Brazil

Much has been made of the fact that since JPII took over, the Catholic population as a percentage of the wider population has fallen dramatically and that BXVI's flock is shrinking. We look to protestants and general apathy as reasons, we look to the 'spirit' of Vatican II, etc.

Tonight I was watching Billy Graham on TV. I have great respect for the Reverend Graham as he has done good work. But my brother and I couldn't help but remark once again just how little difference there was between a Christian minister calling Christ's sons and daughters back to the Church and a certain National Socialist orator who led a certain country to a world war in the last century. I mention this because indeed there is a fine line between Godliness and genocide: an audience is a powerful thing once you have it wrapped around your little finger.

When we look to our roots, we must always remember that reason is one of our core values in terms of finding Christ as opposed to emotion. Not to say that the latter doesn't play its part as well, but Catholicism has relied upon reason for several millennia. Reason will save the Church from destruction on both sides.

Enemies of the Church (both real and imagined?)

Saint Romuald, Camaldolese Abbot
Feria

Vatican clamps down on controversial bishops

That is the headline from CathNews. The article reports that Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful activists are alleging that Bishop Gumbleton is not allowed to speak without permission of the local ordinary, which he was denied in Arizona.

Which makes absolutely no sense since if Bishop Gumbleton really had something he felt strongly about, he could stand on any street corner in this country and shout to the heavens his message. The Bishops of Phoenix and of Tucson stated that it was due to Call to Action's positions that they asked Bishop Gumbleton not to address the local chapter.

But of course, Bishop Gumbleton and his friends obey, but then proclaim how they are oppressed when if they were really serious about their positions, they ought to have disobeyed and paid the consequences. Thoreau, where art thou?

The other bishop being clamped down upon is the one in Paraguay who wants to run for president, Fernando Armindo Lugo Mendez. In reply to his request to be laicized, he was suspended for his continued political activities.

The request was not accepted because being a bishop is considered by the Church, something that is "accepted freely forever."

The Paraguayan Constitution also does not allow ministers of any religion to hold the post of president.

The Pope "can either accept my decision or punish me. But I am in politics already," the bishop was quoted as saying.

Known for his work among the poor, Mr Lugo was appointed bishop of San Pedro by Pope John Paul II in 1994. He retired as bishop 10 years later.

Schedule in Brazil

From Zenit, with rearranging:

May 9, Wednesday
Arrival in São Paulo in the afternoon.

May 10, Thursday
Meeting with young people at Pacaembu Stadium in the afternoon.

May 11, Friday
In the morning, the Pope will preside over Mass with the country's bishops in Campo de Marte.

In the afternoon he will meet with the prelates in the cathedral of São Paulo.

The Pontiff will then travel to the southeastern city of Aparecida.

May 12, Saturday
In the morning, he will visit a "Fazenda da Esperanca" (Farm of Hope) in Guaratingueta. These "fazendas" are centers for the rehabilitation of drug addicts and are present in several countries. The initiative began in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.

At 6 p.m. on the same day, Benedict XVI will pray the rosary with the faithful in the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida.

May 13, Sunday
At 10 a.m. the Pontiff will preside at Mass and at 4 p.m. will open the working sessions of the 5th General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America.

That night, he will travel to Guarulhos International Airport for his return trip to Rome.

They don't understand! It's a different reality!

Whoever wrote this article from IPS was not trying very hard to be organized. The most informative parts start about half way in that summarize the situation in concrete terms. I'll quote there.

Arizmendi has been bishop of San Cristóbal since May 2000, when he succeeded Samuel Ruiz, whom the Vatican also criticised repeatedly for his liberation theology tendencies. Ruiz was dubbed the "red bishop" by local ranchers.
[...]

What the bishop basically wants is for the Vatican to lift its ban on ordaining more indigenous deacons. "We have 330, but many are old and sick and unable to support the Church, so I hope we can ordain another 200 or more, which is what we need," he said.

The diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas is spread over an area of 37,000 square kilometres in Mexico's poorest state, and has a population of 1.5 million, the great majority of whom are indigenous people.

"For this whole area, where roads are bad or non-existent, we only have 330 deacons, 84 priests and 8,000 catechists, which is obviously insufficient," the bishop said.

In February 2001, the Vatican ordered the suspension of ordinations of indigenous people on the grounds that those already ordained appeared to lack "solid and balanced" training.
[...]

Religious expert and columnist Bernando Barranco said that the Vatican's mistrust about possible links between sectors of the clergy and the insurgent Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) may lie behind the ban, as well as the pro-indigenous rights policies that the Church has applied for 50 years in the San Cristóbal diocese.

Several indigenous former catechists and missionaries are known to belong to the leadership of the EZLN, which took up arms in the state of Chiapas in January 1994, only to lay them down a week later to become a non-violent group advocating political change and indigenous rights in Mexico.

Bishop Ruiz, who was in charge of the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas for 40 years until he reached mandatory retirement age, promoted the training of indigenous deacons and priests, following the principles of the "Autochthonous Church" called for by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (Vatican II), the conclave carried out in 1962-1965 which revolutionised Catholicism.

Ruiz's work encouraged indigenous social organisation and their demands for better living conditions. The Zapatistas built on this legacy for their armed uprising, against express opposition from the San Cristóbal diocese.

Advisers of the late Pope John Paul II who had questioned Ruiz's work decided to put an end to the ordination of indigenous deacons in order to "normalise religious life" in San Cristóbal. Under Pope Benedict XVI, the same attitude has prevailed.

Arizmendi, who has continued along the same theological lines as Ruiz, is still requesting that the prohibition against ordaining deacons should be lifted. In Chiapas, deacons are nominated by the indigenous communities, although the bishop has the final word.

The number of deacons in San Cristóbal de las Casas is the highest among Mexico's Catholic dioceses, and the Vatican considers it to be excessive.

According to Arizmendi, this opinion stems from a lack of knowledge of the reality of his dioceses, where many indigenous communities are isolated from urban centres and from roads.

The bishop stated that the rapid growth of "other (Protestant) religious denominations" among the indigenous peoples of Chiapas is due to the shortfall of Catholic Church ministers, including deacons. (END/2007)

At beginning, the bishop is quoted:

"I regret the misunderstanding with the Pope, but we shall insist on clarifying that we are not promoting an autonomous church here, but an autochthonous (authentically inculturated) one, as fully accepted by the Second Vatican Council," the bishop said in an interview with IPS.

Long time readers may remember when Cardinal Arinze's letter came out. This ongoing long distance 'conflict of realities' (though I really don't believe that) is interesting to watch. As I said before, "Ordaining a lot of permanent deacons [...] would be an excellent way of slowly indoctrinating the masses in the idea of a married clergy."

Into the jungle; Or: The boat trip up the river

Actually, I have no idea where Aparecida is in Brazil. I only know that it is somewhat isolated and in the interior aways. I keep having visions of this being a 'Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now' sort of journey...

National Catholic Register: Brazil Bound

Of the events planned, the Pope’s visit to Brazil is among the most anticipated. The main purpose of the visit is to open the fifth general conference of the Latin American bishops’ conference (CELAM) at the Marian shrine in Aparecida.

By coming to Brazil, the Holy Father will be visiting the country with the largest Catholic population in the world, but also a nation that is experiencing growing secularization. And like other Latin American countries, the number of Catholics has also been diminishing because of conversions to the evangelical and Pentecostal sects of Protestantism.

Brazil was also the focus for the liberation theology movement in the 1970s, a doctrinal error that Benedict rejected in the 1980s in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Some analysts predict this year’s visit will give him an opportunity to provide a more authentic understanding of the Church’s preferential option for the poor, just as his recent visit to Turkey highlighted the Church’s desire for an intercultural dialogue with Muslims based on truth and charity.
[...]

The rest of the article describes documents that are coming out sometime this year (post-synod exhortation, the infamous motu proprio, etc.). There is also a brief list of trips scheduled, including another one to Germany.

This is funny

From Daily Southtown (bolding mine):

At the center of it is the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe, once perhaps a pagan goddess, but now unquestionably the patron of the Mexican peon with whom she identifies. I tell students that if they want to understand what Catholicism was like before the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, they should look at Mexican popular Catholicism and read the plays of Shakespeare. The "religion of the border" (as my colleague James "Big Jim" Griffith calls it) does not need, for example, the approval of the Congregation for the Making of Saints to proclaim their saints -- just as Catholics did for a thousand years.

Sometimes these saints disturb us Celts. I have in my possession (but never wear) a medallion of San Juan Malverde, the patron of the narcotrafficantes. In Perez-Reverte's great novel "The Queen of the South," the protagonist prays fervently to both Malverde and Guadalupe without any sense that there might be an inconsistency in such devotions.

Go figure.

The article written by Andrew Greeley and describes his thoughts on the Council of Trent and its effect in the Americas.

The Latin American crisis

In the wake of the appointment of Cardinal Hummes [CathHier-CardRating] as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, Sandro Magister today looks at the growth of the Pentecostals and Charismatics as measured by a new Pew Forum report. The numbers for Latin America do not look good. The Catholic Church's numbers have declined from over 90% to around 67% in Brazil alone.

[After citing the heavy losses the Brazilian Church has taken:]

The Brazilian Catholic Church has, therefore, experienced severe losses and significant internal changes over the past few decades. The “base ecclesial communities,” which the hierarchy emphasized at first, have restricted the ranks of the faithful instead of expanding them. Liberation theology, which has its origins in Western Europe, has sparked an even more restricted and self-referential élite, the polar opposite of the Charismatic currents that are running wild among the poular classes as well. In recent years, there have been signs of reconsideration in the Catholic hierarchy, as exemplified by the personal evolution of Hummes himself, a member of the Franciscan order of friars minor who was initially of social-progressive leanings, but later drew closer to the Charismatic movement.

In a time when communists were running around the jungles of Latin America doing their thing, liberation theology had its heyday. However, I think that liberation theology was essentially an anomoly that came and went. As the above illustrates, the poor, impoverished masses are drawn to Jesus's message and the piety engendered by that message, be it in the form of the Catholic Church or the Pentecostal groups.

The very next paragraph:

In any case, the perception that the advance of the Pentecostals and Charismatics is the most significant overall new development in Christianity over the last century is far from being shared by the hierarchy as a whole and by the élites that influence public opinion the most.

Luke from Star Wars once said, "I, I don't believe it!" His master Yoda replied in a dark, disappointed way, "That is why you fail."

[Giorgio] Bouchard writes: “The Pentecostals, and with them other evangelicals, are absolutely the religious movement spreading most rapidly throughout the world: more than the historical Protestant and Catholic Churches, more than the Muslims who also find themselves in a phase of vigorous expansion. [...] In an age infested by the worst kind of moral relativism and by a suffocating materialism, the Pentecostals represent a new and legitimate interpretation of Christian piety, founded on a great certainty: the presence of the Spirit, the greatly overlooked third person of the Trinity.”

Yes yes yes! Tell it like it is! Bouchard is quoted further:

Why is it that lung cancer is almost completely nonexistent among them, and AIDS almost unknown? Why is it that their young people abstain from drugs and alcohol? It could be that these same much-despised fundamentalists constitute the last manifestation of the puritan spirit that has had such a great importance in the history of modern democracy.”

Magister then goes on to look at the survey data. The Pentecostals and Charismatics go to church more, read the Bible more often, etc. The full Pew report can be found here.

People want the Bible, they want requirements, they want to know Jesus and serve God. They are like children who need rules and boundaries. I just don't understand why it's so hard to cater to these needs, since they're so fundamentally Christian. I am not a big believer in 'speaking in tongues' and the like. The Catholic Church has its own popular pieties and traditions to attract the masses and show them the way. They must be popularized and promoted once more! We'll see if the Latin American hierarchies can figure it out before it's too late.

Is there a Catholic equivalent of Joseph Conrad?

The Conrad question has nothing to do with this really, it just sprang to mind when I read that the letter in question was addressed to the Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, located in a historical hotbed of Zapatista activity.

Vatican City, Mar. 09, 2006 (CNA) - Through a letter sent to the Bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas (México), Bishop. Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, the Holy See decided to put an end to the so-called “Indigenous Church,” influent especially in southern parts of Mexico and throughout Latin America.

The letter is signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Cult and the Discipline of Sacraments. He deplores the influence of the ideology of the "autoctonous church,” inherited by Bishop Arizmendi from his predecesor Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia and remarks that the new policy should supress the overreliance on the ordination of permanent deacons in this diocese.

Bishop Ruiz prevented many different movements and religious orders to be active in the diocese, and seriously discouraged religious vocations to celibate priesthood and above all, he promoted the massive ordination of permanent deacons, valuing that in little time the Church would end up accepting the practice of married priests, which according to him was better adapted to the vision of an "indigenous" or “autochthonous church.”

Read the complete article Holy See reminds its opposition to an “indigenous church” and to married priesthood in Latin America..

Having read about Bishop Ruiz before, it's good to see that good Cardinal Arinze is moving to suppress this kind of activity. One has to admit though that the bishop's efforts were rather clever. Ordaining a lot of permanent deacons (presumably married before their ordination) would be an excellent way of slowly indoctrinating the masses in the idea of a married clergy.