Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 7—The Georgia Bulletin, July 17,1980
Church Of Reform
BY JERRY F1LTEAU
FORTALEZA, Brazil (NC) - Pope
John Paul II capped off his visit to
Brazil by firmly supporting the
Brazilian bishops’ policy of social
activism.
Telling them that because of
unique circumstances their
responsibility extends to “the entire
church,” the pope praised “the image
that you, Brazilian bishops, project
through the entire church and the
whole world. It is an image of
poverty and simplicity, of full
dedication, of closeness to your
people and full presence in their lives
and problems.”
He added: “This is an image of
bishops who are profoundly
evangelical and profoundly in
conformity with the model proposed
in its documents by the Second
Vatican Council.”
At the same time the pope
cautioned that “your vocation to be
bishops prohibits you, with total
and Recife, addressed the pope at
length after his talk, the sources said.
The pope’s talk underwent
extensive last-minute revisions.
It was possible to determine what
some of the revisions were because
the cutting and pasting left its
imprint on the 22-page photocopied
text distributed to the press corps
following the pope.
There appeared to be eight pages
of insertions and changes.
One insertion was a cautious
backing of “comunidades de base,”
basic Christian communities - small
groups of Christian formation and
action promoted by many bishops.
These communities often become
involved in social and political
activism.
Calling the church a true social
force, the pope called for an
authentically Brazilian social pastoral
plan, insisting that at the same time
it must maintain a universal character
consistent with church social
teachings.
“Your vocation to be bishops prohibits you, with total
clarity . . .from everything that has to do with political
partisanships and subjection to this or that ideology or system. But
it does not prohibit you - rather does it call you - to be near and at
the service of all men and women, especially the weakest and most
needy.”
clarity . . . from everything that has
to do with political partisanships and
subjection to this or that ideology or
system.”
“But it does not prohibit you -
rather does it call you - to be near
and at the service of all men and
women, especially the weakest and
most needy,” he said.
Pope John Paul’s comments came
in a four-hour closed door meeting
with the bishops on July 10, the day
before he left to return to the
Vatican after a 12-day whirlwind
visit that took him to 13 cities.
The pope pointed out that the
Brazilian bishops “form today the
most numerous episcopal body in the
world.”
“With numbers there is
corresponding, intense activity,” he
said. “You show this in your
pastorate of the young and dynamic
church which is yours.
“For this reason and because of
the promising prospects of your
country, the episcopate of which you
are part gains a prestige but also
receives a responsibility going well
beyond the bounds of your dioceses
and your country.
“It is a responsibility concerning
the entire church.”
The pope issued a sharp warning
against collectivism and state
capitalism as economic systems.
“The bold reforms that are
necessary have not the sole aim of
collectivizing the means of
production; even less if this means
concentrating all in the hands of the
state, thus turned into being the sole
true capitalist force,” the pope said.
The pope’s meeting with the
bishops was without precedent in
length or style.
Vatican press spokesman Father
Romeo Panciroli described it as
“more of a dialogue than a speech,”
and other sources said this was a
result of strong pressure from Brazil’s
bishops, who asked the pope not
only to talk to them but to listen to
them as well.
Five or six Brazilian bishops,
including prominent social activist
Archbishop Helder Camara of Olinda
This pastoral work “ought to have
its eyes open upon all injustices and
all violations of human rights, both
in the domain of material goods and
in that of spiritual goods,” the pope
said.
The wide-ranging papal talk
focused on numerous church issues.
These included evangelization,
liturgy, catechetics, priestly and
religious vocations, youth formation
and popular religiosity.
Many of these the pope had
developed earlier in his trip and he
mentioned them only briefly in his
speech to the bishops.
On liturgy, one issue he had not
discussed at length before, the pope
sharply criticized free-wheeling
liberalism and an attitude which
wants to return to pre-Vatican II
norms.
The pope asked bishops and priest
to promote “sound liturgical
renewal,” avoiding “on the one hand
an unjustifiable attachment to
liturgical forms that were useful in
the past but do have no more sense
today, and on the other hand
liturgical abuses and prolonged
experimentation in liturgical
matters.”
“This is the empire of
subjectivism, of anarchy, which
break up true unity, gravely disorient
the faithful, and do harm to the
beauty and profundity of
celebrations,” he said.
The pope also issued a strong call
for unity among the hierarchy. Social
issues have sharply divided the
bishops. The bishops conference is
controlled by churchmen favoring a
strong, socially active pastoral
program. More conservative bishops
oppose this saying it creates tensions
with the government and gets the
church involved in issues which go
beyond evangelization.
Violence Or Reform
The Pope’s support of social
activism by the bishops followed a
strong warning issued in a talk to
thousands of Brazilian business,
political, cultural and labor leaders
July 6.
In his speech to the gathering
known as the “Builders of Today’s
Pluralistic Society,” the Pope warned
that two alternatives are facing Latin
America: significant social reform or
tragic violent upheaval.
“Anyone who reflects on the
reality of Latin America, as it is
presented today, comes to the quick
understanding that the realization of
justice in this continent faces a clear
dilemma,” said the pope.
Either justice conies “through
profound and courageous reforms,
according to principles expressing the
supremacy and dignity of man, or
they will be done - but without any
lasting effect or benefit for
humanity, of this I am convinced -
by the forces of violence,” he added.
“Each of you should make this
choice in this historic moment,” said
Pope John Paul.
Although the pontiff presented
sweeping social reform or revolution
as the only real alternatives in Latin
America, he clearly rejected violence
as a solution to the problems of the
world’s most Catholic continent.
“Every society, if it does not wish
to be destroyed from within, must
establish a just social order,” he said.
But he immediately added: “This
appeal is not a justification for class
struggle - for the struggle of the
classes is destined to sterility and
destruction -- but it is an appeal for
the noble struggle for social justice
throughout society!”
The pope urged leaders to “reject
violence as a means of resolving the
problems of society, for violence is
against life. It is a destroyer of man.”
He called on them to focus their
efforts “in the first place on those
who are the most needy, whose
rights are violated most frequently.”
Land Reform
The following day, during a Mass
in honor of peasants in Recife, the
Pope said legal initiatives are needed
to improve the lives of farm workers.
The pope stopped just short of
asking for specific agrarian reform
measures advocated by some
Brazilian bishops, such as the turning
over of unused lands to landless
peasants.
But his call was a firm one for
leaders of society to end the
conditions of misery of millions of
peasants in Brazil’s poverty-stricken
Northeast.
Pope John Paul cited access to
land as a key ingredient for
improving the lives of farm workers.
“It is not admissible that in the
general development of society men
and women who live in rural areas
should be excluded from true
progress worthy of man,” the pope
said during a Mass attended by
400,000 people.
Farm workers “are ready to make
the land productive through the
work of their hands and they need
land to feed their families,” he said.
A fundamental principle of
church teachings is that society is
organized for the benefit of
humanity and not the other way
around, the pope said.
This principle is valid “principally
for those who are mandated by
society to guarantee the common
good,” he declared.
“The initiatives that they take in
reference to the agrarian sector
should be initiatives in favor of
people, whether they be done
through legislation, the judiciary or
in projects safeguarding the rights of
citizens,” he said.
In the Northeast farm workers are
on the fringes of society and “face
particularly painful situations,” the
pope said. These include
malnutrition, unhealthy conditions,
illiteracy and insecurity, he said.
A study by the Bank of the
Northeast estimates the farm
population at five million. Most of
these people have a per capita annual
income well under the $350 average
for the region.
“Land is a gift of God,” the pope
said.
It is against God’s design “to use
this gift in such a way that its
benefits are to the advantage of only
a few, while others, the immense
majority, remain excluded,” he said.
Pope John Paul said the right to
private property is “legitimate in
itself,” but in Christian teachings
land ownership must comply with its
social function.
The pope also stressed the right of
rural workers to participate in the
decisions affecting their lives.
“Farm workers, as all workers,
cannot be denied under any pretext
the right of responsible participation
and communion in the life of
companies and organizations which
define and safeguard their interests,”
he said.
Peasants also have the right to
participate in the “indispensable
transformations of economic
structures,” the pope added.
“Dominate and cultivate the land
should be the principle always
observed by all the people involved
in the administration of this gift of
God,” he said.
At the Offertory of the Mass the
pope was presented a series of
documents by peasant leaders listing
problems faced by farm workers.
The documents said peasants are
being thrown off their lands to make
way for big agribusiness projects,
irrigation systems and electrical
energy plants.
In the Northeast only “one in
eight rural workers has formal access
to land and barely one-third of these
have enough to generate a minimum
income,” said the document,
presented by the National
Confederation of Agricultural
Workers.
The confederation also criticized
land distribution. “Two-thirds of all
the farmers possess a little over 10
percent of the land,” it said.
HUGE WELCOME - More than 500,000 people follow Pope
John Paul II up a main avenue in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as he
makes his way from the airport to Israel Pinbeiro Square for an
open-air Mass.
Church Of The Poor
PAPAL COMMUNION - A group of school
children make their way up the elevated altar in
Brasilia to receive Communion from Pope John
Paul II who was visiting the Brazilian capital.
FORTALEZA, Brazil (NC) - Life
is a continuous series of encounters
with Christ, including the Christ who
is present in others, “especially in the
poor, the weak, the marginalized,”
Pope John Paul II said in opening
Brazil’s 10th National Eucharistic
Congress.
The most intimate and
transforming encounter, toward
which all other encounters are
ordered, is the encounter at “the
table of the eucharistic ministry, that
is, at the table of the bread of the
Lord,” he said.
He made a special appeal “that
this brotherhood which reaches its
highest point in the Eucharist be
turned here into a reality ever more
vigorous.”
The pope’s remarks came during
the homily of the congress’ opening
Mass July 9 before more than
800,000 people gathered in an open
field in front of Fortaleza’s Castelao
soccer stadium.
The altar was set up on a huge
platform visible throughout the
stadium.
Pope John Paul focused on the
Eucharist as a wellspring of Christian
social justice and brotherhood.
Every time the faithful participate
in the Eucharist with a sincere heart
“they cannot but receive a new
impulse toward a better relationship
with one another, with reciprocal
recognition of their rights and of
their corresponding duties as well,”
the pope said.
He said that sharing at the
eucharistic table “signifies and makes
real the suppression of everything
that divides man and brings about
the meeting of all at a higher level,
where every opposition is
eliminated.”
The pope addressed at length the
issue of migration, which is the
central theme of the eucharistic
congress, summarized in the title,
“Whither Goest Thou?”
“The area of human mobility in
this country of yours is broad and
complex,” the pope said.
“The number of those who
migrate within this immense nation, I
am given to understand, is reaching
heights that concern those in
authority: a good part of them go to
search for better conditions of life,
leaving population-saturated areas for
less inhabited places or ones with
better climatic conditions, which by
that very fact offer a better chance
for social and economic progress.”
“But Brazil, like other countries
of the American continent as well, is
a nation that already owed and owes
much to immigration,” he added.
“In this complex situation,” he
said, “how can one not think of the
cultural and sometimes linguistic
uprooting, the temporary or
definitive separation from one’s
family, the difficulties of insertion
and integration in a new
environment, the many other
consequences, especially of an inner,
spiritual nature?”
He declared that “the church has
not and will not ever cease to
proclaim the fundamental rights of
man: the right to settle freely in
one’s own country, to have a
country, to emigrate within and
outside the country for legitimate
reasons, to be able to have a full
family life, to count on the goods
necessary for life, to preserve and
develop one’s own ethnic, cultural
and linguistic patrimony, to profess
publicly one’s own religion, to be
recognized and treated in accord
with the dignity of one’s person in
any circumstance.”
The list of rights he cited was
from a 1978 letter from the
Pontifical Commission for the
Pastoral Care of Migrant and
Itinerant People to all bishops’
conferences.
The pope called for the church
not only to denounce situations of
injustice to migrants but also to
engage in “concrete pastoral action
that engages all its energies.”
Pra ises Integration
The theme of immigration had
been sounded earlier in the Pope’s
visit.
He strongly praised “the
prodigious integration and
intermarriage that Brazil
exemplifies” during a homily in
Curitiba.
About 500,000 people gathered
to see the pope at the open-air Mass
in the heart of Brazil’s agricultural
region.
Seated near the front of the altar,
waving the myriad flags of their
home nations, were thousands of
representatives of the many ethnic
immigrant groups that live in Brazil.
The night before, after he arrived
in Curitiba - the midpoint of his
12-day Brazilian visit -- the
Polish-born pontiff spent a relaxing
two and a half hours enjoying Polish
folk songs and dances and celebrating
the rich ethnic mix of Brazil.
His morning Mass the next day
continued that celebration.
“When excess of population began
to create grave problems of living
space in some country, Brazil knew
how to open up her almost unlimited
spaces with prodigality and
intelligence,” he said.
“Are there other countries where
assimilation and integration of
immigrants is effected with equal
naturalness, with greater naturalness
than here? Impossible.”
He said that Brazil’s natural and
unprejudiced welcome of immigrants
has worked to the country’s benefit,
as the immigrant groups “at once
repaid the hospitality received.”
He said that the immigrants
brought with them “high human,
moral and religious values” and
“above all knew how to love their
new motherland and to work for it,
to give it children and grandchildren
of the very first quality in the
priesthood, in the arts, in politics, in
literature.”
Speaking of Brazil’s history of
racial integration and intermixing,
the pope said, “among all the
beautiful things in your country, I
think that I could not carry away
with me in my heart an image of
beauty more touching and significant
than that of the concord, the
unconstrained joyfulness, the feeling
of authentic fraternity in which the
most diverse races live together
here."
The Pope also praised a plan by
several Christian churches, including
the Catholic Church, to form a
national council of churches in
Brazil.
Such a council would foster
Christian cooperation on social issues
and promote efforts toward Christian
reunion, the pope said July 4 at an
evening ecumenical meeting witfi a
rabbi and leaders of four Christian
churches in Brazil.
The pope stressed ecumenical
cooperation in the country with the
world’s largest Catholic population.
About 90 percent of Brazil’s 120
million people profess Catholicism.
Because many Brazilian Christians
strongly desire reunion, “it was
possible to establish here, among
some churches and the Brazilian
Bishops’ Conference, a project to
create a national council of churches
with the goal of maintaining a stable
framework for dialogue and
cooperation,” he said.
Under the project, a preliminary
council has been formed called the
National Council of Churches in
Formation.
The pope said he hoped the
project “would be a prelude to other
initiatives in the same direction.”
Defends
Popular Religion
No one should “look down on or
laugh at” popular religion, Pope John
Paul II said July 7.
‘‘Popular religious
demonstrations, purified of their
negative values, of all superstition
and magic, are without doubt a
providential means of preserving the
masses in their adhesion to the faith
of their ancestors and to the church
of Christ,” the pope said.
Pope John Paul tackled the
massive Brazilian church problem of
popular religiosity and superstition in
a homily at a Mas attended by
almost a million people.
He warned that the Gospel should
not be watered down in any way, but
he also urged a “permanent and
fruitful interchange” between the
church and native cultures.
Many of these cults, such as the
Candomble, which is especially
strong in Bahia state, and the
Macumba, which pervades the entire
northeast area, make use of Christian
religious symbols.
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