the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which has been entrusted to the Church. One can therefore not simply pick from it what fits in a given structure.

It means that one must be open to the whole of the Christian faith, the whole profession of faith, the Church’s history and development of her teaching and to the living Tradition of the church.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
People for Peace in Africa
Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578

E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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