c. 1997 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Harmony was the buzzword of the day as bishops from the two American continents gathered Monday (Nov. 17) for the first working session of a monthlong meeting, or synod, on the religious, social, economic and political issues of the vast region.

At what may be the largest geographical area ever represented at a synod _ 242 bishops and cardinals from 24 episcopal conferences, communicating in four languages _ delegates are being urged by Pope John Paul II to seek out what unites, not divides them.

The pope has scheduled five continental synods at the close of this millennium to reinvigorate evangelization at the dawn of the next. The African synod was held in 1994. Assemblies for Asia, Oceania and Europe will be held by the year 2000.”While we will obviously be discussing many of the very real problems of our hemisphere, we don’t want to focus only on problems,”said Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles and president of the U.S. delegation.

Yet Mahony recognized the depth of those differences, when he said at a news conference,”I think we have not yet begun to realize our great potential to work together.” Speaking on Sunday at a special Mass for the synod participants, the pope referred to the 500 years of Christian evangelization in the Americas.”The church, enriching itself with the experience of five centuries of evangelization, intends to prepare itself to face the great challenges of the third millennium,”he said.”The objective is to diffuse ever more the evangelical message”and to”knock down the walls of separation between man and man, nation and nation.”Christians, while loving and honoring their own countries, are men and women `without borders,’ because the church community does not know any boundaries of race, language and culture,”he said.

At least some senior prelates agreed.”Solidarity has to be emphasized with a Christian message,”said Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico.”The major problem we have, or share, is evangelization.” But the differences among the countries at the huge parley are inescapable, as many of the participants have made clear in comments published in a working paper.

While the 42-page document assembled by Vatican officials takes pains to emphasize common challenges, it notes many current problems have become tensions between North and South, including U.S. jobs exported South, vast quantities of drugs shipped North and huge piles of debt amassed in the South from loans by banks in the North.

Perhaps the biggest source of tension is the growing presence in Latin America of Protestant evangelical groups many Catholic clergy say are exported from the United States.

However, the Rev. Richard Neuhaus, director of the New York-based Institute on Religion and Public Life, said in an interview that”some bishops in Latin America have very little contact with non-Catholic Christians and have greatly exaggerated the role of North America in the expansion of Protestantism in the South. Some people think it’s being wholly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.” Neuhaus, who is attending the synod as an invited observer, said such a view”underestimates the degree to which there are religious indigenous movements that are not in any way directed by or even closely tied to Protestantism.” Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, has told associates Latin Catholic bishops and Eastern Orthodox prelates have at least one strikingly similar attitude _ they both fear and exaggerate the presence of Protestant evangelical groups.

Latin America has more than 400 million Catholics, nearly half of all Roman Catholics worldwide, and the numbers are expected to climb by 25 percent within the next generation. The United States has 60 million Catholics.

Estimates on the number of evangelical Christians in Latin America vary widely, from 80 million to 200 million. The disparity exists largely because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of loose-knit religious groups with no organizational structure.

Even more difficult is arriving at the number of Catholics who have converted to one of the Protestant groups emphasizing conversion to a personal, experienced faith in Jesus.

Where all this Protestant appeal is rooted is another matter of disagreement and one certain to be on the front burner during the closed-door synod, which ends Dec. 12. The bishops, meeting in an”advisory”capacity, will make their findings to the pope, who will sometime later issue an apostolic letter on the synod.

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Are these new religious movements _ fundamentalism, Pentecostalism and others _ exported from the United States or are they homegrown?”A general consensus exists in all America on the serious problem posed by the religious movements and the sects, given their religious extremism and programs of proselytism,”according to the synod’s working paper.”So extensive is their growth, that in the Central, South and Caribbean parts of the American hemisphere, the term `invasion’ is used, a reference to the fact that many of these groups originate in the United States of America where they have abundant economic resources for the development of their campaigns.” While it is undeniable that North American missionaries are proselytizing actively among their southern neighbors, many prelates say it would be folly to blame the United States.”I don’t think the issue is going to be dealt with by the Catholic Church if we deal with it only as an export,”said Archbishop J. Francis Stafford, former archbishop of Denver and now president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.”I think there is an intimate relationship between economic and political globalization that has grown out of that soil.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Other synod participants said the meeting should not get bogged down in differences over evangelization, contending that other critical issues bind the continents.

The pope has urged the participants to”consider the continent as a whole, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, without introducing a separation between the North … and the South, so as not to risk a contrast between them.” But whatever the synod discusses, it is bound to find contrasts, whether the reasons for poverty in the South or violence in the North.”There has always been a sense of solidarity, but there has also been a sense that these are two very different continents,”said Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council on Social Communications.”We need a new type of united vision.”

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