text: Jay, your experience is not the Latin American experience.  The priest shortage in Brazil, and the impact of mandatory celibacy on those numbers has been an ongoing topic in Rome since before Vatican II.  One solution was the Basic Ecclesial Communities which were lay led and neighborhood or village based.  They were very successful in stemming the river moving towards Evangelic/Apostolic churches.  There was a fairly extensive training program for the lay leaders, many of whom were women.  JPII and Cardinal Ratzinger, as well as some Latin American conservative bishops, soon began to see them as detrimental to the purity of the Catholic faith in Latin America.  Specifically for two reasons.  The first was the fear of Liberation theology and the second was JPII's belief lay leaders were somehow eroding the perogatives of ordained clergy.  Hence, they BEC's were disbanded and the river to Evangelical storefront churches became as wide as the Mississippi.