1. Introduction
On May 12, 2026, at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, the current Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith delivered an opening lecture entitled « Milestones of Contextual Theology Today ».
On that occasion, Cardinal Fernández took it upon himself, among other things, to criticize the position that his predecessor Joseph Ratzinger expressed in his « Notification on the Works of Jon Sobrino S.J. » According to his view, Cardinal Ratzinger's assertion is mistaken when he affirms that the faith of the Church is the only theological locus. Fernández recalls that, shortly after that document was published, he himself took it upon himself to criticize it by pointing out this error, which would be excluding other starting points in theological reflection. However, Fernández himself expresses that such starting points would not be alternative to divine revelation but only complementary, although they do not cease to challenge « from the outset » all reflection.
Nevertheless, as the dissertation at the Urbaniana progresses, his position changes radically. Indeed, from a complementary place, the life of the people of God becomes a theological locus alternative to divine revelation contained in Tradition and Sacred Scripture. Cardinal Fernández himself expresses it unambiguously:
Sometimes a madman is needed, desperately in love with his land and his people, capable of separating the Gospel from some cultural shells that have clung to it and that are not part of its essential message, and of rereading it in the light of what his people live today. Then he manages to provoke what we might call not only a 'spiritual event,' but also a 'cultural and linguistic event' that allows the people to feel fully expressed in the proposal of the Gospel.
But he takes the decisive step when, citing Pope Francis, he affirms that, in reality, the life of the people of God is the only theological locus.
Now, to do theology in this way, would it be specific to Latin American theology and not to other theologies to which the Prelate refers, such as, for example, Roman or North European theology? Or, rather, would it be proper to all theology insofar as theology should be the expression of the life of the People of God?
The answer can be nothing other than this: the starting point assumed by Latin American theology is the proper way of all theology as theology: all theology must be the expression of the experience that the People of God has of divinity, of death, of the meaning of life, etc.
In reality, from this perspective, all theology must be the expression of a context, of the changing and dynamic situation of a people, whose primary experience of reality is expressed in a way different from that of other peoples. Thus, then, the content of theology is essentially variable. The same prefect expresses it:
It is ultimately the Gospel that, written in an ancient culture, now acquires another 'flesh' in popular rites, venerated images, aphorisms and customs, reflections, ways of living the faith, in music.
We ask ourselves, then, how did the cardinal prefect come to affirm such a thesis? What philosophy lurks behind this new way of doing « theology »?
2. The Philosophy Animating the New « Contextual Theology »
This « theology » that Cardinal Fernández proposes is evidently rejecting a way of doing theology that, apparently, results in being abstract, universal, unaware of the peculiarity of the life of peoples. For both the cardinal and Catholic modernism, it is imperative to permanently abandon a philosophy of being, which thinks there are constants in the intrinsic fabric of reality. His proposal is to embrace a philosophy essentially dynamic in character. Only in this way will « Catholic faith » be capable of raising, sustaining, and defending a thought that is allergic to all permanence, to all universality, to all reality that possesses invariable nuclei.
To achieve this objective, nothing better than to assume a hermeneutic philosophy that navigates the unstable waters of historical becoming. For this philosophy, the first act of the human soul is not to see (theory), is not to know the essence of corporeal being (the universal). At the beginning of everything is found a lived experience, a situation in which man is immersed. Hence, an authentic « contextual theology » must be capable of interpreting (not of knowing) the multifaceted ways in which all original lived experience is expressed.
This philosophy proposes, contrary to the metaphysical vision, not the existence of an absolutely objective order (to which human freedom should conform), but a new criterion of universality whose starting point is situated in the experience of different peoples. This new locus theologicus must abandon the universality of knowledge (considered too « impersonal ») and must discard necessary principles. In its place, it may embrace an authentic universality as a result of a historical coincidence that comes from the encounter between peoples and from a language common to nations. It is a process originating in historical facticity and converging, simultaneously, both toward the identity of each people and to consensual universality.
This universality, as we can see, is a universality that is being made, under construction, dynamic, whose contents can never be immovable. Living has marked priority over thinking and is the source from which the latter must be nourished: thinking has as its fundamental task to interpret what has been lived. One must avoid starting from an eternal order of things, or from data revealed by God.
3. « Contextual Theology »
Cardinal Fernández advocates for doing theology from the presuppositions referred to previously, as it requires putting one's « ear » to the lived experience of a people. From there, one will be able to read and interpret the « sapiential » content from which to signify God, man, and the world. Precisely, from this content the Gospel should be read. In reality, the content of the Gospel is also the product of one more sapiential content, formulated by the interpretation of the lived experience of the People of God in the times of Jesus.
Following the expressions of the same cardinal who guards correct Catholic doctrine, the content of the Gospel would be in consonance with the « flesh » that that moment assumed. But it is a flesh that in our time demands a profound interpretation that puts it in tune with the lived experience of the current People of God.
A theology that claims to formulate an intellectus fidei from a metaphysics of being is a disembodied theology, abstract, situated outside history. As Pope Francis would say, it is not a matter of importing « from outside a rationality alien to the people » (Evangelii gaudium, 232). The people only understand that which they live, not a revealed content that is completely foreign to them as the expression of the lived experience of another people (the Jewish people, for example). A content that is distant in time and in the way of conducting themselves toward divinity, toward other men, and toward the world. If we want a true inculturation, the Church must present a message that is the very expression of the experience of each people. Only thus will the people identify with the Catholic faith whose content will come to be entirely one with the content of their own practice.
One of the most prominent cultivators of this pseudo-theology of the people, Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone, asks himself a question (in our view, rhetorical), which reveals his intellectual honesty. Scannone points out that Latin American thought has not given an answer to a capital question, which consists in asking about the possibility of being able to reconcile the saying (which has as its horizon the being situated), on one hand, with the Christian understanding of the transcendence of God, creation, the history of salvation, and the universality of the people of God amid peoples, on the other. [New Starting Point in Latin American Philosophy, Guadalupe, Buenos Aires 1990, 36. See also, Carlos Daniel Lasa. « Theology of the People »: theology or ideology? In Annals of Theology, journal of Theology of the Catholic University of the Most Holy Trinity, Concepción Chile, 19.2, 2017, pp. 221-249].
Obviously, the answer is absolutely negative.
4. A New Church
Our thesis is that Pope Francis's attempt was to refound the Catholic Church. And refounding it required removing that element which was the true katechon: the metaphysics of being. In our view, this position is the essence of the so-called « Catholic modernism » and which has, over time, various cultivators.
Once the philosophy of being is removed, the fluidification of the content of revelation can be operated on, and in this way, make it accessible to any mentality of any epoch. According to the perspective of Cardinal Fernández, it is no longer a matter of determining which philosophy is most apt to understand the faith without corrupting it. The purpose is to give new content to « Catholic » faith, which is essentially variable, in order to be able to adapt to the different ways of thinking and acting of each people.
We believe that recovering and preserving authentic faith should be two of the main duties of the Bishop of Rome. Precisely, we are awaiting this from Pope Leo XIV.
And a clear sign in that direction would be to change, as soon as possible, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, whom Francis appointed to lay these foundations for the refounding of the Catholic Church.
The exposition by Fernández that we have mentioned and commented on in this article is sufficient proof of a man whose essentially modernist mentality wants to convert the Church of Christ into a pseudo-church. A Church that becomes world, and that allows history to completely absorb the eternal God, Creator and Savior.
This new Christianity resembles quite a bit the various faces that Benito Mussolini, referring to the chameleon-like fascism, described in these terms:
We do not believe in dogmatic programs… We allow ourselves the luxury of being aristocrats and democrats, conservatives and progressives, reactionaries and revolutionaries, legalists and non-legalists, according to the circumstances of time, place, and environment (Mussolini, B. (1934) Scritti e discorsi. Milano: Hoelpi, vol. II.).
Would to God that Pope Leo XIV interrupt this attempt to refound the Church of Christ, while at the same time putting all his strength into recovering the true essence of the Catholic Church. A Church that does not disdain authentic tradition since the same does not equate to immobilism, but rather to continuity and deepening in its unfolding.
In this way, he will exempt us from expressing what Saint Polycarp of Smyrna said, as Saint Irenaeus of Lyon tells us, in a letter addressed to a Christian who had abandoned the faith and was engaged in spreading errors, he expressed to him:
« This was not what our venerable master Saint Polycarp taught us. (…) And I can swear to you that, if Saint Polycarp heard the heresies that some are now saying, he would cover his ears and repeat that phrase he used to say: 'My God, why have you made me live until today to hear such horrors?' ».
* Carlos Daniel Lasa holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Córdoba and is a Researcher with Conicet. He has served as Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences at the National University of Villa María. Furthermore, he was a professor of philosophy at that same institution and at the Catholic Universities of Córdoba and Salta.