Brazil soon will no longer hold the position as the country with the
largest number of Catholics in the world. For years the number of people who have declared themselves Roman Catholic are in grave decline, and the last survey by Datafolha Institute indicates a loss of about 9 million faithful since 2014.
The
institute heard 2.828 voting-eligible Brazilians, randomly selected as a
representative sample of the population. The margin of error is two
percentage points (level of confidence 95%). Two years ago, 60 percent
of Brazilians over the age of 16 declared themselves Catholics.
According to the latest survey published on December 25, the percentage
is now only 50 percent — a loss of 9 million.
During
the same period, the percentage of those who claim not to belong to any
religion has more than doubled, from 6 percent in 2014 to 14 percent
now.
Sociology professor Reginaldo Prandi commented,
"Socially, religion does not have a role anymore. It's not a mandatory
condition in order for one to be perceived as a good citizen."
Datafolha Institute interviewed Msgr.
Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, auxiliary bishop of Brazil and general
secretary of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB). When
asked what could possibly explain the decline of Catholics in the most
Catholic country on the planet, Steiner said:
The decline on the numbers presented by this survey may present concealed elements, as for example the majority of non-practicing Catholics, people who were baptized and for whom the Church is part of a family tradition, but who hesitate to declare their Roman Catholic faith because they are distanced from the Church. And also, Pope Francis' election and the development of his pontificate have given to the global public opinion the understanding that faith and the action that ensues from it are basic human needs and they must be lived at any given time or place, connected to any tradition of faith. This new element might somehow have exerted influence in the independence shown by those who haven't exactly defined themselves as Catholics.
The Institute then questioned the auxiliary bishop why
the numbers were so low, even though the new Pope is regarded as a man
of change and is seen as close to the people. Steiner said he respected
the survey and its method, but the CNBB continues to see Catholic
communities in Brazil growing and thriving and claimed that Pope
Francis' leadership is beneficial to the Church.
Evangelical
protestants' numbers remain constant since 2014, but the growth of
evangelical protestantism in Brazil is directly linked to the reduced
numbers in the Catholic Church.
In another survey profiling
evangelicals in Brazil, also published in December, Datafolha
discovered that 44 percent of those who claim to be evangelicals today
come from the Catholic Church. In August 1994, when the Institute made
the first survey to delineate the religious make-up of the country, 75
percent of the population able to vote was made of Catholics. Ten
percent were Evangelical Protestants of the Pentecostal kind, and 4
percent were Protestants from more traditional and historical
denominations (Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, etc).
In 2000, the official census figures were that
Pentecostal denominations made up more than two thirds of the total
number of Protestants in Brazil. During the eighties, historical
denominations either stagnated or even suffered a decline, while
Pentecostal churches grew nearly three times faster than the
population.
In 2012, when the data for the official 2010 census was released, statistics revealed the astounding growth of Evangelicals (61.45% in 10 years).
The predictions from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics (IBGE), the agency responsible for the censuses, is that by
2040 the number of Protestants will exceed the
number of Catholics in the country. Within the Pentecostal
evangelicals, two denominations are worth noting: the Assembly of God
and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.
Silas Malafaia, a famous televangelist and head of the
Victory in Christ Assembly of God, when commenting on the 2010 census
data stated, "A
majority of evangelicals used to be Catholic, but being a Catholic
doesn't mean that you practice the Faith. Conversely, an evangelical is
an evangelical at work, in school, in the community."
The
statistics for the last Datafolha survey confirm the words of Malafaia.
When asked if "all religions have the same value, as all of them follow
the same God," 45 percent of evangelical protestants disagreed, while
among Catholics the disagreement with the statement comes from only 15
percent of the participants. A full 65 percent of evangelicals go to
church more than once a week, while the percentage among Catholics is
only 17 percent.
And as many as 58 percent of evangelicals contribute
financially to their church, while only 34 percent of Catholics
contribute. The average contribution from an evangelical protestant is
almost three times as much what a Catholic usually donates. The adoption
of children by homosexual couples is approved of by 56 percent of
Catholics, but by only 26 percent of evangelicals.
Religions of the world: a comprehensive encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices has
defined the controversial Universal Church of the Kingdom of God as "a
polemical expression of neo-Pentecostalism." The encyclopedia describes
neo-Pentecostalism's main characteristics as "the emphasis on the
spiritual battle against the devil" and the profession of the "health
and wealth gospel," explained as "the right of a 'true' Christian to
live his life here and now in happiness and material affluence."
The Universal Church was founded in 1977 by Edir Macedo, owner of Brazil's third largest television network and, according to Forbes,
one of the richest religious leaders in the world. Macedo is constantly
involved in scandals of fraud, charlatanism and money-laundering. He
has quoted Ecclesiastes
6:3 to justify his public advocacy of abortion, and one of the pastors
of his church became famous in 1995 for kicking a statue of Our Lady of
Aparecida, patron of Brazil, on her feast day, during a live transmission.
The evangelical protestants also have a very strong political expression, coined by the media as "The Evangelical Front." In 2015 they
numbered 78 in Brazil's National Congress: 75 in the Chamber of
Deputies (the lower house) and three in the Federal Senate (the upper
house).
The
advance of the evangelicals seems to be unstoppable. According to the
2010 census, the Assembly of God alone has 100,000 temples and 50,000
pastors, while the Catholic Church owns only 11,000 parishes and has
around 25,000 priests. Professor César Romero Jacob, who studies the
correlation between religious phenomena and the territory in Brazil in
which they occur, believes that the Catholic Church has failed to follow
the movement of its members.
"People leave a Catholic Brazil, from the South and the
Northeast, and move to these poor outskirts of big cities where the
Catholic Church is absent. The pentecostal groups fill these gaps."
Brazilian writer and professor of philosophy Luiz Felipe Pondé remarks that "the Church
turned
toward Marxism and distanced Herself from the housewife. The mother who
has a drug-addicted son doesn't care if it's capitalism's fault; she
wants him to exchange the drugs for Jesus."