The Catholic Church's legal strategies: The re-naturalization of law and the religious embedding of citizenship

JUAN MARCO VAGGIONE

Simposio; Sex Politics: Mapping Key Trends and Tensions in the early 21st Century; 2016

The main purpose of this article is to critically look into some consequences of these processes of juridification of sexuality so as to better understand the articulation between religion and law in contemporary democracies. The first block focuses on the main challenges posed by feminist and sexual diversity movements for religious doctrines, especially Catholicism. It examines the interconnected facets of the sexualization of law, which made abrupt, sharp confrontations with the Catholic Church and examines how these processes have made visible the many ways in which religion is imprinted in secular law. Not less importantly, it traces how these movements have legitimized an alternative paradigm for the articulation between the law and sexuality. Then the article analyses the reactive politics of the Catholic Church in response to the political impacts generated by the processes propelled by feminist and sexual diversity movements. It explores how, far from abandoning the realm of secular law as a contested arena, the Church is strengthening its centrality and significance as a space to resist the juridification of sexuality enhanced by sexual and reproductive rights politics. In this shift the law is seen by the Catholic Church not only as a dimension of politics but also as key instrument to moralize societies. Furthermore, it has re-articulated its engagement with the law in two complementary directions. Firstly, by re-naturalizing the law that emerges from the application of human rights premises and then by mobilizing and strengthening what it calls religious citizenship.