Gay Marriage and Queer Activists Who Oppose It

This person isn't alone, either.  Excerpts:

Today is a hard day to rain on people’s marriage parades. I’m doing it anyway because my stomach is turning to lead and my heart wants to throw up and silence will make it worse. This issue is far from over and my silence, I feel, is the problem to begin with.

I’ll start with an introduction: I am — first and foremost — a queer activist for economic justice. I support a radical redistribution of wealth, and I stand against capitalism and what it does to people’s bodies. As for marriage equality, I am not just unenthusiastic or reserved about this as a goal for the LGBT rights movement — I actively boycott it, and would like to see it abolished as soon as possible...

When you read his arguments, they have a certain familiar ring.  Excerpts:

...The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation...

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private...--The Communist Manifesto, Chapters 1 & 2

Fatima, The Holy Fathers, and The Present

The New York Times, Pope Francis, and I'm Speechless

Cause we've discussed this.  We really have.  Theology that focuses on the poor is not automatically "liberation theology."  And yet, behold!  Excerpts:

He has criticized the “cult of money” and greed he sees driving the world financial system, reflecting his affinity for liberation theology...

Francis’ speeches clearly draw on the themes of liberation theology, a movement that seeks to use the teachings of the Gospel to help free people from poverty and that has been particularly strong in his native Latin America. In the 1980s, Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, led a campaign to rein in the movement, which he saw as too closely tied to some Marxist political elements.

Francis studied with an Argentine Jesuit priest who was a proponent of liberation theology, and Father Lombardi acknowledged the echoes. “But what is clear is that he was always against the strains of liberation theology that had an ideological Marxist element,” he said...

Le sigh.  Guys: here's a sampling of Catholic teaching and lived witness on poverty, social justice, and works of mercy:

• Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
• Caritas in Veritate
• Centesimus Annus
• Rerum Novarum
• Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom
• What to Do When Jesus Is Hungry: A Practical Guide to the Works of Mercy
• The Work of Mercy: Being the Hands and Heart of Christ
• Harsh and Dreadful Love
• Catherine De Hueck Doherty: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters)
• No Greater Love
• Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (The Classics of Western Spirituality)
  

"Power, And Those Too Weak to Seek It"

There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.--Professor Quirell, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Paperback, (Scholastic, 1997), pg. 291

John Zmirak is usually well worth reading, and this piece on "consent as the criterion of the good" is quite good.  Yes, Virginia, separation of Church and state is actually part of authentic Catholic tradition.  Excerpts.

...Although the Church became entangled with government early on – namely, with the conversion of Constantine – it has never seen its primary duty as giving directives to kings, or telling citizens how to vote. That is, at best, a tertiary role the Church is sometimes forced to serve when the conscience of a polity has become so degraded that natural reason cannot do its job, so faith has to step in and plug the gaps. Classic examples include St. Ambrose’s rebuke of Theodosius for the massacre of unruly citizens; the Church in 16th-century Spain insisting that Indians in the New World were fully human and should not be enslaved; German bishops condemning Nazi euthanasia; and Pope John Paul II denouncing both Communist tyranny and the Western “culture of death.”

But these acts of political prophecy on the part of bishops and popes stand out because they are not the norm. It is the duty of laymen – statesmen and citizens – to inform their consciences with sound moral principles in order to form public policy. Religious believers and leaders must make sure that those principles are sound, and call out the culture when they are either perverted or ignored. That is what abolitionist Christians did in the 19th century, and civil rights leaders in the 20th. Such a movement in Poland brought down the Soviet bloc, ended the Cold War, and may have saved our species from a global nuclear war. So maybe – just maybe – people of faith deserve a hearing...

And then an essential rebuke of those who would seek a simply libertarian state with strict free market capitalism without paying heed to what sort of culture is needed to render that humane:

...Indeed, the very name of the workers’ movement (Solidarity) that knocked down the first domino in Communist Europe was borrowed from Catholic social teaching’s term for the force that knits society together, that goads us to treat each other justly even when the government isn’t looking, that lubricates the highly efficient engine of the market economy with the oil of human kindness. Too often, especially in Europe (as Samuel Gregg documents), the word “solidarity” is cheapened into a synonym for socialism. It’s trotted out as a slogan every time the goldbricking workers of one country crave a subsidy from the thrifty taxpayers of another. But words like “justice,” “love,” and “freedom” are often perverted, too – that doesn’t mean we drown the baby in the bathwater.

The central principle of solidarity in practice is simple and timeless – the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This ethical maxim, which Jesus quoted from the Old Testament, exists in some form in every culture on earth – as C. S. Lewis documented in The Abolition of Man, where he called it the Tao. It is so ubiquitous that it’s easy for us to assume that it’s universally accepted – at least in theory – while far too rarely practiced...

In a strongly ethical culture, a humane culture of life in the context of a civilization of love, perhaps we could have far fewer laws--more conscience, fewer cops. Perhaps a free market system could work with minimal regulation in a highly principled population.  Absent the culture, though, libertarianism at its common extreme is one more example of the very modern/Enlightenment-era mistake of thinking that humans are innately good, merely corrupted by the structures binding them.  If only we would loosen the fetters of society, then humans would do the right thing and get along without coercion.  All would be well.  Marx's revolution; Rousseau's noble savage; Rand's superman--on and on it rolls, across all ideological divides in the modern era.

Oh, look!  Zmirak proceeds to make all those points in the rest of his article!

...We have another maxim, which crept into Western souls via “worldly philosophers” such as Machiavelli and Hobbes – the principle of the “consenting adult.” Any time someone uses this phrase, he is saying (under his breath) that none of us is the least bit responsible for each other. If folks make stupid choices, that’s not our problem. Even if we are the ones who tempted them to make such a choice – if we have exploited them personally, economically, or sexually – we are still scot-free: “She was a consenting adult;” “That schmuck should have known better,” we tell ourselves, and smirk.

Instead of an ethic that rests on reciprocity, on admitting the unique value of every person because he’s a fellow human, we treasure a heartless, pragmatic ethos that shrugs at suffering and confusion, a Darwinian willingness to pounce on our neighbor’s mistakes. So “consenting adults” work in sweatshops overseas making our iPads, or sweat before cameras enacting our porn, or wake up alone in the bed where we’ve left them when we were finished with our desires. No individual rights were violated, no crime was committed or contract broken – so the modern secular conscience has nothing meaningful to say.

What we don’t dare to realize is that human trust, promise-keeping, and a basic sense of concern for our fellow man are the glue that holds a free society together. (So Adam Smith taught in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.) The anarchy which arises in its absence is just too awful for people to tolerate, so in self-defense, they will even embrace a tyranny.

So tyranny creeps in...any ideology that focuses on power relationships (rather than love and justice) is programmed to liquidate every human value in the end...

Heal the culture first.  Open the doors to God's grace to heal, illumine, and deify nature.  Then talk to me about libertarianism.

60 Minutes, the LCWR, and Necessary Church Reform

So 60 Minutes ran a piece on the Vatican's doctrinal investigation of the LCWR.  GetReligion was not amused.  Excerpts:

CBS released this clip last week, previewing the Sunday 60 Minutes piece. Talk about hard-hitting! Talk about the opposite of obsequious!

Oh wait. It looked horrific.

Apparently it was.  After it ran on Sunday, one person tweeted:

“60 minutes” tonight marked the election of Pope Francis with an outrageously slanted Bob Simon piece hammering the Church

Another:

aaaand first up on 60 Minutes: Will Pope Francis continue using the same office as the Inquisition to persecute American nuns?

yeah, reporting is one thing. Glowing as you question the subject is quite another.

You can watch the whole thing and make your own judgment, but Godbeat veteran Jeffrey Weiss said the piece failed on a number of counts...

Why the investigation?  Here're some of the reasons I perceived.  John Allen had some good points about the investigation.  There are reasons laid out in the Vatican's own document on the visitation.  Excerpts:

...The decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to undertake a doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) was communicated to the LCWR Presidency during their meeting with Cardinal William Levada in Rome on April 8, 2008. At that meeting, three major areas of concern were given as motivating the CDF’s decision to initiate the Assessment:

Addresses at the LCWR Assemblies.
Addresses given during LCWR annual Assemblies manifest problematic statements and serious theological, even doctrinal errors. The Cardinal offered as an example specific passages of Sr. Laurie Brink’s address about some Religious “moving beyond the Church” or even beyond Jesus. This is a challenge not only to core Catholic beliefs; such a rejection of faith is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life. Such unacceptable positions routinely go unchallenged by the LCWR, which should provide resources for member Congregations to foster an ecclesial vision of religious life, thus helping to correct an erroneous vision of the Catholic faith as an important exercise of charity. Some might see in Sr. Brink’s analysis a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today. But Pastors of the Church should also see in it a cry for help.

Policies of Corporate Dissent
The Cardinal spoke of this issue in reference to letters the CDF received from “Leadership Teams” of various Congregations, among them LCWR Officers, protesting the Holy See’s actions regarding the question of women’s ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons, e.g. letters about New Ways Ministry’s conferences. The terms of the letters suggest that these sisters collectively take a position not in agreement with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality. It is a serious matter when these Leadership Teams are not providing effective leadership and example to their communities, but place themselves outside the Church’s teaching.

Radical Feminism
The Cardinal noted a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith in some of the programs and presentations sponsored by the LCWR, including theological interpretations that risk distorting faith in Jesus and his loving Father who sent his Son for the salvation of the world. Moreover, some commentaries on “patriarchy” distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the Church; others even undermine the revealed doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture...

What does radical feminism in the Catholic Church and women's religious orders look like?  From the side of someone who may well be a supporter or at least sympathetic to this approach, there's a classic overview from Thomas Rausch, SJ's Catholicism in the Third Millennium:

...Feminist spirituality is a relatively new field that has grown out of the struggle of women for equality in both society and Church.  It is a particular expression of liberation theology.  Like feminist theology (for it is often difficult to separate theology and spirituality) feminist spirituality covers a broad spectrum of positions and persons in the contemporary Catholic Church.  Some feminist theologians have moved explicitly beyond the Christian tradition; their theological interests focus on the pre-Christian European worship of the Goddess, a nature religion also known as Wicca.  Mary Daly is among those feminists who identify themselves as post-Christian.  Others, such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, have challenged the tradition in a radical way from within.  What is common to most feminist theologians is a concern to bring the often neglected experience of women into the theological enterprise.

Feminist spirituality seeks to articulate a vision of the spiritual life that can embrace the experience of women, particularly their experience of oppression; it seeks to address their particular needs and help them reappropriate their own spiritual power. Consciousness raising is a first step toward a genuine feminist spiritual vision. Women who have so often been defined in terms of their sexual and reproductive functions insist that their value and personal possibilities cannot be deftermined by biology. This feminist spirituality offers women an alternative vision that includes a critique of those forces and movements that have oppressed women and alienated them from themselves. Patriarchy, the structuring of society and culture in terms of male interests and power, and hierarchy, organizing society and Church in terms of higher and lower status, are both rejected. Feminist spirituality emphasizes equality, inclusivity, and mutuality. It prefers the discussion to the lecture, the square to the circle.

Feminist spirituality differs from much of traditional spirituality in its nondualistic approach to all of reality; it seeks to overcome the split between body and spirit, between spirituality and sexuality, transcendence and immanence, reason and feeling, the sacred and the secular, between this world and the next. It seeks to read the Gospel in such a way that women will be empowered; thus it is uncomfortable with the emphasis in classical theology on losing the self by putting others first, seeing here a reinforcement of the passivity and submission to which so many women have been conditioned by a patriarchal culture and Church. Displacing one's own ego is fine if one's temptation is to pride, but for many women the real task of a genuine conversion is to be more assertive, to affirm their own value, and come to a genuine love of self.

Sandra M. Schneiders lists the following as major characteristics of feminist spirituality: First, it must be rooted in women's experience. Thus there is generally an emphasis on a personal sharing of stories as a way of recovering what has been repressed and of raising consciousness. Second, it celebrates those aspects of bodiliness, such as menstruation and childbirth, that religion has been silent about. They are life-giving, not shameful. Third, it is concerned with nonhuman nature, with its sense of our organic relationship with the universe; its vision is ecologically sensitive. Fourth, it emphasizes rituals that are inclusive rather than hierarchical, joyful and participative rather than unemotional and dominative. Feminist spirituality is concerned for the renewal of Church ministry, liturgy, organization, and community. Finally, feminist spirituality sees an intrinsic relationship between personal growth and social justice. From the perspective of feminist spirituality, the personal is always political...--Thomas Rausch, Catholicism in the Third Millenium, 2nd Edition, (Michael Glazier Books, 2003), pg. 184-186.

From critics of the approach, one can read Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of Christian Tradition, Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities, Sisters in Crisis Revisited: From Unraveling to Reform and Renewal, and Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church.

Why is this vision of feminist spirituality described by Rausch a problem?  Well, if you're post-Christian and outside the Church, then you're certainly no longer Catholic or Christian.  And the LCWR, by a past president's own admission, contains some member congregations who have gone precisely that far.

...During this era of crisis and decline, some Catholic religious orders have chosen to enter a time of “sojourning” that involves “moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus,” Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink told a 2007 national gathering of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

“Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian,” added Brink, a former journalist who is a biblical studies professor at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union. For these women, the “Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative. … They still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel, but they also recognize that these same values are not solely the property of Christianity. Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, Islam and others hold similar tenets for right behavior within the community, right relationship with the earth and right relationship with the Divine.”...

If you're practicing Wicca, you're violating the Church's ban on magic and the New Age.  If you reject all forms of hierarchy, then you will inevitably be at war with the Church from within, since it is inherently hierarchical according to the teaching of Vatican II.  If you're an offshoot of liberation theology, you need to take account of the Church's teaching on liberation theology.  If you differ from traditional Catholic spirituality, then you're rejecting the teaching of Doctor of the Church St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and a whole host of other women mystics and saints.  If you choose to believe that all that is personal must be political, then you have accepted the via moderna in its entirety which will inevitably see all exercises of authority as unwonted impositions of power on the will of another, never as the right exercise of the functions of the members of the body of Christ.  If you truly believe that traditional spirituality is wrong when it supposedly, somehow rejects bodiliness and simultaneously hold that true liberation for women comes from refusing to be defined by biology in any way at all, you're not only incoherent, but also ignoring the true richness of the Church's teaching on the theology of the body.  If you refuse to be willing to lose your life in order to save it (Luke 9:24; Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33; Mark 8:35; Matthew 10:39; John 12:25), then you're repudiating the eternal dynamic of gift at the heart of the Trinity into which we are all invited, choosing to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life, choosing power over paradise (as though choosing tradition and deification somehow meant women were disempowered!  Mary, she of the Magnificat, is Queen of heaven and earth.).  If you steadfastly believe that the Catholic Church can and should ordain women, then you're steadfastly in violation of the clear and irreformable teaching of the ordinary magisterium.

Does this mean there is no room in Catholicism for feminism?  Not at all.  See the following for a sampling of some celebrations of Catholic womanhood in the different walks of life:

• Discovering the Feminine Genius: Every Woman's Journey (Theology of the Body)
• Blessed, Beautiful and Bodacious: Celebrating the Gift of Catholic Womanhood
• The Authentic Catholic Woman
• Rooted in Love: Our Calling as Catholic Women
• Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching
• Mulieris Dignitatem:  On the Vocation of Women
• Redemptoris Mater: On the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Life of the Pilgrim Church
• Holy Women
• My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir
  
• Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves
• Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture
• Style, Sex, and Substance: 10 Catholic Women Consider the Things that Really Matter
• Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism
• The Catholic Girl's Survival Guide for the Single Years: The Nuts and Bolts of Staying Sane and Happy While Waiting for Mr. Right
• Men And Women Are From Eden: A Study Guide to John Paul II's Theology of the Body
• Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II's Love and Responsibility
• The Privilege of Being a Woman
• Life-Giving Love : Embracing God's Beautiful Design for Marriage
• Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church

There is plenty of room within the Church for a tremendous celebration of women.  There is room in the Church for women to take on many more roles, and to continue to work wonders in the roles they currently occupy.  But there is not room in the Church for a feminist theology/spirituality which privileges power over love.

To hold the form of feminist theology outlined by Rausch is to place oneself in the permanent role of dissatisfied Catholic, permanently seeking to alter the fundamental structure of the Church from within by force to conform it to the demands of your ideology.  The faith does not have primacy in your life, nor does Christ, but rather power, challenging the faith rather than receiving it as that which has been handed on, and asserting your own all rightness over against the standards of the Catholic Church and her faith.  This analysis is supported by Catholic women religious.  Excerpts:

Physicians who are also Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma are criticizing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its defenders for using an impoverished “language of politics” instead of “the language of faith” in the dialogue with the Catholic hierarchy.

“There is no basis for authentic dialogue between these two languages. The language of faith is rooted in Jesus Christ, His life and His mission, as well as the magisterial teaching of the Church,” said the physician-sisters’ statement, which was issued after a June 2 meeting on the contributions of religious women in the healing ministry of the Catholic Church.

“The language of politics arises from the social marketplace,” they said. “The Sisters who use political language in their responses to the magisterial Church reflect the poverty of their education and formation in the faith.”...

the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma’s broader statement. It said that a religious community’s charism is given to “enrich the Church” and the Catholic hierarchy must determine its authenticity. A woman religious participates in this charism and “cannot separate her work from the Church.”

The sisters praised “the generosity and service” of the religious women who preceded them and foresaw “great hope” for the future of religious life in the Church.

They said that this hope rests in remaining within “the deposit of faith and the hierarchical structure of the Church.”

“We cannot separate ourselves from sacred tradition or claim to advance beyond the Church.”

The sisters’ June 2 meeting also addressed statements from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, various news agencies and other organizations. The Sisters of Mercy said these have created “confusion, polarization, and false representations about the beliefs, activities, and priorities of a significant number of women religious in the United States...”

Bottom line: Archbishop Sartain has been given a necessary and important task for the renewal of religious orders for women within Catholicism.  There are a number of serious doctrinal problems extant within the LCWR's leadership and, by Sister Laurie Brink's own account, within the member congregations.  Pray for Abp. Sartain and a graced reform for the LCWR.

Pope Francis, Liberation Theology, and Confidently Saying The Wrong Thing

Yeeps.  Just...yeeps.

God bless the author of this piece.  She's certainly got confidence.  There're just a few things I'd like to comment on.

Jesuits: The Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus, are an order of (male) priests condoned by the Vatican that tend to take a missionary and scholarly approach to Catholicism.

"Condoned?"  As in, "barely acceptable yet tolerated?"  Howza about something like "The Jesuits are one of many religious orders within Catholicism"?

Founded by St. Ignatius in 1534, they're now best known as the administrators of several universities (Georgetown is probably the most famous one in the United States).

Okay, so they may be best known as the administrators of several universities, but they are certainly far more than that.  To start with, they have a much bigger educational footprint in the US alone than that rather lukewarm description indicates.

The Jesuits take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience to both St. Ignatius and the pope.

And here's where my mouth dropped.  Cause, you know, they really, really don't swear obedience to St. Ignatius.  Their lawful superiors?  Oh, yeah.  The pope?  Look up "fourth vow of the Jesuits."  But while Ignatius has a huge role as founder in the constitution (and constitutions) of their order, he's not someone to whom they swear obedience (however good an idea that may be).

The Daily Beast has a pretty good explainer up on the Jesuits, which you can peruse for more details.

Actually, how about you go to a Catholic source for information on a Catholic religious order?  Or even more radically, how about going to that order itself?

But there's one important moment to flag in the context of Pope Francis's election.
The order ruffled the feathers of Pope John Paul II for their involvement in liberation theology in Latin America (we're getting to that). Partially because of their involvement in the liberally-associated movement, Jesuits have a reputation for being more progressive than the Catholic church's other clergy.

Want to know what John Paul II (and, for that matter, Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger) actually thought about liberation theology?  See here and here.  Want to know why Pope John Paul II, a Polish pope at a time when state communism was attempting to subjugate the Polish Catholic Church and render silent its opposition to the totalitarian oppression of Soviet Communism, might have had huge problems with liberation theology?  See here and here.

Liberation Theology: First off, the "liberation theology" we're talking about when we refer to South American Catholicism is distinct from the American "black liberation theology." They trace their roots back to two different commonly-cited foundational texts: James H. Cone's A Black Theology of Liberation, and Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation, both written in the early '70s. The two theologies definitely share some significant similarities, namely a reading of scripture that puts the emphasis of the Christian concern with sin on social problems, rather than individual ones. In other words, Christians adhering to a liberation theology should orient themselves toward action against oppression. More symbolically, liberation theology argues that God identifies with the oppressed, and that Christianity should take upon itself the lens of the poor. Both theologies are also often derided as "Marxist" by conservatives (remember Rev. Wright?)

Heh.  Here's the thing: liberation theology actually is Marxist.  Don't believe me?  Check out the citations in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, one of the most popular and widely used books applying the concepts of the theology of liberation to education.  Look at the citations in Gutiérrez's book.  And the key problem with liberation theology isn't the concern for the poor.  It's the notion that worldly poverty matters more than spiritual poverty, that political power matters more than deification, that the secular is more important than the sacred.

The Church is, has been, and always will be an institution directed by her founder to an ongoing and perennial concern for the poor.  We are commanded explicitly to tend to the needs of the least of these or else go to hell.  But we are also told to seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else shall be added unto it.  That is, put Christ first, put holiness first, and all else will fall into place around the true, transcendent center.

Liberation theology, on the other hand, would say to hell with the Church if it didn't first physically fight oppression (which seems to inherently involve seeking the destruction of all hierarchy, which would, of course, inevitably pit the liberation theologians against the very God they claim they're trying to serve.)

On the surface, this theology would seem to fit with Pope Francis. Here's the New Yorker, summing up his approach to poverty as a Catholic:

"He has made some sharp remarks about the vanity, self-infatuation, careerism, and pursuit of promotions in the Roman Curia. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he apparently preferred to be called Father Jorge, and was known for his preoccupation with the city’s poorest, reportedly washing and kissing the feet of patients suffering from AIDS."

But Francis has opposed liberation theology in Argentina. According to the National Catholic Reporter, this seems to have to do more with keeping Jesuits from becoming politically active or working directly in community groups—which would be a departure from the more traditional role of the order—than it does with rejecting an interpretation of Catholicism that places an emphasis on the poor.

I don't think there's any interpretation of Catholicism accepted within the Church that doesn't place a healthy emphasis on the poor.  No pope has ever rejected care for the poor.  Ever.

So while the emphasis on poverty could very well become a part of Francis's reign (and looks bound to), we know very little of what, if any, reforms he'd want to implement to make the church more effective at alleviating suffering from poverty. Despite his "firsts," there's little evidence so far that the new Pope has radical change in mind for the church.

Radical change?  Yes he does--holiness, with all the impossible transformations that will bring.