CONSTRUCTING COUNTER-CULTURE THROUGH LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Sebastian Kappen SJ (1924-93)

Abstract

Institutional, hierarchical, and established systems often consider critical voices and revolutionary ideologies unorthodox and fallacious. Since they enjoy self-given legitimacy and orthodoxy, they can easily marginalize and silence anything that is against them. This is evident in various sectors, also in religions. Our focus is on Sebastian Kappen SJ, one of the radical progressive Christian thinkers from India, who is eclipsed by the prevailing orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. Kappen was a Jesuit Catholic priest from the south Indian state of Kerala. He is generally called a liberation theologian. However, my research claims that he was much beyond that — I will come back to this later. Kappen was also the first Indian progressive theologian who came into conflict with the Vatican. In 1980, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) censored his monograph Jesus and Freedom.