While addressed to a specific group of clergy within the Roman Catholic Church, this letter applies to almost all Christian denominations in the West, a sad state of affairs if ever there was one. A spot-on and much needed rebuke for Western Christendom. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Dear Brother Bishops,
I read the message you sent at the conclusion of your Fortieth Assembly held in Rio de Janeiro at the end of May. What good news did I find there? Forgive my frankness, but none at all. You, Catholic bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM), keep repeating the same old refrain: social issues, social issues, social issues—and you’ve been doing this for over fifty years. Dear brothers, don’t you see that this tune has grown tiresome? When will you bring us the good news about God, Christ, and his Spirit? About grace and salvation? About conversion of the heart and meditation on the Word? About prayer, adoration, and devotion to the Mother of our Lord? In short, when will you finally deliver a truly religious and spiritual message?
This is precisely what we most urgently need today and what we’ve been waiting for all these years. Christ’s words come to mind: The children ask for bread, and you are giving them a stone (Matt. 7:9). Even the secular world has grown weary of secularity and now seeks spirituality. Yet you keep offering them the social, always more of the social—and mere crumbs of the spiritual. To think that you are the guardians of the greatest treasure, exactly what the world needs most, and yet, somehow, you hold it back. Souls long for the supernatural, yet you persist in giving them the merely natural. This paradox is evident even in the parishes: While laypeople joyfully display symbols of their Catholic identity (crosses, medals, veils, religious-themed T-shirts), priests and nuns move in the opposite direction, often appearing without any visible sign of their vocation at all.
And yet, you declare without hesitation that you hear the “cries” of the people and are “aware of today’s challenges.” But does your listening reach deeply enough, or is it merely superficial? When I read your list of today’s “cries” and “challenges,” I see nothing beyond what even the most pedestrian journalists and sociologists already point out. Do you not hear, dear brothers, that from the depths of the world there rises today a formidable cry for God—a cry even many secular analysts hear? Doesn’t the Church and her ministers exist precisely to listen to this cry and respond with the true and full answer? For social cries, we have governments and NGOs. Certainly, the Church cannot remain absent in these areas, but she is not the protagonist there. Her specific and higher field of action is precisely responding to the cry for God.
I know that you bishops are continually pressured by public opinion to self-identify as either progressive or traditionalist, right-wing or left-wing. But are these appropriate categories for bishops? Aren’t you, rather, men of God and ministers of Christ? On this point, St. Paul is unequivocal: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). The Church is first and foremost the sacrament of salvation, not merely a social institution, progressive or otherwise. The Church exists to proclaim Christ and his grace. This is her central focus, her greatest and perennial mission. Everything else comes second. Forgive me, brothers, if I’m simply repeating what you already know. But if that’s the case, why is none of it evident in your message—or in CELAM’s documents in general? Reading them, one can’t help but conclude that the Church’s primary concern on our continent is not the cause of Christ and the salvation he has won for us, but rather social issues like justice, peace, and ecology—which you repeat in your message like a worn-out refrain.
The very telegram Pope Leo sent to CELAM’s president explicitly stresses the urgent “need to remember that it is the Risen One . . . who protects and heals the Church, restoring hope to her.” The Holy Father also reminded you that the Church’s proper mission is, in his own words, “to go out to meet so many brothers and sisters, to proclaim to them the message of salvation of Jesus Christ.” Yet how did you respond to the pope? In the letter you wrote back, there is no echo of these papal admonitions. You didn’t ask him to help you keep alive the memory of the Risen Lord or to proclaim salvation in Christ, but rather to support you in your fight to “promote justice and peace” and to “denounce all forms of injustice.” In short, what you conveyed to the pope was the same old refrain—“social issues, social issues, social issues”—as if someone who had worked among us for decades had never heard that before.
You might say, “But we can take these truths for granted! We don’t need to keep repeating them.” No, dear brothers; we do need to repeat them daily with renewed fervor, or they will be lost. If constant repetition weren’t necessary, why would Pope Leo have reminded you of them? We all know what happens when a man takes his wife’s love for granted and fails to nurture it. This truth applies infinitely more to our faith and love for Christ.
It’s true that your message contains the vocabulary of faith—I see words like “God,” “Christ,” “evangelization,” “resurrection,” “Kingdom,” “mission,” and “hope.” But they appear only in a generic way, without any clear spiritual substance. Consider the first two words, fundamental to our faith: “God” and “Christ.” When it comes to “God,” you never mention him directly—only in stock expressions like “Son of God” or “People of God.” Isn’t that astonishing, brothers? And as for “Christ,” his name appears only twice, both times in passing. When recalling the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea, you speak of “our faith in Christ the Savior”—a grandiose statement that, unfortunately, carries no real weight in your message. From where I stand, I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t seized the opportunity of celebrating this profound dogmatic truth to powerfully reaffirm the primacy of Christ, our God—a primacy so feebly proclaimed these days in the preaching and life of our Church.
You rightly declare that you want the Church to be a “house and school of communion,” as well as “merciful, synodal, and [a Church] which goes forth.” And who wouldn’t want that? But where is Christ in this ideal image of the Church? Without Christ as her raison d’être, the Church is just a “charitable NGO,” as Pope Francis himself warned. And isn’t that precisely the path our Church is on? The one small consolation is that those leaving often become evangelicals rather than losing their faith entirely. In any case, though, our Church is bleeding. Empty churches, empty seminaries, empty convents—that’s what we see all around. In Latin America, seven or eight countries no longer have Catholic majorities. Brazil itself is becoming “the largest ex-Catholic country in the world,” in the prescient words of Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues back in 1970. Yet this continuous decline doesn’t seem to worry you, dear bishops. Amos’s warning against Israel’s leaders comes to mind: You “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6). It’s troubling that your message doesn’t even breathe a word about such an obvious collapse. Even more astonishing is that the secular world talks about this phenomenon more than bishops do. Bishops prefer to remain silent. How can we not recall the charge of “dumb dogs” that St. Gregory the Great leveled against silent shepherds and that St. Boniface repeated just the other day in the Office of Readings?
Of course, alongside this decline there is also growth. You yourselves say that our Church “still pulses with vitality” and contains “seeds of resurrection and hope.” But, dear bishops, where exactly are these “seeds”? They’re not in initiatives aimed at tackling social issues, as you might assume, but rather in the religious revival happening in parishes and in new ecclesial movements and communities, inspired by what Pope Francis called “a current of the grace of the Holy Spirit,” with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as its most visible expression. And yet, even though these forms of spirituality and evangelization are the most vibrant part of our Church—filling both our churches and the hearts of the faithful—they didn’t even rate a brief mention in your message. But it’s precisely in this rich spiritual soil that the future of our Church lies. One clear sign of this is that, while our initiatives focused on social causes mostly draw “gray-haired” types, initiatives centered on spiritual life are seeing a massive influx of young people.
Dear bishops, I can already hear your restrained yet indignant response: “So, with this supposedly ‘spiritual’ emphasis, are you suggesting that the Church must now turn her back on the poor, on urban violence, on ecological destruction, and on so many other social crises? Wouldn’t that be blind—even cynical?” We can agree on this: The Church must absolutely engage with these social issues. My point lies elsewhere: Is it in the name of Christ that the Church engages in these struggles? Is her social action, and that of her members, truly grounded in faith—not just any faith, but a distinctly Christian faith? If the Church enters social struggles without being guided and inspired by a Christ-centered faith, she will do nothing more than what any NGO would do. Worse still, over time she will offer a shallow social commitment that, without the leaven of a living faith, eventually becomes perverted—turning from liberating into merely ideological, and ultimately oppressive. This is precisely the lucid and serious warning that St. Paul VI gave in Evangelii Nuntiandi to the precursors of liberation theology back in 1975—a warning that, it seems, went largely unheeded.
Dear brothers, allow me to ask: Where, exactly, do you intend to lead our Church? You often speak of the Kingdom, but what is its concrete meaning for you? Given that you repeatedly emphasize the need to build a “just and fraternal society,” one might assume that this is the central vision you have of the Kingdom. I see where you are coming from. However, as for the true substance of the Kingdom—present already in hearts today and awaiting its final fulfillment tomorrow—you say nothing. In your discourse, there is hardly any eschatological horizon at all. You do mention “hope” a couple of times, but so vaguely that, given the social focus of your message, it’s hard to imagine anyone hearing that word from your lips and lifting their eyes toward heaven. Please don’t misunderstand me, dear brothers: I do not doubt that heaven is also your “great hope.” But then why this reluctance to speak clearly and aloud—like so many bishops before you—about the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as about hell, the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, and other eschatological truths that can illuminate and strengthen the struggles of the present, while also revealing the ultimate meaning of all things? Of course, the ideal of a “just and fraternal society” on earth is beautiful and important. But it cannot compare with the City of Heaven (Phil. 3:20; Heb. 11:10, 16), of which we are citizens and co-workers by our faith—and of which you, by your episcopal ministry, are chief architects. You will certainly make your contribution to the earthly city. However, that is not your primary expertise, but that of politicians and social activists.
I’d like to believe that the pastoral experience of many of you is richer and more diverse than what comes across in your message. Especially since bishops are not subject to CELAM—which is merely a body at your service—but only to the Holy See, and, of course, to God—and therefore have the freedom to shape the pastoral direction of their dioceses as they see fit. That, at times, naturally results in a legitimate divergence from the line promoted by CELAM. There’s also another kind of divergence worth noting: Some documents come from CELAM as a whole (the General Conferences), while others, usually narrower in scope, come from the standing Council itself. And I’d add a third divergence, even closer to home—the divergence that can, and often does, occur between the bishops and those theological assistants who draft their documents. Taken together, these three factors give us a much more nuanced understanding of the inner workings of our Church. Even so, your message still feels emblematic of the Church’s sorry state today—one that places the social dimension above the spiritual. You used the occasion of your Fortieth General Assembly to insist on this path. You went to great lengths to embrace this option explicitly and resolutely, as you made clear by repeating the words “renew” and “commitment” three times.
I believe, dear bishops, that by so often—and understandably—bringing social issues and their painful realities to the forefront, you have ended up leaving the religious dimension in the shadows, without ever explicitly denying its primacy. In truth, this troubling process began almost imperceptibly in Medellín (at the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in 1968), and it has continued to this day. Yet you all know from experience that unless the religious dimension is promptly brought out of the shadows and placed clearly in the light—both in words and in practice—its priority will gradually be lost. That is precisely what happened with Christ’s centrality in the Church: Little by little, he was pushed into the background. And though he is still acknowledged as Lord and Head of the Church and of the world, it is often only a perfunctory acknowledgment, if at all. The proof of this slow deterioration is plain to see in the decline of our Church. If we continue on this path, that decline will only deepen. And this is because, long before we began to shrink in numbers, we had already lost the true fervor of our faith in Christ, who is the dynamic center of the Church. Dear brothers, the numbers themselves are a challenge to all of us—especially to you—to reconsider the general direction of our Church. Let us renew our commitment to Christ with genuine passion, so that the Church may grow once again—both in quality and in numbers.
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