From our Bureau of Editorials Written by Presidents of Universities Where Liberation Theology Has Thrived
Father John Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, has written an editorial for the Washington Post in which he denounces the war being waged against the Catholic Church by Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega.
There is deep irony involved in this complaint. For many years, Notre Dame’s theology department has been home to professor Gustavo Gutierrez, a Dominican priest known as “The Godfather of Liberation Theology,”
Liberation theology is Marxism dressed up in Christian garb, invented by the KGB as a weapon to wield in the Third World, especially Central and South America. Pope Francis has been heavily influenced by this version of stealth Marxism, which many experts trace directly to Notre Dame’s Gustavo Gutierrez.
So, President Jenkins is now complaining about the end results of liberation theology. Everything he says in his essay is true, and he deserves praise for calling attention to the crimes of Daniel Ortega, but he doesn’t mention the poisonous impact liberation theology has had on Nicaragua’s leftist elites, or the key role this form of stealth Marxism has played in creating a dictatorship modelled after that of Cuba.
And God only knows how many of those leftist Nicaraguans hell-bent on destroying the Catholic Church in their nation admire Father Gutierrez, or studied at Notre Dame, or were taught by liberation-theology- loving alumni of Notre Dame’s theology department.
President Jenkins is outraged by Nicaragua’s dictatorship, and says in the last sentence of his editorial that Ortega’s regime “should be isolated as an international pariah for trying to ‘disappear’ Catholicism, freedom of worship and free speech.” A question for Father Jenkins: What about Cuba and Venezuela, which are in some respects even more insidious when it comes to persecuting Christians? Selective outrage, once again. Cuba gets a pass, and so does its colony of Venenozuela, those other two shining examples of the only kind of utopia that liberation theology can create..
From El Guasintonpó (Washington Post)
Nicaragua’s seizure of the Jesuit-run Central American University in Managua on Aug. 16 was only the latest episode in the government’s five-year campaign to silence the Catholic Church.
Described by President Daniel Ortega’s regime as a “center of terrorism” for having attempted to shield student protesters during widespread anti-government demonstrations in 2018, the university has had its buildings, bank accounts and even its furniture seized. If past practice is any guide, it will soon be either shuttered or run by the state, with faculty and curriculums censored by the Sandinista government.
Since 2018, Catholic priests and laity critical of the government have been harassed, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and murdered. The regime has shut down more than 700 nonprofits and nongovernmental agencies, including the Catholic charity Caritas and the Red Cross.
This year, the government prohibited more than 1,000 Catholic processions during Lent and Easter. Priests were barred from anointing the sick, conducting baptisms and celebrating Mass. Even saying the rosary is now considered a subversive act in Nicaragua.
In February, Bishop Rolando Alvarez was arrested and sentenced to 26 years in prison for “anti-government activities” after he criticized the regime’s closure of Catholic radio and television stations. The religious order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa has been expelled from the country.
Prior to the seizure of Central American University, the government took control of two other Catholic universities — Universidad Juan Pablo II and Universidad Cristiana Autónoma de Nicaragua — and rescinded the accreditation of La Purísima Catholic Seminary in Managua. In all, over the past several years, the government has taken over 13 universities for being critical of the regime.
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