c. 2007 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ When Pope John Paul II visited Brazil in 1980, one of his gravest concerns was the rise throughout Latin America of liberation theology, a movement that sought to fuse Roman Catholic social doctrine with the teachings of Karl Marx.

Today liberation theology’s proponents are aging and their influence is marginal at best. The Vatican’s rebuke last March of the Rev. Jon Sobrino, 68, one of the movement’s luminaries, struck many observers as almost an anachronism.

This eclipse is due largely to the decline of the Soviet Union and communism, but also owes much to the work of former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger _ who will visit Brazil next week (May 9-14) as Pope Benedict XVI.

As John Paul’s top doctrinal official during the 1980s and ’90s, Ratzinger repeatedly condemned liberation theologians for their deviations from Catholic orthodoxy. As he goes to Brazil to inaugurate a meeting of Latin American bishops, the church he will visit faces challenges no less complex than Marxism, and much less susceptible to a top-down response from Rome.

Although Latin America is still the world’s most Catholic region _ home to nearly half of the church’s 1.1 billion faithful _ millions of Catholics there have recently turned to other faiths or to no faith at all.

Between 1980 and 2000, the number of Brazilians identifying themselves as Catholic fell from 89 percent to 74 percent, according to census figures. Last year, a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found the proportion of city dwellers in Brazil who called themselves Catholic was less than 60 percent.

Many former Catholics have turned to Protestantism, especially Pentecostal denominations, whose members account for 15 percent of Brazilians, 9 percent of Chileans and 20 percent of Guatemalans, according to the Pew Forum.

The appeal of the new faith is both spiritual and social, says the Pew Forum’s director, Luis Lugo.

Pentecostalism is able to “generate a living and personal sense of communion with God,” and to “provide a sense of community” for the displaced and disadvantaged populations (including Latino immigrants to the U.S.) where it has enjoyed its greatest growth, Lugo said.

For Benedict, the rise of Pentecostalism and other “sects” is a legacy of the “politicization of the faith” by liberation theology. “The widespread exodus to the sects is doubtless connected with such politicization,” he told a German interviewer in 1996.

According to Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich., the growth of Latin American Protestantism in the 1970s was largely a rejection of the revolutionary aspect of liberation theology. “The Roman Catholic Church was seen as politically aligning itself with violence,” he says.

But the more enduring appeal of Pentecostalism, Gregg acknowledges, lies in the “personal connection” it offers to Christianity.

To be sure, the Catholic Church recognizes the positive qualities of Pentecostalism, at least judging from the growth of Catholic Charismatic movements, which now claim 34 percent of Brazilians, 21 percent of Chileans and 40 percent of Guatemalans.

While sharing many of the outward practices of Pentecostalism, such as speaking in tongues and praying for divine healing, Charismatic Catholics remain members of the Catholic Church.

The church’s willingness to accommodate diverse styles of worship fits with its recent, less confrontational approach to non-Catholic denominations. In 1992, John Paul denounced Pentecostals as “ravenous wolves,” but last January a spokesman for the Latin American bishops said “sects are not the problem _ our believers are the problem.”

The ranks of unbelievers are growing as well, with an unprecedented proportion of Latin Americans describing themselves as atheist or agnostic. The percentage of religiously unaffiliated Brazilians rose from 1.6 percent in 1980 to 7.4 percent in 2000.

This cultural change is matched by the rise in Brazil and Chile of European-style secularist governments, which oppose Catholic teaching on such issues as abortion, divorce, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. Farther north, Mexico City last month legalized abortion over vociferous protests from local Catholic leaders.

In such struggles, the Catholic Church might find yet more common ground with Pentecostals. Although many of the newer denominations support center-left governments on matters of economic policy, they tend to espouse traditional views on social issues, including medical ethics and sexuality.

Just as the legalization of abortion fostered new political bonds between conservative Catholics and Protestants in the U.S., Lugo suggests, the growth of Latin American secularism could once again bring “erstwhile enemies” together.

KRE/LF END ROCCA