Notre Dame workshop examines challenges to Latin American church

Published: 2003-10-08

NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- Strong evangelization efforts by fundamentalist Christian churches in Latin America are a challenge and an opportunity for the Catholic Church, said several speakers at a two-day workshop at the University of Notre Dame. They noted that such evangelization is breaking the monolithic religious control Catholicism once had in the region, while stimulating the church to improve and extend its services to larger portions of the population. Another theme emerging in the Oct. 2-3 workshop was the growing pluralism within the Catholic Church as charismatic, environmentalist, feminist and indigenous groups spring up. The workshop on contemporary Latin American Catholicism was sponsored by the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for the Church in Latin America and organized by the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame. Although Catholicism "is losing ground to evangelical Protestants, the fact of the matter is that Protestants are doing a great favor" to the church by reminding Catholics "that spiritual evangelization is an ongoing process," said Anthony Gill, associate political science professor at the University of Washington. Through competition, "religious consumers will get better service," he said.

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