SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 6 - N. 14 - 2000 - April - I
From: CIOFS Bulletin, 1999, N. 3
Meeting Religious Needs: a Challenge to the SFO
Marianne Powell
(Part II)
The Protestant churches, including some of the free churches, have been present in Latin America for many years already, but they have been relatively small. What has happened in the last three decades, however, is that this Continent has seen an explosion of sects of all kinds. The same thing is happening in Africa, but so far it seems with less drastic consequences.
According to statistics worked out by H. Suso and reported in an article by Franz Damen in issue 72 of the publication "Berichte, Dokumente, Kommentare" (Reports, Documents, Commentary) from the Mission Centre of the OFM Friars in Bonn, Germany, every year 3.5 million Catholics in Latin America leave their Church to join one of the numerous sects operating on that Continent. The same statistics tell us that already 12.5 % of the population of the Continent belong to sects, and in some parts the figure is as high as 25% or 30%. Within the last ten years some sects have doubled or tripled their membership.
The attitude of the Catholic Church to this has been very negative. Our Church had practically a monopoly of Christianity in this area, and the growth of sects has been seen as an invasion or an attack - the intrusion of a foreign element that is not compatible with the Latin-American soul and culture.
To view things in perspective, however, it is necessary to remember that the membership of the established Christian churches throughout the world has stagnated in relation to the growth of the world population. By contrast the sects have grown in numbers that exceed the population growth.
Another fact which does not apply to Latin America alone is the increasing fragmentation of Christianity in the 20th century. While in the year 1900 there were about 1900 different Christian denominations, in 1985 the number had reached 22,189 (of which 3,799 are active in Latin America).
The fragmentation has been particularly marked in Latin America, where sects have carried on an intensive mission, but many of the sects have split up after settling in Latin America to form a large number of native denominations. These are mostly indigenous, non-white communities forming amongst the economically and socially marginalised. For an explanation of this growth, some of the members of the sects have pointed to the better chance which the sects give the Indian and Afro-American native population to integrate their traditional culture and religious traditions.
There have been two slightly different official reactions to the question of the sects. A Vatican document published in May 1986 ("Sects or new movements. Pastoral challenges") analysed the phenomenon and saw the rise of the sects as a natural response to the present day de-personalizing structure of society. The sects respond well, the document said, to people's needs for a sense of belonging, for solidarity, cultural identity, participation and involvement, and the document concluded that the sects therefore rather than constituting a threat to the Catholic Church should be seen as a pastoral challenge.
The other reaction came from the ecumenical deliberations of the bishops in a document "Religious movements today: Challenge for the Churches", Cuenca, November 1986. The bishops value the sects much less, and they see the challenge coming not so much from the sects but from the miserable conditions of the poor Latin-American peoples, who seek liberation.
The sects are as diverse as they are numerous. There are Christian sects, most of them Pentecostal, pseudo-Christian (like Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons etc.), who grew out of Christendom but added other elements, and there are non-Christian sects of all kinds, many of them syncretistic, blending traditional indigenous religious elements with the esoteric and the occult or Asian religions.
The Pentecostal presence in Latin America is not new, but it has exploded in recent years. In 1930 the Pentecostals constituted 9.5% of the Protestant presence there; in 1972 this had grown to 73%.
In spite of honest efforts on the part of the Catholic Church it has to a large extent failed to meet the challenge of the sects. The reasons for this are various. There is a serious lack of priests in Latin America, which leads to the often publicised desperate situations where Catholics sometimes for years cannot attend a mass or receive Holy Communion - or any other sacrament for that matter, and lay people are not sufficiently integrated in the pastoral work. As a priest, Michael Garnett, working in Peru said in an article published in The Tablet (an English Catholic paper) in July 1998: The Church considers the situation in this area to represent a special crisis, but is has been a special crisis since Christianity was introduced here in the 16th century. Michael Garnett describes an experience where he had travelled across the mountains to a small town to celebrate First Communion. He noted a plaque on the wall of the little church which said that the members of the parish had built it and completed it 7 years previously. After the mass he asked the catechist when mass had last been celebrated there, and the catechist answered: "Father, this is the first." For a Church in which sacraments are central and the ordained ministry a constitutive element, to consistently lack priests is to move towards the abyss. We should be saddened, but not surprised that an increasing number of our members seek their spiritual sustenance elsewhere.
The growth factors are external as well as internal. Among the external factors Franz Damen in the article referred to above mentions US neo-conservative influence that opposes Latin-American involvement in liberation initiatives. Many of the sects have a very conservative social ethos.
Among the internal factors is the ease with which the
Pentecostals have taken popular religiosity on board. This combined
with the simple organization and structure of the sects, the very
simple but dualistic doctrine, and certain "magic" elements like
miracles and healing has appealed particularly to the indigenous
people. To this can be added various other aspects summarized below
(again from Franz Damen's article):
-- the possibility of belonging to small simple group in a
brotherly and sisterly atmosphere
-- integration into a "lay" religion with no religious hierarchy,
where the charisma of individual members is recognized
-- the feeling of belonging to a religion which is supernatural,
mysterious and has a very simple doctrine
-- a spirituality of conversion, of holiness and healing, which
changes life in a concrete way
-- participation and co-responsibility, spontaneous sharing of
faith among all members
-- effective popular methods of religious upbringing and
formation.
As we can see from this summary, what the sects offer does not relate to any particular doctrine, but to concrete ways of living and sharing the faith.
A Secular Franciscan response?
In view of this, and looking over the list of reasons given for opting for a sect, it seems to me that the sects do present a very real challenge to the SF0. Many of the needs that people have, and which they feel are being met in the sects, ought to be met equally well in a Secular Franciscan fraternity: a sense of belonging, brotherliness, respect for the charisma of the individual, a spirituality of conversion and holiness experienced in a concrete way, participation and co-responsibility, sharing and effective formation programmes adapted to the members and to prospective members.
We may have to reconsider our role in the Church, since our Rule and our spirituality is immensely well suited to pick up the growing religious interest which we find among lay people - not only in Latin America, but in many other parts of the world. We have something to offer, and a structure that is already in place. While the challenge in Latin America may come from the sects, in my own part of the world, which is a highly secularized society, the challenge comes from a new upsurge of religious feeling, free flowing, free wheeling, unstructured and attaching itself to whatever it can find: Asiatic religious practices, medieval mystical lore, re-incarnation, elements of Roman Catholic Easter ritual -- drawn in because it appeals to the senses, satanic cults and all sorts of mixtures. In Danish shops today the most popular elements people buy to decorate their homes are statues of Mary and devotional candles decorated with saints' pictures coming from Mexico, and in shops selling women's clothes rosaries hang on the rail, together with belts and trinkets. The more serious side of this is that we have to keep our churches under strict supervision, since church furniture and equipment have suddenly acquired a commercial value.
The Secular Franciscan Order worldwide has plenty of challenges. As with the Church at large, our future depends on how we meet them.
Primary sources: "Berichte, Dokumente, Kommentare" 72: Die neuen Heilsbringer, Missionszentrale der Franziskaner (1998), Hans Jörg Urban, "Freikirchen" in Kleine Konfessionskunde, ed. Johann-Adam-Möhler-Institut (Paderborn 1997).