The case of Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, one of the leading theologians of Latin America, is still a story in progress as this week's column is being written. A "Notification" regarding his two books on Christology, Jesus the Liberator (1991) and Christ the Liberator (1999), was originally issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in late November 2006, but was not released until the middle of last month.

As unpleasant as such developments always are --- and as tempting as it is for progressive Catholics to think the worst (the resumption of witch-hunts against theologians, for example) --- observers should not automatically assume that the Sobrino case is another in a long, continuous line going back to the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation period, through the anti-Modernist campaign of the early 20th century under Pius X, followed by the suppression of some of the Church's greatest theologians by the Holy Office during the pontificate of Pius XII, and culminating in the condemnations and silencing of theologians under John Paul II, when the current pope was head of the CDF.

I happen to agree with John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter (see his on-line column of March 16 and his subsequent story in the March 23 issue of the paper) that the criticism of Father Sobrino's writings is not simply a replay of the CDF's previous criticisms of Latin American liberation theology.

In the 1980s the issues were ecclesiology and methodology. When the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was censured and silenced for a year, it was for his 1985 book, Church, Charism and Power, which had characterized the Church as a dysfunctional family and included sharp criticisms of the Church's hierarchical structures and the manner in which ecclesiastical authority is exercised.

The pioneers of liberation theology, especially Father Gustavo Gutierrez, now a member of the Dominican Order, were accused of using Marxist analysis to critique the work of the Church in society. The first "Instruction" on liberation theology in 1984 was, in fact, so harsh in its criticisms that, at the insistence of the then-Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (d. 1998), a second "Instruction" was published two years later that adopted a more measured approach.

This latest document on Jon Sobrino needs to be viewed in a different context from those earlier ones. The central issue today is Christological, and the context for this latest document from the CDF is not its previous statements on liberation theology, but its controversial document of September 2000, Dominus Iesus, on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as our Mediator and Redeemer.

Although Father Sobrino has been publishing books since the 1970s, the CDF's "Notification" focused on two Christological works published in 1991 and 1999 respectively. Whether the CDF accurately represented Sobrino's writings (Father Sobrino and other major theologians insist that it did not), five of the six stated concerns in the "Notification" were centered on Christology.

Do these two books properly present Jesus Christ as truly divine? Did Jesus understand himself to be so? Was his death on the cross truly salvific, or was it only a moral example for all humankind?

The "Notification's" one concern that is at least partially ecclesiological and methodological in character is the first, that is, whether Jon Sobrino's emphasis on the Church of the poor is so central to the way he does theology that it runs the risk of minimizing or even ignoring the apostolic tradition of the Church, as expressed in the early ecumenical councils. Significantly, the teachings of those councils were Christological rather than ecclesiological in content.

As head of the CDF under John Paul II and before being elected pope in his own right, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was deeply concerned with the issue of the uniqueness and singularity of Jesus Christ in the mystery of salvation. He had no apparent objection to emphasizing the universality of Christ in order to make him better known and understood beyond Christianity itself, but never at the cost of regarding him as just another holy man who founded one of the world's great religions.

In Cardinal Ratzinger's mind, if we were to go down that theological road, Christianity as we have known it for some 20 centuries would disappear, or be changed to the point where it would no longer be recognizable.

If there is any comfort to be taken from this latest initiative from the CDF, it is that no penalties or sanctions have been imposed upon Jon Sobrino. He has not been silenced, and no one has been prohibited from reading his books.

Small comfort perhaps, but it's still progress.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.