Christian Faith and the Modern World

In the post-conciliar debate on the relationship between Christian faith and the modern world, it is clear that the process of secularization in the Christian West is irreversible. The Western world has become aware of its autonomy in relation to religion, to Christianity and to the Church. Such a stance takes as an assumption the thesis of F. Gogarten that sees secularization as a consequence of the impact of biblical faith on history. Therefore, the theology of secularization opened the way to Christian reconciliation with the modern world and its achievements. However, the modern world encountered by Christian faith is the bourgeois world, which relegated religion to the private sphere.This is the reason why European theology has sought to overcome this issue with the political theology of J. B. Metz - the deprivatization of the Christian faith in order to conquer the public sphere - and by J. Moltutann's theology of hope. However, the theology of secularization and the attempts of the Western World to overcome secularization still remain insufficient to explain the main contradiction of the Third World and of Latin America, in situations of dependency which is between the rich and wealthy minority and the vast impoverished majority The theology of liberation has found the concrete place to read reality in the liberating practice of the poor. From the theology of secularization there has, therefore, been a move toward political theology, and from political theology to the theology of liberation, as an horizon to do theology. The way is thus opened for a renewed understanding of Council Vatican II Church.