the church in brazil

Originally posted by Palynka
I agree that it's becoming spam-like, but this spat isn't helping the discussion either...

FMF: Why don't you call out generalissimo in a dedicated thread? You can expose him there and not clutter the rest of the forum. I would guess that it would even receive more attention there than squeezed between other arguments.

Why don't you call out generalissimo in a dedicated thread?

because he's a coward.

Originally posted by Palynka
Do you agree that John Paul II decapitated the progressive parts of the church in Brazil? In what sense?

Bump.

Originally posted by Palynka
Bump.

He seems he tried but wasn't very successful at it:

Brazil's bishops wanted a new Latin American church, a Church of the poor, not for the rich, a church of liberation, not domination. They wanted change, not accommodation, because they said the Kingdom of Heaven began on earth, here and now, not after death. For them fatalism was not an option.
But to Pope John Paul II it all sounded too much like Marxism - which his Polish background told him could only be inimical to faith.
Gradually but systematically, all over Latin America, he replaced leftwing senior clerics with right-wingers, some of them connected with Opus Dei. Radical priests and nuns left the church in droves, and the heydey of liberation theology seemed to be over.
But not in Brazil, where the theology of liberation has entered the bloodstream and remains there.
How come?
The answer lies, to a large extent, in the geography and history of Brazil. Its gigantic size, covering half of South America, means that priests have always been thinly spread. Some Amazon prelacies are the size of European countries. So church influence and control has been patchy. At the same time Brazilian society developed in a more informal, less hierarchical way than its Hispanic neighbours. The population, perhaps without a priest for months on end, evolved their own, more festive religious celebrations.
An episcopate of over 300 bishops, representing both violent megacities like São Paulo, and semi-feudal rural zones like the Northeast, means a plurality of experience. Diversity encourages tolerance, symbolized in attitudes towards sexual behaviour. A recent poll of 758 priests revealed that 41 per cent had had some sort of a relationship, including sexual, with a woman after ordination. Almost half, 48 per cent, want optional celibacy. There was little agreement with the Pope's view that homosexuality is 'evil' either -. 68 per cent do not see it as a sin.
But more important still is the role that liberation theology has played in the creation of Brazil's most energetic movements for social justice.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Justice_Vatican_Brazil.html

Originally posted by no1marauder
He seems he tried but wasn't very successful at it:

Brazil's bishops wanted a new Latin American church, a Church of the poor, not for the rich, a church of liberation, not domination. They wanted change, not accommodation, because they said the Kingdom of Heaven began on earth, here and now, not after death. For them fatalism was not an ...[text shortened]... al justice.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Justice_Vatican_Brazil.html

That disconnect regarding homosexuality is also true for many European countries, but it didn't lead to an active dismantling of progressive parts. They still co-exist with more conservative ones.

I mean, I think it's clear JP2 was NOT progressive regarding these issues, but to me dismantling is more than just active promotion of the conservative views.

Originally posted by Palynka
That disconnect regarding homosexuality is also true for many European countries, but it didn't lead to an active dismantling of progressive parts. They still co-exist with more conservative ones.

I mean, I think it's clear JP2 was NOT progressive regarding these issues, but to me dismantling is more than just active promotion of the conservative views.

Well, he did more than "actively promote":

Secondly, a conservative reaction within the Church moved the clergy out of
politics, rolled back many progressive innovations, and stressed the orthodoxy of the
pre–Vatican I I era. The reaction gained an important supporter in John Paul I I , a
staunch anti-Marxist. Under him the
Vatican punished liberation theologians, reprimanded progressive bishops, intervened in
religious orders, censored publications, and divided the Archdiocese of São Paulo, a
progressive stronghold. At the fourth continental assembly of Latin American bishops at
Santo Domingo in 1992 the Vatican ignored much of the progressive approach.
Moreover, John Paul I I appointed conservative bishops and curtailed the power of the
CNBB, which had embodied the ecclesiastical
nationalism of the 1970s and 1980s.

http://www.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/WPS/263.pdf at p. 10

Originally posted by no1marauder
Well, he did more than "actively promote":

Secondly, a conservative reaction within the Church moved the clergy out of
politics, rolled back many progressive innovations, and stressed the orthodoxy of the
pre–Vatican I I era. The reaction gained an important supporter in John Paul I I , a
staunch anti-Marxist. Under him the
Vatican ...[text shortened]... 1970s and 1980s.

http://www.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/WPS/263.pdf at p. 10

Thanks, that's exactly the info I was looking for.