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http://snipurl.com/dsv0 National Catholic Reporter's Exhaustive Obituary of Pope John Paul II (excerpt:) John Paul II laid out his priorities on his first major foreign trip, to Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979, for a meeting of the bishops� conferences of Latin America, a trip originally scheduled by Paul VI. At Puebla, John Paul criticized liberation theology, a theological movement that sought to place the church on the side of the poor in their struggle for justice. According to its critics, liberation theology provided cover for radical priests and laity to side with Marxist revolutionary movements. Its proponents saw liberation theology as Latin America�s way of translating Vatican II into action. If siding with the �joys and hopes� of the poor - as called for by Gaudium et Spes, the culminating text of Vatican II - meant anything, they felt, it meant working for justice. John Paul clearly wanted the church on the side of social justice, but at the same time he thoought liberation theology was a distortion. The liberation proposed by the church, he said, is �the authentic liberation of man� as distinct from ��re-readings� of the gospel.� These �re-readings � cause confusion by diverging from the central criteria of the faith of the church, and some people have the effrontery to pass them on, under the guise of catechesis, to the Christian communities.� >From implying that liberation theology was inauthentic, he went on to discipline people risking their lives or careers to bring to Latin America the freedoms he himself wanted for Poland. Shabby papal treatment of El Salvador�s martyr-archbishop Oscar Romero is only the best-known example. Biographer Jonathan Kwitny notes that the pope�s aides had actually planned to remove Romero, a very public sign of disapproval, but did not have time to implement their plan before he was assassinated on March 24, 1980. The cardinal sin of the liberationists, many church observers believe, is that they also talked about liberation inside the church. Franciscan Leonardo Boff, who eventually resigned from the priesthood under the weight of Vatican harassment, called in his book Church, Charism and Power for �class struggle� inside Catholicism to redistribute authority. It was not a prescription destined to make John Paul happy. [snip] -------------- The Legacy of John Paul II (America Magazine) http://snipurl.com/dsv4 (excerpt:) ...But John Paul's care for the world was not just centered on Eastern Europe. He also was a prophet for peace and justice elsewhere, especially the Middle East and the third world. He balanced concern for the rights of Palestinians with his condemnation of terror. He supported humanitarian intervention but opposed preemptive war. He worried about the impact of economic globalization on the poor in the third world, and urged rich countries like the United States to give more generously to development. In a world of competing economic and national self interests, he was a prophetic voice for humanity and reconciliation. He admired the American people but was not afraid to challenge government policies that were contrary to moral values whether it was the Clinton administration's population policies or both Bush administrations' wars against Iraq. [...] But John Paul was often mislabeled as a conservative. True, he stressed traditional church teaching. He also allowed his subordinates to silence and remove theologians from teaching positions. But anyone who listened to him carefully realized that he did not fit into the normal liberal-conservative boxes of American politics and culture. True he opposed abortion, the use of condoms, gay marriage, women priests and a married clergy. But he was to the left of liberal Democrats when it came to opposing capital punishment and the war in Iraq and supporting foreign aid and the United Nations. And while he opposed women's ordination, he also opened practically every other church position to women, from altar servers to diocesan chancellors. -------------- see also: http://snipurl.com/dsuy A list of Catholic theologians and others disciplined by the Vatican during the papacy of John Paul II _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. 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