If the Truth of Christ and Him, Crucified, Doesn't Work...

...Try Song and Dance (called by some, Inculturation)

Brazil's Priests Use Song and Dance To Stem Catholic Church's Decline

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Pack 15,000 bodies shoulder to shoulder in a vast old warehouse, get them singing as loud as their lungs will allow and feel the temperature rise.

"How many people are sweating?"

As the Rev. Marcelo Rossi stands before a shimmering expanse of upraised hands, working up the crowd, a droplet of perspiration cuts a shining rivulet behind his left ear and trickles toward his clerical collar.

"Sweating is good," he announces. "It gets the bad things out. Now put your hands over your hearts and join me: Let's get rid of envy, of greed. . . ."

More here.

As a followup to the problems facing the Church in Brazil - indeed in all of Latin America - there is this article, also from the Washington Post, titled, "New Pope Should Reach Out to 'Inactive Catholics'".

Millions of Catholics in Latin America -- as in the developed world -- have turned against church dogma on sex, artificial birth control, and abortion. Even in the world's largest Catholic country, Brazil, where 80 percent consider themselves followers, 70 percent of married women use a method of artificial contraception, only two percentage points lower than women in the United States, according to the Population Reference Bureau. And that doesn't even take into account the millions of women who use birth control before marriage.

70% of Brazilian women consider themselves followers of the Church yet they practice birth control...Well, let's celebrate with song and dance!

How does the writer of the article suggest that the new Pope "reach out" to our 'inactive brothers and sisters'? With truth and charity?

... people ... have become comfortable living a life without religious guidance...In some respects we have even adopted an elitist attitude toward those who don't share our inactivity and have found spiritual fulfillment in more charismatic faiths such as Pentecostalism.

I am not sure if a liberalized dogma would draw back into the church people who are now Catholics by default or cultural Catholics. I am certain that if the church does not reconsider certain dogmas it will lose further relevance for those in the middle and upper classes who have become pretty good at justifying religious inactivity.

A "liberalized dogma"? I suppose that's similiar to a "half-truth."

At any rate, it always seems to come back to sex at some point in the conversation. People want, not freedom, but license to engage in behavior which is at odds with the dignity and beauty of human life and procreativity. Many have become enslaved by their so-called "freedom."