This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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E Letter: Toxic Liberation Theology

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Pope Saint John Paul II wrote definitively on liberation theology in two documents:

1984: INSTRUCTION ON CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE “THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

1986: INSTRUCTION ON CHRISTIAN FREEDOM AND LIBERATION http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19860322_freedom-liberation_en.html

In a new book published in 2018, the author, in writing about the decisive Theologies in the Americas conference in Detroit in 1975, noted the driving narrative—still prevalent, and advanced, I am sad to say—of those attending.

“There was a sense in which liberation theology, perceived as a Latin American import, became shorthand for a great many socio-political grievances. Global oppression tied to systems of domination within the United States worked as an overarching theme. The situation in the United States existed in a dialectical process with Latin America and the Third World. Change, the organizers believed, “demands the dismantling of the center” that dominated the American hemisphere through its political, economic, and cultural power. Latin Americans hoped to present their theology, often an abstraction in the North American debate, and challenge U.S. theologians to address oppression within their own borders. North American advocates spoke of “unmasking the demonic structures of autonomous power” obscured by the ideology of efficient markets and the “military-industrial complex.” They observed that the United States was experiencing inequality within its borders and exploiting foreign people for the advantage of an elite class. Only as a compliant middle class gained consciousness of the systems of domination and acquired a “view from below” could they join the oppressed and realize their full humanity. The agenda addressed the need to awaken the religious imagination of the middle classes, which provided the bulk of legitimation to an oppressive order.” (pp. 239-240)

Lilian Calles Barger. (2018). The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology. Oxford University Press: New York.

The root of liberation theology is the political ideology of Marxism, as noted by Cardinal Ratzinger:

“The present Instruction has a much more limited and precise purpose: to draw the attention of pastors, theologians, and all the faithful to the deviations, and risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and to Christian living, that are brought about by certain forms of liberation theology which use, in an insufficiently critical manner, concepts borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought.”

Retrieved February 8, 2019 from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

Marxist thought is alive and well in America today and our faith is the worse for it.

Please pray the rosary—the full 15 decades Our Lady called for, as this article notes https://traditioninaction.org/religious/d013rp15Decades_Stretenovic.html —for the Church; and try praying it the way St. Louis de Montfort (a Saint of the Rosary) suggests in his book, True Devotion to Mary; full prayers here: http://www.philomena.org/rosarydemontford.asp