Agnostic media commentators point with delight to the alleged decline of the Church in Latin America, but this too, is largely a canard. The performance of the secular leaders throughout South and Central America has been inadequate. And the Church has risen to the challenge of oppressive governments and competitive evangelical recruitment such that it is now enjoying a substantial renaissance.
A widely publicized Latino- Barometro poll of 2005 revealed that 18% of Latin Americans trusted any of the political parties in their countries, 28% their national congresses, 38% private business, 42% trusted the military, and 43% trusted their national presidents. The Roman Catholic Church was trusted by 71%, including leftist-governed countries such as Venezuela (74%), and even Cuba, and including a representative sampling of non-Catholic opinion.
Left-wing “Liberation Theology” has collapsed and been rejected by everyone, laity and clergy. It was an import from Europe that did not put down roots. Evangelical Protestantism has been a spur to more comprehensive pastoral effort by the established church. As in other spheres, competition has been a benefit. The fact is that while Roman Catholicism was unchallenged in Latin America for 500 years, it was not really a Catholic continent. Foreign missionaries provided an inordinate percentage of the clergy and a vast number of local cults and indigenous practices were roughly absorbed and accepted under the Roman umbrella, with little change to pre-colonial practice. Rigorous organizations with serious purposes and structures of belief and work, like Opus Dei, Charismatic Renewal, Communion and Liberation, are now flourishing, and growing more quickly than their reasonably friendly Protestant rivals, like the Jesuits and the Capucines in the Counter-reformation. Even the quasi- Communist, President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, while he persecutes the Church, speaks in Christian images.
There has been a religious decline in much of Europe, but then Europe itself is in decline, and the two trajectories are related. The only prominent public figure in Europe who has long sensibly emphasized the danger of Europe’s demographic erosion and dechristianization is Pope Benedict XVI. The Islamic attempt to treat him like the Danish cartoonists failed, after he pointed out the lack of reciprocity in Christian generosity to Muslim minorities, in a speech in Regensburg two years ago. He regretted offending Muslim sensibilities, but retracted nothing and apologized for nothing.
