Emelio Betances. 2007. the Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective (Resena de Libro‪)‬

Emelio Betances. 2007. The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective. Plymouth, United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 275 pp. ISBN-13: 978-07425-5505-l. Mexico, Central America, South America, and portions of the Caribbean: Latin America is far too large, populous, and culturally diverse to be painted in a single portrait. The same is true for the Catholic Church in that region, where a wide array of parish plans, liturgical forms, and concepts of church vary greatly from nation to nation as well as from parish to parish. The range of cultures, the great disparity between wealth and poverty, and the rapidly changing realities within Latin America demand multiple responses at the local levels if the Church is to carry out its mission. The bishops discovered long ago that they needed to find effective and often imaginative ways to meet the spiritual and temporal needs of their parishioners while simultaneously maintaining close bonds with the universal Church.