Criminal Legacy of Catholic Liberation Theology: The Road to Hell Paved with ‘Irrational’ Intentions

By the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church controlled nearly one-third of Mexico’s arable land—a monopoly that stoked fierce power struggles, left thousands dead, and triggered waves of social upheaval. The roots of this imbalance lay in the Church’s relentless accumulation of land and wealth through exploitative practices, its alliances with entrenched political and economic elites, and its instinct to safeguard the institution over the well-being of impoverished peasants. These injustices hardened into what might be called a kind of mauvais sang—a deep, inherited malaise that ran through Mexico’s social fabric. It first erupted during the Cristero War (1926–1929), a bloody confrontation between Catholic establishments and liberal reformers seeking to dismantle the Church’s vast hacienda-based holdings. Later, the same malaise was rearticulated rhetorically through Liberation Theology, a movement forged in the crucible of poverty and inequality. By the 1970s, more than sixty percent of Latin Americans lived below national poverty lines, while regional Gini coefficients remained stubbornly above fifty, reflecting entrenched inequality.

Founded on the just cause of fighting poverty and injustice, Liberation Theology too often succumbed to liberal romanticism and revolutionary nostalgia. It lost faith in rational methods for resolving systemic problems—or in Catholic rationalism itself. Its embrace of Marxist ideas proved especially fraught, prompting Vatican condemnations in 1984 and 1986 for political excesses and theological divisiveness. This blurred the lines between spiritual liberation and criminal-political power struggles, fueling violence, corruption, and institutional instability. The movement notably gained momentum and was formalized through the Medellín Conference in 1968, held in Medellín—an area later infamous for its associations with drug cartels—highlighting the complex and sometimes troubling intersection between liberation theology and local power dynamics.

The Criminal Evolution of Catholic Liberation Theology

In the 1970s and 1980s, liberation theologians lent support to revolutionary movements across Central and South America, at times aligning themselves with guerrilla fighters and even drug traffickers. In Nicaragua, for example, prominent clerics backed the Sandinista revolution and supported guerrilla warfare against the Somoza dictatorship—a testament to how ideals of spiritual liberation could mutate into armed conflict. Although Liberation Theology publicly preached emancipation and equality, such entanglements deepened cycles of violence and institutional collapse. The resulting civil wars that swept Central America displaced millions and claimed over two hundred thousand lives, far from the justice liberation theologians so fervently pursued.

Colombia experienced similar tragic consequences. Between 1980 and 2010, roughly 220,000 people were killed in drug wars, some of which were indirectly legitimized through Church involvement financed by cartel money. Major cartels like Medellín invested millions in Church projects to buy political influence and grassroots legitimacy. This criminal patronage still thrives; a 2017 Colombian government report found that nearly fifteen percent of parishes in cartel-controlled regions maintained financial or logistical ties to illicit groups, eroding the Church’s autonomy and credibility.

Mexico followed a comparable trajectory. In regions where liberation theology had taken deep root, some parishes became enmeshed in local power structures overlapping with cartel networks. In Michoacán and Guerrero, priests faced investigations for allegedly accepting “donations” from traffickers, and cartel leaders often appeared openly at parish events. In 2013, Mexican authorities revealed that at least a dozen churches had been used for laundering crime proceeds, often through conspicuously large offerings.

In Mexico, the criminal legacy linked to liberation theology has uniquely embedded itself within the cultural landscape. The cult of Santa Muerte, or “Saint Death,” which now claims over eight million devotees—including drug traffickers—embodies the unsettling fusion of piety and organized crime. Despite condemnation by the Mexican Bishops Conference in 2013, the devotion endures, further eroding the Church’s traditional authority. Alongside Santa Muerte, narco-saint rituals reinforce cartel cohesion and territorial control, weakening the Church’s historic role as mediator and moral guide. Groups like MS-13, with up to seventy thousand members across the United States and Central America, have incorporated Santa Muerte and narco-saint practices into their own rituals, illustrating the deep cultural legacy of criminal–church entanglements. As a result of this persistent theological distortion, trust in the Catholic Church within cartel-dominated Mexican states such as Guerrero and Tamaulipas has fallen sharply—from 68 percent in 2000 to just 47 percent in 2023.

Catholic Liberation Theology and U.S.–Mexico Immigration

Since 2008, more than five million undocumented migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico. In 2023 alone, southern border encounters totaled 2.4 million. The Church, through organizations such as Caritas Mexico, has provided humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of migrants—more than 300,000 in 2022. Yet Liberation Theology’s politicization, and its shadow of cartel collusion, have weakened ecclesial unity and hampered coordinated advocacy for migrant communities.

Across Latin America, traffickers and guerrillas alike have co-opted the rhetoric of Liberation Theology. By framing their work as “liberation from oppression,” they justify criminal violence as political struggle, muddying the boundary between crime and resistance. The effect is twofold: it grants such groups a veneer of legitimacy and draws popular support from the marginalized. What began as a call for justice becomes a script for lawlessness.

The result has been a deepening fracture in Latino communities and a harder road for U.S.–Mexico immigration reform. Pragmatic cooperation has given way to polarization and rancor.

Can Catholic Rationalism Offer a Way Forward?

Perhaps the most troubling legacy of Liberation Theology’s politicization is its encouragement of a radical Catholicism that resists Catholic rationalism. Catholic rationalism, rooted in the broader tradition of thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and European scholasticism, holds that moral and theological truths arise through the interplay of faith and reason. It demands clarity, logical consistency, and ethical accountability, enabling believers to confront real-world challenges with both doctrinal fidelity and intellectual rigor.

American Catholic rationalism, while grounded in these same foundational principles, is distinctively marked by its emphasis on practical moral reasoning, transparency, and accountability within the public sphere. It prioritizes engagement with democratic institutions, legal frameworks, and pluralistic dialogue, offering a pragmatic approach that bridges spiritual conviction and civic responsibility. This tradition fosters open debate and reform both within the Church and society at large.

The philosopher Jacques Maritain serves as a crucial bridge between Catholic rationalism as a whole and the American Catholic tradition. Born in France but influential for many years in American academic circles, Maritain helped shape modern Catholic thought, notably laying the intellectual groundwork for universal human rights grounded in human dignity, personal responsibility, and the integration of faith and reason. His reinterpretation of Aquinas’ doctrine of the golden mean envisioned Catholic rationalism as a discipline of balance, tempering extremes by placing reason and free will at the core of moral decision-making. Maritain’s focus on ethical accountability and transparency continues to inspire contemporary calls for reform and integrity within the Church.

Importantly, this rationalism acknowledges that human experience is always mediated and subject to distortion, emphasizing careful scrutiny of transcendental claims through reason rather than blind acceptance. Maritain’s perspective resists both unchecked subjectivity and rigid dogmatism, grounding spirituality in a balanced interplay of reason, ethics, and communal life. His modern virtue ethics elevates reason as essential for discerning moral truth, navigating between legalism’s rigidity and relativism’s uncertainty, and recognizing the dynamic, situational nature of virtues amid contemporary complexities.

Joined with today’s demands for accountability and reform, this nuanced rationalism offers a promising path to restore the Church’s credibility and renew its capacity to address political and social crises. Through transparent governance, consistent moral conduct, and pragmatic, faith-informed action, Catholic institutions can embody the golden mean—not merely as an abstract ideal but as lived practice—reclaiming their role as both spiritual leaders and thoughtful contributors to a more just and coherent society.

Source: https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2025/09/10/criminal-legacy-of-catholic-liberation-theology-the-road-to-hell-paved-with-irrational-intentions/