As pope visits MX, Catholics in decline

[Micosil]

mexiconewsdaily.com/news/as-pope-visits-mx-catholics-in-decline/

One observer estimates that only 46% of Mexicans are full participants in the church

This week’s visit to Mexico by Pope Francis comes at a time when the number of Catholics has been in decline for years, according to statistics and experts in religious affairs.

The trend has been seen since the 1950s when 98% of Mexicans declared themselves Catholic, according to the National Statistics Institute (INEGI). By 2010, that figure had dropped to 83%.

 

[sydneycatholic]

mexiconewsdaily.com/news/as-pope-visits-mx-catholics-in-decline/

The US-based sects that go on “missions” to Latin America are to blame for a lot of this.

And then you have the Mexico City Policy that has not been enforced since Obama came into office, which prevents US federal government money going to development aid programs that subscribe to Catholic teaching, notably against abortion and that aggressively push anti-Catholic population reduction.

The USA seems to have perfected 2 things: spreading anti-Catholic Protestant “sects” and Hollywood anti-Christian values.

I don’t understand how any American can be proud of what the US has done for the Church.

We can rejoice that the US is becoming more secular and less Christian since the “Christianity” of the USA has always been an anti-Catholic one.

The problem is… they have exported all these pseudo-Christian sects into Latin America and the rest of the world.

The rise of Christianity in China is another interesting phenomenon. Not sure if the Christian sects there are anti-Catholic or not.

I always thought Pope Francis was elected to help stem the awful Protestantization of Latin America thanks to the USA. I recall it hurt Pope John Paul II so much, the spread of these “Christian” sects.

The Spanish-US war really could be seen through a Catholic lens where the US went around in places like the Philippines to undermine the Church and spread its Protestant “Christianity.”

 

[Padres1969]

The US-based sects that go on “missions” to Latin America are to blame for a lot of this.

And then you have the Mexico City Policy that has not been enforced since Obama came into office, which prevents US federal government money going to development aid programs that subscribe to Catholic teaching, notably against abortion and that aggressively push anti-Catholic population reduction.

The USA seems to have perfected 2 things: spreading anti-Catholic Protestant “sects” and Hollywood anti-Christian values.

I don’t understand how any American can be proud of what the US has done for the Church.

We can rejoice that the US is becoming more secular and less Christian since the “Christianity” of the USA has always been an anti-Catholic one.

The problem is… they have exported all these pseudo-Christian sects into Latin America and the rest of the world.

The rise of Christianity in China is another interesting phenomenon. Not sure if the Christian sects there are anti-Catholic or not.

I always thought Pope Francis was elected to help stem the awful Protestantization of Latin America thanks to the USA. I recall it hurt Pope John Paul II so much, the spread of these “Christian” sects.

The Spanish-US war really could be seen through a Catholic lens where the US went around in places like the Philippines to undermine the Church and spread its Protestant “Christianity.”

Question, are you saying population reduction measures are inherently anti-Catholic, or the methods they push to do so are anti-Catholic?

And yes your statement about “sects” that go on Missions to Latin America isn’t off base I’d suspect. I’ve got the results of those Missions you speak of sitting at the next desk over in my office. She’s a Catholic born and raised Mexican-Brazilian woman who married a Mexican former Catholic Mormon convert who as part of their marriage pushed her conversion to the LDS church. Their kids are all LDS, and after their messy divorce she became a non-denominational Christian. And I’ve heard other stories along those lines. Seeing numbers on what religions have gained ground in Mexico would be interesting for sure and I suspect the LDS church would be one of the bigger growth religions in the country.

EDIT Went looking for myself, and it does appear the LDS Church has made some big inroads in Mexico, particularly in recent years after the government recognized it. At 1.3 million adherents and growing, the LDS Church is only larger in the US when compared to Mexico. Also appears the JW’s have made some big inroads as well with potentially over a million members in Mexico. This in a country that only have approximately 6.1 million Protestants (and that number includes LDS and JWs).

 

[sydneycatholic]

Question, are you saying population reduction measures are inherently anti-Catholic, or the methods they push to do so are anti-Catholic?

Clearly the methods. The Church is against contraception. It is a huge shame even our Sister Orthodox Churches accept contraception, and that all Christians did until the Anglicans caved into accepting marital birth control in the 1920s.

In any event, the post-Christian West is trying to export the Culture of Death and anti-family ideologies with the same missionary zeal that it used to do so when they were a force for good spreading the Gospel.

I strongly relate to the Rest, as I mourn the decaying West of which I’m a part. But the Church has always been like that. The Holy Spirit flies off when it is rejected by the West and it emerges in the non-West, notably Africa and Asia.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

Question, are you saying population reduction measures are inherently anti-Catholic, or the methods they push to do so are anti-Catholic?

And yes your statement about “sects” that go on Missions to Latin America isn’t off base I’d suspect. I’ve got the results of those Missions you speak of sitting at the next desk over in my office. She’s a Catholic born and raised Mexican-Brazilian woman who married a Mexican former Catholic Mormon convert who as part of their marriage pushed her conversion to the LDS church. Their kids are all LDS, and after their messy divorce she became a non-denominational Christian. And I’ve heard other stories along those lines. Seeing numbers on what religions have gained ground in Mexico would be interesting for sure and I suspect the LDS church would be one of the bigger growth religions in the country.

EDIT Went looking for myself, and it does appear the LDS Church has made some big inroads in Mexico, particularly in recent years after the government recognized it. At 1.3 million adherents and growing, the LDS Church is only larger in the US when compared to Mexico. Also appears the JW’s have made some big inroads as well with potentially over a million members in Mexico. This in a country that only have approximately 6.1 million Protestants (and that number includes LDS and JWs).

And it’s not just Central/South America either. I just got back from visiting a number of islands in French Polynesia (vs. January in Massachusetts !) and in every island - places like Fakarava, Bora Bora even, there was a prominent, new, beautifully clean and attractive, LDS building in or near the center of the largest settlement. And in Vaitape, the principal settlement on Bora Bora, I walked to what clearly had started out as a Catholic Church, only to find it was now home to a Pentecostal group.

 

[Padres1969]

And it’s not just Central/South America either. I just got back from visiting a number of islands in French Polynesia (vs. January in Massachusetts !) and in every island - places like Fakarava, Bora Bora even, there was a prominent, new, beautifully clean and attractive, LDS building in or near the center of the largest settlement. And in Vaitape, the principal settlement on Bora Bora, I walked to what clearly had started out as a Catholic Church, only to find it was now home to a Pentecostal group.

Indeed, I’m focused on Mexico’s numbers because of what I was looking at above, but it appears that Pentacostal groups make up a big portion of the remaining “Protestant” groups that have made inroads in Mexico with Pentecostals accounting for 22% of the Protestant population in Mexico now and other Evangelical groups being 39% of the remaining non-JW or LDS (surprisingly not-Baptists). So between Pentacostals, non-Baptist Evangelical groups, the LDS Church and the JWs you’ve got the vast majority of the non-Catholic population accounted for. The only other non Christian group with a large percentage of the population is Atheism (just shy of 4.6% of the population) which is growing in Mexico too, though not as fast or as much as in the US and Europe.

 

[Sy_Noe]

The US-based sects that go on “missions” to Latin America are to blame for a lot of this.

And then you have the Mexico City Policy that has not been enforced since Obama came into office, which prevents US federal government money going to development aid programs that subscribe to Catholic teaching, notably against abortion and that aggressively push anti-Catholic population reduction.

The USA seems to have perfected 2 things: spreading anti-Catholic Protestant “sects” and Hollywood anti-Christian values.

I don’t understand how any American can be proud of what the US has done for the Church.

We can rejoice that the US is becoming more secular and less Christian since the “Christianity” of the USA has always been an anti-Catholic one.

The problem is… they have exported all these pseudo-Christian sects into Latin America and the rest of the world.

The rise of Christianity in China is another interesting phenomenon. Not sure if the Christian sects there are anti-Catholic or not.

I always thought Pope Francis was elected to help stem the awful Protestantization of Latin America thanks to the USA. I recall it hurt Pope John Paul II so much, the spread of these “Christian” sects.

The Spanish-US war really could be seen through a Catholic lens where the US went around in places like the Philippines to undermine the Church and spread its Protestant “Christianity.”

I’m confused if you object to all non Catholics doing mission work or just for example LDS. The Episcopal Church is not considered Catholic by the Catholic Church. Yet the Episcopal church near me, youth in their teen group and adults as well, go every year on a mission trip. I know to the Dominican Republic and perhaps other places as well. Although I don’t know how many Dominicans have left the Catholic Church for the Episcopal. But if they did, would that bother you as well?

 

[sydneycatholic]

I’m confused if you object to all non Catholics doing mission work or just for example LDS. The Episcopal Church is not considered Catholic by the Catholic Church. Yet the Episcopal church near me, youth in their teen group and adults as well, go every year on a mission trip. I know to the Dominican Republic and perhaps other places as well. Although I don’t know how many Dominicans have left the Catholic Church for the Episcopal. But if they did, would that bother you as well?

I’d rather these Christian groups attempt to convert non-Christians.

There are many groups calling themselves Christians that have long regarded Catholics to not be Christian.

I know the Episcopalians as mainline Protestants don’t view Catholics in this regard.

However, why don’t they go to Hindu India or Muslim Indonesia? So, yes, I have a problem with Christian groups attempting to convert Catholics obviously, as I don’t exactly like this type of inter-Christian evangelism.

Check out the latest Pew Forum statistics with the Protestantization of Latin America.
pewforum.org/2014/11/13/religion-in-latin-america/

I don’t think the mainline Protestants have much to do with this at all in any substantive matter, it is all those “evangelical” groups out there going on “missions” that are so sectarian and see Catholics in need of “saving”.

I’ve dealt with them so often and it can be quite emotionally hurtful but they need to be confronted for they spread lies about the Church, and slurs I don’t need to repeat as I’m sure you’d be aware of them.

I won’t bore you with the sociology of what Protestantism does to groups as an individualistic faith compared to the more communal-faith of Catholicism.

Suffice to say that Christian division only leads to an inability to proclaim the Gospel as One Body so that the world may believe. And ultimately this leads to greater secularization and a growth in atheism.

We see in the USA, the Pew Forum report (pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/) showing the USA is no longer Protestant-majority and quickly become similar to post-Christian Europe. However, it is those mainline Protestants that have been most affected, not the sectarian evangelicals of various types.

 

[Padres1969]

“There are many groups calling themselves Christians that have long regarded Catholics to not be Christian.”

Actually your point made me think. If it is groups that consider Catholics to be non-Christian that are doing the most growing in countries like Mexico, it does make me wonder if the end result couldn’t be a rising tide of anti-Catholicism (and possibly other more mainline Protestants that hold more catholic positions as well) in those countries. That could include the US as well.

I know it’s not a likely possibility, or at least I hope it’s not. But even the possibility is worrisome.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I’m confused if you object to all non Catholics doing mission work or just for example LDS. The Episcopal Church is not considered Catholic by the Catholic Church. Yet the Episcopal church near me, youth in their teen group and adults as well, go every year on a mission trip. I know to the Dominican Republic and perhaps other places as well. Although I don’t know how many Dominicans have left the Catholic Church for the Episcopal. But if they did, would that bother you as well?

Sy, in my opinion there is a difference between the kind of missions that LDS et al have in Mexico and Dominican Republic for example, and the missions that Episcopalian youth groups have over spring break or during the summer. To my knowledge the latter take on a building project or some sort of service. They come and they go, after accomplishing their service project. That is very different from LDS missionaries who are placed in communities for two years to gain conversions.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I

I won’t bore you with the sociology of what Protestantism does to groups as an individualistic faith compared to the more communal-faith of Catholicism.

This is just hearsay, but many from Mexico and Latin America who are converted into the Mormon faith say it is precisely BECAUSE of the focus on the family and for the community-based worship and faith, something that they found lacking in the RC church.

I’m not certain how that fits into your statement of individualistic faith vs communal faith. Perhaps you are speaking theologically - that non-Catholics are called individually to belief in Christ vs membership and practice within the communal Catholic Church. Am I understanding you correctly?

 

[sydneycatholic]

This is just hearsay, but many from Mexico and Latin America who are converted into the Mormon faith say it is precisely BECAUSE of the focus on the family and for the community-based worship and faith, something that they found lacking in the RC church.

I’m not certain how that fits into your statement of individualistic faith vs communal faith. Perhaps you are speaking theologically - that non-Catholics are called individually to belief in Christ vs membership and practice within the communal Catholic Church. Am I understanding you correctly?

Well I obviously take the Catholic position. The Enlightenment which ushered in the era of “individualism” as opposed to “communalism” (and before it the Reformation) basically caused the inability of Christendom to proclaim the Gospel as One.

I am speaking here to what would have been called the “Christian West” here to avoid bringing up the Eastern Orthodox in terms of ecclesastical jurisdiction.

I was reading a review of a book recently released by Brad S Gregory, “The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society” (Harvard UP, 2012).

In an effort to understand how contemporary American society came to be with its hyperpluralism of religious beliefs, emphasis on individual human rights, and dedication to consumerism,

Brad S. Gregory looks for answers not to the Enlightenment, but to earlier eras, especially that of the Protestant Reformation. He approaches his topic from six intertwined perspectives: excluding God, relativizing doctrines, controlling the churches, subjectivizing morality, manufacturing the goods life, and secularizing knowledge.

His investigation crosses national boundaries; sweeps across the centuries; and engages the disciplines of theology, philosophy, political science, sociology, economics, and even popular culture. An introduction explains his genealogical method and his conception of change over time, a conclusion summarizes his findings, and 145 pages of notes provide references to primary and up-to-date secondary literature in multiple languages. His writing style is lucid and even witty at times: “Whatever!”

In the chapter “Excluding God,” Gregory shows how the late-medieval via moderna and its precursor John Duns Scotus departed from the traditional view of God as transcendent and incomprehensible, the God who revealed himself as “I am Who am” (Ex. 3:14) and whom St. Thomas Aquinas identified as the act of “to be” (esse). Scotus and his followers claimed that God shares being with creation, is conceptually part of the same framework as the created world in a “univocal metaphysics,” and in nominalism is construed as the highest being (ens). Protestants insisted on the distinction between God and his creation, initially rejecting Aristotelianism and sacramentality as understood in the Roman Church.

The Reformed and Radicals insisted that God is not physically present in the material world and that transubstantiation is a false teaching. After the early Church, they argued, God no longer manifested his power in miracles, and claims of apparitions and miracles wrought through saints were to be rejected as superstitious beliefs. But Protestantism per se did not disenchant the world. Instead, the doctrinal disagreements of the Reformation era sidelined disputed Christian truth claims and opened the door for the intellectual exclusion of God via univocal metaphysics and Occam’s razor through modern philosophy and science.

In the seventeenth century (natural) philosophers tried to understand the world by using reason alone, identifying efficient causes, using mathematics, and seeing the world as governed by immutable natural laws. Natural theology using reason alone sought to understand the relationship between God and the world based on metaphysical assumptions of the via moderna in which God and nature belong to the same conceptual and ontological framework. Occam’s razor and an either/or conception of natural and supernatural causality increasingly restricted God’s role in the world.

Once all events were defined as natural, miracles were explained away and there was no need for a God except as a remote first cause. Some philosophers turned God into Nature and Jesus Christ into an ethical sage. Nineteenth-century thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher saw religion as the subjective realm of intuition and feelings. The intellectual elimination of God came not through the findings of science but through their conflation with assumptions of univocal metaphysics and the application of Occam’s razor to the relationship between God’s presence and natural regularities.

This is only the “abstract” of the Review of Gregory’s book as found at ProjectMuse online.
muse.jhu.edu/login?type=summary&url=/journals/catholic_historical_review/v098/98.3.minnich.html

BTW I work in the tertiary sector. And I don’t want to go into the whole history of Protestantism, as it relates to the Americas, both the USA and Mexico.

For many Catholics, we see Our Lady of Guadelupe as the true uniter of the Americas. The Church is pre-denominational and thus in accordance to what it officially sees itself as being (pre-denominational), I don’t call the Catholic Church a denomination. Along with the Eastern & Oriental Orthodox Sister Churches, we are the Universal Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that surpasses nationality, the boundaries of modern-day nation-states that are always subject to change.

We place our trust entirely in Christ as well as the Blessed Mother who is the Mother of the Church and All Christians.

Our Lady of Guadelupe pray for the Americas and for the revitalization of the Church in Mexico and the USA.

 

[sydneycatholic]

Sy, in my opinion there is a difference between the kind of missions that LDS et al have in Mexico and Dominican Republic for example, and the missions that Episcopalian youth groups have over spring break or during the summer. To my knowledge the latter take on a building project or some sort of service. They come and they go, after accomplishing their service project. That is very different from LDS missionaries who are placed in communities for two years to gain conversions.

Please accept my apologies, I responded to you when I meant to respond to another. I’m new to interacting on this very informative, Faith affirming and thought-stimulating forum.

God bless you.

EDIT: I actually may have been wrong and that this message was a response to you.

 

[Sy_Noe]

Please accept my apologies, I responded to you when I meant to respond to another. I’m new to interacting on this very informative, Faith affirming and thought-stimulating forum.

God bless you.

EDIT: I actually may have been wrong and that this message was a response to you.

No. I think you were responding to me. I was just confused about what you were objecting to. But as ComplineSanFran said the Episcopal youth that go to other countries do so to be of service to those in need. I’ve listened to some of them speak about their trips and they do so much good. Many blessings to you too.