Posted on 12/27/2019 4:31:57 PM PST by ebb tide
ROME (ChurchMilitant) - The rise of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America, rooted in the Latin Mass, is rapidly reversing the long march of progressivism and Protestantism.
"We see that traditionally oriented churches and seminaries are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation, increasingly empty," Juan Migel Montes, director of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), Rome, told Church Militant.
"Catholic traditionalism is back in fashion," an upbeat Montes said. "This explains the defeat the Left is suffering in ballot boxes everywhere as the social, political and cultural realities linked to a traditional idea of Catholicism are multiplying everywhere."
"In Rome, as in the main South American dioceses of Rio, São Paolo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima and Santiago, Masses in the Vetus Ordo [Old Rite] are mushrooming," he said. "They are teeming with boys and girls and young families. They do not come across to me as sour people or, according to a certain caricature." Montes was alluding to Pope Francis' Christmas address to the Curia, in which many believed he decried traditionalist Catholics as "rigid" and "unbalanced."
Traditionally oriented churches are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation are increasingly empty.Tweet
"On the contrary, I see them as very enthusiastic and very eager to expand their range of influence among their peers. In fact, I continually see new faces in religious ceremonies. This motivates me to hope well for the future," Montes added.
The Rome bureau chief of TFP, an organization founded by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Brazil in 1960, attributed the leftists' political defeats and some resulting violence and unlawfulness — as has occurred in Venezuela — to the "undoubted growth of traditionalist Catholicism in South America, especially among young people."
A Tridentine rite parish in Belem, Brazil
In a frontpage article with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Montes elaborated on the spurt in the Catholic traditionalist movement:
Right-leaning blogs are multiplying, animated by young and very young people, with millions of followers. New political and cultural groups of conservative orientation are arising. Online conferences of traditionalist orientation are gaining notoriety. Stores of modest clothing are spreading, in open contrast to today's immoral or extravagant fashions. After decades of virtual cultural monopoly of the Left, more and more books are being published and more and more conferences in the center-right area are being held. Sometimes the phenomenon can even be dazzling. For example, polls show 37% of Brazilians in favor of the restoration of the Brazilian monarchy.
Church Militant asked if the Amazon Synod might actually provoke an even greater growth of traditional Catholicism. Montes said that, ironically, the advance of progressivism in the Church — as seen in the so-called "Indian theology" that bears a marxist footprint and undergirded veneration of Pachamama idols — is serving to open the eyes of many people to the depth of the crisis in the Church.
Montes, in fact, attributes the ascendancy of Protestantism to a long history of "preaching from the pulpits, with different accents, of liberation theology. The re-emergence of traditionalism among the faithful," he said, is likely the "result of the 'unintended consequences of intentional actions,' which ordinary people mock with the expression 'the devil makes pots but not lids.'"
Montes also noted that in one of Pope Benedict XVI's trips to Brazil, the pontiff explicitly identified the sociological turn of preaching in the Catholic Church — specifically liberation theology — as the reason why countless Catholics defected to neo-Protestantism. Montes quoted TIME magazine: "The Catholic Church has made the option for the poor, and the poor have made the option for the evangelicals and the pentecostals."
This phenomenon does not occur in traditionalist Catholic circles, where evangelization adheres to the precept of Our Lord to "seek first the kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be granted unto you," Montes explained. Despite having differing "liturgical sensitivity," he said numerous groups within the Church today "move decisively toward the search for tradition" in every field of life:
Procession with the Blessed Sacrament
[In] the life of piety they practice traditional devotions, especially the Marian one, and are not afraid of introducing themselves for what they are, conservative Catholics, even in the way they dress. In politics, they are increasingly demanding from candidates ... the non-negotiable principles preached by Benedict XVI, that is, the defense of life from conception to natural death, the family founded on the union of two people of different sex and the inviolable right of parents to choose education for their children.
Faithful Catholics can correct the drift occurring within the Church, Montes emphasized, through "forms of devotion, prayer and Catholic witness, in harmony with the traditional Magisterium of the Church — forms that were gradually abandoned and sometimes explicitly denied."
In September, Bp. José Luis Azcona, bishop emeritus of the Marajó Prelature in the Amazon area of Belém do Pará, Brazil, sounded the alarm: "The Amazon, at least the Brazilian part of it, is no longer Catholic," because it has a Pentecostal majority that, in some regions, "reaches 80%."
"Under the pretext of 'intercultural dialogue,' Catholic missionaries no longer evangelize or baptize," he lamented. "However, evangelicals do evangelize and work very hard indeed. While Catholic missionaries talk to Indians about 'deforestation,' 'climate change' and 'integral ecology,' Protestant pastors visit their communities with Bible in hand."
Gabriel Klautau Miléo, creator of the Salve Roma website, confirms the recoveries made by Catholic traditionalism. On Twitter, he posts pictures of Latin Mass churches filled with young people.
"All the photos ... were taken in Belém do Pará, one of the main urban centers of the Amazon region," he writes. "Several friends of mine and their families have returned to Catholicism by [re-]discovering the traditional rite of the Church."
"This is what the Amazon really needs," he notes. "We already have the apostolate of the Tridentine Mass in the two main urban centers of the Brazilian Amazon [Belém and Manaus] and in a city in the interior of the state of Pará [Santarém]."
Archbishop Alberto Taveira Correa, who heads the archdiocese of Belém do Pará, confirms that in his 10 years as archbishop, he can testify to the "growth in vocations" in his own diocese and others.
The Amazon, at least the Brazilian part of it, is no longer Catholic because it has a Pentecostal majority that, in some regions, reaches 80%. Tweet
Brazil's traditionalist Catholic Instituto Bom Pastor (Good Shepherd Institute) is also reporting a boom in vocations, as its "members want to exercise the priesthood in the doctrinal and liturgical Tradition of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, faithful to the infallible Magisterium of the Church with the exclusive use of the Gregorian liturgy in the worthy celebration of the Holy Mysteries."
Montes agrees it is impossible to predict the immediate future. "However, the rise of a mighty movement in traditional Catholic public opinion allows us to have many hopes," he affirms. "These hopes are also based on the promises of Our Lady who, in Fatima, proclaimed the triumph of her Immaculate Heart, after a period of tribulation."
Ping
Ain't it the truth. It's been going on for 50 years, and by no means just in Latin America.
I could tell you stories about Erie, PA.
The Modernists --- whatever happened to the Anti-Modernist Oath? --- proceed as if the Gospel is not enough, Pope Francis has open contempt for conversion and Baptism. Then the inevitable dissolution overtakes the Modernist project-- and it can't happen fast enough.
God save the Catholic Church!
"Return, O God of Hosts, we pray! Look down from heaven and see! Attend to this vine, the root Your right hand has planted, and the branch You have raised up for Yourself."
“The Amazon, at least the Brazilian part of it, is no longer Catholic,” because it has a Pentecostal majority that, in some regions, “reaches 80%.”
.......
Thanks be to God!
Abandoning The Faith is not of God.
“ Abandoning The Faith is not of God.
.....
Choosing saving faith in Christ is of God.
It is the Gospel.
Pentecostalism is not “saving faith in Christ”.
Hate to disappoint you ...
This is good news.
That is what has happened in the convents starting in the 60s as the leftists nominally in the Church went to all of them with their Jungian explanations and convinced nuns that they weer actually social workers and should be getting paid for it. Thousands of sisters sapped their habits for mufti and left their convents to work in offices in the cities. The orders shrank and they found themselves having to send begging letters to the faithful because they could not afford to take care of their old ones due to the extreme shortage of new blood. Some orders remained traditionally contemplative and kept their habits. They, for a time, also sent out begging letters because the new postulants were overwhelming their abilities to house them. Now the modernizing orders are mostly died off and the traditional orders are full. Modernism has within it the seeds of its own demise.
Too bad.
Most Pentecostal churches teach the Gospel.
Going to any church doesn’t save.
Exercising saving faith in Christ’s sacrifice alone saves.
“Glory to God for His indescribable Gift!”
That’s what happens when the Church strives present itself as Protestant and Modern. If the Church is emulating the Protestants, strongly implying that Luther and Calvin had it right all along, then folks might as well join the real thing.
Like all of protestantism, they teach a watered-down poor facsimile of The Gospel. Such stuff is not of God.
Hate to disappoint, but there it is.
Sore loser.
I never heard the Gospel in Catholicism - not once. Not ever.
I've heard it in many kinds of Christian churches, including a Pentecostal church.
cc: pinging former catholics to see if they share the experience I just posted...
I’ve seen many calls to join the Roman Catholic Church. Rarely is faith in Christ mentioned.
I have noted countless times on FR that posts are always about catholicism and never about Christ.
Paul identified Catholicism ... an other religion, not the Gospel of God’s Grace in Christ Jesus. Don’t want to get the dead souls in Catholicism all upset so I won’t post the list of ‘necessary things’ found in that religion and pushed as essential to eventually get eternal life.
What is the Gospel, northmountain? What EXACTLY is it? What Scripture specifically tells you what the Gospel that saves you says?
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