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Catholic World News News Feature

Tough papal challenge for Brazilian bishops May 14, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI called Brazilian Church leaders to account in an unusually tough, candid address on May 11, saying that failure to preach the Gospel has endangered the faith.

At a Friday-afternoon Vespers service in Sao Paulo's cathedral, the Holy Father told 430 Brazilian bishops that more vigorous evangelization is needed to restore confidence in the Church and to stem the loss of Catholics to new religious sects.

[The full text of the Pope's talk is available on the Vatican web site.]

The Pontiff insisted that bishops must devote themselves to their primary duties, ensuring the integrity of the Catholic faith and promoting the use of the sacraments rather than becoming absorbed in other public causes.

"This, and nothing else, is the purpose of the Church: the salvation of individual souls," the Pope reminded the bishops. It is pointless to pursue social reform to the detriment of the spiritual affairs, the Pope argued, because by doing so Church leaders undermine their own authority. He argued that "wherever faith in Jesus Christ and in his sacramental presence is lacking, the essential element for the solution of pressing social and political problems is also missing."

The Pope acknowledged the serious dangers in Brazilian society:

The sanctity of marriage and the family is attacked with impunity, primarily by making concessions to pressures that can have a negative influence on legislative processes. Certain crimes against life are being justified in the name of the right to individual freedom; the dignity of human beings is attacked; the scourge of divorce and of extra-marital unions is increasingly widespread.

These problems are only aggravated, the Pope continued, when the Church is divided over questions such as clerical celibacy, and when priests and religious become involved in ideological campaigns, neglecting their apostolic missions.

Pope Benedict devoted most of his address to the need for evangelization, especially in light of the competition from Evangelical Protestant missionaries and other sects-- competition that has seriously eroded the proportion of Catholics in the Brazilian population. "It seems clear," the Pope said, "that the principal cause of this problem is to be found in the lack of an evangelization completely centered on Christ and his Church."

The Pope went on:

Those who are most vulnerable to the aggressive proselytizing of sects—a just cause for concern—and those who are incapable of resisting the onslaught of agnosticism, relativism, and secularization, are generally the baptized who remain insufficiently evangelized; they are easily influenced because their faith is weak, confused, easily shaken and naive, despite their innate religiosity.

"No effort should be spared" in a campaign to draw lapsed Catholics back into active participation in the life of the Church, the Pope said. He instructed the bishops to concentrate on sound preaching, solid formation of priests, and proper administration of the sacraments-- with a particular focus on making priests available to hear confessions.

Bishops, the Pope reminded the Brazilian hierarchy, are witnesses to the faith, under a solemn obligation to preserve the "apostolic tradition, free from any interpretations motivated by rationalistic ideologies."

The challenges facing the Church in Brazil today, the Pope said, call for "starting afresh from Christ in every area of missionary activity."