Catholic Social Movements face Modernity

LIDA, MIRANDA

Routledge History of Latin American Culture

Routledge

Lugar: New York; Año: 2017; p. 281 - 302

Since the French Revolution, and particularly during and after the Industrial Revolution, it became a commonplace notion to associate the Catholic Church with counterrevolution and traditionalism, through its contacts with reactionary aristocracies. Furthermore, in Latin America, the Church was strongly attached to colonial traditions and social structures, and thus proved in general quite reluctant to accept the changes brought about by independence from France (Haiti, 1804), Spain (1810-1824) and Portugal (1822) as well as the liberal trends originating in Europe. The 19th century progressive thinkers, particularly those inclined to liberalism and socialism, had good reasons to mistrust the Catholic Church, and occasionally there was open confrontation with Catholic preachers and authors as if they were irreconcilable enemies. Catholic authors and their teachings tended to remain confined to Church circles and somewhat discredited. The Church was often accused of being a stronghold of the Ancient Régime, monarchical and reactionary, as well as an obstinate bulwark against modernization. Moreover, it remained decidedly opposed to the efforts to extend full political rights to the "populace", thus hindering democratization process and, in particular, rejecting the demands of the nascent working classes for social justice and laws designed to improve the prevailing labor conditions.Throughout Latin America, the nations that attained political independence during the 19th century, national independences soon defied the political and economic privileges generally enjoyed by the Catholic Church as an inheritance from colonial times. In different degrees, new nation-states, most of them young republics, proceeded to change the old rules across the board: some countries established a separation between Religion and the State and proceeded to take over the extensive landed properties owned by religious orders and bishoprics; other nations chose to secularize education and even marriage, creating civil service offices, abolishing the customary legal and juridical privileges and benefits of clergy, and so on. Those changes transformed the traditional catholic identity of Latin American people; nevertheless, they haven´t eroded it substantially, as we shall see.All along the 19th century, Catholicism experienced deep changes in Latin America. The achievement of independence from the European metropolis pushed the Church authorities in the new Latin American nation to seek new horizons by establishing direct relations with the Holy See and no longer through the channels of their respective metropolitan Church hierarchies and crowns. Moreover, with the arrival in the Americas of new missionaries from Europe, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, a period of intensive trans-Atlantic mass migrations, a significant renewal of the rank and file of the Church was observed. Considerably less powerful in political and economic terms than in colonial times, the Catholic Churches in Latin America adopted a thoroughly renovated agenda, quite adapted to their new nations and independent societies striving to follow the path of modernization. Thus, a widespread flourishing of Catholic journals could be observed as a means of influencing public opinion, as well as encouraging new social movements most appropriate to deal with changing societies challenged by social and political democratization. Even in strongly stratified societies, such as those in the Pacific Andean nations, the Catholic elites had to face the social question, not without significant unease.The present article, then, focuses on the growth, progress and consequent transformations experienced by social Catholic movements and identities since the appearance of the Rerum Novarum encyclical until the second half of the 20th century, marked by the Second Vatican Council and its impact on all aspects of Latin American Catholicism. Since the 19th century, the pressures of secularization had not brought about a complete regression of the Catholic faith; on the contrary, they provided an opportunity for its reshaping and resignification in order to assimilate and offer some measure of satisfaction to the increasing requirements of modernization, despite the heavy weight of traditional opposition.