Description: Decisively shaped by the turbulent atmosphere of war, occupation and resistance, the years 1943-1955 gave rise to a most unusual flowering of progressive initiatives in Catholic politics, theology and apostolic missions. Though suffering severe setbacks in the deep freeze of the Cold War politics, mid-Century European Left Catholicism was not without influence in the subsequent emergence of Latin Americam Liberation Theology and the deliberations of the Vatican II. This volume constitutes the first attempt to analyse the phenomenon of Western European Left Catholicism from a comparative and transnational perspective.
Description: Milagros Peña investigates how social protest has become a significant aspect of religious ideology throughout Latin America, particularly with the emergence of liberation theology in Peru. Through extensive research of archived documents, newspapers, and interviews with Catholic theologians of all persuasions, including Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, and other central figures in Peru's social movements, Peña assesses the fate of liberation theology, its strengths and weaknesses, and the responses of such conservative Catholic movements as Sodalitium Vitae and Opus Dei, with their theology of reconciliation.
This in-depth analysis coves the various historical periods of religious action and counter-action in Peru: the Church's control over education and cultural institutions; anticlericalism; the Catholic Action movement; the radicalization of the Catholic Church that produced liberation theology and its support of poor people's causes; and the response of the conservative Catholic right, which, with the support of Pope John Paul II, attacked liberation theology as Marxist and as a promoting violence and guerrilla warfare. Theologies and Liberation in Peru shows the significance of ideas in social movement mobilization either for change or for stability, either to guide mass protest or to thwart it.
