Church deals with a diminished role in cuban life

[catholictiger]

nytimes.com/2012/03/26/world/americas/church-deals-with-a-diminished-role-in-cuban-life.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

HAVANA — At an evangelical church booming with pounding drums, crashing cymbals and a throaty bass, members of an overflow crowd danced in the aisles, sang over a soaring trumpet and swept their arms in prayer. One woman shook violently, her hand aloft as if to say enough, or perhaps more.

A vigorous papal welcome? Hardly.

He pointed toward people spilling out of the front door of the church, a sight rarely seen at Roman Catholic Churches here that have struggled to fill their pews despite serving in the vanguard of pressing for more religious freedom here

lets hope the pope revives this dying Catholic Identity of this country.

 

[triumphguy]

According to CBC this morning the Church’s influence in Cuba has been increasing since the 1990s.

 

[Tigg]

Not just in Cuba:

The Church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes… She will lose many of her social privileges… As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution…

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI),
Faith and Future, Ignatius Press, 2009

 

[catholictiger]

According to CBC this morning the Church’s influence in Cuba has been increasing since the 1990s.

link?

 

[triumphguy]

I’m sure you were brought up to ask nicely, and write in full sentences, so I’ll pretend you did:

cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/03/26/pope-cuba-visit.html?cmp=rss

Catholic Church influential in Cuba
But problems remain. Despite years of lobbying, the church has virtually no access to state-run radio or television, is not allowed to administer schools, and has not been granted permission to build new places of worship. The island of 11.2 million people has just 361 priests. Before 1959 there were 700 priests for a population of 6 million.

However, the Catholic Church is now the most influential independent institution in the country, thanks in no small part to Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana. He has negotiated with Raul Castro for the release of political prisoners, given the government advice on economic policy and allowed church magazines to publish increasingly frank articles about the need for change.