Pope Warns Priests to Avoid Deep Involvement in Politics : Catholicism: The pontiff added a theme to his traditional Third World message during visit to Brazil, which represents a test case for the church’s future.

During Pope John Paul II’s recent 12-day trip to Brazil, he proclaimed two themes that are standard fare for his approach to the Third World: a stirring message that combines hope for the poor with straightforward criticism of civil authorities--and a warning to priests against deep political involvement.

The Pope’s repetition of familiar themes in Brazil is tied to the country’s importance to the church.

To some observers, Brazil, embodying the struggle taking place throughout the region between progressive and traditionalist forces, presents Rome with a broad “test case for the future of the church.”

Numbers alone would assure Brazil a certain importance to Catholic leaders in Rome. With the largest Catholic population in the world, it is estimated that 88% of Brazil’s 150 million people are church members.

That figure, however, is being adjusted downward each year by as many as 600,000, one estimate of the number who switch allegiance to a host of Pentecostal and fundamentalist Protestant groups.

That explains why the Pope added a new issue on this visit: a warning to the faithful to avoid the advances of evangelical Protestants.

Soon after he arrived, the Pope warned Brazilian bishops of “serious gaps” in the understanding of church doctrine that leave people “prey to the seduction of sects and new religious groups.” He said the fundamentalist groups offer false mirages and distorted simplifications in attracting followers.

The concern is no surprise to the Rev. Don Exley, who directs operations for the Assemblies of God in a region of Latin America that includes Brazil.

He estimates that 16 million Brazilian Catholics have affiliated with the Assemblies of God alone. The Assemblies are a Pentecostal denomination based in Springfield, Mo.

“There is such a sense of hopelessness in many of the countries where the switch from military governments to democracy really hasn’t solved the problems.” People who are still desperately poor have lost confidence in politics and have “probably lost confidence in traditional churches,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Pope remains adamant that the best way to strengthen the church is to uphold the traditional model, with authority centered in Rome.

Robert Ellsberg, editor in chief for Orbis Books, one of the foremost publishers of “liberation theologians” the region, said Pope John Paul has not wavered in a very deliberate approach.

“Consistently, the Pope’s philosophy worldwide is that the Catholic Church has a prophetic mission to play and certainly that includes a social witness. But the best way to advance that, the Pope believes, is through maintaining the traditional spiritual integrity of the church. As he sees it, the (traditional) church is a special sign of a spiritual dimension over and against the secular and materialistic culture of our age.”

Perhaps nowhere has the struggle been in direct conflict for so long than in Brazil, between the Pope’s vision of church and that of liberation theologians, who favor a more decentralized approach to church and a more activist stance toward social problems.

A expert on the church’s role in the international arena said Brazil is the most important country for determining which model of Catholicism will prevail and what role the church will play in societies it views as desperately in need of reform.

The expert, Eric O. Hanson, said the Pope had been able to provide the church in Eastern Europe with specific guidance in how to affect social and political change. He was able to draw from his experience as a cardinal in Poland, where he had warded off the Communist Party by maintaining the unity of the church, from the hierarchy on down.

But in Brazil, the church, since the end of dictatorship, no longer faces a single enemy, and the model the Pope applied in Poland “is less useful,” Hanson said.

“Now the situation is a lot more fluid. He (the Pope) feels very strongly that he must keep what he sees as the unity of the church” and that means “strengthening control from the center in Rome,” a strategy that causes tension between Rome and proponents of liberation theology.

The tensions are disheartening to advocates of a more activist approach. They were heartened in 1980, when the Pope last visited Brazil, by his fiery condemnations of an unjust social order, and his urging of priests and bishops to place themselves on the side of the poor.

He seemed at the time to end the speculation that he was annoyed with activist bishops by twice wrapping in a bearhug the diminutive Dom Helder Camara, the outspoken liberal bishop of Recife.

And following one of the Pope’s talks, the Franciscan priest and liberation theologian Leonardo Boff said he found support for his theology in the papal texts.

Eleven years later, a retired Camara has been replaced by an archconservative, Boff has been silenced for the second time by Rome and Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, a Boff mentor, is involved in a constant struggle with officials in Rome.

“The largest Catholic country in the world, one way or another, has got to be a test case for the future of the world church,” Ellsberg said. It might have become a model based on liberation theology--what a progressive church would look like in a situation where there was wide agreement among both people and hierarchy, he said.

More likely, it is becoming “the test case of how the Pope . . . is able to turn around a big church like that and, through imparting his own particular personal vision and spirituality,” make the church conform to a more traditional model.