Here is another text by Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez that helps us to understand the thinking of Archbishop Gerhard Müller, the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who declares himself to be a faithful disciple of Fr. Gutierrez and his Liberation Theology (here and here).
In this text, he proposes to seize the Gospel from the Hierarchy of the Church and give it to the poor to interpret it according to their struggle for liberation.
At right, the cover of Concilum magazine, The People and the Church (Os pobres e a igreja), which includes the essay by Gutierrez titled "The People in the Church" (Os Pobres na Igreja). Below right, the Portuguese text; below left, our translation.
The Gospel read from the perspective of the poor, the exploited classes, the militants in their struggle for liberation, calls out for a Church of the people. A Church that springs from the people, a people that tears the Gospel from the hands of the powerful of this world and thus prevents them from using it as a means to justify a situation opposed to the designs of the liberator God.
When the poor of this earth repossess the Gospel, taking it from the hands of those who consider themselves its private owners, we will have what is being called today in the milieus of some people of Latin America the "social appropriation of the Gospel."
("Os pobres na Igreja" in Concilium, Os pobres e a Igreja, 1977/4, pp. 92)
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