Entre o consolo e a profecia: poimênica da libertação diante de desafios pastorais contemporâneos

Abstract

The Latin American reality, deeply marked by social injustices, conflicts of interests between existing groups, further influenced by the characteristics of post-modernity, a culture of consumption and neoliberal capitalist globalization, challenges Latin American poimenics. The The observation that social and economic injustices affect all dimensions of the human being and these are caused by structures, logics and systems present in Latin American Society calls on Christian poimenics to develop a prophetic dimension which knows how to simultaneously balance caring for the person who is suffering with criticisms and articulations which aim at overcoming the structures, systems and logics which generate suffering. The analysis of the characteristics of Latin American poimenics shows, in general terms, that it is faced with innumerable difficulties to take on the social, political, religious and even cultural context as part of its mission. Its individualist and reductionist orientation impedes it from allying itself to the struggles for liberation which are in progress on the continent. Poimenics easily acquires a palliative characteristic when it isolates the individual from the historical context in which the person is inserted. A good part of these difficulties is due to its excessive dependence on United States and European models and presuppositions. Faced with this framework, this research sought, within presuppositions of Liberation Theology, resources to dialog with the challenges placed by the Latin American continent to poimenics. Such an attitude is justified through the observation that the latter is the most organic expression of Latin American theology in the last decades and it still preserves characteristics and presuppositions which dialog with the challenges set forth for Latin American poimenics. The concept option for the poor confers to poimenics the possibility of assuming a prophetic stance with regard to structures, systems and logics which cause people to suffer, thus, overcoming its individualist orientation. The research also sought, through the practical method of the ToL, resources for thinking and articulating theoretical and practical presuppositions of liberation poimenics on the horizon of the Latin American reality and based on specific cases.