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Friday June 30, 2006
Here's a sobering story about how Catholicism is contracting in Latin America, even as Pentecostalism is expanding. This is not a new story. Nor is it a new story about how mainline Protestantism is collapsing in the US, while Pentecostalism...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Here's a sobering story about how Catholicism is contracting in Latin America, even as Pentecostalism is expanding. This is not a new story. Nor is it a new story about how mainline Protestantism is collapsing in the US, while Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism are booming. Catholic blogger Mark Shea captures what's most challenging about the Latin American Catholic story. Excerpt:
Is it any surprise? Even 'mainstreamed' Fundamentalists talk about the untraceabnle abstract spiritual effects of the divine disfavour that may befall us all if we don't all support the Bible-thumpers.
Is it really any surprise that some vultures can come in, appropriate the same imagery, and promise a better life, ... when instead of speaking of freedom and democracy, you were too busy fending off Commies in the name of Jesus to see the real situation
?
Yeah, they poached your convertees:
Real tragedy is, you only see 'belief.' Not hunger, poverty, or injustice.
Just like back home.>
Cusidh, you been in the absinthe again?>
Let's just hope those people escaping slums want to come to the First World, lest the be met with Minutemen on the border with Neuhaus and Dreher cheering them on demanding that 12 million people be sent back to the slums.>
"We all know that reaching a goal in sports or business requires discipline and sacrifice, but then all of this is crowned by success, by reaching the desired aim. And so it is with life itself: becoming men according to the plan of Jesus requires sacrifice, but this is not something negative; on the contrary, it helps us to live as men with new hearts, to live a truly human and happy life. Because there is a consumerist culture that wants to block us from living according to the Creator s plan, we must have the courage to first create islands and oases, and then great landscapes of Catholic culture in which life follows the design of the Creator." --Pope Benedict XVI>
The flesh is very gratified by some popular preaching.
I don't think churches should try too hard to aggravate/excite/entice the flesh, there can be much trouble in that direction, the flesh will seek attention, etc., on its own without encouragement.>
For centuries in Europe and Latin America, the Catholic Church has relied on its ties with the political and social powers-that-be to maintain dominance. All too often, the Church served those clients at the expense of the average Catholic -- and, as a result, became apathetic, complacent and self-important. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. People want substantial spiritual food, not blind adherence to tradition, pseudo-intellectual arrogance or watered-down, quasi-Marxism. They want hope. They want and need the Gospel. If the Catholic Church can't provide that, then people will go to where it is provided.>
RE: Joel Osteen: I understand where you're coming from on Joel, but as a person who was fed a steady diet of "turn so you won't burn" sermons, I had to learn of God's love, grace and mercy by studying the Scriptures for myself. Therefore, even though Mr. Osteen and I might have some slight doctrinal differences, I have grown to appreciate his message of God's love. If you will pardon the old cliche' "you draw more flies with honey than you do vinegar", I find that sometimes people are so beaten down that they need that hope in order to change their lives for the better. Otherwise, they think to themselves, "What's the use? I'm such a sorry, throw-away individual." I've managed to bring people into the fold with more love messages than hellfire and brimstone ones, although I'm not saying the latter shouldn't be taught as well. What I'm getting at is, the sick (sinner) is in need of the physician (the Lord). Preaching damnation to someone right off the bat, in my opinion, is the same as telling the distraught person on the building ledge to jump.>
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