Introduction

There are differing views among scholars of Paulo Freire’s work on whether his Christian faith is important in understanding his educational philosophy. English scholar Irwin Leopando, in the introduction to his book A Pedagogy of Faith: The Theological Vision of Paulo Freire, surveys various Freire scholars on this particular question and notes some of the differences among them¹. Some, he says, especially those “within Western intellectual and radical circles”² have foregrounded revolutionary Marxism to explain Freire’s commitment to social justice. Leopando agrees, if one chooses to focus on Freire’s use of Marxist analysis in the 1960s. However, he argues, it is not correct in the overarching context of Freire’s entire life. It fails to take account of his upbringing and early adulthood, and even his own description of how he saw his usage of Marx in relationship to his Catholic Christian faith. In an interview in 1974, Freire described that relationship as follows:

When I was a young man, I went to the people, to the workers, the peasants, motivated, really by my Christian faith… When I arrived with the people - the misery, the concreteness, you know! But also, the beauty of the people, the ability to love… The obstacles of this reality sent me - to Marx… Marx was a genius. But when I met Marx, I continued to meet Christ on the corners of the street - by meeting the people³.

In other words, even in his mid-fifties Freire held that his earliest Christian faith was not replaced by his later discovery of Marx but continued to remain intact as a fundamental guiding principle.

In addition to those who place an emphasis on Freire’s use of Marx there are those who overlook Freire’s Catholicism altogether, fail to give it the proper treatment it deserves, or reject it entirely. According to Leopando, “sociologist Stanley Aronowitz omits Catholic theology when enumerating the three main pillars of Freire’s thought.”⁴ Donald Macedo, in his introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Freire’s best-known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed makes no mention of Freire’s faith⁵. The same is true in his introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of the same⁶. Macedo is certainly aware that Freire came from a family where one of the parents was a Catholic. He mentions briefly Paulo’s mother’s faith and the fact that it shaped her moral values⁷. However, he fails to mention anything about the young boy’s own religious formation and how it contributed in later life to his thinking. He is not alone. Among those who neglect to pay sufficient attention to Freire’s religious upbringing, Leopando lists: Jones Irwin⁸, Peter Roberts⁹, Peter Mayo¹⁰, and Carlos Alberto Torres¹¹. Each has written extensive treatments of Freire’s work “while only mentioning his faith in passing, if at all”¹². Finally, Leopando highlights those who reject Freire’s Catholicism as a “legitimate basis” for his commitment to social justice. At the top of the list are Marxist educators John Dale and Emery J. Hyslop-Margison. They consider Freire’s Christianity a liability and decry him for not being critical of it¹³. In the end, they argue that “Praxis Marxist analytical techniques” were fundamental for Freire in his guiding work, not his Christianity¹⁴.

Leopando, on the other hand holds the view that Freire’s faith must be taken seriously and is in fact “the ontological ground of his consciousness”¹⁵. To him, Freire’s Catholicism is the thread that runs through his entire life from childhood to his final years; it is his abiding “moral compass.”¹⁶ Other scholars have drawn attention to the value of Freire’s Catholicism and various aspects of theology in terms of his overall work¹⁷. However, Leopando, is the only one to produce a monograph devoted entirely to the subject.

It is in the context of this discussion - indeed disagreement - over Freire’s Catholicism that this paper is situated. Given the limitations of space, it will confine itself to his best-known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed - first published in Spanish in 1968, later in English in 1970, and in the original Portuguese in 1972. In particular, the paper has in view Freire’s remarks in the preface, as well as chapters one and two of the book. The contention is that Freire’s Christian faith is clearly evident and functions as a grounding principle in understanding his work. Leopando considers Freire’s “philosophical anthropology” to be the “lynchpin of his pedagogical system”¹⁸ and I agree with him, at least with respect to Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I would argue though that the more appropriate term within the discipline of Catholic theology is “theological anthropology” or Christian anthropology. A general definition, which describes Freire’s approach well is “the interpretation of human existence in the light of Christian faith.”¹⁹ It considers all aspects of humanity in its origin, nature and destiny - both individually and collectively and is further divided into such questions as creation, image and likeness of God, freedom, evil and sin, grace, holiness, hope, love, salvation, and eschatology. It is a category of theology interrelated with others (e.g., trinity, Christology, revelation and faith, pneumatology, ecclesiology, etc.), though theological anthropology is most closely tied to Christology, “wherein Christ is portrayed as the paradigm of the human as intended by the creator.”²⁰ The renewed emphasis in Catholic theology on Christ’s full humanity in the 20^th century therefore also impacted theological anthropology. It is through this broader renewal of Catholic theology in the previous century therefore that Freire was also influenced. It should be noted though that Freire was not a professional theologian. Therefore, one should not look for an explicit, fully developed theological system in his work. Instead, his use of “theology” and theological language is an expression of his lived commitment to his own faith shaped by his context. Terms frequently used in Pedagogy of the Oppressed such as “freedom”, “human liberation”, “fully human”, “justice”, and “despair”²¹ are the vocabulary of Christian anthropology. Claims such as “fatalism in the guise of docility… is related to a distorted view of God” or that the oppressed see their plight “as the will of God - as if God were the creator of this ‘organized disorder’”²² are also theological and in line with positive developments in 20^th century thinking where human agency in the divine-human encounter is foregrounded. The same is true with statements such as “Freedom is not an ideal located outside of humanity; nor is it an idea which becomes a myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion”²³. Thus, to the theologically trained reader, Freire’s writing in the early parts of Pedagogy of the Oppressed are rife with faith-grounded claims. Perhaps most striking is his predominant optimism about human nature - even in his view of the oppressor. As biographer Denis E. Collins rightly notes, Freire’s optimism is related to a theological conviction, namely his belief “that all men and women can someday become as fully human and free as their Creator intends them to be”²⁴.

The paper will proceed in three sections. The first and second will review some of what has already been written in support of the argument that Freire’s faith was influential in shaping his educational philosophy. As such it will consider his upbringing and early adulthood, educational influences, his involvement - directly or indirectly - in the Catholic Left in Brazil and various theologians who are said to have influenced him. The third section will broaden the first two and propose a further contribution to the argument by identifying an additional factor that transformed Catholicism in the 20^th century, namely the turn to anthropology within theology. This is, I contend, among the most important of that which shaped the landscape of theology and the culture of Catholicism more generally and would have influenced Freire and those with whom he came into contact in numerous direct and indirect ways. The goal of the paper is to bring this additional consideration to the fore, to strengthen and contribute to the discussion around the extent to which his faith matters in his theological outlook on human nature. Little has been done by systematic and historical theologians on Freire’s work. Hopefully, this will encourage further research in this area as well as further collaboration between scholars in education and critical pedagogy and those in the area of theology.

1. Freire’s formation - educational and professional experiences

In order to understand Freire’s commitment to human justice, it is important first to understand his childhood, family struggles, education and early work leading up to the mid-1960s when Pedagogy of the Oppressed was written. Once these have been described, the paper will look at Freire’s relationship to his Catholic Christian faith, religious influences, and his involvement with Catholic organizations in Brazil.

Paulo Freire was born the youngest of four children on September 19, 1921, in the city of Recife in northeast Brazil²⁵. Although half of the population in the area lived in abject poverty, Freire’s family was considered middle-class. His father served in the Brazilian Army and later as a miliary police officer and his mother was a homemaker and seamstress. They lived in relative comfort for the first eight years of Paulo’s life until the Great Depression struck in 1929. This, together with his father’s loss of employment meant the family needed to move to the town of Jaboatão, ten miles south, to a smaller home. In the immediate years that followed, Paulo’s father’s health declined and in 1934 he died, sending the family further into poverty. As the family became poorer, Paulo did worse in school. Although their financial situation improved shortly thereafter when Paulo’s siblings each found work, this particular time in his life left a permanent mark on him. According to Richard Shaull, it was in Jaboatão that Freire decided to dedicate himself “to the struggle against hunger, so that other children would not have to know the agony he was experiencing”²⁶. Through the efforts of his mother, Paulo was able to secure a scholarship and attend a private high school in Recife. In 1941, at the age of twenty, he started working as a teacher of Portuguese; he would continue with this work for the next six years. At the same time, he began to study law and the philosophy and psychology of language at the University of Pernambuco. It was during this time, Leopando notes, as he “devoured works on education, psychology, and philosophy” that “his interests coalesced around the subject matter that would constitute his life’s work - the philosophy of education”²⁷.

In 1944, Freire married Elza Maria Costa de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher. In 1947, he finished as a teacher of Portuguese and began as the director of the Department of Education and Culture of Pernambuco’s Social Service Ministry (SESI). He worked at SESI for ten years and according to his own words was “involved in the most important political-pedagogical practice” of his life²⁸. It was there, John Elias maintains, that Freire became “increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional methods for dealing with illiteracy that posited an authoritarian relation between the teacher and pupil”²⁹. Instead, he began to formulate ideas that “would later develop into his dialogical methodology”³⁰. When he finished at SESI in 1957, he concentrated on his studies and in 1959 completed his doctorate at the University of Pernambuco. The research for his dissertation drew largely on the work and insights gained during the previous decade. The dissertation would form the basis for his first book³¹Education as the Practice of Freedom³².

In the early 1960s, Freire became involved in various educational movements aimed at reform. One of them was the Movement for Popular Culture (MCP), which permitted him to operationalize some of his theories. Through MCP, Freire experimented with non-traditional forms of education that shifted the emphasis to the learner. He would later describe this approach as follows: “Instead of a teacher, we had a coordinator; instead of lectures, dialogue; instead of pupils, group participants; instead of alienating syllabi, compact programs that were ‘broken down’… into learning units”³³. The goal was “to raise class consciousness and to increase the popular vote” by studying Brazilian society and culture.³⁴ Early on, the leadership of the MCP was Roman Catholic and most of the active participants were Catholic university students interested in social justice³⁵. However, as Elias explains, members of the Communist Party in Brazil began to join the MCP, so Freire shifted his work to the Cultural Extension Service of the University of Pernambuco³⁶.

In 1963, Freire was appointed the director of the national literacy campaign and developed a program modeled after a similar one in Cuba, which had significantly reduced illiteracy in that country³⁷. Alongside Freire’s program was the Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB), an organization sponsored by the Catholic Church also aimed at promoting literacy throughout the country. Through his work in the Cultural Extension Service, Freire was responsible for coordinating MEB’s efforts across Brazil³⁸. MEB was started in 1961, spearheaded by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (CNBB). According to Leopando, the MEB and Freire’s literacy programs “constituted the most active and wide-ranging educational campaign in the early 1960s”³⁹. There was a good deal of methodological overlap between them as well as with other organizations belonging to what was known as the “Catholic Left” (discussed below) because members moved between the groups and shared ideas⁴⁰. Freire himself identified topics such as nationalism, the political evolution of Brazil, development, illiteracy, and democracy as commonly shared themes.⁴¹ But as literacy grew and the poor became increasingly aware of the injustice of their socio-economic situation, opposition to these literacy programs grew among the conservatives in the country. Freire’s intention was never to cause revolt; it was to expand democratization through increased self-awareness and self-advocacy. Nevertheless, he was accused of the former⁴². The literacy plan came to an end in 1964 when President João Goulart’s government was overthrown by the military. Freire and others associated with the left were imprisoned for subversive activity. Freire remained there until being exiled - initially and briefly to Bolivia and later for five years to Chile. It was there that he would write his first book Education as the Practice of Freedom - drawing not only on his theoretical insights from his education but also his experience with the literacy initiatives. Several years later he would write is best-known work Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

2. Freire’s formation - early faith, ecclesial and theological influences

Beneath Freire’s earliest experiences of poverty, his educational formation and work in national literacy, was his faith. During his childhood, he was positively influenced by his parents, especially his mother who was a “devout Catholic”⁴³. Moreover, he grew up in a country where the Roman Catholic Church was the predominant religious influence and where the Catholic hierarchy wielded a great deal of influence, including social and political sway. He came of age during a time that progressive Catholic organizations began to emerge, populated by intellectuals, university students, and professionals. They were tired of the traditional form of Catholicism and its emphasis on individual piety, obedience to divine authority and contempt for the world. Instead, they embraced new intellectual currents and focused their attention on worldly problems, supported by fresh readings of Gospel, the examples of Jesus, and the papal social teachings of the Catholic Church⁴⁴.

Paulo Freire was born into a religious home. Although his father was not a Christian, he was a spiritual man. Reflecting on his influence in his later life, Paulo said that his father “had another understanding of Christ. He did not choose to go to church. He had nothing to do with the church, Catholic or Protestant”⁴⁵. But he was a tolerant man, which was unusual in the male-dominated society of Brazil at the time. He did not impose his views on the rest of the family but discussed them alongside other religious views. From this, Paulo learned the value of freedom and respect, which he would eventually use in his approach to education. As he would later recall, “I remember how I grew up in this atmosphere of respect… it was not difficult for me to understand that as an educator I should respect my students, because I had been respected by my father and my mother”⁴⁶.

Paulo’s mother on the other hand was a practicing Catholic and through her own life of faith shaped Paulo’s. He was raised a Catholic, which according to James Kirylo “had a significant impact on shaping his perspective and his later pedagogical theories and activism.”⁴⁷ Through his mother’s influence as well as his father’s he learned the importance of the alignment of faith and action at an early age and to decry it when he saw it being violated. He recalled that at the age of six he was angry at having seen his grandmother, motivated by racial prejudice speaking inappropriately to a black woman. Using the language of a child, he told his parents that it was impossible to be a Christian and at the same time to discriminate against another person for any reason⁴⁸. This early faith formation was important. His friend Maocir Gadotti recalled that when he was young, he once went for a walk “compelled by a ‘certain pleasant and daring intimacy with Christ’ and full of a ‘sweetly Christian’ vision”⁴⁹. Through spiritual moments such as these and especially through the influence of his mother, he even considered becoming a priest, though he gave it up once found out that priests couldn’t marry⁵⁰.

In his early twenties, Freire distanced himself briefly from the Church. The reason was that the growing disconnect between what he saw on the streets and what he heard preached from the pulpit on Sunday was too much. He would later say that the distance though was from the Church and “never from God.” He returned the following year mainly through hearing the lectures of “Tristão de Ataíde”⁵¹, the pseudonym of Brazilian political activist and Catholic intellectual Alceu Amoroso Lima. Lima would become head of Catholic Action in Brazil and later a member of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace⁵². In addition to Lima, Freire began reading, among others, French author Georges Bernanos who lived in Brazil from 1938 to 1945, French personalist philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, and Jacques Maritain, a French neo-Thomist philosopher⁵³. Maritain was one of the best-known public intellectuals of the twentieth century; he also impacted Lima. Along with other individuals and movements, these Catholic thinkers would have a notable influence on Freire’s formation, ultimately contributing to the shape of his work.

Catholicism in Brazil from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth was undergoing an enormous transformation. Prior Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822, the Church was not an overly powerful institution, especially in comparison with its neighbouring countries. The diocesan clergy were spread throughout the countryside and were influenced more by the elite than by their own bishops⁵⁴. The situation changed though with the creation of the Republic of Brazil in 1889. The local Church and state became formally separated. Now with the backing and resources of Rome, the institutional Church in Brazil began to grow in size and power. To put it in terms of numbers, in 1889 there was one archdiocese and only eleven dioceses. Four years later, Pope Leo XIII created an additional archdiocese and four new dioceses. From then on, the Church grew rapidly. In 1900, there were seventeen dioceses and archdioceses; by 1920 there were fifty-eight; and by 1964, there were 178. Thus, the structure of the Brazilian Church grew by approximately 1,500% in the brief period of only seventy years.⁵⁵ Along with its size, it grew more independent and politically powerful, adhering to the conservative positions of Rome against things like Socialism and Protestantism and sealing itself off from society for protection. However, since these were not actual problems in Brazil, the institutional Church in the early part of the twentieth century “alienated itself from the Brazilian reality”⁵⁶.

As Leopando describes it, in the early part of the twentieth century the Church found itself in a paradoxical situation⁵⁷. On the one hand it was potentially a powerful force within a largely Catholic country. On the other hand, it exerted little influence, politically, intellectually, and even religiously. One of the reasons was the religious illiteracy of the people. Many Brazilians were uncatechised, so the Church was unknown and thus irrelevant⁵⁸. Indications of this, according to Thomas Bruneau, “could be found in the lack of religion in most fields of social action including politics, arts and letters; in the lack of vocations, finances and organizations; and in the lack of Catholics among intellectual elites”⁵⁹. Another reason, which was related to the first, was the shortage of clergy. To respond to this situation, the hierarchy channeled its efforts into recruiting and mobilizing lay Catholic elites “to advocate for the Church’s goals in the public square”⁶⁰. One of the results of this would be the formation of a “Catholic Left” in Brazil⁶¹.

According to Thomas Sanders the “Catholic Left” was a movement among the Catholic elites in Brazil that focused broadly on “economic development and social change”⁶². Its origins can be traced to the 1920s and 1930s, through such organizations as the Catholic Electoral League (LEC) and the Centro Dom Vital. The Centro was created in 1922. Its first director was Jackson de Figueiredo who remained in that role until his death in 1928. He was succeeded by the earlier mentioned Alceu Amoroso Lima. The Centro was small but effective in the Church’s development⁶³. As Leopando writes, it “rapidly became a gathering place for many of the most gifted Catholic leaders of the twentieth century”, including Helder Câmara and Paulo Freire himself⁶⁴. The LEC was started by the Catholic bishops in the early 1930s with the assistance of individuals like Amoroso Lima⁶⁵ to create pressure in support of certain issues of Catholic teaching, such as the indissolubility of marriage and mandatory teaching of religious education in public schools⁶⁶. It was especially effective in getting the majority of its suggestions into Brazil’s new constitution in 1934. Together with the Centro, the LEC helped to create the Catholic Left by encouraging the laity to become vocal and to participate in worldly affairs.

One of the ways in which the Centro helped to revitalize Brazilian Catholicism was to assist with the founding of Catholic Action (ACB) in the country in the mid-1930s⁶⁷. ACB was a lay organization that had its roots in Italy in the 19^th century. By the 1930s, there were branches in Catholic countries such as France, Portugal, and Belgium. Although it was a lay association, it was very much attached to the formal structures of the Church. In 1927, Pope Pius XI made this clear in his definition of it as the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy. Initially ACB was quite conservative with each local branch managed by the local bishop and overseen by a priest. Activities included religious education, liturgical practice, devotional piety, and sexual ethics⁶⁸. However, in the mid-1940s this started to change. Fr. Helder Câmara was appointed the national chaplain to ACB in 1947 and began to move the organization towards a more progressive, socially conscious one. Soon its agenda included more pastoral matters such as illiteracy and poverty. Câmara would become the auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro five years later. At the same time as ACB was moving to the left an “extremely competent group of young clergy” from Europe⁶⁹, especially Dominicans from France, were appointed to guide ACB. They brought with them new social ideas of the time.

Paulo Freire and his wife Elza became active members of ACB during these years of renewal under the leadership of Câmara. According to Leopando, it provided them with “their first immersion within a proto-activist Catholic milieu… that foregrounded socioeconomic issues as areas of vital concern”⁷⁰. It was also through ACB that Freire would meet the professional contacts that would lead to his work at SESI⁷¹.

Another organization that helped stimulate the Catholic Left in Brazil was one called Catholic University Youth (JUC). JUC was one of the bodies that fell under the broader umbrella of Catholic Action. Started shortly after ACB in the 1930s, the earliest form of JUC had a similarly conservative orientation. However, also like ACB, it changed to become more socially progressive after the war. JUC followed the same method of social analysis as similar movements like Young Christian Workers (JOC) and the Young Christian Students (JEC), namely See-Judge-Act. Originating with Thomas Aquinas, See-Judge-Act was an approach to developing a critical awareness among followers using a three-step process. First, people would be encouraged to look around themselves and “see” what was happening. Second, they would evaluate that reality and make a “judge”-ment about it. Finally, after the first two steps, they would be encouraged to “act”. During Freire’s time at the University of Pernambuco he often came into contact with students from JUC and many of them would become volunteers for his “emerging conscientizing literacy programs”⁷². This is not surprising given that their analysis, like his own started with the concrete reality of human living. By the early 1960s however, many in JUC had moved closer to the Brazilian Communist Party and forms of Marxism that espoused violence. Freire though did not belong at this point with these more extreme forms of the Catholic Left⁷³. Given the radicalized turn of the JUC, in July 1961 the Brazilian bishops issued “an extremely strong directive” forbidding the JUC to engage in “undesirable political activities”⁷⁴. “Christians,” it said, “cannot consider socialism a solution.” Nor can they accept a “doctrine that espouses violence as valid and acceptable”⁷⁵. The leadership of the JUC though was entrenched, so many with the organization moved to other Catholic groups. Among them were Freire’s education program and the Church-sponsored MEB, mentioned above. The most radical and contentious though was the newly formed Popular Action (AP).

Popular Action (AP) began in June 1962. Although it was not officially connected with the Catholic Church, some considered it a “para-Christian organization” while others found it to be the clearest expression of the Catholic Left in the early 1960s⁷⁶. According to Thomas Bruneau, AP quickly became “the most revolutionary organization in Brazil”⁷⁷. Within months it released a “Base Document” that made its core convictions clear. It said that “our only obligation is toward man. Toward Brazilian man… who is born in the shadow of premature death… who lives with the specter of hunger… who travels… without hope… who grows up stupid and illiterate… far from the blessings of real freedom”⁷⁸. According to Emmanuel de Kadt, AP’s basic principles were derived from the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier. However, it also found inspiration in two other principal sources, the French Jesuit Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his views on socialization, a subject emphasized in John XXIII’s encyclical Mater et Magistra the previous year, and the German philosopher, G.W.F Hegel with his views on the dialectics of evolution. Hegel’s views came to AP through the Brazilian Jesuit philosopher Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz, who had done much work on humanization, historical consciousness, hope, and eschatology⁷⁹. In Leopando’s view, AP’s ideology was “an explosive synthesis of Christian Personalism, Marxism, and religious existentialism”⁸⁰. AP used a similar educational philosophy as Freire and a praxis that also promoted conscientization⁸¹. In other words, there was a cross-fertilization of ideas within the Catholic milieu that Freire inhabited in the early 1960s. Although Freire’s views at that time were “far less revolutionary” he later adopted many similar ones during his time in Chile, which were “most visible” in works such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed⁸². In 1964, when the military overthrew the Goulart government, AP was suppressed and many of its members suffered more violent persecution than any other group in the country.

The final thing to consider before moving to the third section and looking at developments taking place within theology in the twentieth century are the Catholic theologians who influenced Freire. According to Leopando three in particular were “decisive influences” in progressive Catholic circles during the time that Freire’s ideas were maturing. The three were Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin⁸³. They were the ones that “deeply influenced” him in his “lifelong concern with ‘humanization’” ⁸⁴ Leopando considers their impact in four areas of Freire’s thinking: Catholic anthropology; the uniqueness of humans and culture within the wider world of animals; the human person and historical consciousness; and dialogue and the relational nature of humanity. In each of these, he argues that one or more of them were instrumental in the development of Freire’s thinking. For his anthropology, all three had a “decisive impact” but Mounier and Maritain were especially significant. For Freire’s understanding of humanity and its relationship to culture, Teilhard was especially influential, notably his notion of socialization and his theory of hominization in which Freire saw resonances with his own in terms of conscientization. Freire’s optimism about the transformative potential of human agency was similar to Teilhard’s view of human activity as the center of worldly progress. Regarding historical consciousness, Leopando maintains that it was Mounier’s work that helped Freire to reject the idea that history is predetermined and instead to see that humans are agents of historical change. The Brazilian theologians Almery Bezerra de Melo and the earlier mentioned Lima Vaz both were active and influential on promoting this meaning of historical consciousness throughout the country. For Leopando “Freire’s educational philosophy bears clear imprints of Bezerra’s and Lima Vaz’s thought.”⁸⁵ Both were also influenced by Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard. Finally, Freire’s understanding of the relational nature of humanity, including his attention to the “I-Thou” relationship is owed to Martin Buber, but also to Maritain, Mounier and to Catholic anthropology more generally, “which strongly rejects individualistic notions of self-sufficiency or self-invention.”⁸⁶ Standing back and looking more broadly over the theological influences on Freire, Leopando concludes that his “youthful encounter with the works of Jacques Maritain, Emanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin shaped his educational praxis for the rest of his life.”⁸⁷

3. Currents of reform in catholic theology in the 20^th century and their reception in Brazil

This overview of influences on Freire is useful in understanding how organizations and individuals influenced his faith, something he carried with him even at the end of his life. Indeed, in one of his last writings he spoke about the challenge of faith and how its shapes a person and their obligation toward others. He wrote:

It is not easy to have faith. Above all, it is not easy due to the demands faith places on whoever experiences it. It demands a stand for freedom, which implies respect for freedom of others, in an ethical sense, in the sense of humility, coherence, and tolerance⁸⁸.

His parents and especially his mother, his early childhood experiences of poverty and later involvement with SESI, his interactions with Catholic organizations such as the Centro, ACB, JUC, MCP, MEB, and prominent theologians such as Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard, were all no doubt important in differing ways and to various degrees. However, the purpose of this third section is to focus on one of the changes that was sweeping through Catholic theology during this time that also undoubtedly had an influence, namely the renewal of Catholic anthropology. During the twentieth century Catholic theology was reconceptualizing its understanding of the human person. The work was inspiring new centres of study, new movements and was being communicated through new and existing journals and periodicals. Modern travel and the structure of the Catholic Church, with its international network of bishops and priests as well as religious communities meant that these new ideas could move more quickly and easily around the world. It is to this renewal in Catholic anthropology that I now wish to turn. It is my contention that this too had an impact on Freire, directly or indirectly and thus also needs to be considered. In what follows, I outline five developments that took place in Catholic anthropology in the twentieth century.⁸⁹ I then describe some of the ways that these developments reached Brazil, in particular through French Catholic theologians, before finally offering a conclusion.

In 1958, just a year after Freire finished at SESI and a year before completing his doctorate at the University of Pernambuco, the Belgian theologian Gustave Thils published a book Orientations de la théologie in which he devoted an entire section to what he called “the century of anthropology”⁹⁰. The focus was on work done by theologians in the twentieth century on the human person. According to Dries Bosschaert, although all of them shared the same goal of turning attention to humanity, their works were not all the same⁹¹. Some focused on the reasons for doing so - political and theological; others looked at the results; and finally, some noted that the turn towards human beings and not God was at times controversial. In his book The Anthropological Turn, Bosschaert surveys these various currents of thought coalescing around the theme of the human person and identifies five categories: the human person (Christian humanism); the human person’s worldly activities (theology of earthly realities); the history in which the human person is placed (theology of history); the society to which humans contribute (theology of society); and the people who function as the church’s presence in the world (theology of the laity). Each of these overlaps in various ways with the above-named influences on Freire and show that Catholic theologians were reflecting on and writing about them during the same time that Freire was active. The five categories will be described in the same order as above.

Theological reflection on the human person, or Christian humanism emerged in the 1930s. Contrary to the earlier notion that Christianity aided people in perfecting themselves through personal piety, Christian humanism focused on what it means to become more fully human. Inspired by the renewal of Thomism in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris, Christian humanism turned to a “phenomenological analysis of the human person”⁹². One of the best-known influences in the area was Jacques Maritain and his book Humanisme integral⁹³. Using Neo-Thomist principles, Maritain considered both value of the human person and society together. However, Maritain’s approach was decidedly theocentric. According to him, the human person only received value in relation to God. As he wrote: “The creature cannot be disregarded or annihilated before God, nor can it be rehabilitated without God or against God; it must be rehabilitated in God”⁹⁴. In the words of Bosschaert: “while Maritain’s Christian humanism was characterized by a creative openness, it shared the strict intellectualism and conceptualism of Roman Neo-Thomism”⁹⁵. Pushing back against this strict form of Neo-Thomism was the Nouvelle théologie⁹⁶ movement that started in the 1930s. It too emphasized a form of Christian humanism, but one that turned towards human existence and underscored the human person, created in the image of God and destined for fulfillment in God. Both it and the stricter Neo-Thomist approach found inspiration in the existentialism of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger as well as Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel⁹⁷.

In addition to focusing on the individual, Christian humanism also considered the person in society. The best-known philosopher and strongest proponent of this approach was Emmanuel Mounier, who was influenced early on by Maritain. Another advocate was the French Jesuit Yves De Montcheuil. De Montcheuil used Maurice Blondel’s philosophy of L’Action “to affirm the theological character of human action… and promote the faithful’s active involvement in social life”⁹⁸. Others joined De Montcheuil and published their work in the journal Témoignage chrétien founded in 1941. After the war ended, notes Bosschaert, this form of Christian humanism that required societal engagement “strongly influenced the Catholic contribution to the post-war reconstruction”⁹⁹.

The second category in the turn to anthropology was a theological interest in human activity in the world. It involved both theological reflection on the activity itself as well as the value of the results. As Bosschaert explains, it was motivated by two concerns: Marxist materialism, which dismissed the divine, and the spiritualistic tendencies of conceptual Neo-Thomism, which failed to take properly into account the concrete, historical world in which people lived¹⁰⁰. In the 1930s, French Dominicans Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu were also working in this area. Congar was encouraging theologians to take history seriously, whereas Chenu spoke about history as the place where the incarnation of the Word happened in an on-going way. There were three sites in particular where God was interacting with humanity: art, science and technology, and human work. Regarding the first, Dominicans Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey founded L’Art sacré movement in 1937 that connected theology and the modern world to art. They promoted their ideas through their own writings as well as the journal of the same name L’Art sacré. Regarding science and technology, Darwin’s theory of evolution had challenged traditional biblical notions of monogenism. This opened the way for a theological interpretation of evolution. The primary figure in this regard was the French Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Finally, given the growing size of the working class, theologians began to reflect on the value of human labour. Historically, Catholic theology had linked the hardship of labour to original sin. However, in the early twentieth century a more positive approach started to appear. In the 1940s and 1950s, Chenu wrote two important books¹⁰¹ that were based on his experiences with the Young Christian Workers (JOC) and others, as well as on the ideas of Simone Weil. He was joined by his confrere, Louis-Joseph Lebret who in 1941 founded the association Économie et Humanisme. Its purpose what to bring together the social doctrine of the church with human sciences to lay the foundation for a “human ecomony”¹⁰².

These first two categories of humanism and human activity raised interest in the nature of history itself, from which came efforts to develop a theology of history. The war and post-war period presented the world with two opposing realities with which to wrestle. Negatively, the war demonstrated the worst of humanity’s potential. Positively, the post-war period, with its scientific and technological progress showed the capability of humanity to build a better future. Marxism had already offered the framework for developing a theory of history wherein humanity was active as the beginning and end of the process. The challenge to theologians was to develop a Christian understanding of history. The Protestant theologian Oscar ^{Cullmann was one of the first to do so in his 1946} book Christus und die Zeit¹⁰³. He was soon joined by Catholic theologians doing the same. According to Bosschaert, generally speaking these theologians tended to be in one of two camps: in terms of salvation history, one focusing on the incarnation and the other on eschatology¹⁰⁴. The former saw the incarnation as a sign of the positive value of the present time and a hope for a better future. Teilhard de Chardin was a source of inspiration for this group whose members included the Jesuit theologian Léopold Malevez, Dominican theologians Maurice Montuclard, and Dominic Dubarle, as well as the rector of the Institut catholique de Paris, Bruno de Solages.¹⁰⁵ The latter tendency saw the present day as fleeting and chose instead to focus on the eschaton, that is, the world-to-come. The two most prominent members were the Oratorian priest and theologian Louis Bouyer and the Jesuit theologian, Jean Daniélou¹⁰⁶.

The fourth category relates to theological reflection on society and the world and begins with Catholic social teaching (CST). Although the tradition of CST started in the mid-nineteenth century in Mainz, Germany with Bishop Wilhelm-Emmanuel von Ketteler’s concern for the working class¹⁰⁷, it received its first papal endorsement with Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum. A next important stage in Catholic social teaching, according to Bosschaert, happened during the interwar period¹⁰⁸. In opposition to both National Socialism and Communism, Pope Pius XI’s vision of a human society guided by both reason and Revelation began to take hold. The ideal that emerged was a kind of mediaeval Catholic society that would bring people back together again in community. Jacques Maritain as well as the French historian Henri-Irénée Marrou were notable influences. Maritain’s earlier mentioned Humanisme integral had not only promoted Christian humanism, but also envisioned a new Christianity that was incorporated into the present-day context, “although the temporal always remained subordinate to the eternal”¹⁰⁹. Maritain’s and Marrou’s ideas though as well as those promoting a similar proposal were met with rejection in the post-World War II period. Instead, a “Catholic Left” began to emerge emphasizing “the human person and an engagement with Marxist thought”¹¹⁰. Their ideas were promoted through the French periodical La Revue Nouvelle, founded in 1945 and edited by Jean Delfosse and its Dutch-language counterpart Universitas founded in 1932. The former was a continuation of an earlier one that was started by Belgian theologian, Jacques Leclercq who had been a chaplain to the JUC. Many of Leclercq’s colleagues continued to contribute to La Revue Nouvelle focusing on an analysis of the present-day situation and promoting a spirituality for the laity. The latter journal, Universitas, was the platform for a Dutch student organization within the Catholic university that sought to give students and faculty a forum to express their Christian identity. They began to form a “pray-think-work” community that developed around the Belgian theologian Albert Dondeyne. All of these European Catholic Left movements, writes Bosschaert, “developed, in line with societal changes, towards a more international approach, adopting a critical posture towards society”¹¹¹.

The fifth and final category was the development of a theology of the laity. For most of the history of the Church, the hierarchy’s view of laypeople was somewhere between disregard and distain. The focus in terms of membership was on the hierarchy. The well-known 1867 letter of Monsignor George Talbot to Cardinal Manning is representative of how laypeople were viewed by the hierarchy at the time. Talbot wrote: “What is the province of the laity? To hunt, to shoot, to entertain. These matters they understand, but to meddle with ecclesiastical matters, they have no right at all”¹¹². This though changed in the twentieth century. In 1905, Pope Pius X decided to draw various lay social and charitable initiatives into a Catholic Action movement, which would be under the supervision of the authority of the Church. Several decades later, Pope Pius XI gave it a more formal structure, defining it (as mentioned above) as the participation of the laity in the mission of the hierarchy. This narrow view though began to open up with his successor, Pope Pius XII. In his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, which used the Pauline image of the Body of Christ as the central understanding of the Church, laypeople were considered members of the body. At the same time that things were moving with the papal magisterium, Catholic Action was also developing. One of its forms was the more traditional one already described, which was parish-based and controlled by the hierarchy. The earlier discussed ACB was the Brazilian branch of this movement. The other one was not parish-based, but instead followed the lines of social class. It took the form of such groups as those mentioned earlier: Young Christian Workers (JOC), Young Christian Students (JEC), and Catholic University Students (JUC), which had a Brazilian branch. Driven by the “see-judge-act” method, they were much more socially and politically engaged.

Another occurrence that inspired greater attention to the laity was the publication of two books in the 1940s. The first was in 1943 by French theologians Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel entitled La France, pays de mission¹¹³. Their involvement in Catholic Action as well as their research conducted in the field made it clear that lay people were abandoning the Church. Their work had been commissioned by the French Cardinal, Emmanuel Suhard. In 1937 Suhard founded the seminary Mission de France and in 1943 a similar one Mission de Paris. Both had as their goal the formation of clergy to evangelize the French working class. The second book that drew attention to the laity was one published in 1947 by Suhard himself, entitled Essor ou déclin de l’Église¹¹⁴. According to Bosschaert, Suhard’s book “stimulated new and existing initiatives in both practical and intellectual fields”¹¹⁵. In terms of practice, lay Catholic organizations like those in Brazil were already spreading around the world and efforts were being made to coordinate them at the international level. One example was the establishment of the Conférence des Organisations internationales catholiques (OIC) in the early 1950s. Another was the organizing of World Congresses on the Lay Apostolate which took place in 1951, 1957 and 1967¹¹⁶. Also in terms of practice were the so-called “worker priests” a pastoral movement that formed around the French Dominican Jacques Loew. Loew had also been the secretary of the earlier mentioned association Économie et humanisme founded by Lebret. Worker priests were clergy who laboured alongside the lay working-class in factories, mills, and shops. The movement was initially supported by the magisterium. However, it fell out of favour in the 1950s as many of the priests began to get involved in trade unions and eventually with those in communist parties. It was officially ended in November 1953¹¹⁷.

In additional to the practical initiatives, there were theological developments also happening in the area of ecclesiology. Slowly theologians and others were beginning to see the Church not as an institution but as a community of believers. In this renewed understanding of Church, lay people had a more active role since they too were baptized members along with the clergy. This was the view of the earlier mentioned Dominican theologian Maurice Montuclard among others. Alongside of this, theologians were asking what it meant to speak of laypeople participating in the threefold office of Christ, that is as priest, prophet, and king. In this regard, questions were raised about the extent of their ability to teach and to lead within the Church. One of the most important works of the time on this topic was Yves Congar’s Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat¹¹⁸. Others too such as the German Jesuit Karl Rahner and the Italian Pietro Pavan also made important contributions¹¹⁹.

These five categories of theological development in anthropology show a network of theologians working in the area, inspiring the emergence of new research centers and international associations focused on humanity and the world. This was the broader theological background emerging as Freire as a Catholic was developing his ideas. But how did these developments move from Europe to Latin America and in particular to Brazil? Sociologists Michael Löwy and Jesús García-Ruiz argue that the Brazilian Church and the Catholic Left in the country were heavily influenced by French catholic theology in the twentieth century¹²⁰. Alceu Amoroso Lima played a significant role, as did Louis-Joseph Lebret and a network of Dominican priests, French and Brazilian, Emmanuel Mounier, the JUC and others. The earlier mentioned Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz and Almery Bezerra de Melo were also important. A survey of how French Catholicism influenced the Brazilian Church during this time shows many intersections with Freire and the progressive developments in Catholic anthropology.

The earliest French influences in the Brazilian Church, post-independence, were in the seminaries. The underdeveloped Church created an opportunity for Rome to structure the country along the lines of European Catholicism and its cultural values. It included as part of that program the formation of clergy and the reform of religious orders. Seminaries in the important dioceses such as Mariana and Salvador de Bahia were turned over to the French Vincentians and one was entrusted to the French Capuchin friars; the most qualified students were sent to France and to Rome¹²¹. Trained according to the Roman manuals of the time in an a-temporal, objective and deductive style of theology they returned to Brazil strongly opposed to liberalism and modernism and very much unprepared for the modern society that was emerging in the country¹²². This though would soon change.

According to Löwy and García-Ruiz, the leading intellectual of French Catholicism in Brazil in the twentieth century was Alceu Amoroso Lima, who Freire began to follow in the 1940s. No one played as central a role as him in the transformation of Brazilian Catholicism from the 1910s to the end of the 1950s¹²³. His first trips to France at an early age were brief but when he was twenty years old, he stayed for almost a year. During that time, he met the Brazilian writer José Pereira da Graça Aranha who encouraged Amoroso Lima to participate in the literary and philosophical modernization of Brazil. He also came into contact with the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson and poet Anatole France¹²⁴. Amoroso Lima returned quickly to Brazil when World War I broke out. But his time in Paris had left a deep impression on him. His close contact with French thinkers moved him to reflect on modernity and new ways of thinking. At the end of the war in 1919 he began to publish under the pseudonym that he became well known for, Tristão de Ataíde. He also began to communicate regularly with the director of the Centro Dom Vital, Jackson de Figueiredo on matters political but also philosophical and religious. Amorosa Lima became Catholic in 1928 and several months later Figueiredo died. The founder of the Centro, Archbishop Sebastião Leme da Silveira Cintra appointed Amoroso Lima its new director. Soon thereafter the Centro took a new direction, focusing itself on cultural matters rather than political¹²⁵.

In terms of the influence of French Catholicism in Brazil “Amoroso Lima was the first to introduce to Latin America to the thought of Maritain,” translating a significant part of his works into Portuguese¹²⁶. His first contact with Maritain’s work was in 1919. But it was not until 1926 when he read Primauté du spirituel and later Trois réformateurs and Misère et grandeur de la Métaphysique that he would move more closely to Maritain and away from Bergson and the conservatism of Figueiredo¹²⁷. Maritain allowed him to see that Catholics could engage in socio-political matters that were both social and Christian. In the early 1930s, in response to Maritain’s influence, Amoroso Lima became interested in sociology, the social teachings of the Church, and critical of capitalism. In 1936, Archbishop Leme founded ACB and appointed Amoroso Lima to be its president. A position he would hold until 1945. Through ACB, he would continue to advance the thought of French Catholicism¹²⁸.

During the Second World War and after, the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier became more influential among middle class Catholics in Brazi and beyond.¹²⁹ According to Luiz Alberto Gómez de Souza, director of the JUC in 1956-57, Mounier was the one who had “the deepest influence on the youth of Catholic Action in France, Canada, and Belgium”¹³⁰. Fr. Lima Vaz would echo this sentiment but broaden it years later, saying that by the beginning of the 1960s, Mounier was “the master most followed by young Brazilian Catholics”¹³¹.

Mounier’s thought was to the left of Maritain’s and his focus was more social. During the 1950’s Mounier’s socialism was seen as an attractive alternative to Maritain’s Christian democracy. Amoroso Lima encountered Mounier’s work through his periodical Esprit and began to incorporate some of his thinking into his own and into his work with ACB, which he was still leading. At the end of the 1940s Amoroso Lima met Fr. Lebret and was introduced to the Dominican community of São Paulo. He saw in Lebret’s work an intelligent “integration of the spiritual and the economic and their complementarity” and quickly became a defender of his social teaching, leaving behind Maritain¹³². In other words, over the course of several decades he had moved from Maritain to Mounier, to Lebret. However, each had made an impact. As Löwy and García-Ruiz write “He learned from Maritain to think of pluralist and democratic societies, from Mounier to think of socialism and social engagement of believers, and it was Lebret who brought to him certain ideas of economic transformation”¹³³. As he moved through the 1950s, he would pass these learnings on to the various organizations of the Catholic left in Brazil with which he came into contact.

Lebret also played an important role in shaping post-war Brazilian Catholicism. He first visited Brazil in 1947 and gave a course on the human economy. That same year he helped to establish a research centre in São Paulo, which was a branch of his own association Économie et Humanisme in France. This new enterprise called “The Society for Graphic Analysis and Applied Mecanographics to Social Complexes” (SAGMACS)¹³⁴, undertook on-the-ground research in the 1950s with the help of Lebret. It became one of the principle means by which Lebret’s writings were disseminated throughout Brazil, many of them translated into Portuguese thanks to the Brazilian Dominican publishing house, Duas Cidades¹³⁵. In addition to influencing Amoroso Lima, Lebret and his work would have a significant impact on Helder Câmara, who considered him a “true prophet”¹³⁶. He was also well-regarded by the leaders of the JUC in the 1950s. He encouraged them to go out from the university and to see for themselves the living conditions of those in the favelas. Francisco Whitaker who was the Brazilian JUC president from 1954-55 said that Lebret was the one who inspired the students to incorporate the notion of social sin into their 1954 documents¹³⁷. As Löwy and García-Ruiz conclude “Lebret replaced therefore, over the course of the 1950s, Jacques Maritain as a source of inspiration in Catholic circles that were more open-minded”¹³⁸.

In addition to Maritain, Mounier and Lebret, all of whom were promoted by Amoroso Lima, with the last two in particular having their own direct influence, there were the networks of French religious communities. Löwy and García-Ruiz focus on the French Dominicans who have been identified frequently in this paper. But they also note the need for future attention to the French Jesuits such as Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, Jean-Yves Calvez et Jacques Perrin.¹³⁹ In any case, we will look briefly at the Dominican Order since the movement of Dominicans to Brazil and of Brazilian seminarians to the Dominican schools in France during this time was one of the most important “vectors in the formation of a new religious field in Brazil”¹⁴⁰.

The names of the French friars, Congar and Chenu have already been mentioned. They, as well as others such as Christian Duquoc were widely ready and studied in the Dominican seminaries in Brazil. Moreover, they were influential in shaping the views of the Dominican chaplains who led the JUC¹⁴¹. Congar’s book Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat in particular helped young Catholics to see their role in the transformation of the world as well as their independence from the hierarchy. Chenu’s work in the area of the worker priest movement, especially his book Pour une théologie du travail¹⁴² inspired the Brazilian Catholic Left to commit itself to the side of the working class. However, few had as great an impact as the Dominican Thomas Cardonnel. Arriving in December 1959, Cardonnel was only in Brazil for a brief period. Nevertheless, even in this short time he made a “stunning impact on student groups”¹⁴³. In his fiery homilies he preached on themes such as money and the poor and criticized the conservative wing of the Brazilian hierarchy for its hypocrisy¹⁴⁴. According to Leopando, Cardonnel’s statements “electrified the youth movement” and much like Mounier, “helped to solidify the student activists’ awareness of the concept of structural and economic violence”¹⁴⁵. His articles were published in 1960 in the student movement journal in Rio O Metropolitano. According to Löwy and García-Ruiz, they, together with the lectures he gave “unleashed a violent polemic”¹⁴⁶. By the end of the 1962, he was recalled to France by his own community at the request of the Brazilian hierarchy.

Conclusion

From all of the foregoing, we see networks of influences appear that shaped Freire’s operative theology of the human person in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I say “operative” since they formed him, not as a professional theologian with the intention of analysing and developing an explicit theology, but as a thoughtful, critical, and educated believer. We can organize these networks thematically and chronologically as: early experiences with faith and poverty in the 1920s and early 1930s through parents, especially his mother and through the move from Recife to Jaboatão; his education and work experiences in the 1940s and 1950s at the University of Pernambuco, SESI and the Cultural Extension Service; his interactions, both personal and professional with the Catholic Left, including ACB, JUC, MCP and MEB in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s (mostly led by progressive Brazilian laity); and his encounter with the work of Catholic authors, intellectuals and theologians in the 1940s and 1950s, individuals such as Bernanos, Amoroso Lima, Maritain, Mounier, and Teilhard du Chardin. All of this was happening during a time of social, political, and ecclesial change in Brazil.

At the same time, we have in the background a development in Catholic anthropology with its focus on the human person, human activity, history, society, and the emerging role of laypeople. This development was in contrast to an earlier theology that privileged the hierarchy as well as objectivity, a-temporality, and immutability in Catholic doctrine, leaving little room for humanity and the world. Leading the way were progressive theologians such as: Thils, Dondeyne, Congar, Chenu, Mounier, Teilhard de Chardin, Lebret, Montuclard and Maritain, most of whom were French. Although Maritain was no longer in the foreground by the 1950s, his theology was influential in the 1930s and 1940s in turning our attention to world. These individuals impacted Catholic organizations in Brazil through their research and publications. Moreover, they influenced many in the country, chaplains and advisors, Catholic leaders such as Helder Câmara, and intellectuals such as Amoroso Lima, Bezerra, and Lima Vaz. Freire was very much woven into these networks and circles of influence - European theology acting on Brazilian organizations, and those organizations having their own impact on others, including individuals such as Freire. For example, as we saw above, Amoroso Lima was reading Mounier in the 1940s when Freire was reading Amoroso Lima; Congar’s and Chenu’s writings on a theology of laity and on a theology of work were influencing JUC during the same time that Freire was working with members of the JUC; Câmara who became close friends with Freire starting in the 1940s was following the work of Lebret at the same time. All of this leads to three conclusions.

First, there is a difficulty involved in identifying a precise genealogy of influence. Determining which book or article, personal relationship or encounter, involvement in an organization or work experience shapes a person, especially in their religious belief, is clearly a challenge. This is particularly true in Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed since he does not identify those influences when expressing his anthropology in the first chapters. Therefore, to try to draw parallels with the work of certain individuals by comparing turns of phrase, etc., is fraught with problems. Instead, further work should be done by historical theologians to develop a clearer and more complex view of how precisely those involved in this new theology shaped the Catholicism of Brazil during the pre- and post-war period.

Second, when considering what influenced Freire and his philosophy of education, an understanding of what was happening in Catholic theology is essential. Freire held on to his faith throughout his life. To exclude this as a consideration of his work, leaves one’s scholarship incomplete. To overlook the complexity of how an individual’s faith is continually formed and reformed and how it is unique to that person creates the possibility of a distorted understanding of them. But this personal dimension is tempered by the wider communal dimension and Freire’s faith was also influenced by the changes in twentieth century Catholic anthropology.

Third and finally, it is not possible to speak simply of Freire’s faith as shaped by these European theological currents whether directly or indirectly as though it was a transposition of one onto the other. In his book, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916-1985, political scientist Scott Mainwaring makes an interesting claim. He says that it was the Catholic Left in Brazil that “helped introduce a new understanding of the relationship between faith and politics.”¹⁴⁷ It did so by bringing European Catholic social thought to the country. However, he says it did more than just introduce these ideas into the Brazilian context. It “applied” them to “Brazilian conditions and developed a new conception of the Church’s mission”¹⁴⁸. Löwy and García-Ruiz, however, take issue with this use of the term “applied.” Whatever the Brazilians did with the work of Lebret, Congar, Mounier, and others was not an application of French ideas to Brazil. Instead, they used them as the starting point to create new ideas and “to invent a properly Brazilian inspired politico-religious culture”¹⁴⁹. In other words, a new reality was created. In my view, the same must be said about Freire’s faith. It was not influenced by an application of these new theological currents. Instead, it was formed by a “reception” of them into the Brazilian context of the time with its own unique socio-political, cultural, and ecclesial milieu. Catholic theologian Gilles Routhier speaks of reception as an “assimilation”, “actualization”, “appropriation”, or “inculturation” such that a transformation takes place, and a new reality emerges¹⁵⁰. In this respect, in order to properly understand properly Freire’s faith, we must consider that it was a faith formed in a particular context. This would be an interesting undertaking by theologians, both substantially and methodologically.