Magnificent! Another adjective does not exist to characterize the book of the French historian, Alphonse Dupront, “The Religion Catholic: Possibilities and Perspectives “, edited for the Loyola and translated BY the philosopher Henrique C. Vaz, S.J. .To understand it in its vast wealth it is necessary that the reader knows a little the History of the Ocidente since the coming of Jesus Christ. This, however, does not intimidate to who to search a more solid cultural recital on this institution divine human being and, so argued, so loved, so hated and, over all, little known and understood. Vaz, in the bibliographical note that wrote for the brazilian magazine “Síntese”, volume 22, informs that Dupront is one of the founders of etno-history and that its method of boarding is description-phaenomological.. It is me impossible, however, to offer to the reader a total vision of this workmanship. For this, I chose a small topic that if it relates to critical the very calm one that Dupront makes of shunting lines of the sacerdotal life and that it calls “secularization forces”. These forces work the Church since the end of century XVI and had gained terrible speed after Vatican Concílio II when if it observed that, on behalf of a hasty modernization, that meant a bath to remove the dust of the centuries, when it was played dirty water also played the child who was in the basin. The secularization signals occur in the trend of the eclesial society if to recognize only in the lay model. The abandonment of the habit, the definition of the sacerdotais functions according to partner-economic vocabulary; the resignation of the bishops to the 75 years, and dominating everything this, the criterion of the USEFUL one In this in case that the priest or minister is if questioning, since the times of the seminary, which its utility and that it will have also to be directed for a profession (psychologist is the preferred one) to be “useful” to the community. In this, as in the remaining portion, the Church “if conforms with the world”. Dupront considers the priest as one of the people most essential to the society human being if he is it, as of fact it it is, that one that pardons the sins and that the Lamb of God in the altars of the world sacrifices. Having lived in the Church of the two concílios I can perceive well the clamorous differences very, and, unhappyly, worse, that they exist between the old cures of the parishes and the priests of “nouvelle becomes vacant”. I do not go to prolongate itself in these painful differences. I will only point some. The old cures very knew well its Latin, and unhappyly the Latin are not studying nor in the seminaries. The priests until 60’s read the classics of the Church, either in the Latin or in the Greek, they lived in the houses parishes that were attached of the Church and were available at any time of the day or the dawn; being hours and hours hearing its faithful in the individual confessions. Today they live far of its churches and are always in interminable meetings and run away from the individual confession. In summary. It has a conflict between what the world asks for to the priest and what the Church waits. The Church waits, according to Dupront, that living in the century it continues “not being of this world”. Disciple of Christ it carregue in its particular Cross the Past of the Church with its tradition, its errors, its miracles in History . It is this type of priest who the Catholics need and with what I agree fully.
