The Church has always been solidary towards the University, and towards its vocation of leading man to the highest levels of knowledge of truth and the reality of the world in all its aspects. It pleases me to recognize here, with the most lively ecclesial gratitude, the various religious congregations which have founded and maintain in your midst renowned universities, reminding them, however, that they are not a property of those who founded them or of those who go to them, but an expression of the Church and of her patrimony of faith.In this sense, dear Brothers, it is worthy to recall that last August marked 25 years of the Instruction Libertatis nuntius of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on certain aspects of liberation theology, which underlined the danger that was included in the non-critical import, made by some theologians, of theses and methodologies originating from Marxism. Their more or less visible consequences, of rebellion, division, dissent, offense, anarchy are still being felt, creating amidst your diocesan communities great pain and a grave loss of living strength. I beg all those who feel in any way attracted, involved, or touched in their very selves by certain deceitful principles of liberation theology to once again read the aforementioned Instruction, receiving the benign light that the same offers with extended hands; to all I recall that "the supreme rule of [the Church's] faith derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others" (John Paul II, Enc. Fides et ratio, 55). May the forgiveness offered and accepted in the name and for love of the Most Holy Trinity, whom we worship in our hearts, in your ecclesial communities and organizations, put an end to the tribulation of the dear Church that wanders though the Land of the Holy Cross [Brazil].
Benedict XVI
December 5, 2009
