“Religion Conversion is an end and can only be an end, in means”: Criticisms Directed Against the Theology of Liberation from Evangelii Nuntiandi to Puebla as published in Celam’s Theological Journal

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the field of theology from the perspective of intellectual history: that is, as a domain of theoretical controversies having political, disciplinary, and institutional implications. It aims, from such an analytical perspective, to reconstruct and interpret a set of criticisms directed against the Theology of Liberation throughout the 1970s in Medellín, the journal of Celam’s theological studies. Those criticisms, the paper concludes, reject secularization and politicization, which would be based on Liberation Theology, while claiming that the correct theological analysis is based on Revelation and the Magisterium.

KEYWORDS
Theology of Liberation; Celam; Catholicism; Intellectual History; Political History