Evangelism in Latin America

The Australian news site MercatorNet is the best Catholic news site I've seen with its excellent commentaries that have previously been recommended by other Catholic bloggers, including Fumare, Amy Welborn, and Curt Jester. One recent news item you don't want to miss is entitled Latin Rapture.

In the MercatorNet article, two Catholic priests in Latin America comment on the huge growth of Protestant Pentecostals in the last 30 years. Some of their very interesting observations:

• “I believe that if Latin America is still following a Christian path, it is thanks to the evangelicals”
• n 1900 there were only 25,000 evangelicals in all of Latin America. Now, in Argentina, there are said to be four million Pentecostals and in Brazil 25 million. In Brazil it is claimed that they represent 18 per cent of the population; in Chile 25 per cent; in Colombia 35 per cent; and in Guatemala 45 per cent. (Exact figures are hard to come by.)
• “Those 16th century Protestants have turned liberal; they accept, for example, abortion and gay marriage,” says Father Julio Elizaga, a Catholic priest who has been working in ecumenism in Uruguay and Latin America for 56 years. “That’s why their churches are empty. The Methodists used to have around 3,500 to 4,000 members in Uruguay. Now there are just 500”
• “official figures show that in Latin America 11 per cent of the population is evangelical, most of them practising. Pentecostals don’t have two groups of mere believers and practising believers... Some people say that they are Catholic but never go to Mass. This doesn’t happen among the Pentecostals.”
• How did the Pentecostals seize the initiative? Pastorino argues that Catholics took their eyes off the ball. “In the 1960s part of the Catholic Church followed the ‘progressive’ ideas of the day. Even its language become more sociological; it sidelined mysticism and eschatology,” Pastorino said. It was also a time when, says Father Elizaga, more than 100 priests walked off the job in Uruguay. The door was open for the Pentecostals.
• However, like most Protestant denominations, Pentecostals are a fractious lot and this hampers their growth in Latin America. “Pentecostal churches are divided; they have neither an authority nor an episcopate. This is their worst problem,” says Father Elizaga. “If they maintained a united front, they would be a devastating force”