Benedict XVI and Liberation Theology

The Zenit news agency today carried a report that Benedict XVI had told a group of Brazilian bishops on 5 December that Brazil needed to get over the divisions left by Marxist-inspired liberation theology (the Vatican text of the Pope's statement is here in Portuguese).
According to the Zenit translation, Benedict noted that August marked the the 25th anniversary of the instruction "Libertatis Nuntius," a document he signed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Zenit reports:

The statement notes how there are many currents of "theology of liberation," as liberation is one of the central messages of Revelation, both in the Old as well as the New Testament.  However, one of these, particularly in the last three decades of the 20th century, took Marxism as its base in an attempt to understand the complex and sometimes scandalous social reality of Latin America. That current became known as Marxist theology of liberation -- many times simply, though erroneously, called liberation theology.

In his address to the Brazilian bishops, the Pope said that "its more or less visible consequences, made up of rebellion, division, disagreement, offense and anarchy can still be felt, creating great suffering in your diocesan communities and a serious loss of living energies." He continued: 

I implore all those who, in some way, have felt attracted, involved and touched in their interior by certain deceitful principles of liberation theology to take up again that document [Libertatis Nuntius], receiving the gentle light that it offers with open hands.

It has to be underlined that Libertatis Nuntius specifically states that it is directed against, "Concepts uncritically borrowed from Marxist ideology and recourse to theses of a biblical hermeneutic marked by rationalism are at the basis of the new interpretation which is corrupting whatever was authentic in the generous initial commitment on behalf of the poor" (10). Nevertheless, as Denis Carroll points out Libertatis Nuntius was followed by the 1986 Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation that was  more positive in tone than the earlier statement, although this 1986 Instruction was not mentioned by Benedict in his address to the Brazilian bishops.

In fact, Benedict's remarks coincide also with the 40th anniversary of the first presentation on the international stage by Gustavo Gutierrez of his "Notes on a theology of liberation", an expansion of a paper presented first in Lima and then in Montevideo. Ironically, maybe, in the light of what came later, Gutierrez presented his theses at a November 1969 meeting in Cartigny, near Geneva, organized by SODEPAX, set up after the Second Vatican Council as a joint committee on Society, Development and Peace of the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches. Significantly, also, though convened on the issue of "development", Gutierrez in his paper shifts the paradigm to one of  "liberation". As Gutierrez notes in his presentation, "the term 'development' is inadequate to express these deep longings [for a society built on justice]. The word 'liberation'  seems more precise and potentially richer, as well as more suitable for theological reflection". A similar shift can be seen also in the presentation to that meeting by Rubem Alves,  "Theology and the liberation of man", and by Jürgen Moltmann, "The Christian Theology of Hope and its Bearing on Development": "The Christian hope must ... develop the imagination of love: love for the unloved, the neglected, and the derelict. This hope is thereby brought into constant proximity to re-volutionary hopes for the future, close to the revolt of the oppressed and neglected, and, at teh same time, kept at a critical distance from the 'advanced' and the 'developed'."