Robert Faricy, S.J.
Salvation, Liberation, and Christian Responsibility Catholic tmdition tells us that the Church is the mediator of salvation. lncreasingly, in the past decade, that salvation is seen as accomplished in man in the concrete circumstances of Ms life in the world. The purpose of this article is to help to clarify the Christian idea of "salvation-liberation" chietly by presenting in a reflective way sorne of the conceptual forms that the ideas of salvation and liberation have taken in recent Roman Catholic thought. There has been a marked development of Catholic unrlerstanding of salvation especially in the past ten years, since the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudinm et Spes (1965), and sin ce the meeting of the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CE LAM) at Medellin, Colomhia (1968), This development has been in the direction of a greater emphasis on the this-world aspects of salvation and liberation, and in the direction of more stress on Christian responsibility. The principal theological question as to the meaning of salvation has for sorne time taken this general form: What are the relationships between the persona!, the social, and the universai aspects of salvation? What is the relationship between man's salvation and the salvation of the world? What is the importance for the individual person of the social dimension of salvation? The whole complex question in volves the effort to understand, in terms of person and society and in te1ms of man and world, the meaning of salvation. Among Catholic theological responses to this question since 105