The Catholic Church, Contemporary Sexual Politics and Development in Latin America

JUAN MARCO VAGGIONE

The Handbook of Religions and Global Development

Routledge

Año: 2015; p. 167 - 179

The Catholic Church, as a global institution, is not just the leader of this conservative block within the UN, but also one of the principal obstacles to the implementation of sexual and reproductive rights-based policies in Latin America. The Vatican not only constructs ethical-religious positions, but orchestrates strategies and disseminates discourses that seek to influence the political actions of those within its hierarchy and the faithful (Vaggione, 2012). This political machine, the analysis of which constitutes the primary objective of this article, has adapted to different international and national scenarios in defense of a sexual order based on biological reproduction. While the feminist and sexual diversity movements have managed to fissure, at least partially, the hierarchy?s power over sexual politics, including generating legal reforms that expand the legal boundaries of freedom and diversity, the Catholic Church has not given up its goal of supporting political regimes that reflect its ethical-religious positions. Nevertheless, as this article demonstrates, this goal is channeled in dynamic ways that adapt to changing circumstances. First, this article considers the ways in which the Vatican, as the pillar of ecclesiastic power, structures the defense of sexual order in reaction to advances by the feminist and sexual diversity movements. To understand the public actions taken by the Church in national or regional contexts, we must consider the Church as a transnational institution that acquires its principal strategies and discourses from the Vatican. Second, we consider Argentina?s same-sex marriage debate in 2010 as a moment in which to observe the forms of political intervention employed by conservative Catholic sectors. Although this analysis focuses on Argentina, it permits us to consider the renewed strategies and discourses that characterize conservative Catholic activism in Latin America in general. Through these analyses, the article seeks to address the debates surrounding the intersections between religion, development and sexual politics in contemporary societies. The failure of secularization theory has challenged the principal approaches to religion, in particular those that consider religion?s influence in contemporary politics. Because the frameworks that reduced religion to taking place outside of politics in the context of western modernity were contested, analytical and normative approaches that accommodate complex political forms of religion became a priority. Sexuality is an ideal area in which to understand (present) religious political articulations, in particular those of the Catholic Church. Without giving up traditional forms of power, the institution of religion circulates strategies, actors and discourses that demonstrate the limits of secularization theory as a theoretical and ideological framework for understanding contemporary sexual politics.