Liberation theology: coming in from the cold

Liberation theology has definitely come in from the cold, if the recent remarks of Cardinal Gerard Ludwig Müller are anything to go by. Cardinal Müller is, of course, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of The Faith, the guardian of orthodoxy in the Catholic Church. But Cardinal Müller prefers to stress the positive side of his role, “to promote and preserve the faith” and to recognise that there is “trial and error” in theology. And in this context the cardinal mentions Gustavo Gutiérrez in the same breath as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Newman. The era of “God’s Rottweiler”, as Müller’s predecessor-but-one, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was sometimes called, seems to be over. Also on the way in from t