David QuinnPope’s triumphant visit masks a troubling reality, writes David Quinn
A quiet religious revolution is underway in Latin America that has long been noticed by anyone who follows religious affairs closely, but has largely been unnoticed by anyone else even though it is one of the single biggest social phenomena currently taking place on the planet.
Here in Ireland, we are used to watching Catholics leaving their religion behind and becoming secular.
In Europe, they leave either Catholicism or Protestantism to become secular.
In Latin America, something different in happening. Latin American Catholics are not abandoning Catholicism to become secular (although some are). Instead, they are swapping Catholicism for Protestantism, and, to be more precise for Pentecostalism, which is related to the charismatic movement.
Most media coverage focussed on the political aspects of the Pope’s trip to Latin America. A lot more attention should have been paid to the state of Catholicism in the region and more specifically on why so many Latin Americans are switching from Catholicism to Pentecostalism.
Pew Forum
Let’s look at the scale of what’s going on first. The Pew Forum in the US, which conducts major research into religion around the world, published the results of a survey late last year into the degree to which Latin Americans are leaving the Catholic Church, why they are leaving it, and what they are leaving it for.
It finds that 84% of Latin Americans were raised Catholic but the percentage who remain Catholic (or say they are Catholic) is now 69%.
The percentage who say they don’t belong to any religion (the ‘unaffiliated’) has risen from 4% to 8%, but more significantly the number who identity as Protestant has gone from 9% to 19%.
The biggest falloff in the number of Catholics is in Nicaragua (25%), and the lowest is in Panama (4%).
The two largest Latin American countries are Brazil and Mexico. In Mexico there has been a 9% falloff in the number of Catholics but in Brazil, the biggest of all, it has been a much higher 20%.
In Brazil, 61% of adults now call themselves Catholic, versus 26% who identity as Protestant.
In the Pope’s homeland of Argentina, 71% say they are still Catholic versus 15% who say they are Protestant and 11% who say they are unaffiliated.
Why are they switching to Protestantism? Almost no-one mentions doctrinal reasons. Instead, 81% gave “seeking a personal connection with God” as a reason, followed by 69% who said they enjoyed the style of worship at their new church, 60% who said they “wanted greater emphasis on morality” and 59% who said their new church helps its members more.
Mind you, doctrinal issues are there in the background. A Church has to know what it believes in order to attract members. Pentecostals are in no doubt about the authority of the Bible. They place huge faith in the Holy Spirit and believe he is active in our lives from day to day.
They believe in miraculous healing. They have absolute faith in Jesus as the Son of God. It’s interesting to note how Pentecostalism has been growing at almost the same time as much of the Catholic Church in Latin America has been placing its faith in Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology can be Marxist in its basic outlook or not Marxist at all. But all forms of Liberation Theology believe in the ‘preferential option for the poor’ and place huge emphasis on that. Pope Francis certainly does and so must all Catholics. Opinions can obviously differ on how best to exercise this option.
But the option for the poor – however it is exercised – obviously hasn’t impressed too many Latin Americans. One saying has it that as the Catholic Church in Latin America opted for the poor, the poor opted for Pentecostalism.
Why would they do that? Obviously, they believe it will improve their lives and do so in a way that the Catholic Church can’t.
It is obviously deeply worrying from a Catholic point of view that so many former Catholics believe that they can find a better relationship with God in another Church, that they can find a style of worship they like in another Church, that they get better moral guidance in another Church, and that their new Church is better at helping its members.
A huge number of those who are converting are poor, so clearly they see Pentecostalism as a better option for them than Catholicism. They want to be helped spiritually as well as materially. A great deal of Liberation Theology has focussed on improving the political conditions in a country, which is often very necessary, depending on the exact content of the change being sought.
But politics deals more with the external, while spirituality deals more with the internal. (Would Marx have regarded Pentecostalism as the “opiate of the people”, “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world”?)
For his part, Pope Francis emphasises the option for the poor but he also emphasises traditional devotions which he knows many ordinary Catholics in his own country and elsewhere love, and he encourages cordial relations with Pentecostals and Evangelicals. (Some parts of the Catholic Church in South America are trying to adapt to the Pentecostal style of worship by becoming more charismatic in their own style.)
The other very important factor the study by the Pew Forum brings out is how Latin American Protestants are much more eager to share their faith than Catholics are.
In Brazil, for example, only 14% of Catholics say they have shared their faith with someone in the last week compared with 43% of Brazilian Protestants.
That is a huge difference and shows how Pentecostal Protestants are far more evangelical-minded than Catholics.
How can Catholicism possibly win more adherents, much less hold on to its own, when Catholics are so shy about sharing their faith?
Here in Ireland, of course, very few Catholics switch from Catholicism to Protestantism. Instead they cease to practice any sort of organised religion. More’s the pity. If a Catholic is going to leave their Church, it would be much better if they joined another Church than to give up the practice of the Christian faith completely.