THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN BRAZIL

FIRST MASS IN BRAZIL

Although it appears to be an easy task being a Christian in Brazil – catholic or
protestant – because of the vast number of Churches and reach of Christianity
inside the Brazilian culture, as soon as one delves a little deeper into the faith
the case ceases to be so simple. It ceases to be simple due to the fact of how
the faith arrived in the country already bent by the Iberian tradition, and kept
changing along the centuries that in the end became only a masquerade of
false moralism. Outlining Brazilian faith, from a Christian perspective, is as
disappointing as it is interesting, for we begin to see the same patterns
repeating themselves throughout the world, giving us the feelings of both
despair and understanding.

We were once a colony of the Portuguese Empire, and Christianity was the
realm’s official religion when the kingdom defeated the Islamic menace
(Reconquista – ended in 1492) after it nationalized the military religious orders
of the Middle Ages (a process which began under the Pope Nicholas IV and the
reign of Dom Diniz, 1290). The prevailing religion would change slightly each
year that passed, to finally develop practices that would resemble the
Caesaropapism system from the distant byzantine East. After Centuries of
hostilities and struggle, interweaved by peaceful years, Christians in the Iberian
Peninsula would assimilate some Islamic oriental practices, notably the notion
of a strong central power that controls and leads society to victory.

The Crown and the Cross would often fuse, and eventually the Church in Brazil
found itself under the control of a central power, up to the point that it almost
caused a schism during the Empire - an event known as “Questão Religiosa”
(Religion Question – a struggle between the “Brazilian Church and the Roman
Church which reached its peak in the decade of 1870). The schism did not
happen, but this quarrel contributed enormously to the wreck of the Brazilian
Empire (ended in 1889), as the Crown lost support from the Church.

During the empire, the upper classes were almost entirely masonic and against
Christianity, doing all they could to hamper the natural growth of the Christian
faith, which we may try to enumerate:

 The prohibitions of monasteries, as monasteries are always a way of isolation

from society, escaping the tenets of the central power and developing independent
communities.

 The extermination of the Jesuit’s religious education. Beginning within the era
of the Marquis of Pombal - a politician that believed in the economical credo he brought
from his education in England - the Jesuits were expelled for they also formed
independent societies apart from the government, when they began their evangelization
in Brazil. Moreover, the enlightened Marquis believed that religion was behind the reason
of why the Portuguese Empire was not developing as fast the British Kingdom.
  The upper masonic classes corrupted the clergy, indoctrinating inside the
masonry all priests that had political ambitions. A papal decree from the XVIII century
enforced that all freemasons were excommunicated, and masonic Catholic clerics did not
exist anywhere, except for a brief period of time in revolutionary France and in Brazil.
This is an exclusive promiscuity that resulted in something tragic: for a long time,
excommunicated priests single-handedly composed the upper Brazilian clergy.

Of course, this scenario would someday divide the upper classes between the
masonic republican elite, and the monarchist conservatives who would sooner
or later be godforsaken by this political Church. This circumstance had arrived
at Pope Pio IX’s ears when he wrote the Bulla Syllabus (1864), starting a
personal struggle against the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II. In the long run,
the Emperor sided with the Pope, which made him lose all the support he had
from his masonic politicians and totalitarian landowners. Nevertheless, the
clutter had already been made: Church and Crown would never reconcile.

This series of events would shape the religious minds of Brazilians in an

intricate way, as religious life was always mingled with political life. The Pope
John Paul II addressed this anomaly (2002) when he said that Brazilians are
Christians by their feelings, but not truly by their faith. With a social life filled with
Christian events – processions, novenas and public tributes to the Holy Virgin,
promoted by the population and even the government – Brazilians did not
develop their interior and silent spiritual progress, with the inwardness required
to live a truly Christian existence.

The heavy toll that Christendom paid for this development is the anomaly that in
five hundred years of existence, in a Christian nation that has the size of
Europe, no saint, mystic, or even a considerable number of theologians arose to
bring forth Christ to the world. What Brazil has, instead, is a mixed pious feeling
that can be intertwined with other faiths that came to existence within our racial
and religious miscegenation.

Which kind of faith this masonic clergy would convey to the nation - apart from
these utilitarian public displays of piety, serving only to their purposes? Only a
hollow shell made of empty rites, feasts and false moralism. Christianity was
reduced to its exterior expression, only to be mixed with African and Indian
paganism. People prayed not to attain heaven, but to be healed from tropical
ailments. If Catholic Brazilians from the future gaze into their past, they will be
looking at an empty house.

Blended with politics, the religious feeling also got involved with affairs of the
state throughout the Republican era, and it is not easy now to undo this fusion.
Catholicism and Protestantism were invaded during the twentieth century with
Marxist ideas – as it happened with the case of the horrid Liberation Theology –
and only now the traditionalist movements inside the Christian Churches seem
to be waking in an attempt to redo evangelization appropriately. It is hard,
though, to get rid from modern ideas of equality and to free Christianity from the
social and political influences. Some priests get bashed by the media when they
defend a strong conservative position and call out against multiculturalism or
liturgies that place African witchcraft in front of the altar.

Marxism has already played a great role in our culture, as it played in the West.
Whereas throughout the world the African cults disappear for the Islamic
advance, in Brazil they spread under the demagogic intellectual aestheticism,
and objective truths keep getting swept under the rug. In Brazil, the ancient
conflict between Christianity against the pagan Roman religions became the
conflict of a hollow government religion against its actual Church.

MULTICULTURAL CELEBRATION

As said Saint Augustine “man is an abyss; what will rise from these depths, no
one can see in advance”. But what seed did the Christian faith plant to be
uprooted in the future? As long as one does not seek the revealed truths inside
Christian facts aside of its body of ideals, it will always be impossible to solve
the problem of faith, especially in Brazil. Christ did not come to give us a
marvelous earthly life, but to lead us to heaven. While this fact is not
acknowledged, the valuable life lessons taken from the sermon of the mount will
always remain shallow. As Christ said in the parable of the mustard seed:
 How will we liken the Kingdom of God? Or with what parable will we
illustrate it? It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in
the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, yet
when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs,
and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge
under its shadow.”

The Portuguese empire brought already old mustard trees to Brazil, where they
ended up dying. Instead of the mustard seed, to America came an already
shattered faith from the reformation, where its vices were loosened, and its
virtues were twisted. Twisted Christian virtues wander wildly, as said
Chesterton, and do a terrible damage, for the modern world is full of old
Christian virtues gone mad. While the seed is not sown, the Kingdom of God
will never be understood. Only when the seed is sown, we will be able to finally
to heed the wisdom from the proverbs:

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will
make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when
I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you
disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will
laugh when disaster strikes you.

Hélio de Amorim e Silva Neto