Western Catholics ‘are not looking’ at Church’s global future
The Filipino charismatic movement El Shaddai has 10 million followers and is the largest Catholic lay organisation in the world.
Charismatic Catholicism is “a huge story that we are not looking at” and charismatic practice is “drawing a huge number of believers in Central and South America, Africa and in the Philippines”, according to the sociologist Dr Thomas Landy
Speaking to a Tablet webinar on “Global Christianity: The future of the Catholic Church”, Dr Landy described Pentecostal-style new communities in Ivory Coast as “probably the biggest story” in the country and “a driver of evangelisation there”.
“More of these are popping up than parishes,” he said. “They are spreading throughout the country. They are spreading beyond the country, trying to become global missionaries. They are really a moving force there, though one that the Church doesn't always know how to deal with particularly well.”
Landy specialises in the sociology of religion and Catholicism and is director of the Rev Michael C. McFarland SJ Centre for Religion, Ethics and Culture, at the College of the Holy Cross in the US.
He also highlighted a Filipino movement called El Shaddai, which has 10 million followers and is “the largest Catholic lay organisation in the world, one that I would venture to guess that most people here have never heard of. It is a potent force in the Filipino diaspora.”
While he emphasised that he did not have “a particular narrative” to share about the growth of charismatic Catholicism, he said about 75 million Catholics around the world subscribed to its movements.
“It's one of the energetic forces in the world, and it is a place that the charismatic consciousness, with its focus and witness on healing, on the power of prayer and God’s regular intervention in daily life, is very different to most Europeans’ more rationalised emphasis.”
He hoped he could help people to look at the rest of the world for the stories that they are not paying attention to.
The webinar focused on how global Catholicism has expanded more over the last 100 years than at any time in its existence, with an estimated 75 per cent of Catholics today living outside the West.
Landy said it was important to consider what this meant for Catholicism. “How are changing demographics and population growth in different parts of the world shaping the Catholic Church of the future?”
He continued: “Those of us in the West have looked at changes since the 1960s and framed them as inevitable narratives about secularisation and what happens in the face of modernisation. The assumption of inevitability is baked into them. It has turned them into self-fulfilling prophecies.”
But he highlighted that this growth in Catholicism has happened during the period of most intense modernisation in history.
“It didn't take place in spite of the modernisation, I would suggest, and it didn't take place only in places that were somehow distinct from the modern world, as some Westerners might imagine Africa to be. It took place in places experiencing intense modernisation and that is especially true of Africa, Asia, South Asia.”
These, he said, were places that had transformed themselves enormously and yet developed a vibrant Catholic life.
“When we think that secularisation is inevitable, we have to stop and say there is no path that is inevitable. Self-fulfilling prophecies are not the only route,” he said.
Prof Ian Linden of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, observed: “I think we Europeans have lost that capacity to dream.”
Drawing from his work with the Catholic Institute for International Relations he noted that Latin America, which was formerly very Catholic, was already by the 1960s seeing a serious spread of Pentecostal churches.
Latin America proved very important in the process of globalisation, he said, “in the sense that we were moving from the centralised throbbing heart of Rome, as it were, and a centre-periphery model of the Church towards a network Church”.
“Certainly, it was very advanced in its theological thinking for one very simple reason – they had the very good fortune of dreaming up the bishops’ conference earlier than anywhere else around the world”.
Acknowledging the third speaker, the New Delhi-based journalist Rita Joseph, Prof Linden highlighted how the development of the Church in India was directly relevant to the discussion because Christians and Catholics represent only about 1.5 per cent of the Indian population, and throughout most of Asia Catholics are a minority compared to Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or some of the smaller religions.
“That is the major challenge, coming to terms with vibrant religious cultures that aren't Christian or Catholic,” he said.
Ms Joseph suggested that inculturation was “vital” for Catholicism and she said a “de-clericalised” Church must be prepared to engage with issues such as abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. These should not be taboo subjects, she said.
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