L. American, Canadian Catholics share traits

Baptism, Confirmation come easy, but they stumble on Commitment

By BARBARA FRASER
Catholic News Service
Aparecida, Brazil

Canada's Catholic Church has much in common with its Latin America counterpart, including the challenge of "convincing people that because they are baptized they have an obligation to be disciples and missionaries," said Bishop Martin Currie of Grand Falls, Nfld.

Migration, the environment and the Church's relationship with indigenous peoples are other shared concerns, said Currie.

The Newfoundland bishop is part of the Canadian delegation participating in the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, meeting in Aparecida.

The biggest common task is developing a deep faith commitment among Catholics, he said.

"We baptize very easily, people make their first Communion, get confirmed very easily," Currie told Catholic News Service. "But have we initiated them (so) they have a commitment to Jesus and the Church? This is one of the serious questions that we're all facing."

Foreign strains

With about 250,000 immigrants arriving in Canada every year, ministry is complicated by the diversity of Canada's Catholic community. The congregation at a Sunday Mass in a major city like Toronto may speak "35 or 40 languages," he said. One solution is to encourage priests from the immigrants' home countries to accompany the people, but that presents problems.

"Priests are needed here in Latin America" where the population is younger and the percentage of Catholics is greater than in Canada, Currie said. In addition, priests arriving in Canada from immigrants' home countries face the difficulty of becoming accustomed to a foreign culture.

Canadians from rural areas have migrated to urban regions, and the majority of Canadians now live in the country's six largest cities. Many of the migrants are members of Canada's native peoples.

Issues related to ministry with indigenous peoples, who have been on the agenda in Aparecida, strike chords in Canada, where the government set up reserves and boarding schools to assimilate native peoples.

Many cases of abuse at schools, some involving churches, are in the courts.

"If the Church is guilty of anything, it's guilty of going along with the (government) assimilation program" that established the schools and reserves, Currie said.

Churches in Canada have established a reconciliation committee in an effort to "repair the history of our past," he said.

In Canada, as in parts of Latin America, some native people are returning to their indigenous religions. Pope Benedict sparked controversy when he warned about that trend in his speech to the bishops in Aparecida May 13.

Nevertheless, Currie said, "It forces us to ask how we (brought) the Gospel message to them."

The early attitude toward evangelization was sometimes one of "bringing God to them. God was there long before. But because of the mind-set with which we began to evangelize, we made mistakes.

"We have learned a lot in the last 400 years, and hopefully now we are going to be able to see the good things that were in their own religion," especially the indigenous view of "nature, God (and) the sacredness of earth and water," he said.

Polar ice cap

Caring for the natural world is increasingly important in Canada, where global warming is leading to the thawing of permafrost and the melting of the polar ice cap.

"If we believe that creation is given to us by God and we are stewards of creation, we're going to need to become very conscious of our responsibility for the environment," Currie said. "We're going to need to develop a deep theology."

Those challenges require Catholics to be well grounded in their faith, a challenge as great in Canada as in Latin America.

In the past, Currie said, "Many times we geared our catechesis toward preparing people for sacraments, rather than preparing them to have a relationship with Jesus."

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