THE long dominance of liberation theology is at the root of the decline of Catholicism in Brazil, according to Fr Clodovis Boff.
Until 2007, the religious was an important theologian of liberation theology, although not as famous as his brother Leonardo, a former Catholic priest who is one of the founders of the movement, which gained popularity in the 1970s and emphasised freedom from poverty and oppression as the key to salvation.
Then, in a move that alienated him from his famous brother, Fr Clodovis Boff published the article, Liberation Theology and Return to Fundamentals, in which he accused liberation theologians of making the poor the centre of theology instead of Jesus Christ.
Now, Fr Boff has written a book calling for a recentring of the Latin American Church in Christ.
“It is necessary for the Church to once again emphasise Christ as priest, as master and Lord, and not just the fight against poverty and the climate crisis,” he said at the launch of the book, The Crisis in the Catholic Church and Liberation Theology, written in collaboration with Fr Leonardo Rasera.
“These are important questions, but without drinking from Christ, who is the source, everything dries up, everything dies,” Fr Boff said.
In the late 1960s, when liberation theology began its long dominion of religious thought in Brazil, more than 90 per cent of Brazilians were Catholics.
Since then, the percentage of Catholics in the Brazilian population has decreased and now stands at 51 per cent.
Moreover, Brazilian Catholics have a low rate of church attendance.
A survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate in 36 countries last year showed that only eight per cent of Brazilian Catholics go to Mass on Sunday.
The rate was the third lowest among the analyzed countries.
For Frs Boff and Rasera, the decline in church attendance was due to the deposit of faith not being passed on.
With liberation theology, “faith is instrumentalised in terms of the poor,” Fr Boff writes in the book.
“One falls into utilitarianism or functionalism in relation to the Word of God and to theology in general.”
He says liberation theology “appeals to ideas such as ‘margins of gratuity’ and ‘eschatological reserve’ to assert its respect for the transcendence of faith. In fact, the part of transcendence is, in this theology, the smallest and least relevant part, the ‘lion’s share’ falling, as always, to the ‘liberating reading’ of faith.”
According to Fr Boff, this is leading many Catholics to Protestantism, esotericism, neopaganism, and even Satanism.
“Far from having disappeared, it would be absurd to say so, faith in Christ continues to be a reference for the Church,” Fr Boff said in a launch of his book in which he spoke on the theme “The Crisis in the Catholic Church: Lack of Faith, Ideologies, and Worldliness.”
“But the decisive question is whether faith in Christ is your central, main, determining reference,” he said.
“It is not a question of the Church affirming the centrality of Christ only in formal and theoretical terms but of affirming it existentially and operationally, as being the beating heart of all its life and action.
“Doctrinally affirming the primacy of Christ in the Church costs little.
“Affirming, however, in an existential way, that Christ is the absolute centre of the Church, costs, and a lot. It costs the heart and the soul, when it does not cost tears and perhaps blood.”
In his book, Fr Boff talks about how he collaborated with proponents of liberation theology during the pontificates of St Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
For him, it is necessary that liberation theology be rethought with Christ at the centre, not the poor, in order to be “timely, useful, and necessary,” as St John Paul II said in his letter to the Brazilian bishops in 1986.
This story was first published by ACI Digital, CNA’s Portuguese-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
