Posted on 12/27/2019 4:31:57 PM PST by ebb tide
ROME (ChurchMilitant) - The rise of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America, rooted in the Latin Mass, is rapidly reversing the long march of progressivism and Protestantism.
"We see that traditionally oriented churches and seminaries are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation, increasingly empty," Juan Migel Montes, director of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), Rome, told Church Militant.
"Catholic traditionalism is back in fashion," an upbeat Montes said. "This explains the defeat the Left is suffering in ballot boxes everywhere as the social, political and cultural realities linked to a traditional idea of Catholicism are multiplying everywhere."
"In Rome, as in the main South American dioceses of Rio, São Paolo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima and Santiago, Masses in the Vetus Ordo [Old Rite] are mushrooming," he said. "They are teeming with boys and girls and young families. They do not come across to me as sour people or, according to a certain caricature." Montes was alluding to Pope Francis' Christmas address to the Curia, in which many believed he decried traditionalist Catholics as "rigid" and "unbalanced."
Traditionally oriented churches are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation are increasingly empty.Tweet
"On the contrary, I see them as very enthusiastic and very eager to expand their range of influence among their peers. In fact, I continually see new faces in religious ceremonies. This motivates me to hope well for the future," Montes added.
The Rome bureau chief of TFP, an organization founded by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Brazil in 1960, attributed the leftists' political defeats and some resulting violence and unlawfulness — as has occurred in Venezuela — to the "undoubted growth of traditionalist Catholicism in South America, especially among young people."
A Tridentine rite parish in Belem, Brazil
In a frontpage article with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Montes elaborated on the spurt in the Catholic traditionalist movement:
Right-leaning blogs are multiplying, animated by young and very young people, with millions of followers. New political and cultural groups of conservative orientation are arising. Online conferences of traditionalist orientation are gaining notoriety. Stores of modest clothing are spreading, in open contrast to today's immoral or extravagant fashions. After decades of virtual cultural monopoly of the Left, more and more books are being published and more and more conferences in the center-right area are being held. Sometimes the phenomenon can even be dazzling. For example, polls show 37% of Brazilians in favor of the restoration of the Brazilian monarchy.
Church Militant asked if the Amazon Synod might actually provoke an even greater growth of traditional Catholicism. Montes said that, ironically, the advance of progressivism in the Church — as seen in the so-called "Indian theology" that bears a marxist footprint and undergirded veneration of Pachamama idols — is serving to open the eyes of many people to the depth of the crisis in the Church.
Montes, in fact, attributes the ascendancy of Protestantism to a long history of "preaching from the pulpits, with different accents, of liberation theology. The re-emergence of traditionalism among the faithful," he said, is likely the "result of the 'unintended consequences of intentional actions,' which ordinary people mock with the expression 'the devil makes pots but not lids.'"
Montes also noted that in one of Pope Benedict XVI's trips to Brazil, the pontiff explicitly identified the sociological turn of preaching in the Catholic Church — specifically liberation theology — as the reason why countless Catholics defected to neo-Protestantism. Montes quoted TIME magazine: "The Catholic Church has made the option for the poor, and the poor have made the option for the evangelicals and the pentecostals."
This phenomenon does not occur in traditionalist Catholic circles, where evangelization adheres to the precept of Our Lord to "seek first the kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be granted unto you," Montes explained. Despite having differing "liturgical sensitivity," he said numerous groups within the Church today "move decisively toward the search for tradition" in every field of life:
Procession with the Blessed Sacrament
[In] the life of piety they practice traditional devotions, especially the Marian one, and are not afraid of introducing themselves for what they are, conservative Catholics, even in the way they dress. In politics, they are increasingly demanding from candidates ... the non-negotiable principles preached by Benedict XVI, that is, the defense of life from conception to natural death, the family founded on the union of two people of different sex and the inviolable right of parents to choose education for their children.
Faithful Catholics can correct the drift occurring within the Church, Montes emphasized, through "forms of devotion, prayer and Catholic witness, in harmony with the traditional Magisterium of the Church — forms that were gradually abandoned and sometimes explicitly denied."
In September, Bp. José Luis Azcona, bishop emeritus of the Marajó Prelature in the Amazon area of Belém do Pará, Brazil, sounded the alarm: "The Amazon, at least the Brazilian part of it, is no longer Catholic," because it has a Pentecostal majority that, in some regions, "reaches 80%."
"Under the pretext of 'intercultural dialogue,' Catholic missionaries no longer evangelize or baptize," he lamented. "However, evangelicals do evangelize and work very hard indeed. While Catholic missionaries talk to Indians about 'deforestation,' 'climate change' and 'integral ecology,' Protestant pastors visit their communities with Bible in hand."
Gabriel Klautau Miléo, creator of the Salve Roma website, confirms the recoveries made by Catholic traditionalism. On Twitter, he posts pictures of Latin Mass churches filled with young people.
"All the photos ... were taken in Belém do Pará, one of the main urban centers of the Amazon region," he writes. "Several friends of mine and their families have returned to Catholicism by [re-]discovering the traditional rite of the Church."
"This is what the Amazon really needs," he notes. "We already have the apostolate of the Tridentine Mass in the two main urban centers of the Brazilian Amazon [Belém and Manaus] and in a city in the interior of the state of Pará [Santarém]."
Archbishop Alberto Taveira Correa, who heads the archdiocese of Belém do Pará, confirms that in his 10 years as archbishop, he can testify to the "growth in vocations" in his own diocese and others.
The Amazon, at least the Brazilian part of it, is no longer Catholic because it has a Pentecostal majority that, in some regions, reaches 80%. Tweet
Brazil's traditionalist Catholic Instituto Bom Pastor (Good Shepherd Institute) is also reporting a boom in vocations, as its "members want to exercise the priesthood in the doctrinal and liturgical Tradition of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, faithful to the infallible Magisterium of the Church with the exclusive use of the Gregorian liturgy in the worthy celebration of the Holy Mysteries."
Montes agrees it is impossible to predict the immediate future. "However, the rise of a mighty movement in traditional Catholic public opinion allows us to have many hopes," he affirms. "These hopes are also based on the promises of Our Lady who, in Fatima, proclaimed the triumph of her Immaculate Heart, after a period of tribulation."
“ The Bible is front and center at EVERY Mass, both Old and New Testaments. ”
That isn’t the Gospel, which isn’t presented at any “mass”.
The Gospel is read directly from the Bible, with references so anyone who wishes can follow up.
What is NOT presented is the fantasy invented by the Protestants.
See Post 62.
Oh! Okay.
< /sarc>
You haven’t been to a mass then! There is a reading from the gospel every mass, and there is normally a mass every day and twice on Sunday.
LOL!
15 years of masses, served as altar boy, countless marriages and funerals.
Reading from the Gospels is not presenting the Gospel that leads to salvation.
Your assumption in the statement I quoted indicates you are talking about something different - simply reading the Scripture.
As a Christian, I'm not sure what you refer to.
I'm talking only about the Scriptures - the words of Christ and the Apostles.
The high point of the Liturgy of the Word is the reading of the Gospel. Because the Gospels tell of the life, ministry, and preaching of Christ, it receives several special signs of honor and reverence. The gathered assembly stands to hear the Gospel and it is introduced by an acclamation of praise. Apart from Lent, that acclamation is "Alleluia," derived from a Hebrew phrase meaning "Praise the Lord!" A deacon (or, if no deacon is present, a priest) reads the Gospel.
Your ERROR is confusing the "Gospel" with the four "gospels" ("...the life, ministry, and preaching of Christ"). It's okay to be confused. It's not okay to hear the truth and walk away.
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.
1 Cor 15:1-6 (NIV)
We all celebrate Christmas on December 25th even though that date isn't in the Bible; the Catholic Church teaches us that this the day that the Messiah was born.
We don't celebrate Easter the day after Passover (which is when the Bible tells us the first Easter Sunday was); we celebrate it on the first Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox, because this is the day the Catholic Church declares Easter Sunday to be.
We don't take our day of rest on the Jewish Sabbath (which was the day of rest in the Bible); we take it on Sunday, because the Catholic Church has moved it to Sunday (and declared it so at the Council of Laodicea in 360).
(If you're taking your day of rest on Sunday, you're doing this without any biblical basis. In fact, you're following a Catholic practice of using either Sacred Tradition as your source.)
“Try to stay focused on the subject at hand.”
a little humor.
No, you're talking about a pastiche of Bible verses taken out of context and stitched together and/or reinterpreted according to various Protestant "influencers".
Note...I WAS Protestant, until I started actually studying what Catholics REALLY teach, and not what Protestants "say" they teach.
And it is wrong to pluck a single verse out of the whole Bible as the entirety of the teaching. Protestants do this constantly.
Do you realize how dumb that is?
First, it’s six, not just one verse. Second, look at the Gospel Wheel earlier in the thread for even MORE SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE of God’s plan for you. Third, think before you write.
If only it were true, Captain.
You are bragging that the RCC is not “handcuffed to the Bible”?? And then you brag about WHY you celebrate Christmas and Easter when you do? Because “THAT’S WHAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TEACHES!?? And THAT my friend is exactly WHY the RCC is the queen of apostacy. Traditions and Doctrines of men. NOT biblically based. Founded on paganism and sustained by those who will not STUDY their Bible (2 Tim.2:15), but choose instead to read a view verses here and there while DEPENDING ON THEIR CHURCH to give them their man made “ meaning” of what the scriptures say.
THIS is how you end up with the False Prophet as your current pope.
Please STUDY 2nd Timothy, the whole letter. It was written for just these times.
There were decades between the Resurrection and the Bible. Were the Christians of that time all damned because they had no Sacred Scripture to read? (Really?)
(For most of recorded history, most of mankind was illiterate. Does it really stand to reason that the first requirement for salvation is literacy?)
Are you being facetious here? Eyewitness testimony, the Apostles with miracles, signs and wonders to prove that their mission was God given. Do you not think God was in charge?? He sent His Son to die FOR US, then just left us in the dark about WHY??!
And if miracles provide sufficient proof for you, consider the miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917, performed by Our Lady for the benefit of 70,000 eyewitnesses. Or Juan Diego's tilma in Mexico City, or those healed at Lourdes. (Because if you're going to turn to miracles as a sign of proof, then you have to turn to all of them.)
Not at all dumb...it's what Protestants DO, all the time. One verse, six verses....irrelevant. Unless a Church embraces THE WHOLE BIBLE, it is erroneous. And NO Protestant Church actually does that..they ALL ignore critical pieces (or whole books).
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