John Allen has interesting interviews posted today – they are excerpted in his column, with full texts elsewhere on the NCR site:

First is a conversation with a Peruvian evangelical scholar of religion:

What explains the growth of Protestantism in Latin America?
One way of explaining it would be the pastoral failure of the Catholic Church, which does not have the resources to educate the people in the faith. Latin American Catholics have a religious sensibility, but are often unattached to the church, and consequently they look for alternatives. The Catholic Church recently carried out a study of more than 1,000 converts, which concluded that if the church had offered deeper Bible study, better worship, and more personal pastoral attention, these people would not have converted. One factor is the shortage of priests. [Note: In 2001, there were 7,176 Catholics for every priest in Latin America, compared to 1,325 Catholics per priest in the United States.]

A deeper reason may be the way Christianity was implanted in Latin America. There was never really a complete missionary effort, the way the missionary orders envisioned it. It was done quickly in order to turn the Indians into subjects of the King, and to collect their tithes.

Some argue that today’s conversions to Protestantism are also superficial, and that many will return.
That’s a possibility. A recent study in Costa Rica, carried out by a Protestant team, found that eight percent of Costa Ricans who joined a Protestant church eventually left, some to return to Catholicism, while others moved on to something else.

In general, however, most Latin Americans who become evangelicals stay with it, because they find a different approach to understanding the faith and the church. For one thing, evangelical Christianity in Latin America is very much a movement of lay people. There are pastors, many of whom don’t have as complete a theological training as Catholic priests, but they rely on their ability to mobilize the people. Protestantism is also home-grown. In Peru, for example, 60 percent of Catholic priests are foreigners — Spaniards, Americans, Canadians, and so on. The number is just 10 percent in the Protestant churches.

Next, a scholar who will be involved in Benedict’s weekend reunion/meeting of his former students, on the topic of evolution:

What do you think will come from the Schülerkreis meeting?
I think they want to have some kind of statement on Darwinian theory, close to that made by the previous pope in 1996. [Note: John Paul II then defined evolution as "more than a hypothesis."]

What are your impressions of the thinking of Benedict XVI on evolution?
I think he’s very close to John Paul. One thing I will stress is that referring to "neo-Darwinism" [as Schönborn did in The New York Times] is not appropriate in our time. We have different knowledge, and we know many more details. For one thing, we can now do evolutionary experiments in the lab. We can empirically show how the mechanisms of evolution work, optimizing molecules by mutation and selection. We can design molecules by evolutionary techniques using the same process we see in nature. I believe the pope is interested in this.

So you believe Benedict will take a somewhat different position than Schönborn?
I think so, but one never knows. We’ll see at the end.

And finally, with a Mozart scholar, occasioned by (again) Cardinal Schonborn – who recently denied Mozart’s Freemason ties:

To discuss Mozart’s Masonry and his Catholicism, I interviewed Robert Levin of Harvard University, a concert pianist and harpsichordist and an expert on Mozart. Levin recently completed a setting of Mozart’s "C Minor Mass," making it liturgically complete for the first time. He hopes to arrange a performance at the Vatican.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has questioned Mozart’s ties to the Masons. What do we know?
His association with Freemasonry has never been a matter of controversy. For one thing, we know the exact lodge to which he belonged, known in German as "Crowned Hope." He persuaded his father to become a Mason, and perhaps his friend Haydn. He wrote a substantial body of music for the lodges and for various Masonic ceremonies and functions, for example his famous Masonic funeral service. The last piece he finished before his death was K.623, "The Little Masonic Cantata." … To argue that Mozart wrote these compositions merely at arm’s length as a kind of commercial proposition is not particularly persuasive.

Did Mozart feel a tension between his Masonry and his Catholicism?
We shouldn’t drive a wedge between these two things … Individuals, and artists in particular, often can be more nuanced than the official positions. Mozart saw no conflict. He was the assistant choirmaster at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and expected to become the master, anticipating writing a glorious series of sacred music. The Masonic lodges Mozart visited weren’t subversive. He found them attractive because of their fascination with human dignity and human freedom. They represented a break with the aristocracy and oligarchy.

What about Mozart’s Catholicism?
The best way to approach it is through his music. I find it very, very hard to believe that the fervor and expressiveness of the music Mozart wrote for the church, such as the "C Minor Mass" or the "Requiem," is just the equivalent of an opera composer making a good pitch for his libretto. The sense of the glory of God is so powerful … Mozart’s spirituality emphasizes majesty, grandeur, and affirmation. There’s relatively little terror and trembling. … His music of greatest solemnity and complexity always comes at the resurrection, not the crucifixion. Some might say it’s a sugar-coated Catholicism, but the tenderness he brings to the Et Incarnatus Est in the "C Minor Mass," for example, is special. In the 18th century, the "doctrine of affections" was in force, which held that each key symbolized a particular human emotion. It’s telling that even though the "C Minor Mass" starts out in that key, it’s C Major which dominates, the key of majesty and glory. … Mozart’s Catholicism is a powerful affirmative force, without being subject to the "stick" of terror, threatening eternal damnation to those who didn’t believe. It’s overwhelmingly music of tenderness, empathy, and at times of grandeur.

Interesting stuff, as usual.