Pope visits Brazil, church loses ground

ALAN CLENDENNING

Associated Press
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Pope Benedict XVI is heading to the world's most populous Roman Catholic country at time when evangelical Christians are packing converted storefronts and cavernous churches every Sunday, thrusting their Bibles in the air.

Benedict will try to halt that wave of Protestant fervor during his first trip to Brazil. Aiming to energize its more than 120 million Catholics, Benedict will canonize the country's first native saint, hold Masses that could attract millions and open a conference of Latin American bishops in the holy shrine of Aparecida.

Few believe the five-day papal visit, which begins Wednesday, will reverse the flight of Catholics who have abandoned the church to become Protestants - or who simply stopped attending Mass amid profound societal change.

Nearly half the world's 1 billion Catholics live in Latin America, but Pentecostal churches are enjoying explosive growth, promising divine intervention to lift parishioners from lives of misery in a region where the divide between rich and poor is among the worst on the planet.

Brazil's census shows the percentage of citizens characterizing themselves as Catholics plunged from 89 percent in 1980 to 74 percent in 2000, while those calling themselves evangelical Protestants rose from 7 percent to 15 percent.

A study released last week by Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation indicated the Catholic decline stabilized from 2000 to 2003, but also showed the percentage of Protestants continued to rise.

Sao Paulo's former Catholic archbishop, Claudio Hummes, told reporters the losses are "a hemorrhage, and it's not over."

"It is due to the expansionism of Protestant sects that attract an ever-larger number of baptized Catholics, but also to moral relativism, imported from Europe and introduced on the continent above all by the local ruling classes, the mass media and the intellectuals," said Hummes, now prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy.(Continues)

I read a book once that claimed that the body of Jesus was entombed in the walls of the Vatican. That Peter killed the guards and stole the body from the tomb and the Catholic Church was born that very same day. The Apostles went around toting Jesus' body until they finally built a church and stuffed it in the walls. I can't recall the name of the book however...it was a long time ago.

I've not heard of that claim until now. I'd be interested in the title, if you ever find it.

So, basically, the Catholic church is losing its flock because the protestants are offering a better reward scheme. That's why we switched from Nectar Points to Tesco Clubcard Points. It's a good reason for changing where you shop and buy petrol... but it's a heck of a strange way to choose a religion.

Nice bold font. Speaking of context, I think it important to remember that when the bibles were compiled there were intended to offer control of the peasant class, and to be controlled by the ruling class. It's exampled today in the Pope and his vestments clad in gold thread, and fur, for example.

So if one compiles scripture that says believe in jesus and after the horrific suffering of this life, for those lesser born, they would have glory in heaven to look forward to. If they obeyed the rules. If they believed in jesus, and thereby empowered the church. So telling peasants that jesus said not only if they believe in him are they to find their way out of the suffering they knew so well in this life, in the next, but if they didn't they'd suffer even worse in hell, but if they believed they could ask in his name for anything, and it would be granted unto them.
That's powerful stuff, to let believe people that had nothing, that all they had to do was believe, obey and ask, and they'd have more. And if they believed and asked and didn't receive!? Well there was an answer for that too. One can ask for what they want, but it's gods wisdom that knows what they need. And sometimes what one asks for isn't what they need. But that wasn't the promise of jesus. Jesus said ask anything in his name and it will be given.

So what an inducement, in a new faith, to gain converts from the gutters. The people were trampled beneath the feet of Roman power, where the bible was partially compiled, so to promise all one need do is have faith in the new god and they'd have more than what they had in holding faith in the old god/desses, was even more potent a message when that faith claimed it was the only true one, knowing the only true god that exists.

Now , in order to survive itself, it seems the catholic church is having to meet the competition, because once again people are looking elsewhere for what was promised but didn't quite make the grade, in the catholic faith. Every religion thinks it's the only one and shall exist for eternity in the hearts of the faithful. But that the world no longer honors Zeus, or builds temples to Auset/Isis, or sanctifies ones self in service to Apollo, proves it isn't true. Humans are fickle beings. We create something to make us feel better about being us, then we make it to impart rules so we can feel bad or good about what being us, means.

It's never boring, being human and insecure.