MissiOnLine.org Father Leonel’s «Theology of Reconciliation» True reconcilation passes through forgiveness Leonel Narvaez Gomez, Espere, Liberation Theology, forgiveness Liberation Theology does not promote violence but its analysis leads to dangerous schematisms. Here, Father Leonel’s denunciation and his innovative proposal

I had the chance to study philosophy and theology in South America during an historical moment – the 60s and 70s – when Liberation theology permeated sacerdotal life and pastoral trends. The preferential option for poor people and justice deeply inspired my daily work. Like father Camillo Torres and hundreds of religious men and women, priests, and committed lay people, I came to believe at a certain point that the organization of the people in view of a revolution (it was not important whether the revolution would happen in a violent or non violent way) was the only way out of the social injustice problem.  Today, 35 years after that day, armed resistance and revolution proved to be failed strategies for the transformation of society. It cannot be said that Liberation Theology promotes violence. However, its typical way of proceeding with the analysis of reality  - “seeing, judging and acting” –has led many unwary people to opt for violent extremism. Liberation Theology’s proposal of “denouncing, announcing and transforming” has generated, somehow, languages and narratives loaded with rage, which have encouraged the use of force and violence.
The preferential option for poor and oppressed people ensured that Liberation Theology broke the ties with the dominant classes of society, which were considered responsible for the social injustice, and stirred up the popular organization and the social, union and political participation. But in this way it came out only with a stronger castling by the richest and thus, as a consequence, a deeper adversity and violence.
I do not think that Liberation Theology is inspired by Marxism. On the contrary, I think it has a deep biblical and evangelical inspiration. The point is that some instances of sin and oppression are so dramatic that they require huge attention and lucidity in order not to be too involved with the sensibility and rage which may be caused by it. To feel indignation and rage is not wrong in itself, much less a Marxist attitude. It is something different to propose armed combat as a response.
Working with the poorest of the poor I came to understand a dangerous situation of sin: poor people's rage. A poor person feeling angry is doubly poor. And if I recognize the urgency to answer to his poverty, I also deem it essential to help him “cure” his anger.
But how to help the outcasts to avoid the danger of anger, which quickly turns into resentment and urgency of revenge? In this regard, what practical application may Jesus’ central message to love even one’s own enemies have? Asking  myself such questions, I came to the conclusion that Liberation Theology is incomplete without Reconciliation Theology, and vice versa. Both these spiritualities and theologies mutually strengthen and balance one  another. From Liberation Theology I learnt, among many other things, the value of small base communities in order to live, while renewing, the affiliation with the Church; I learnt the importance of the liturgy as a celebration of solidarity with poor people and as announcement of the utopia of God’s Kingdom made true. I saw Mary’s feeling as a “great sign of the motherly and merciful face of the closeness of the Father and Christ”. Finally, I learnt the necessity of going through a deep personal and social conversion in order to change situations of oppression.
Notwithstanding, with much respect I have to point out two risks that I personally find in Liberation Theology. The first one comes from an idealist vision of man’s dignity and human rights. Some liberation theologians try to suggest the idea that man’s dignity, and his consequential rights, have to be always kept in their total purity. They are right, but human limits and imperfections make a lack of purity inevitable every day to some degree. When dignity or human rights are violated, what is the most effective way to restore their greatness? They will say, “Applying justice.” But what kind of justice?
Most people’s answer will be in the direction of a punishing justice. Many human rights defenders, however, do not realize that the very moment they ask for the punishment, in other words revenge, they are violating the same rights that they are defending.  Overcoming errors, recovering dignity and reintegrating the “guilty” into society are also human rights, apart from being an exercise without which the polis, the city, cannot exist.
The people who have worked for decades with the “victims” know that justice, truth and reparation, though important, are incomplete answers. Many victims – even if their aggressors have been punished, the truth about why they were wronged has been found out and reparation has been made – are still very much tied to rage, resentment and an instinctive desire of revenge. They do not manage to free themselves from the “thankless memory” of the offense received. For them there is little future. To break free from an oppressing past is a necessary condition for their growth. The second risk of liberation theology is socio-economical reductionism: limiting the liberation to the socio-economical sphere, reducing God to one simple dimension of our history, lowering the criterion of truth to the political revolutionary effectiveness, making the Church a mere platform where to attain the intra-human justice and thus reducing Christ to a socio-political leader, identifying the poor person of the Bible with the organized proletariat. This reductionism generates, at the very least, a difficult relation with the different powers and the rich classes.
Looking for ways to answer to the just protest of the poor people of the world, which is the principle motivation behind Liberation theology, often happens to end up feeding the anger of being poor to the point that some fanatic activists of this theology believe in the necessity to support the violent revolution against the power structures and the oppressors.        
There is not anything more antireligious and absurd. History itself witnesses what a violent escalation was thus created. The right path is no doubt the one of “caritas in veritate”, an idea proposed by Pope Benedict XVI in his recent encyclical letter by the same name. The reality of the exploitation of the poor will never be accepted by the rich or the exploitation structures if the problem is not set through the language of charity.
Not by any fault of Liberation theology, the anger generated by the awareness of the oppression of the poor leads to the embracing of Marxist beliefs that violence is the midwife of history. But it is history itself that contradicts this theory because the armed revolutions ended only by substituting violent structures with even more violent ones. Violence has proved to be the gravedigger of historical transformations!
Though some people may think that violence is of use in overcoming some problems, sooner or later the resentment generated by any violence always surfaces and problems become worse than before. There are instead non-violent methodologies which offer sufficient guarantees that conflicts and situations of violence themselves can change. Among them there are communication and “lovable language” which create the political culture of forgiveness and reconciliation. If the Theology of Liberation denounces the numerous ways of human degradation caused by a system of capitalist production, the Theology of Reconciliation states that the answer to a crime cannot be another crime.
It is not a question of supporting the idea of a naïve, utopic, apolitical pacifism. It is rather a question, on one hand, of transcending the punishing culture of law and justice seen only as punishment and elimination of the aggressor’s freedom and, on the other hand, of promoting the development of a new culture where our “archaic brain”, which instinctively cultivates rage, violence and revenge, may activate the potentialities of non-violence, tolerance, goodness, compassion and love. […]
One of Jesus’ most surprising intuitions is that the Kingdom of God is within us. This means that the human being is already “equipped” for love, sweetness and mercy. After all, missionary work isn’t anything but recovering those things, wherever they may have been lost, and fortifying them continuously, wherever they start to grow.
We were not created for punishment and hell but for forgiveness and love. A spirituality which starts from compassion and tenderness, that is from forgiveness and reconciliation, totally changes our perspective. The great mission of Jesus’ followers is to be builders of communities, of a people, of the Kingdom of God. We have to express God’s compassion and tenderness brought to its maximum expression, on one hand through forgiveness and on the other by becoming the offering and sacrifice (lambs) in order to amend and redeem the unavoidable limitations of the people living with us.