From the Rev Deacon Dr Duncan Macpherson SIR – Your account of Piers Paul Read’s new novel Death of a Pope quotes him as saying that “Left-wing social Catholicism falsifies the Gospel and can promote violence” (Report, April 24).
Any attempt to translate Christian values into a political programme runs the risk of falsifying the Gospel but the promotion of violence is not the monopoly of those on the Left.
The Right-wing politics of Franco, Pinochet and countless other “Catholic” dictators led to repression, torture and murder on grand scale. Whatever distortions or failures of vision might be attributed to individual Latin American liberation theologians, it remains true that the majority of the innocent victims of political violence in Latin America in the 20th century were slaughtered by Rightwing death squads, often trained and supported by the CIA, acting on behalf of repressive dictatorships and monopolistic multinationals.
“Right-wing Catholicism twists the Gospel”?
Yours faithfully, DUNCAN MACPHERSON Hampton, Middlesex