Liberation Theology in El Salvador

In 1968, the Conference of Latin American Bishops, "echoing and extending the ideas of Pope John XXIII, gave a new interpretation to the role of the Church. Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutierrez gave the philosophy the name 'liberation theology.'" Liberation theology made the Roman Catholic Church more sensitive to the needs of the poor and more focused on improving this world instead of waiting for the life in the next. Liberation theology also discredited the old solution of "more alms" in favor of organizing the poor for political participation. While some priests who favored liberation theology also endorsed socialism, liberation theology in El Salvador in the 1990s is less radical than it was two decades years ago, and many former revolutionaries have turned their focus to m

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ith health, a preferential option for the poor offers both a challenge and an "insight. It challenges doctors and other health providers to make an option for the poor by working on their behalf. The insight is, in a sense, an epidemiological one: most often, diseases themselves make a preferential option for the poor. That is, the poor are sicker than the non-poor. They are at heightened risk of dying prematurely, whether from increased exposure to pathogens (including pathogenic situations) or from decreased access to services or, as is most often the case, from both of these 'risk factors.'" Liberation theology, "which argues that genuine change will be rooted in small communities of poor people, advances a simple three-part methodology·observe, judge, act. The observe part of the formula implies analysis. It is perhaps surprising the Catholic bishops of Latin America, traditionally allied with the elites of their countries, have more recently chosen to favor hard-bitten social analysis when examining their societies. Many would argue that liberation theology's key documents were hammered out at the bishops' meetings in . . . 1968 and in . . . in 1978. In both instances, progressive bishops, working with like-minded
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Approximate Word count = 3690
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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