Posted on 05/03/2007 12:50:55 PM PDT by siunevada
CARAPICUIBA, Brazil (Reuters) - For years, Ronaldo da Silva's daily routine consisted of drinking himself into a stupor until he passed out on a sidewalk.
Now he spends his days praying and singing with hundreds of fellow Christians at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Carapicuiba, a sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Sao Paulo where Pentecostal congregations are found on just about every block.
"I'd probably be dead or in jail if it weren't for this church," said da Silva, a 38-year-old former Catholic who claims God cured him of epilepsy and helped him straighten out his life when he converted to Pentecostalism a decade ago.
Conversions like da Silva's are increasingly common all over Brazil, where a boom in evangelical Protestantism is steadily chipping away at the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
The trend, which is playing out all across Latin America, poses a major challenge for Pope Benedict, who arrives in Brazil on May 9 for a five-day visit largely aimed at blunting the decline of Catholicism in this continent-sized nation.
Although Brazil still has more Catholics than any other country in the world, with about 125 million, the percentage of believers that practice the Vatican's brand of Christianity has been dropping rapidly in the last three decades.
When the late Pope John Paul II visited Brazil in 1980, 89 percent of Brazilians identified themselves as Catholic. By 2000, when the last census was taken, the share of Catholics in the population had fallen to 74 percent.
The number of evangelical Protestants nearly tripled in the same period to 26 million, or about 15 percent of the population.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Let's see...Who was the lone voice in the wilderness??? Who was the first universal preacher to call sinners to repentance...
You got a clue??? I'll give you one...It wasn't John the Catholic...
The apostle Paul said that there were many religious groups around then perverting the gospel and these groups were within the (John the Baptist) church...Preaching a different gospel...Which one of these perverted groups is the one you lay claim to???
Yes, the Body of Christ IS the church. It’s not a building or a denomination, it’s the totality of Christian believers.
Yes, the Body of Christ IS the church. It’s not a building or a denomination, it’s the totality of Christian believers.
yes, but the Anglicans are really ticked off at them for the homosexual bishop and other gays in that church denomination.
the BRIDE of Christ is not just YOUR church, my Friend. It is the Body of Christ which Christ calls HIS church. It’s not a denomination or a building, it’s PEOPLE, HIS people.
You are a little over 100% wrong...
Heb 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
The throne of grace is not in your church nor any church you've ever been in...
There is no person or being that has set foot on the face of the earth that is, or ever has been in the person of Christ, except for the Holy Spirit...
So you have never confessed any of your sins directly to Jesus...You have not asked Him to forgive you, or save you???
Catholic was a Latin word that had absolutely nothing to do with YOUR church...
Your church is not the church revealed to Paul the apostle...The word Catholic was not coined by any apostles or by God for that matter...When the word Catholic was coined, there were no popes, no priests in fancy robes, no worshipping of Mary, and on and on...
The Catholic church you attend didn't exist in the time of Jesus or the apostles...So what's in a name, eh???
It's kinda goofy anyway...Why would you use the Latin word for universal and connect it with the English word church??? Catholic isn't a Pronoun...It means universal...Why use the Latin??? The Latin is what was used by pagan Rome in those days...Did Ignatius use the Greek word for universal in his writings or the Latin??? Why would your church insist on using the pagan Latin word???
Ignatius says the church was universal...And you say your's is the Universal church...That makes you the same??? Surely you jest...
But to answer you question truthfully, your church wasn't any where near the fisrt church to be found...
1Co 11:22 What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.
You want to eat crow in public, or private???
There was no Catholic in the time of the spostles...It was the church of God...Ignatius called that church of God universal and some perverters of the gospel a few centuries later invented the Catholic church (using a capital C instead of the appropriate small c)...
I pinged you earlier to the thread on Dr. Francis Beckwith. Here are a few others.
And here is a lengthy list of notable converts.
All my posts were in jest. I respect the Protestants believe me!
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, no wonder it sounded so, um, funny! LOL.. You should really warn a girl! DUH!
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