Liberation Theology

5. A Grateful Prostitute Thanks Liberation Theology

A prostitute was called as a delegate to speak at the Pastoral Commission on Marginal Women, which convened in Brazil in July of 1984. Her speech was titled, “In Praise of Liberation Theology.” This is what she said (emphases added):
“We prostitutes were invited to participate in the fourth national meeting of the Pastoral Commission on Marginal Women, a meeting was called by the church and the prostitutes called in as delegates. It was during the first five meetings that I discovered that we are not alone in our efforts to organize. There I met bishops, priests, pastoral agents, who called prostitution a social sin. Nobody was indicted as a sinner. Prostitution is a social sin generated by economical, political and social structure. It’s the government; it’s the social structure that causes prostitutes. They’re not responsible for who they are, so the bishop told the prostitutes. (Prostitutes are not responsible for their actions, someone else must be blamed. This is a characteristic of LT.) We must organize. Then we must unite our efforts with those of other oppressed sectors of society in order to advance together toward our liberation. Not liberation from sin, but liberation from the stigma of being a prostitute. What concretely does this support from the church mean for us? For me and my companions, who have always been stigmatized and excluded by society, this acceptance by the church means simply, and I want to emphasize this in capital letters, REDISCOVERING OUR DIGNITY. We could go on and be prostitutes, now that the pastors have explained it to us, and still maintain our dignity. It is because of this rediscovery of our worth that I’m now able to stand before you and speak out without feeling like a public sinner. For us, the theology of liberation is not just a label used to describe a new trend of Catholic thought. It is much more. It is a life project grounded in faith. It offers proof that we prostitutes, by rediscovering the spiritual power contained in our religious belief, will also encounter a self actualization project that confirms our humanity and we discover that we are women, too. This is what my voice and that of the five million prostitutes in Brazil want to tell our gathering. With great assurance and great faith, I am able to say many thanks to Liberation Theology; Many thanks to those theologians who have helped to make this possible for us, the outcasts of society. We have access to the Gospel.” (Dr. Fred Schwarz, Christian Anti-Communism Newsletter, 1989)
God had not “liberated” these sinful women from their sins; carnal churchmen and a false theology had, in their minds, liberated them from the “stigma of being prostitutes.” If anyone thinks I am being unfair by mentioning priests and prostitutes together, let me assure you that I didn’t put them together; they put themselves together in the Latin American Marxist Revolution.
You can see clearly that truth and sin meant one thing to Paul in the first century and quite another to priests and prostitutes in the 20th century. And this progressive philosophy is the going theology in post-modern churches. If your church is above this, just remember, the churches that believe this today were above it yesterday!
God said through Hosea, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because they have rejected knowledge, I will reject you as my priests” (Hos. 4:6). The people would be rejected because they lost their knowledge of God and the priests would be rejected because they had failed to keep the people properly informed—they had misled them instead. This should serve as a stern warning to both people and priests today, who want to believe that their sins are someone else’s fault. Prostitutes who think someone else is responsible for their sin and priests who teach them to think this way, both fall squarely into the category of those whom God said He would reject. It’s a strange religion in which prostitutes, preachers and priests can unite. I know we live in a time of grace rather than law, but grace is no license for people to do as they see fit and blame others for causing them to do it. “Shall we go on sinning,” writes Paul, “so that grace might increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”(Rom. 6:1, 2)
If there is no established truth there can be no established authority or morality, a prostitute may practice her trade with impunity while her priest confirms her in it. And before you, my liberationist reader, pass judgment on a prostitute, you should reflect on the fact that you as a progressive hold the very same theology that she and her priest did. You have all denied God your Creator and Jesus Christ your Savior and Lord. Everyone who understands will know that you are in denial. When you say, “There are no absolutes,” you are saying, “There is no God”—God being the Supreme Absolute. The prostitute will go on living in public disgrace, the priest will go on living in defiance to Christ, and you will go on living in self-righteous pride, believing that your philosophical faith is superior to the biblical faith of true believers—and all of you will look to your reasoning rather than your Redeemer for justification.