For one week in May of 2007, hundreds of bishops from throughout Latin America gathered in Brazil at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida for the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America. The essays in this volume—written by ten of the foremost scholars of Latin American theology and the church in Latin America—examine the official documents from the conference and assess the bishops’ strategies for dealing with globalization, discipleship and missions, structural sin, the preferential option for the poor, and the future for the Catholic Church in Latin America.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Inaugural Address of Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Message of the Fifth General Conference to the Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean
Celam Bishops
Medellin and Puebla: Dead or Alive in the 21st Century Catholic Church
Robert S. Pelton, C.S.C.
The Challenge of Aparecida for the Church in America: Discipleship and Mission
Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, C.S.B.
Aparecida and Hispanics of the U.S.A.
Virgilio Elizondo
The Preferential Option for the Poor at Aparecida
Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P.
Base Communities, a Return to Inductive Methodology
Jose Marins
Aparecida and Global Markets
Ernest Bartell, C.S.C.
Globalization and Economics at Aparecida
Javier Maria Iguiniz Echeverria
An Analysis of the Aparecida Document in Terms of Structural Sin
Margaret R. Pfeil
Amerindia: Return from Internal Exile
Sergio Torres
Aparecida and Pentecostalism in Latin America
Edward L. Cleary, O.P.
The Future as Seen from Aparecida
Daniel H. Levine
Contributors
Appendix
I. A Missionary Church in the Continent
II. The Continental Mission
III. Complementary Services for the Continental Mission