La teología de la liberación en prospectiva - Noticias más vistas

The focus of the pastoral theological discourse is on comfort and encouragement.People needed this in order to endure that specific moment.But there are also elements of admonition in the sense that people mustcome out of the indifference of often resulting resignation in order to beable to commit themselves to solidarity to overcome the situation.Summary: A theology of hope as a pastoral responseThrough the pastoral theological discourse, Gutiérrez speaks to the Peruvianpopulation in critical moments during the two last decades of the 20 thcentury. One fundamental question that the pastoral theological discoursetries to respond to is how it is possible as committed Peruvian Christiansto speak of joy and the love of the God of life in the midst of a deep crisis.In order to formulate the pastoral theological discourse Gutiérrezneeds the two political discourses to describe the contemporary situation.This situation is described in terms of a deep political crisis with distrustbetween Peruvians in general and between the population and the authoritiesin particular. The political violence aggravated the situation, accordingto Gutiérrez. The radical political discourse is needed to explain the rootcauses behind the crisis, where poverty and unjust structures in society arecalled institutionalised violence which Gutiérrez identifies as the breedingground for the political violence. The liberal political discourse pointsto possible solutions and offers non-violent methods to reach a politicalsolution. The two political discourses correspond to the first step in thesee – judge – act mo del. Together these two discourses give an indicationof what takes place in society and why. The Catholic theological discoursepresents doctrinal criteria according to which the present situation can bejudged.The pastoral theological discourse, finally, intends to respond to thereaders’ need for pastoral orientation both with comfort and encouragementon the one hand, and teaching and an invocation to admonition thatcalls for action on the other. The latter corresponds without doubt to thethird step in the model.To raise hope in an extremely difficult situation was one of the mostimportant tasks of Gutiérrez as pastor and, therefore, one of the essentialingredients in the pastoral theological discourse during these years. Therefore,it is not surprising that the word ‘hope’ (Spanish: esperanza) is one ofthe most frequently used words in his theological vocabulary, especially inthe 1980s and 1990s. The verb in Spanish (esperar) means to hope, to waitCongreso Continental de Teología x 359