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According to some experts, Brazilian Evangelicals could become a majority in the country as soon as 2032.

This phenomenon is particularly strong in the Amazon, where some states have the biggest percentage of Evangelicals in the country.

Four of the six Brazilian States with the biggest proportion of Evangelicals are located in the Amazon, in the northern part of the country.

In Rondônia, which is at the top of the list, there were 734,000 Catholics in 2010 - when the last data were released by the government - and 528,000 Evangelicals.

Ten years before, in 2000, the number of Catholics was 793,000 and there were only 375,000 Evangelicals.

That is one of the many issues the Amazonian bishops will have to discuss at the upcoming Synod for the Amazon region taking place Oct. 6-27 in Rome.

"Until the 1970s, when I arrived in the Amazon, Brazil was almost completely Catholic. But the expansion of the farmlands in the cleared rainforest changed everything," said Italian-born Bishop Flavio Giovenale of Cruzeiro do Sul, in the Amazonian State of Acre.

"It's almost like the Evangelicals had the project of transforming the Amazon into a non-Catholic territory, following the gigantic changes in the region," he said.

Most people avoid selecting one single reason for the increasing presence of Pentecostal and Neo-pentecostal Christians in the Amazon.

"It's a complex phenomenon. But the Evangelicals certainly filled up the spaces we had left open," saod Giovenale.

In major urban areas of the rainforest, such as Belém and Manaus - cities with populations of 1.5 million and 2.1 million, respectively - the process followed the same model as the rest of the country. In the opinion of Giovenale, rural migrants without roots in the city could find a community and a sense of Christianity only with the available pastors.

"The historical districts of most cities in Brazil are full of Catholic churches, while the poor, distant neighborhoods count only Evangelical churches," the bishop said.

In the cities, the so-called Prosperity Gospel theology quickly seduced many poor migrants who had to adapt to their new reality, according to the Italian-born priest Luigi Ceppi, who has lived in the Amazon since the 1980s.

"The poor were put aside. Then appeared a kind of religiousness which promised to satisfy their material needs," Ceppi argued. Continue reading

• Image: Vatican News

According to official Mormon statistics, there are over 64,000 people in Tonga today who are Mormon equivalent to around 60% of the total population of Tonga (approximately 107,000 people). This represents a 20% growth of the Mormon population since 2006.

"Whatever the real story behind the counting process normally used by the Mormon Church, what is perhaps more important here is something for all other churches including the Catholics to learn from."

He points to the consistency of Mormon outreach, "untiring door-to-door home visitations and their charitable offerings to struggling families and individuals" as an inspiring example for Catholic pastoral work.

"Understandably, there are many of our people who do struggle with financial needs to their families," he said.

Caritas International and the St Vincent de Paul Society assist the marginalised with necessities and environmental initiatives. The two are often one in Tonga.

"Our local Caritas Tonga in partnership with Caritas International has been initiating and encouraging community projects in villages and parishes that are part of these efforts against climate change," he said.

"Such initiatives, for example, include planting trees along shorelines as measures of soil protection and windscreen protecting buildings."

"Long before Caritas was established in Tonga, the St Vincent de Paul Society was already functioning on the parish level in helping out those poorer families and those who were lacking in the basic needs in life, such as shelter, water and food."

His people love the colourful aspects of culture and tradition in liturgical music, singing and arts.

The future of the Catholic Church in Tonga depends on faith shining through simplicity.

"For me, ours is a journey along the path to growth in finding real joy in ‘being who we are', and even in the beauty of just being alive.

"In other words, we ‘shine out' in being ‘simple'."

Richness in faith, love and joy give beauty to many of the poorer Tongan families.

"These people still show joy in their ordinary way of living even when they still give to others out of their own poverty.

"There is also a ‘glow' of certain grace in people in homes who on a daily basis take good care of their sick and elderly members," he said.

Source

• catholicoutlook.org
• Image: mormonnewsroom.org.nz

A cultural shift is to blame: people raised in the faith but who don't practice it have ceased to identify with it. In other words, they're just being honest.

Church attendance has been plummeting since the 1960s; hardly anyone baptises their kids anymore. Britain is slouching towards Gomorrah.

But is Christianity in terminal decline? No. Those who say it is always compare its present state to around 1850-1960, when church attendance could almost be called a "normal" or "average" activity.

But the history of British Christianity is actually one of peaks and troughs - and understanding how and why it has yo-yoed up and down helps us understand a bit better what we're witnessing today.

Compare the state of today's Christian churches to 1900 and things look bad. Compare them to the 18th century and things look pretty average.

Easter Day in St Paul's Cathedral in 1800: can you guess how many people took communion? Six. Six people took communion. In the late 18th century the Church of England was in a dire crisis. Churches stood empty, clerical numbers were dwindling, people complained that priests were out of touch with their congregations.

Worse: scepticism was on the rise - even atheism - and Jacobinism, which was violently anti-clerical, was on the march in Europe. Every complaint made about contemporary Christianity was made in 1800. Including the sad decline of Christmas, although the problem back then was one of uninterest. Most public workers just got one day off work. Scrooge was the rule, not the exception.

Why were things so bad? Again, the problems are instantly recognisable. The relationship between faith and the state was unhealthy. The state had co-opted one branch of Christianity, Anglicanism, and fiercely opposed dissenters like Catholics.

England had witnessed a Reformation, a Civil War and a Glorious Revolution - all of which exposed the vanity, hypocrisy and cowardice of much of the religious establishment. With the rise of empiricism and new technology, it looked as if science might hold better answers than the Bible. Continue reading

• Tim Stanley is a historian, and columnist and leader writer for The Telegraph.

I can attest that, in "fashionable" Catholic circles during the eighties and nineties of the last century, it was almost de rigueur to make fun of Mother Angelica. She was a crude popularizer, an opponent of Vatican II, an arch-conservative, a culture-warrior, etc., etc.

And yet while her critics have largely faded away, her impact and influence are incontestable. Against all odds and expectations, she created an evangelical vehicle without equal in the history of the Catholic Church.

Starting from, quite literally, a garage in Alabama, EWTN now reaches 230 million homes in over 140 countries around the world. With the possible exception of John Paul II himself, she was the most watched and most effective Catholic evangelizer of the last fifty years.

Read Raymond Arroyo's splendid biography in order to get the full story of how Rita Rizzo, born and raised in a tough neighborhood in Canton, Ohio, came in time to be a nun, a foundress, and a television personality.

For the purposes of this brief article, I would like simply to draw attention to three areas of particular spiritual importance in the life of Mother Angelica: her trust in God's providence, her keen sense of the supernatural quality of religion, and her conviction that suffering is of salvific value.

The accounts of the beginning of EWTN read like the stories of some of the great saintly founders of movements and orders within the Church. Mother had a blithe confidence that if God called her to do something, he would provide what was needed.

Her right hand man, Deacon Bill Steltemeier, a lawyer and businessman who would prove indispensable in getting the operation of EWTN off the ground, came to her in the most remarkable way.

While in Chicago for a convention, he saw a flyer advertising a speech at a local parish by a nun whom he did not know. For some reason, he felt compelled to attend. Despite typically horrific Chicago winter weather and though he had no real idea where he was going, he made it to the parish and caught the second half of the nun's presentation. Continue reading

Sources

• Bishop Robert Barron, writing in The Catholic World Report.
• Image: Crux

When I travel, I always get asked by parents how they can get their adult children back to church. It's an epidemic. We know this.

And we can talk about catechesis and community and leadership and orthodoxy and the sacraments and the fullness of truth. We can complain about politics and how we need more preaching from the pulpit. But here is the core problem. Here is the practical reason why people are not convinced of the Catholic faith anymore:

We Catholics don't look or act any different than non-catholics. It's that simple.

The question we must answer is "if Catholicism offers a better way, why don't Catholics' lives seem any better?"

If we believe our faith and action in this life has eternal consequences, why don't we act like it? If the God of our universe, the Creator of everything, is truly present in the Eucharist, why don't our actions show this?

If our relationship with God is truly the most important relationship, why don't our daily schedules reflect that? If our marriages and families are our greatest blessings, why do we sacrifice them for our careers?

If God has a plan for us, why do we make so many plans without him? And why are we not on our knees every morning thanking, praising and giving over to him every moment of our entire day?

If Catholicism is true, why isn't everything we do ordered around this Truth? Continue reading

Sources

• Matthew Warner in National Catholic Register
• Image: Patheos

Matthew Warner is a lover of God, his wife, his kids, his life, cookies, hot-buttered bread, snoozin' & awkward (as well as not awkward) silence.

The country's largest provider of religious instruction, the Churches Education Commission, told its followers in a recent newsletter that schools were an "under-utilised mission field".

"Churches by and large have not woken up to the fact that this is a mission field on our doorstep. The children are right there and we don't have to supply buildings, seating, lighting or heating," commission director David Mulholland wrote.

Christian followers were also encouraged to join school boards so they could have "more influence" on holding religious study in class.

Public schools are secular but can choose to "close" in the middle of the day for religious lessons.

Rationalist David Hines said the loophole allowing Christian education undermined the secular education system.

"The teachers are all evangelical Christians ... the values do not include respect for other religions or for secular value systems."

Continue reading