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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2022
Catholic Social Teaching in Latin America—portrayed in the documents of the Conference of Latin American Episcopal Conferences (Río, Medellín, Puebla, Santo Domingo, and Aparecida)—seeks to provide pastoral orientations to the social problems of the subcontinent, analyzing reality from a concrete theological perspective: the perspective of the poor. This article analyzes how Latin American problems and the way to diagnose them also appear in the pontifical documents of Pope Francis, especially in Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’, applied to the world context. We conclude that the perspective of Latin American theology continues to be valid and relevant for the faithful throughout the world.
1 For some scholars, Francis is close to liberation theology through the theology of the people. See Scannone, Juan Carlos, “Pope Francis and the Theology of the People,” Theological Studies 77, no. 1 (2016): 118–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rafael Luciani, Pope Francis and the Theology of the People (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), 1–36. For others, however, he is not influenced by liberation theology. See Mario I. Aguilar, Pope Francis: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2014), 15.
2 Giuseppe Giordan, “Pope Francis: Effect between Internal Reforms of the Catholic Church and Geopolitical Choices: An Introduction,” in Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 30, ed. Ralph W. Hood and Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2020), 251–55, at 252.
3 Massimo Borghesi, The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio's Intellectual Journey (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018), Introduction, Kindle.
4 S. Stewart Braun, “Pope Francis and Economic Democracy: Understanding Pope Francis's Radical (yet) Practical Approach to Political Economy,” Theological Studies 81, no. 1 (2020): 203–24, at 204, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563920907077.
5 Francisco Gómez Hinojosa, De la teología de la liberación a la teología del papa Francisco. ¿Ruptura o continuidad? (Madrid: PPC, 2018): 77–128.
6 The epistemological source of “see, judge and act” in modern thought is found if we follow Jürgen Habermas (page 16, Pensamiento postmetafísico) in “post-Aristotelian logic and Fregean semantics developed in the 20th century.” For him, “he problem does not lie so much in the method as in the impact of the thought: post-metaphysical thought, linguistic turn, situated character of reason and inversion of the primacy of theory over praxis—or overcoming of logocentrism”; in Jürgen Habermas, Pensamiento postmetafísico, trans. Manuel Jiménez Redondo (Madrid: Taurus Alfaguara, 1990), 16. This explains why many pastoral letters leave doctrines and start to see the reality (see), name the reality (judge), and transform the reality (act). Hence, the “see, judge and act” method will have a deep reception in the documents of the church of the twentieth century and in the spiritualities sustained by the review of life that will find an echo in societies such as Latin America. Lozada, Leonidas Ortiz, “La importancia del método en el Concilio y en el Magisterio Episcopal Latinoamericano,” Revista Medellín 32, no. 126 (2006): 313–31Google Scholar.
7 Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM), Medellín, https://celam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2-conferencia-general-medellin.pdf, 1–4, and in CELAM, Puebla, https://celam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/3-conferencia-general-puebla.pdf, 29–30.
8 Rubio, Miguel, “Laudato Si’: Una teología de la creación en perspectiva ecológica,” Moralia 39 (2016): 89–117Google Scholar.
9 Peregrín, Eduardo García, “Laudato Si’: de Francisco de Asís al papa Francisco,” Proyección: Teología y mundo actual 260 (2016): 41–67Google Scholar; Deane-Drummond, Celia, “Pope Francis: Priest and Prophet in the Anthropocene,” Environmental Humanities 8, no. 2 (November 2016): 256–62, https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3664369CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 “There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.” Pope John XXIII, Encyclical, Mater et Magistra (On Christianity and Social Progress), §236, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater.html.
11 Scannone, Juan Carlos, “La Ética Social del Papa Francisco: El Evangelio de la misericordia según el espíritu de discernimiento,” Teología 55, no. 126 (2018): 145–62Google Scholar, at 158 (my translation), https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/6807.
12 Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (On the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today's World), November 24, 2013, §50, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html (translations my own).
13 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Practice of Reflexive Sociology (The Paris Workshop),” in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, eds. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc JD Wacquant (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 217–60, at 218.
14 Pope Francis, Video Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to participants in an international theological congress held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, September 3, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150903_videomessaggio-teologia-buenos-aires.html.
15 Cf. Luciani, Rafael, “Francis and the Pastoral Geopolitics of Peoples and Their Cultures: A Structural Option for the Poor,” Theological Studies 81, no. 1 (2020): 181–202, at 184–86, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563920906135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 The pastoral approach considers the signs of the times in its first meaning as a fundamental principle of relevance and pertinence. In the second meaning, theology understands that historical reality has a sacramental dimension given God is present within it. This same presence demands recognition of the value that the fides qua should have for theology. The act of believing in Christ today, according to Jon Sobrino, must configure Christology. This cannot reduce the knowledge of Christ to the fides quae transmitted in the texts of the church. What has been valid in the field of spirituality should be accurate by analogy for the discernment of the signs of the times. Jorge Costadoat, in Jon Sobrino, Theológica Xaveriana 181 (2016): 38.
17 The concluding document of Medellín is a compilation of the final documents that each commission prepared to address the different issues agreed upon at the Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America (Medellín, September 1968). Thus, the text consists of sixteen chapters, one introduction, and one message to the peoples of Latin America. To facilitate citation, the name of the chapter and its corresponding number will apply to the digital edition prepared by José Luis Gómez-Martínez at https://www.ensayistas.org/critica/liberacion/medellin/index.htm.
18 CELAM, “Pobreza de la Iglesia,” Medellín, 3 (my translation).
19 The discernment of the sign of exclusion implies arriving at the moment of action in lucid and comprehensive orientations toward people who live and suffer different types of discrimination. See Azcuy, Virginia, “La pobreza de la Iglesia y los signos de los tiempos: Medellín como recepción inacabada del Vat II,” Teología 110 (2013): 135–36Google Scholar.
20 CELAM, “Pobreza de la Iglesia,” Medellín, 4–5.
21 CELAM, Puebla, 33 (my translation).
22 CELAM, Puebla, 31.
23 CELAM, Santo Domingo, https://celam.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/conferencia-general-santo-domingo.pdf, 67–68 (my translation).
24 CELAM, Santo Domingo, 50.
25 CELAM, “Final Message,” Aparecida, https://celam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/5-conferencia-general-aparecida.pdf, 30 (my translation).
26 It is not unknown that the presence of theology in Latin America, in principle, can be found from the beginning of colonization. This was based on European themes and interests, in which imperial conquest and the mission of Jesus Christ were identical. Although not with the words preferential option for the poor, but in its content, however, it is found in the thought of preachers such as Antón Montesino OP, (1475–1540), the testimony of Bartolomé de las Casas OP (1474–1566), Antonio San Miguel, Monje Jerónimo (1704–1804), and Luis Beltrán OP (1784–1827), who protested against the bad treatment inflicted on the Indigenous people. In them an option for the most fragile of society in previous times is recognized. See Christian Smith, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 11–12. However, Monsignor Marcos McGrath, before Vatican II, pointed out that in the European and North American bibliography there was not a work written and published in Latin America in philosophy and theology. For his part, Joseph Comblin affirmed that theology on the continent was Western in nature; there was no theological production. In fact, having no history, theology would be a slavish repetition of European themes. See Costadoat, Jorge, “La formación teológica en América Latina antes del Concilio,” Estudios eclasiásticos 95, no. 373 (2020): 442Google Scholar. This same author presents a brief review of theology in Latin America, after the Second Vatican Council, in whose theology one can begin to recognize a production of theologians from this latitude of the world. See Costadoat, Jorge, “Vigencia de la teología latinoamericana de la liberación: a cinco décadas de su origen,” in Theological Xaveriana 71 (2021): 1–3Google Scholar.
27 It must be taken into account that solidarity is a category that had been developed in the corpus of CST from the notions proposed by Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra, and expanded by John Paul II in several of his writings; ccf. Clark, Meghan J., “Pope Francis and the Christological Dimensions of Solidarity in Catholic Social Teaching,” Theological Studies 80, no. 1 (2019): 102–22, at 103–04, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040563918819818CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §188.
29 Pope Francis, Encyclical, Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), May 24, §2, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.
30 CELAM, Aparecida, 242.
31 The image of the polyhedron is taken from EG §236: “Here our model is not the sphere, which is no greater than its parts, where every point is equidistant from the centre, and there are no differences between them. Instead, it is the polyhedron, which reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness.”
32 The theological concept of “style” as a key to reading Laudato Si’ is defined by Jiménez as one of joy, confidence, and freedom: “It is not a style of escape from the world or of avoidance of problems. Nor is it a style of longing for past times.… The particular style of Francis seeks to be rooted in the Gospel and invites conversion and reorientation towards the future.” Luis Orlando Jiménez, “El concepto teológico de “estilo” como clave de lectura de Laudato si’ y Gaudete et exsultate: una manera de encontrar a Dios en la acción transformadora del mundo,” Theologica Xaveriana 70 (2020): 1–28, at 10, https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.tx70.ctecl.
33 Jiménez, “El concepto teológico de “estilo” como clave de lectura de Laudato si’ y Gaudete et exsultate,” 11.
34 Sachs states the following about this: “Truman's imperative to develop meant that societies of the Third World were no longer seen as diverse and incomparable possibilities of human living arrangements but were rather placed on a single ‘progressive’ track, judged more or less advanced according to the criteria of the Western industrial nations.” Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development, (London: Zed Books, 1999), 4.
35 The modernization or neoclassical approach, strongly influenced between 1945 and 1965, Deepens the horizon exposed by Truman. The failure to fulfill the promises of modernizing development, in addition to the deep political and social deterioration, is the perfect context for the emergence of the dependency approach (between 1965 and 1980). This approach emphasizes the social and political variables of underdevelopment. Halfway between these two approaches, environmentalist approaches emerge that will offer the concept of sustainable development (1970–1990) and human-scale development approaches (1975–1980). These are confronted by neo-modernizing approaches (from the 1980s and their neoliberal recycling until our decade), which, in their political and economic influence in the first decades of the twenty-first century, is opposed to new approaches around human development (1990–2000) and sustainable development (2000–2010). See Garza, Esthela Gutiérrez, “De las teorías del desarrollo al desarrollo sustentable: Historia de la constitucción de un enfoque multidisciplinario,” Ingenierías 11, no. 39 (June 2008): 21–35, https://es.calameo.com/eya-academy/read/00350627055073855f05dGoogle Scholar.
36 In fact, PP acts as the great founding story of all the Latin American episcopal conferences from Medellín onward. See Dueñas, Carlos Cerda and Leetoy, Salvador, “El desarrollo es el nuevo nombre de la paz: contexto, secuencia y vigencia de la encíclica Populorum progressio,” Claves del pensamiento 12, no. 24 (December 2018): 1–33, at 1–8, https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1870-879X2018000200001Google Scholar.
37 Faced with a developmentalism (modernization approach) that causes inequity and injustice, Pope Paul VI calls for “a concrete action, in favor of the integral development of man and the solidarity development of humanity” (PP §5). Development “is not reduced to simple economic growth.” Its authenticity lies in “promoting the whole man and all men” (PP §14) and, in this sense, “it is the passage, for each and everyone, from less humane living conditions to more humane conditions” (PP §20), “specifying that moral deficiencies and oppressive structures are also taken into account, as well as recognition of the dignity of each person, cooperation in the common good, recognition of the supreme values and of God and the faith (PP §21).” Pope Paul VI, Encyclical, Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), March 26, 1967, https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/es/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html (my translation).
38 CELAM, “Movimientos de laicos,” Medellín, 2.
39 CELAM, “Movimientos de laicos,” Medellín, 2.
40 CELAM, “Pastoral de élites,” Medellín, 7.
41 CELAM, “Educación,” Medellín, 7.
42 CELAM, “Catequesis,” Medellín, 8.
43 CELAM, “La paz,” Medellín,14.
44 To delve into this context, see Enrique Dussel, De Medellín a Puebla. Una década de sangre y esperanza (1968–1979) (Buenos Aires: Docencia, 2017).
45 CELAM, Puebla, 88 (my translation).
46 CELAM, Puebla, 76.
47 Among other liberation theologians, the critical theological approach to the issue of idolatry and capitalism as religion can be broadened. Allan Da Silva Coelho, Capitalismo como religiāo: Uma crítica a seus fundamentos mítico-teológicos (São Paulo: Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, 2014).
48 CELAM, Puebla, 35 and 88.
49 To expand on what is related to the debate on how development is not only a technical and socioeconomic issue but also an ethical matter, consult Camacho, Ildefonso, “Desarrollo: perspectiva ética y cristiana,” Revista de Fomento Social 76, no. 2 (2021): 439–73Google Scholar.
50 CELAM, Santo Domingo, 64.
51 CELAM, Santo Domingo, 89.
52 On this formulation and its insufficiency as an antimodernist critique, see José de Jesús Legorreta, Modernidad, secularización e Iglesia en América Latina. Los obispos latinoamericanos y el cambio cultural (Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2013): 54–56.
53 See CELAM, Santo Domingo, 62–77.
54 Not without tensions and lines of disagreement, which they acknowledge, especially in relation to the notion of human promotion. See Víctor Codina and Jon Sobrino, Santo Domingo 92. Testimonial chronicle and contextual analysis (Bilbao: Sal Terrae, 1992): 19–39; Fernández, Germán Neira, “Human Advancement: A Privileged Dimension of the New Evangelization,” Theologica Xaveriana 105 (1993): 49–65, https://revistas.javeriana.edu.co/index.php/teoxaveriana/article/view/21865Google Scholar.
55 CELAM, Aparecida, 194.
56 CELAM, Aparecida, 241.
57 CELAM, Aparecida, 241.
58 For Hinkelammert, at the center of the preconciliar doctrine is the person; at the center of postconciliar doctrine is the subject. In the postconciliar doctrine, the subject “is projected onto the external world to transform it through his work in function of the satisfaction of his needs [establishing a necessary] existential solidarity among men, given the dignity of each one of the subjects as the subject of work. and the consumption of a product produced in a land that belongs to everyone.” Hinkelammert, Franz, “From Social Doctrine to Social Doctrine?,” Steps 9 (1987): 1–9Google Scholar, at 5.
59 See Camacho, Ildefonso, “Desarrollo: perspectiva ética y cristiana,” Revista de Fomento Social 76, no. 2 (2021): 439–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 CELAM, Aparecida, 16.
61 See Antonio Argandoña, The Common Good (Barcelona: IESE Business School, 2011), 2.
62 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), 164.
63 To reconstruct the theoretical debate around the role that religion plays within a social system and the analysis of the documents of the social thought of the church on the process of globalization, development, the environment and ecology, see Esquivel, Juan Cruz and Mallimaci, Fortunato, “Religión, medioambiente y desarrollo sustentable: la integralidad en la cosmología católica,” Revista de Estudios Sociales 60 (2017): 72–86, https://dx.doi.org/10.7440/res60.2017.06CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 See Jiménez, “El concepto teológico de “estilo” como clave de lectura de Laudato si’ y Gaudete et exsultate,” 21.
65 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §53.
66 See, for example, Yuengert, Andrew M., “Pope Francis, His Predecessors, and the Market,” The Independent Review 21, no. 3 (2017): 347–60, at 347–49, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26314740Google Scholar.
67 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §54.
68 Cf. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §53.
69 Cf. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium.
70 Cf. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium.
71 One of the first debates on the subject of idolatry in which the human being appears as a commodity and the market as a god can be found in the text of Hugo Assmann. La idolatría del Mercado, Colección Economía-teología (San José: Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, January 1, 1997).
72 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §54.
73 See Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §158.
74 See Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §203–04.
75 Eugenio Yáñez, “La Doctrina Social de la Iglesia frente al actual modelo de desarrollo económico en la sociedad de América Latina” (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Chile), https://fdocuments.es/document/la-doctrina-social-de-la-iglesia-frente-al-actual-modelo-de-desarrollo-economico-en-la-sociedad-de-america-latina.html?page=1.
76 See Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §218.
77 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §205.
78 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §217–37.
79 Franz Hinkelammert and Henry Mora, Towards an Economy for Life (San José: DEI, 2013), 355–82.
80 Santiago Sierra, Bien común: desafío para una sociedad excluyente (Bogotá: PUJ, 2020), 241–75.
81 Leonardo Boff, “El papa Francisco y la teología de la liberación,” Servicios Koinonia, April 28, 2013, https://www.servicioskoinonia.org/boff/articulo.php?num=559.
82 See Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §24.
83 Okafor, Peter Onyekwelu, “Editorial: Pope Francis: Apostle of Contextual Theology,” Ministerium: A Journal of Contextual Theology 5 (2019) 1–8, at 7–8, https://ezenwaohaetorc.org/journals/index.php/Ministerium/article/view/869/866Google Scholar.
84 Andrea Tornielli, “Never Be Afraid of Tenderness,” La Stampa, December 15, 2013, last modified July 16, 2019, https://www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/en/2013/12/15/news/never-be-afraid-of-tenderness-1.35947042.
85 Pope John XXIII, Mater et Magistra §236.