Catholicism and Latin America

This is in response to “A Continental Shift.”

In today’s world, Christian faith is an option which evokes other options. Faith matures as this option is faced. Protestantism may have the attraction of being a new option for many Latin Americans. If, in exploring this option, a deepened Christian faith results, the Catholic Church is enriched. What benefits Christianity is good for both Protestants and Catholics.

Conversion is the turning toward God and away from sin. Only in a superficial way does conversion have to do with changing one’s denomination. It is entirely thinkable to the modern Catholic that a person’s sincere search for deeper connection with God could take them into another denomination. Denominations are more different styles of being Christian than opposing and mutually intolerant camps.

The jewel of Christianity is many-faceted, and may be viewed through many sides.

Many Christians in Latin America are . . . forming base communities and probing into their personal and common experiences of grace through prayer, sacrament, and social action. This is the true reality of conversion, regardless of the denomination in which it happens. Where the world is enriched through God’s grace and human response to it, there is the church and there is the gospel.

Whether or not Evangelical Christianity can meet the needs of the Latin spirit in the sphere of social action and political liberation needs to be seen. For now we know that its private spirituality and emotional approach are attractive to many. We also know that Catholicism worldwide is more attuned to individual conscience, selective acceptance, and the priesthood of all believers. As for the saints, we know they protect Protestants as well as Catholics.

ROBERT E. DOUD

Glendale