Basic ecclesial community
An ecclesial base community is a relatively autonomous Christian religious group that operates according to a particular model of community, worship, and Bible study. The 1968 Medellín, Colombia, meeting of Latin American Catholic bishops played a major role in popularizing them under the name basic ecclesial communities. These are small groups, originating in the Catholic Church in Latin America, that meet to reflect upon scripture and apply its lessons to their situation.
The concept of a base ecclesial community is found in the early Church, when the Church Fathers taught the Bible to believers to contribute to their spiritual formation. The purpose of the base ecclesial community engaged in Bible study is "be taught and nourished by the Word of God" and "being formed and animated by the inspirational power conveyed by Scripture".
The proliferation of base communities is due in part to the documents of the Second Vatican Council which called for the Catholic laity to take a more active role in the church, and also from the shortage of priests. They spread to Africa, and then to Asia where some have morphed into models for neighborliness in modern urban and ecumenical environments, with the hope that Christian renewal at the peripheries will impact cultural centers.
Description
Present in both rural and urban areas, the base community, organized often illiterate peasants and proletarians into self-reliant worshiping communities through the tutelage of a priest or local lay member. Because established Christian parishes with active priests were often miles away and because high level church officials rarely visited even their own parishes these "base communities" were often the only direct exposure to the church for people in rural areas or those for whom a "local" church may be miles away. Thus, the base community was significant in changing popular interpretations of Roman Catholicism for multiple reasons.Initially, their very structure encouraged discussion and solidarity within the community over submission to church authority and, as their very name suggests, made power seem to flow from the bottom or base upward. The influence of liberation theology meant that discussions within the church were oriented toward material conditions and issues of class interests. Through this process of consciousness raising, evangelizing turned into class consciousness.
Emphasis
Other Base Communities came into existence in the Eastern Bloc, but with a different theological emphasis. They did not subscribe to liberation theology, as they were being persecuted by Marxists themselves. One of the best-known groups was Hungarian priest György Bulányi's "Bokor" movement after World War II, which sought to save the teachings of the Christian Church and resist the increasing persecution by the Communist Party. The movement's ideals were simple, namely to express Christian love in three ways: giving, service and non-violence. Bulányi was jailed for life by the Communist régime of Mátyás Rákosi, General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, in 1952, and was amnestied in 1960. However, he was not allowed to work as a priest. He continued to start small base communities illegally, and wrote illegal samizdat articles.They are in some ways similar to Western cell groups, a notable component of many Pentecostal and some Protestant churches. Base Christian communities believe in helping people whose lives have been destroyed. Over 120,000 new churches have been set up to help the poor. The Base Christian communities follow the word of God and stand by the poor, helping the helpless. The Base Christian communities work to fulfill Christ's purpose to proclaim good news to the poor, tell them of hope, and to remind all people that there is always someone loving them somewhere, and that they still have a chance in life.
A Base Christian community is a group of people who join together to study the Bible, and then act according to a social justice oriented form of Christianity especially popular among the third world and the poor.
Latin America
In the 1960s basic ecclesial communities spread rapidly, encouraged by the emphasis which the Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council and at the Latin American Medellin Conference gave to more active engagement of the laity in living the gospel imperatives. BECs realize the presence of the church in all its aspects, as communion, servant, herald, sacrament, and institution. They present a pattern of Christian life which is less individualistic, self-interested, and competitive, as preferred by the poor in mutual support and co-responsibility. Due to a shortage of priests, the sacraments are not always accessible in some of these communities but for them the word of God is an "immediate point of reference, the source of inspiration, nourishment, and discernment,... to shape a just society that will turn the word into reality and embody the gospel project in a coherent way,... conscious of the gift given to us in Jesus Christ."BECs were not a product of liberation theology; they existed before it arose, and have thrived despite some Vatican reaction against the liberation theology movement. The liberationists built upon the BEC movement, giving it a more explicitly social edge. Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, who coined the term "liberation theology", once said that ninety percent of the movement is the preferential option for the poor. The Latin American bishops, following up on their 1968 statement at Medellin which called for an "effective preference to the needy and poorest sectors" of society, issued in 1979 at Puebla a document entitled "A Preferential Option for the Poor". Then in 2007, with Pentecostal and Evangelical movements threatening the faith of Catholics within the impoverished peripheries of Latin America’s mega-cities, these bishops at the Fifth Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean embraced the base communities as a pastoral model.
A decline in base communities in some parts of Latin America has been attributed to Pope John Paul II's appointment of more conservative bishops and his difficulty in understanding the complexities of liberation theology. The Argentine-born Pope Francis's message "often has stood in marked contrast to the words of his two predecessors. Francis has in fact sought to revive liberation theology in its pastoral application—... what theologians call 'base community' work in the region's slums and marginalized areas." He has averaged a trip a year to Latin America during his papacy. Speaking from his experience in Latin America, Francis has highly extolled "popular movements", which demonstrate the "strength of us" and serve as a remedy to the "culture of the self". He sees such movements as an "antidote to populism" and as capable of revitalizing democracies which he finds "increasingly limp, threatened, and under scrutiny over countless factors." The communities have received strong endorsement from the Catholic hierarchy, beginning with the Latin American bishops at Medellin in the wake of Vatican II, who strove "to encourage and favor the efforts of the people to create and develop their own grassroots organizations for the redress and consolidation of their rights and the search for true justice." In 2016, the bishops' committee for the accompaniment of base ecclesial communities on the continent issued the statement: "In this ecclesial spring, aroused by the gestures and doctrine of Pope Francis, the communities have been strengthened and renewed in their evangelizing and missionary enthusiasm. We reaffirm our conviction that the communities are the Church of Jesus at the base, the poor and poor Church." One example of the need for these communities would be Guatemala where a single parish among the native Mayans has 100,000 members in 53 distinct communities served by 3,000 lay ministers. The diocesan bishop here is Álvaro Leonel Ramazzini Imeri who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in the 5 October 2019 consistory. The cardinal has long been an advocate for the poor, and has survived several death threats.
Brazil
The Brazilian Paulo Freire's classic work Pedagogy of the Oppressed increased literacy and raised the awareness of human rights. This furthered the BEC movement and "provided a springboard for Liberation theologians, most of whom were inspired by the theological insights they learnt from the struggles of poor communities." Brazil has had members of the Catholic clergy who gained an international reputation as defenders of the poor, such as Archbishop Hélder Câmara, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider, and Leonardo Boff. BECs have afforded protection for social activists, as in the Amazon region where land seizures are a contentious issue. The proliferation of BECs in Brazil was particularly widespread in comparison to the rest of Latin America: it has been estimated that the amount of base communities in the country at the peak of the liberationist movement counted at least 70,000, with upwards of two and a half million members.The Message of Pope Francis to the Participants in the 13th Meeting of the Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil, in January 2014, declared that "the motto of this meeting, 'BECs Pilgrims of the Kingdom, in the Countryside and the City', must resound like a call so that they might increasingly assume their very important role in the Church’s mission of evangelization." Quoting the Document of Aparecida, Francis stated that BECs allow people "to attain greater knowledge of the Word of God, a greater social commitment in the name of the Gospel, for the birth of new forms of lay service and adult education in the faith." He had chaired the committee that drafted the Aparecida document. Francis also recalled his more recent statement to the whole church, that base communities "bring a new evangelizing fervor and a new capacity for dialogue with the world whereby the Church is renewed."