Transnational Religions: The Roman Catholic Church in Brazil & the Orthodox Church in Russia

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2001 by Ralph Della Cava

By the same token, funds to Latin America have remained static, if not entered in relative decline (Mirror 2000). In Brazil, financing the base communities, especially its periodic assemblies (the tenth of which since 1975 took place in July 2000), appears to have held its own (Beozzo 2000); that to prominent Liberation Theology projects has tapered off. Only the Movimento Sem Terra, a politically militant movement for agrarian reform, comprised of rural workers and small landowners who enjoy the support of both the Catholic and Lutheran hierarchies, continues to be a major recipient. Exactly what consequences the shift of world funds from projects in the "South" to those in Central and East Europe may have had on grass-roots church activities, remains to be fully documented (Gomes de Souza 1999). But such turnarounds, corresponding to wider geopolitical changes, illustrate the precariousness and political fickleness of transnational support.

The Brazilian Church and World Religious Changes

Of course, West Europe's rush to refashion a "Greater Europe" -- so as eventually to include the countries of the former "Communist Bloc" and perhaps Russia itself -- is not solely responsible for the reallocation of resources to East Europe and their decrease to Brazil. Rather, it is just as likely linked to or, in the least, coincides with the current outcome of a major, on-going ideological controversy that has torn at the entire Catholic Church, particularly since the Second Vatican Council (1963-1965). I refer to the debate over the social commitment of the church in the modern world. Over the short run, church progressives seemed to have been winning it; over the middle run, they were badly routed even if not entirely defeated. Indeed, by 1984, several of their leading exponents had been silenced, their writings deemed doctrinally "in error," and their pastoral movements, especially in Brazil, attacked as "political" and insufficiently pastoral (Della Cava 1992a).

At about the same time, a score of so-called "new religious movements" had won firm papal support. Rooted largely in West Europe and marked by a religious and social conservatism that was and is starkly at odds with Liberation Theology, they set Out to displace progressives. By the late nineties, one of these, a largely lay undertaking, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, had come to enjoy significant influence in most of the parishes of Brazil's approximately 300 dioceses (Della Cava 1992b). That new direction has yet to be satisfactorily explained.

But, to the relief (and rescue) of many of Brazil's three-hundred or more bishops, the Charismatics had at least brought middle class cadres, many disaffected by Liberation Theology, back into the day-to-day running of the institution, especially at the local level. Their appeal may have also been responsible for reversing the decades-long decline of candidates to the priesthood. Moreover, the Charismatics' form of worship, both festive and participatory, both mystery-filled and miracle-working, seemed at last to have given Catholicism a competitive chance with fast-growing Protestant Pentecostalism.