Poorly catechized people: EVERYWHERE!
Posted on 01/12/2022 7:37:39 AM PST by ebb tide
CV NEWS FEED // A new report from the Wall Street Journal found that under Pope Francis, the Church is losing Latin Americans, many of whom are joining Pentecostal and Evangelical Christian groups.
The column began with an anecdote: Tatiana Aparecida de Jesus, a former prostitute and drug addict, “joined a small Pentecostal congregation in downtown Rio called Sanctification in the Lord and left her old life behind” last year.
“The pastor hugged me without asking anything,” she said. WSJ described her as “one of more than a million Brazilians who have joined an evangelical or Pentecostal church since the beginning of the pandemic, according to researchers.”
“For centuries, to be Latin American was to be Catholic; the religion faced virtually no competition,” WSJ explained. “Today, Catholicism has lost adherents to other faiths in the region, especially Pentecostalism, and more recently to the ranks of the unchurched. The shift has continued under the first Latin American pope.”
“The Vatican is losing the biggest Catholic country in the world—that’s a huge loss, an irreversible one,” Brazilian demographer José Eustáquio Diniz Alves said. “At the current rate, he estimates Catholics will account for fewer than 50% of all Brazilians by early July.”
WSJ analyzed a number of the “complex” reasons for the change. Ironically under Pope Francis, who has famously emphasized the poor in his speeches, critics “point to [the Church’s] failures to satisfy the religious and social demands of many people, especially among the poor. Latin Americans often describe the Catholic Church as out of touch with the everyday struggles of its congregation,” WSJ reported.
Liberal Catholics have made great efforts to capture the imagination of Latin Americans, with less success than many realize. “The rise of liberation theology in the 1960s and ’70s, a time when the Catholic Church in Latin America increasingly stressed its mission as one of social justice, in some cases drawing on Marxist ideas, failed to counter the appeal of Protestant faiths,” according to WSJ. “Or, in the words of a now-legendary quip, variously attributed to Catholic and Protestant sources: ‘The Catholic Church opted for the poor and the poor opted for the Pentecostals.’”
Despite the efforts of Catholics who promoted liberation theology, enough Latin Americans have opted for Pentecostal Christianity to boost “socially conservative views from the favelas to the halls of Congress, helping to propel right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro to power in 2018,” the report stated:
While President Bolsonaro still identifies as Catholic, he got himself baptized by a Pentecostal pastor in the River Jordan in 2016 in the lead-up to his presidential campaign. Pentecostals and evangelicals are prominently represented in his cabinet and make up a third of Brazil’s congress. His wife attends an evangelical church.
“In nations with growing numbers of people with no religious affiliation, more-liberal social practices are growing,” WSJ pointed out.
Argentina, the pope’s native country, legalized abortion last year and Chile’s congress is taking the first steps on a bill to decriminalize the procedure. Even in Mexico, which still has a large Catholic majority, the church’s hold on society is weakening, as seen in the Supreme Court’s September vote to decriminalize abortion.
Another factor in the Church’s loss of adherents is Pope Francis’s personal feelings about the importance of converting people to the Catholic faith at all. “Pope Francis has often inveighed against missionary efforts aimed at winning converts,” WSJ explained:
At a 2019 Vatican synod on Latin America’s Amazon region, there was scarcely any discussion of the church’s losses of adherents, even though a recent report by a church agency showed that 46% of the Amazon region’s 34 million inhabitants weren’t Catholics. The gathering devoted more attention to the region’s environmental challenges, a signature cause of the current pontificate.
Pentecostal Christians also “offer material as well as spiritual help” to the very poor, WSJ reported. “Lay-led churches with flocks as small as a few dozen families organize donations of rice and beans for hungry families, fund soccer clubs for young boys to lure them away from drug gangs and organize private healthcare as an alternative to Brazil’s failing public hospitals.”
According to a 2014 Pew survey, “the most popular reason given by former Catholics in Latin America for embracing some form of Protestantism was to have a more personal connection with God, cited by 81% of respondents,” WSJ reported. “Nearly six in 10 said they left Catholicism because they found ‘a church that helps members more.’”
Many Pentecostal preachers teach a “prosperity gospel,” which “holds that God’s grace is reflected in material wealth,” WSJ wrote. One pastor described communities that promote such thinking as “places where you’re not a bad person for dreaming big, for wanting to earn more.”
“Some Catholic movements in Latin America have sought to win back lost sheep, either by emulating important features of Pentecostalism, such as ecstatic worship, or by reviving a more traditional form of Catholicism, including the Latin Mass,” WSJ reported:
The Rev. Martín Lasarte, a Uruguayan priest appointed by Pope Francis to the 2019 Vatican synod on Latin America’s Amazon region, believes the liberation theology movement has often placed political and social issues above the religious experience. In such cases, “it lacks the existential sense of the joy of living the Gospel, this personal encounter that so many Pentecostal churches give to the person,” he said.
Another Catholic prelate, Brazilian Rev. Paulo Ricardo, who has “1.5 million followers on Facebook,” has “condemned liberation theology as heresy and enthusiastically supported elements of Mr. Bolsonaro’s agenda such as relaxed laws on gun ownership.”
While Pope Francis has traveled 10 times to Latin America since his election, “he is clearly not leading a crusade to reclaim the region for Catholicism,” WSJ reported.
The WSJ piece is generating considerable discussion among Catholics online. In response to the article, published on social media with the quotation “The Catholic Church opted for the poor and the poor opted for the Pentecostals,” CatholicVote tweeted:
His plan is working.
“If Satan himself ran the Catholic church, he’d do it exactly the way Pope Francis does. I am quite confident that one day, he will be declared an antipope.”
You posted exactly what I’ve thought since Francis was appointed.
Maybe he’s not appeasing enough pagans or worshipping enough ancient American idols.
Francis the Fake Pope doesn’t care about Catholics in the pews -he has China funding the Vatican
Hammer, meet nail.
When a sensible board of directors sees one part of a company that's failing badly and losing money, they start looking at what the management of that part might be doing wrong, and taking steps to correct the problem, possibly including replacing the management if they can't or won't fix it.
When the College of Cardinals saw that the Latin American church was in terrible trouble and hemorrhaging membership at an alarming rate, they elevated one of the senior managers of that troubled subsidiary to CEO. Don't fix the problem, propagate it. Go figure.
Hint to WSJ. the Catholic Church is not a democracy nor a republic.
It has and will continue to withstand terrible leadership even the worst ever such as this one
People can discern that there is even in the hierarchy and remain Catholic.
The article claims the Catholic Church “opted for the poor” in its embrace of Liberation Theology. No. It “opted” for the Marxists.
When Benedict became pope, many Germans renewed their interest in Catholicism.
Francis being pope should have increased interest in Catholicism among Latin Americans.
I remember when Bobby Fisher beat Russia's Boris Spasky at chess in the 1970s. It had been a long time since an American won the World Chess championship. As a result, chess fever swept America. Chess set sales soared. Magazines articles appeared about chess.
According to a 2014 Pew survey, “the most popular reason given by former Catholics in Latin America for embracing some form of Protestantism was to have a more personal connection with God, cited by 81% of respondents,” WSJ reported. “Nearly six in 10 said they left Catholicism because they found ‘a church that helps members more.’”
One of the questions is “why are you here (in church) this morning.”
Anyone following the ImPopester is following him to hell.
It’s interesting what Romans 1 says. Pay close attention to Romans 1:24-32. There’s a list of traits that people will possess during the end times. Check verse 32 out where it says that those who approve of the practice of those traits are worthy of judgment.
32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
Has been for a long time.
Yet at any stage of her history, to ascertain the veracity of Catholic teaching based upon your judgement of what valid historical church teaching consists of and means is to essential be as a evangelical Bible Christian (and a NT one) in that regard,except that for the latter, valid historical church teaching means what is seen in Scripture. And which creates division (which is how the NT church began) yet a better unity than a broad one based upon error.
Thus we have threads as, , Is Catholicism about to break into three?
Archbishop Viganò: We Are Witnessing Creation of a ‘New Church ’
The SSPX's Relationship with Francis: Is it Traditional? post #6
Is the Catholic Church in De Facto Schism?
The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope...If Francis is a true Pope …
However, the basic premise of Catholicism as expressed by so many popes in the past is that the flock are not to be ascertaining the veracity of Catholic teaching based upon their judgement, but,
* Epistola Tua: To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment , and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation.
What are you talking about?
The WSJ thinks that liking a pope matters It doesn’t. That’s all.
From his home page:
It seems that I have a call into apologetics, meaning giving an answer for the faith, and which, due to my upbringing and location, seem to mostly be exercised in regards to Catholicism.
Lucifer seemed to have a special call also.
Repeating something on every Catholic thread doesn't make it true. Your "wholly inspired substantive authoritative record" still says, "So, then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter." (2 Thess 2:15)
And your extreme verbosity makes your arguments less effective, not more effective. Read Scripture, but read Strunk & White too.
Indeed "Repeating something on every Catholic thread doesn't make it true" but mine is substantiated, while not matter how often your repeat your recourse to 2 Thess 2:15, you all cannot tell me what these traditions were that Paul exhorted the Thessalonians stand firm and hold to (2 Thess 2:15), and which cannot be compelled validate whatever your church (or the EOs when their tradition conflicts with yours) says is tradition.
The Jews likewise have their traditions which are no more the inspired word of God than yours.
Of course, the basis for assurance (by a faithful Catholic) that your traditions are whatever your church says is the word of God is actually based upon tradition itself, that of the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial veracity of teaching that requires assent, which is nowhere seen (not Caiaphas) nor promised or essential for authority and knowing what is of God.
However, Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. An around you go.
In contrast, while men such as the apostles could also speak as wholly inspired of God and provide new public revelation thereby, yet neither of which does even Rome presumes its popes and ecumenical councils do.
Moreover, we have sound warrant to assume that, if these oral traditions referred to any new teachings that were to be preserved, then what Paul referred to as tradition would be subsequently written down. For God manifestly made writing His most-reliable means of authoritative preservation of the word of God. (Exodus 17:14; 34:1,27; Deuteronomy 10:4; 17:18; 27:3,8; 31:24; Joshua 1:8; 2 Chronicles 34:15,18-19, 30-31; Psalm 19:7-11; 102:18; 119; Isaiah 30:8; Jeremiah 30:2; Matthew 4:5-7; 22:29; Luke 24:44,45; John 5:46,47; John 20:31; Acts 17:2,11; 18:28; Revelation 1:1; 20:12, 15;
Therefore here are some questions for those who argue for the alternative of sola scriptura, which is that of sola ecclesia:
1. What is God's manifest reliable means of preserving the express wholly inspired word of God: oral transmission or writing?
2. What became the established supreme substantive authoritative source for testing Truth claims: oral transmission or Scripture?
3. Which came first: this authoritative body of the written word of God, or the NT church, and that provided the transcendent prophetic, doctrinal and moral foundation for the NT church?
4. Did the establishment of a body of wholly inspired authoritative writings by the first century require an infallible magisterium?
5. Which transcendent sure source was so abundantly invoked by the Lord Jesus and NT church in substantiating Truth claims to a nation which was the historical instruments and stewards of express Divine revelation: oral transmission or writing?
6. Was the veracity of Scripture ever subject to testing by the oral words of men or vice versa?
7. Do Catholic popes and councils speak or write as wholly inspired of God in giving His word like as men such as apostles did, and also provide new public revelation thereby?
8. In the light of the above, do you deny that only Scripture is the transcendent, supreme, wholly inspired-of-God substantive and authoritative word of God, and the most reliable record and supreme source for what the NT church believed?
9. Do you think sola scripture must mean that only the Bible is to be used in understanding what God says, and means that all believers will correctly understand what is necessary, and that it replaces the magisterial office (and ideally a centralized one) as the formal judicial earthly authority on matters of dispute (though it appeals to Scripture as the only infallible and supreme source of Truth)?
10. Do you think the sufficiency aspect of sola scripture must mean that the Bible explicitly and formally provides everything needed for salvation and growth in grace, including reason, writing, ability to discern, teachers, synods, etc. or that this sufficiency refers to Scripture as regards it being express Divine public revelation, and which formally and materially (combined) provides what is necessary for salvation and growth in grace?
11. What infallible oral magisterial source has spoken to man as the wholly God-inspired public word of God outside Scripture since the last book was penned?
12. Where in Scripture is a magisterium of men promised ensured perpetual infallibility of office whenever it defines as a body a matter of faith or morals for the whole church?
13. Does being the historical instruments, discerners and stewards of express Divine revelation mean that such possess that magisterial infallibility?
14. What is the basis for your assurance that your church is the one true apostolic church? The weight of evidence for it or because the church who declared it asserts she it cannot err in such a matter?
Meanwhile...
Catholisim is losing members that have learned to do research on their own.
Poorly catechized people: EVERYWHERE!
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