(Archbishop of Sao Salvado da Bahia, Brazil)
In the Archdiocese of Sao Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, we have a big negro population formed by more or less distant descendants of slaves who came in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries from Guinea, Angola, Nigeria, Congo and Dahomey. The capital of the State, Salvador, with over one million and a half negros in a population of 2,300,000 inhabitants is one of the biggest African towns in the world.
The negro population inherited from its ancestors the cult of the traditional African religion of their countries of origin. For various historical circumstances those beliefs and rites of those animistic religions merged with the practice of the Catholic religiosity creating a religious syncretism, which is the most delicate pastoral challenge of the Archdiocese. The main difficulty of this syncretism lies in the following: the content of the beliefs (and superstitions) of Afro-Brazilian traditional religions cannot be identified with the content of the Catholic faith, lastly it can be considered "semina Verbi" and "praeparatio evangelica". For this reason it would be dangerous to put these two religious expressions on the same equal level, taking one for the other, practising now one, then another on or both together.
For this reason, the pastoral approach adopted by the archdiocese concerning the challenge of syncretism can be summarised in the following points:
1) The Catholic Church professes sincere esteem and respect for Afro-Brazilian forms of worship, for their leaders and followers.
2) For this reason she judges harmful the two religions that can be mixed up together and the practice of both together as if they had the same value. This confusion puts in danger the identity of the Catholic Christian faith.
3) The Catholic Church itself wishes to propose and accepts a deep dialogue with Condomblé and other Afro-Brazilian forms of worship.
4) They feel the duty to show that syncretism is dangerous both to the Catholic faith and to beliefs of traditional African religions, and for this reason is inconvenient.
5) The Catholic Church is in favour of full religious freedom and against any legal restriction to practise Afro-Brazilian forms of worship, such as it happened in the past and still happens today on the part of some neo-Catholic denominations. She considers that a serious catechesis and adequate preaching on the Catholic faith is the only way to avoid inconveniences of religious syncretism.
6) It would be of great use for the position of the Catholic Church in Bahia and in Brazil to know, and as deeply as possible, the pastoral theoretical and practical approaches of the local Churches in the African continent with regard to syncretism. What is generally the relationship of these Churches towards the faithful who converted to Catholicism from the Traditional African Religions? Are they allowed to continue attending worship and maintain beliefs of traditional African religions? What kind of pastoral discipline is in force in this respect?
Original text: Portuguese
