From: kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Cath. Christianity 101 - CDFs 1986 Christian Freedom and Liberation - 2
Date: 16 Aug 1992 19:45:15 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: skat.usc.edu

The following is a portion of the CDF's 1986 "Instruction on
Christian Freedom and Liberation."  The document is organized in
the following manner:

     Introduction.
-->  Chpt 1. The State of Freedom in the World Today.
     Chpt 2. Man's Vocation to Freedom and the Tragedy of Sin.
     Chpt 3. Liberation and Christian Freedom.
     Chpt 4. The Liberating Mission of the Church.
     Chpt 5. The Social Doctrine of the Church: For a Christian
               Practice of Liberation.
     Conclusion.

Note: (-->) indicates the section of the document contained herein.

In Christ,

Dennis
kriz@skat.usc.edu

-------------------------------------------------------------------
CDFs 1986 Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation - Chpt 1


                            Chapter I
             THE STATE OF FREEDOM IN THE WORLD TODAY


I. ACHIEVEMENTS AND DANGERS OF THE MODERN LIBERATION PROCESS

The heritage of Christianity
----------------------------

 5. By revealing to man his condition as a free person called to
enter into communion with God, the Gospel of jesus Christ has
evoked an awareness of the hitherto unsuspected depths of human
freedom.

 Thus the quest for freedom and the aspiration to liberation, which
are among the principle signs of the times of the modern world,
have their first source in the Christian heritage. This remains
true even in places where they assume erroneous forms and even
oppose the Christian view of man and his destiny. Without this
reference to the Gospel, the history of the recent centuries in the
West cannot be understood.


The modern age
--------------

 6. Thus it is that from the dawn of modern times, at the
Renaissance, it was thought that through the natural sciences man
would be able to gain freedom of thought and action, thanks to his
knowledge and control of the laws of nature.

 Luther, for his part, basing himself on his reading of Saint Paul,
sought to renew the struggle for freedom from the yoke of the Law,
which he saw as represented by the Church of his time.

 But it was above all in the Age of the Enlightenment and at the
French Revolution that the call to freedom rang out with full
force. Since that time, many have regarded future history as an
irresistible process of liberation inevitably leading to an age in
which man, totally free at last, will enjoy happiness on this
earth.


Towards the mastery of nature
-----------------------------

 7. Within the perspective of such an ideology of progress, man
sought to become master of nature. The servitude which he had
experienced up to that point was based on ignorance and prejudice.
By wresting from nature its secrets, man would subject it to his
own service. The conquest of freedom thus constituted the goal
pursued through the development of science and technology. The
efforts expended have led to remarkable successes. While man is not
immune from the natural disasters, many natural dangers have been
removed. A growing number of individuals is ensured adequate
nourishment. new mans of transport and trade facilitate the
exchange of food resources, raw materials, labour and technical
skills, so that a life of dignity with freedom from poverty can be
reasonably envisaged for mankind.


Social and political achievements
---------------------------------

 8. The modern liberation movement had set itself a political and
social objective. It was to put an end to the domination of man by
man and to promote the equality and brotherhood of all. It cannot
be denied that in this sphere, too, positive results have been
obtained. Legal slavery and bondage have been abolished. The right
of all to share in the benefits of culture has made significant
progress. In many countries the law recognizes the equality of men
and women, the participation of all citizens in political life and
equal rights for all. Racism is rejected as contrary to law and
justice. The formulation of human rights implies a clearer
awareness of the dignity of all human beings. By comparison with
previous systems of domination, the advances of freedom and
equality in many societies are undeniable.


Freedom of thought and of decision
----------------------------------

 9. Finally, and above all, the modern liberation movement was
supposed to bring man inner freedom, in the form of freedom of
thought and freedom of decision. it sought to free man from
superstition and atavistic fears, regarded as so many obstacles to
his development. it proposed to give man the courage and boldness
to use his reason without being held back by fear before the
frontiers of the unknown. Thus, notably in the historical and human
sciences, there developed a new notion of man, professedly to help
him gain a better self understanding in matters concerning his
personal growth or the fundamental conditions for the formation of
the community.


Ambiguities in the modern process of liberation
-----------------------------------------------

 10. With regard to the conquest of nature, or social and political
life or man's self-mastery on both the individual and collective
level, anyone can see that the progress achieved is far from
fulfilling the original ambitions. It is also obvious that new
dangers, new forms of servitude and new terrors have arisen at the
very time that the modern liberation movement was spreading. This
is a sign that serious ambiguities concerning the very meaning of
freedom have from the very beginning plagued this movement from
within.


Man threatened by his domination of nature
------------------------------------------

 11. So it is that the more man freed himself from the dangers of
nature, the more he experienced a growing fear confronting him. As
technology gains an ever greater control of nature, it threatens to
destroy the very foundations of our future in such a way that
mankind living today becomes the enemy of the generations to come.
By using blind power to subjugate the forces of nature, are we not
on the way to destroying the freedom of the men and women of
tomorrow? What forces can protect man from the slavery of his own
domination? A wholly new capacity for freedom and liberation,
demanding an entirely renewed process of liberation, becomes
necessary.


Dangers of technological power
------------------------------

 12. The liberating force of scientific knowledge is objectively
expressed in the great achievements of technology. Whoever
possesses technology has power over the earth and men. As a result
of this, hitherto unknown forms of inequality have arisen between
those who possess knowledge and those who are simple users of
technology. The new technological power is linked to economic power
and leads to a concentration of it. Thus, within nations and
between nations, relationships of dependence have grown up which
within the last twenty years have been the occasion for a new claim
to liberation. How can the power of technology be prevented from
becoming a power of oppression over human groups or entire peoples?



Individualism and collectivism
------------------------------

 13. In the field of social and political achievements, one of the
fundamental ambiguities of the affirmation of freedom in the age of
the Enlightenment had to do with the concept of the subject of this
freedom as an individual who is fully self-sufficient and whose
finality is the satisfaction of his own interests in the enjoyment
of earthly goods. The individualistic ideology inspired by this
concept of man favored the unequal distribution of wealth at the
beginning of the industrial era to the point that workers found
themselves excluded from access to the essential goods which they
had helped to produce and to which they had a right. Hence the
birth of powerful liberation movements from the poverty caused by
industrial society.

 Certain Christians, both lay persons and pastors, have not failed
to fight for a just recognition of the legitimate rights of
workers. On many occasions the Magisterium of the Church has raised
its voice in support of this cause.

 But more often than not the just demands of the worker movement
have led to new forms of servitude, being inspired by concepts
which ignored the transcendental vocation of the human person and
attributed to man a purely earthly destiny. These demands have
sometimes been directed towards collectivist goals, which have then
given rise to injustices just as grave as the ones which they were
meant to eliminate.


New forms of oppression
-----------------------

 14. Thus it is that our age has seen the birth of totalitarian
systems and forms of tyranny which would not have been made
possible in the time before the technological leap forward. On the
one hand, technical expertise has been applied to acts of genocide.
on the other, various minorities try to hold in thrall whole
nations by the practice of terrorism. Today control can penetrate
into the innermost life of the individuals, and even the forms of
dependence created by the early-warning systems can represent
potential threats of oppression.

 A false liberation from the constraints of society is sought in
the recourse to drugs which have led many young people from all
over the world to the point of self-destruction and brought whole
families to sorrow and anguish.


Danger of total destruction
---------------------------

 15. The recognition of a juridical order as a guarantee of
relationships within the great family of peoples is growing weaker
and weaker. When confidence in the law no longer seems to offer
sufficient protection, security and peace are sought in mutual
threats, which become a danger for all humanity. The forces which
ought to serve the development of freedom serve instead the
increase of threats. The weapons of death drawn up against each
other today are capable of destroying all human life on earth.


New relationships of inequality
-------------------------------

 16. new relationships of inequality and oppression have been
established between the nations endowed with power and those
without it. The pursuit of one's own interest seems to be the rule
for international relations, without the common good of humanity
being taken into consideration.

 The internal balance of the poor nations is upset by the
importation of arms, which introduces among them a divisive element
leading to the domination of one group over another. What powers
could eliminate systematic recourse to arms and restore authority
to law?


Emancipation of young nations
-----------------------------

 17. It is in the context of the inequality of power relationships
that there have appeared movements for the emancipation of young
nations, generally the poor ones, until recently subjected to
colonial domination. But too often the people are frustrated in
their hard-won independence by unscrupulous regimes or tyrannies
which scoff at human rights with impunity. The people thus reduced
to powerlessness merely have a change of masters.

 It remains true that one of the major phenomena of our time, of
continental proportions, is the awakening of the consciousness of
people who, bent beneath the weight of age-old poverty, aspire to
a life in dignity and justice and are prepared to fight for their
freedom. 


Morality and God: obstacles to liberation?
------------------------------------------

 18. With reference to the modern liberation movement within man
himself, it has to be stated that the effort to free thought and
will from their limitations had led some to consider that morality
as such constitutes an irrational limit. It is for man, now
resolved to become his own master, to go beyond it.

 For many more, it is God himself who is the specific alienation of
man. There is said to be a radical incompatibility between the
affirmation of God and of human freedom. By rejecting belief in
God, they say, man will become truly free.


Some agonizing questions
------------------------

 19. here is the root of the tragedies accompanying the modern
history of freedom. Why does this history, in spite of great
achievements, which also remain always fragile, experience frequent
relapses into alienation and see the appearance of new forms of
slavery? Why do liberation movements which had roused great hopes
result in regimes for which the citizens' freedom [8] beginning
with the first of these freedoms which is religious freedom [9],
becomes enemy number one? 

 When man wishes to free himself from the moral law and become
independent of God, far from gaining his freedom he destroys it.
Escaping the measuring rod of truth, he falls prey to the
arbitrary; fraternal relations between people are abolished and
give place to terror, hatred and fear.

 Because it has been contaminated by deadly errors about man's
condition and his freedom, the deeply-rooted modern liberation
movement remains ambiguous. It is laden both with promises of true
freedom and threats of deadly forms of bondage.


II. FREEDOM IN THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD


Church and freedom
------------------

 20. It is because of her awareness of this deadly ambiguity that
through her Magisterium the Church has raised her voice over the
centuries to warn against aberrations that could easily bring
enthusiasm for liberation to a bitter disillusionment. She has
often been misunderstood in so doing. With the passage of time
however it is possible to greater justice to the Church's point of
view.

 It is in the name of the truth about man, created in the image of
God, that the Church has intervened [10]. yet she is accused of
thereby setting herself up as an obstacle on the path to
liberation. Her hierarchical constitution is said to be opposed to
equality, her Magisterium to be opposed to freedom of thought. it
is true that there have been errors in judgement and serious
omissions for which Christians have been responsible in the course
of the centuries [11]; but these objections disregard the true
nature of things. The diversity of charisms in the people of God,
which are charisms of service, is not opposed to the equal dignity
of persons and to their common vocation to holiness.

 Freedom of thought, as a necessary condition for seeking the truth
in all the fields of human knowledge, does not mean that human
reason must cease to function in the light of the Revelation which
Christ entrusted to his Church. By opening itself to divine truth,
created reason experiences a blossoming and a perfection which are
an eminent form of freedom. Moreover, the Second Vatican Council
has recognized fully the legitimate autonomy of the sciences [12],
as well as of activities of a political nature [13].


The freedom of the little ones and the poor
-------------------------------------------

 21. One of the principal errors that has seriously burdened the
process of liberation since the Age of the Enlightenment comes from
the widely held conviction that it is the progress achieved in the
fields of the sciences, technology and economics which should serve
as a basis for achieving freedom. This was a misunderstanding of
the depths of freedom and its needs.

 The reality of the depth of freedom has always been known to the
Church, above all through the lives of a multitude of the faithful,
especially among the little ones and the poor. in their faith,
these latter know that they are the object of God's infinite love.
Each of them can say: "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20b). Such is the dignity which
none of the powerful can take away from them; such is the
liberating joy present in them. They know that to them too are
addressed jesus' words: "No longer do I call you servants, for the
servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called
you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made
known to you" (Jn. 15;15). This sharing in the knowledge of God is
their emancipation from the dominating claims of the learned: "You
all know ... and you have no need that any one should teach you" (1
Jn 2:20b, 27b). They are also aware of sharing in the highest
knowledge to which humanity is called [14]. They know that they are
loved by God, the same as all other people and more than all other
people. They thus life in the freedom which flows from truth and
love.


Resources of popular piety
--------------------------

 22. The same sense of faith, possessed by the people of God in its
hope-filled devotion to the Cross of jesus, perceives the power
contained in the mystery of Christ the Redeemer. Therefore, far
from despising or wishing to suppress the forms of popular piety
which this devotion assumes, one should take and deepen all its
meaning and implication [15]. here we have a fact of fundamental
theological and pastoral significance: it is the poor, the object
of God's special love, who understand best and as it were
instinctively that the most radical liberation, which is liberation
from sin and death, is the liberation accomplished by the Death and
Resurrection of Christ.


Salvific and ethical dimension of liberation
--------------------------------------------

 23. The power of this liberation penetrates and profoundly
transforms man and his history in its present reality and animates
his eschatological yearning. The first and fundamental meaning of
liberation which thus manifests itself is the salvific one: man is
freedom from the radical bondage of evil and sin.

 In this experience of salvation, man discovers the true meaning of
his freedom, since liberation is the restoration of freedom. It is
also education in freedom, that is to say, education in the right
use of freedom. Thus to the salvific dimension of liberation is
linked its ethical dimension.


A new phase in the history of freedom
-------------------------------------

 24. To different degrees, the sense of faith, which is at the
origin of a radical experience of liberation and freedom, has
imbued the culture and the customs of Christian peoples.

 But today, because of the formidable challenges which humanity
must face, it is in a wholly new way that it has become necessary
and urgent that the love of God and freedom in truth and justice
should mark relations between individuals and peoples and animate
the life of cultures.

 For where truth and love are mission, the process of liberation
results in the death of a freedom which will have lost all support.

 A new phase in the history of freedom is opening before us. The
liberating capacities of science, technology, work, economics and
political activity will only produce results if they find their
inspiration and measure in the truth and love which are stronger
than suffering: the truth and love revealed to men by Jesus Christ.

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Footnotes:

[8] LIBERTATIS NUNTIUS, XI, 10: AAS 76 (1984), pp. 905-906.

[9] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical REDEMPTOR HOMINIS, 17: AAS 71
(1979), pp. 296-297; DISCOURSE of 10 March 1984 to the FIFTH
CONFERENCE OF JURISTS: L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO, 11 March 1984, p. 8.

[10] Cf. LIBERTATIS NUNTIUS, XI, 5: AAS 76 (1984), p. 904; John
Paul II, OPENING ADDRESS AT PUEBLA: AAS 71 (1979), p. 189.

[11] Cf. GAUDIUM ET SPES, 36.

[12] Cf. ibid.

[13] Cf. op. cit, 41.

[14] Cf. Mt. 11:25; Lk 10:21.

[15] Cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation EVANGELII NUNTIANDI, 48:
AAS 68 (1976), pp. 37-38.

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