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The new evangelization in Latin American perspective
Cross Currents, Fall, 1998 by Anna L. Peterson, Manuel A. Vasquez
These differences are evident even when the new evangelization echoes postconciliar themes. One of these, the church's preferential option for the poor, has been vigorously reiterated by John Paul I! in his many trips to Latin America. During a 1991 trip to Brazil, for example, the pope spoke to inhabitants of a shantytown in Vitoria, Espirito Santo, in the following terms: "You favela residents are very close to the pope's heart because you are very close to Christ's heart. The poor are God's favorites, and Christ showed them a preferential love which the church desires to imitate."(7) In this, the pope's teachings appear to reaffirm Medellin's guiding principles. Nevertheless, a closer inspection of his understanding of the preferential option for the poor reveals sharp differences from the approaches of progressive Latin American Catholicism. These differences are evident in the two Vatican documents dealing with liberation theology: Libertatis Nuntius (1984) and the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (1986).
Libertatis Nuntius took a very critical view of liberation theology, due no doubt to Ratzinger's confrontational approach toward progressive Latin American Catholicism. The Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, however, struck a more conciliatory tone, attempting to synthesize liberationist themes with the call for a new evangelization. Despite this difference, both documents share an interpretation of the option for the poor in nonexclusive, largely apolitical terms. According to the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,
The special option for the poor, far from being a sign of particularism or sectarianism, manifests the universality of the Church's being and mission. This option excludes no one. This is the reason why the Church cannot express this option by means of reductive sociological and ideological categories which would make this preference a partisan choice and a source of conflict.(8)
This reinterpretation of the option for the poor represents a reaction to the perceived threat of secularization and ideologization of the faith in liberation theology's use of social scientific tools, particularly of class analysis. The Catholic hierarchy views the use of class analysis as a potentially divisive practice that erodes the church's universal appeal. Thus, instead of conceiving the option for the poor as the necessary outcome of the "irruption" of a new emancipatory collective subject, as it is seen in liberation theology, the Vatican justifies this option in abstract terms, as the need to defend and promote the dignity of the human being.(9) This dignity is destroyed by injustices that result from human sin and weakness. Contrary to Medellin's recognition of the existence of "structural sin," however, the new evangelization perceives sin in primarily personal terms.(10) According to John Paul II, "All situations of social injustice are first of all 'the result of the accumulation and the concentration of many personal sins.'"(11) This conception of sin shifts the burden of church action away from intervention to change social institutions toward a focus on moral transformation. Thus, the pope affirms that
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