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FEATURE:
The Catholic Church and Latin America
May 18, 2007 Episode no. 1038
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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Pope Benedict XVI is back at the Vatican after his visit to Brazil last week (May 9-13). It was his first trip to the Western Hemisphere since becoming pope. While in Brazil, Benedict gave the opening speech at a conference of Catholic bishops from across Latin America and the Caribbean. The bishops are discussing some of the most difficult issues facing the church in their part of the world. Kim Lawton was in Brazil earlier this week.
KIM LAWTON: Pope Benedict XVI calls Latin America a "continent of hope." But during his five-day visit to Brazil last week, he acknowledged that it's also a continent of great social and spiritual challenge. He urged the Catholic Church and its regional leaders to revitalize their faith in order to effectively tackle those challenges.
Bishop WILLIAM SKYLSTAD (President, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops): To make the community of faith lively, to be faithful to the Gospel, to be faithful to our tradition as a Catholic Church, to continue to grow in the knowledge of our Church and our tradition, to address a present reality of a world community that is changing so dramatically and quickly.
LAWTON: One-hundred-and-sixty-two bishops from across Latin America and the Caribbean are meeting in Brazil until the end of the month in order to hammer out pastoral guidelines for the next decade. Benedict opened the gathering by warning that the positive development of society and Catholic identity here are "in jeopardy."
One of the biggest threats may be the dramatic rise of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Two-thirds of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics live here in the Southern Hemisphere, but the numbers have been dropping dramatically. According to a Church-sponsored study, 8,000 Latin Americans leave the Catholic Church every day to become evangelical Protestants.
John Allen of the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER says this trend is a key priority in the bishops' discussions.
JOHN ALLEN (Vatican Correspondent, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER): Now, I don't think Benedict XVI or the Catholic Church is looking for a holy war against Pentecostalism. But I do think that these significant losses of their own people have raised some very deep questions about what's happening in the Catholic Church in Latin America and what the Church needs to do to stem the tide.
LAWTON: In Brazil, Benedict raised concerns about what he called the "aggressive proselytism of the sects."  The best way to counter that, he said, is a return to the fundamentals of the Catholic faith. Bishop William Skylstad is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a delegate at this meeting.
Bishop SKYLSTAD: I think our primary focus as a Church should be how can we make ourselves better? How can we be more faithful as disciples of the Lord Jesus? That's what's really important. We don't do that by attacking other people or expressing our differences with other people necessarily. It's how we do this ourselves that is faithful to the mission of Jesus.
LAWTON: One major concern is the severe shortage of clergy. Latin America has the highest priest-to-parishioner ratio in the world. In the U.S., for example, the Church says there is roughly one priest for every 1,300 parishioners. In Latin America, the average is about one priest for every 7,000.
Mr. ALLEN: Part of the reason that people have been leaving is because they don't feel that their needs are being met in the Catholic Church, and by needs being met, what I mean is very basic, retail-level, meat-and-potatoes pastoral care. You know, when your spouse gets sick, is the pastor there to sit at your side and hold your hand?
LAWTON: The bishops are discussing ways to increase the number of men going into the priesthood. But they're also talking about ways to empower lay people, a sometimes controversial proposition for a Church that carefully protects the authority of its hierarchy.
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Mr. ALLEN: I have not met a Latin American bishop in the last couple of years who is not crystal-clear that unless they do a much better job of mobilizing and empowering their laity to work with them and to assist them in delivering basic pastoral care, they are simply not going to be able to meet this challenge that is coming from the Pentecostals.
LAWTON: Another controversial question is the Catholic Church's relationship with politics. Jabes Alencar is pastor of the Assemblies of God Bom Retiro in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His congregation has 16,000 members, and he estimates that 80 percent of them are former Catholics. Alencar says many were turned off by their priests' involvement in politics.
Reverend JABES ALENCAR (Pastor, Assemblies of God Bom Retiro, through translator): In the moment that the Catholic Church started working politically, trying to free men through politics, and put the priority on the social side, the Church lost the answer.
LAWTON: Benedict has long been a vocal opponent of Latin America's liberation theology movement. Just weeks before the pope's trip, the Vatican denounced the writings of Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, an El Salvador-based liberation theologian. Although liberation theology doesn't hold the same social influence in Latin America that it did in the 1980s, its objectives of helping the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed are still highly relevant here. According to the UN, Latin America has the widest gap between rich and poor of anywhere in the world.
In Brazil, Benedict said faith is not a political ideology, nor a social or economic movement, and he criticized the negative effects of both Marxism and capitalism. But he said the Church does have a responsibility to fight poverty and express solidarity with the abandoned.
Bishop SKYLSTAD: So the Church is in the middle of that, calling for peace and justice.
LAWTON: Some Protestant leaders said that finding a way to help the poor without becoming trapped by politics is one goal their community could share with Catholics.
Reverend ABIVAL PIRES DA SILVEIRA (Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil, through translator): The greatest challenge to the Church today, whether Catholic or Protestant or any denomination is to work for social justice. When the Catholics tried to do this, they did it by way of liberation theology, which became an ideology and eventually counterproductive.
LAWTON: As the bishops sort through these and other difficult issues, U.S. Church leaders said they came to listen, not to offer answers.
Bishop SKYLSTAD: For us in the United States we have many, many migrants from the South, especially in the United States mostly from Mexico. But they're part of our tradition now, and how can we work together as bishops in the United States along with bishops of South America, Latin America, the Caribbean? How can we work together for the development, the betterment of all peoples? That's our common goal.
LAWTON: Catholic officials agree that Benedict's visit won't in and of itself resolve the many problems facing the Church here. More influential, they say, will be the strategies the bishops create to take the Church into the next decade.
I'm Kim Lawton from Aparecida, Brazil.
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Related Reading:
BASE COMMUNITIES: AN INTRODUCTION by Margaret Hebblethwaite
THE SILENCING OF LEONARDO BOFF: THE VATICAN AND THE FUTURE OF WORLD CHRISTIANITY by Harvey Cox
LIBERATION THEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE by Robert McAfee Brown
CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO LIBERATION THEOLOGY edited by Christopher Rowland
LEGACIES OF LIBERATION: THE PROGRESSIVE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BRAZIL AT THE START OF A NEW MILLENNIUM by John Burdick
LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY: THE NEXT GENERATION by Ivan Petrella
RESURGENT VOICES IN LATIN AMERICA: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, POLITICAL MOBILIZATION, AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE edited by Edward Cleary and Timothy Steigenga
COMPETITIVE SPIRITS: LATIN AMERICA'S NEW RELIGIOUS ECONOMY by R. Andrew Chesnut
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