Latin American Catholicism Research Articles

An organizational sustainability framework for Latin American Catholic schools in the La Salle network. A cross-national study using structural equations modeling

PurposeThis study aims to address the challenge of sustainability in Catholic schools quantitatively, even more so knowing that there are few systematized and quantitatively elaborated approaches that help to determine their sustainability dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the structural relationships of organizational sustainability in primary and secondary religious schools in Latin America based on the substantive functions of the school, such as care, upbringing and education from an organizational approach.Design/methodology/approachDeductive reasoning was used. In the preliminary phase, data were extracted from 420 educational leaders of primary and secondary schools in Latin America from the Lasallian Network, leading a school population of 200,500 students and impacting 166 schools; these previous results were again contrasted with the forthcoming literature with research from the Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain, to achieve the sustainability framework, which has an endogenous variable called the school organizational sustainability framework.FindingsThe results reveal four dimensions of the first-order structural model: management, association, communication, well-being and curriculum, And eight second-order dimensions: governance, communication, resources, secular association, secular partnership, health, social commitment, and campus operation. The investigation results show that secular association and well-being are two dimensions that are constituted as the main elements of a sustainability framework for this type of organization.Research limitations/implicationsThe Catholic school has specific dimensions that need to be cared for with special attention, such as association, which comes from the laity and comes from the experience of the religious. In addition to this vital dimension, well-being, constituted as care for the people of the community, as care for all, is connatural to the religious school. Still, it is constituted by an edge that completes it, and that is the concern for the well-being of those outside regarding social justice. A limitation in the pretension of totality is that the study is conducted in a small portion of Catholic schools in Latin America.Practical implicationsA practical impact in the schools investigated is to present this sustainability framework as a reference to incorporate these dimensions as a strategy to bet on sustainability. Although the realities and contexts of the Latin American school are very different, some factors can impact low-income schools and schools with more significant financial resources if they are strengthened and worked on with dedication. In addition, this framework can lead to roads and the construction of indicators within the school, which can measure the sustainable commitment of the whole school. Finally, a clear finding of the framework is the need for good governance processes related to leadership and leaders' commitment to school-wide sustainability.Social implicationsThe present study impacts the depth that the proposal of the global educational pact can reach in the reality of Catholic schools in Latin America. The seriousness with which its leaders take the issue of sustainability from this perspective can contribute to the sustainability of life itself.Originality/valueThe originality of this research is that it constitutes the first Sustainability framework in Latin America in Catholic schools from an organizational approach.

Unexplained Revolutions: The Origins and Ends of Latin American Catholic Upheaval

John T. McGreevy's chronicle of modern Roman Catholic history is a vivid and sometimes jarring reminder of the historical depth of contemporary divisions within the Church, especially as these enter the public sphere. Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis elucidates the church's ambivalent response to the challenge of modernity over the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specifically the rise of democratic nation states, anti-colonialist movements from the global south, the struggles of poor and working people for liberation, and feminist and human rights movements. The spread of totalitarianism and the supposed triumph of capitalism represented a different set of challenges for the church in this period.

Editorial — Transformations of Latin American Catholicism Since the Mid-20th Century

Editorial — Transformations of Latin American Catholicism Since the Mid-20th Century

Paths for building something better than ‘normal’ in the Latin American Catholic schools

The COVID-19 global post-pandemic and what it symbolises for current generations question us in what we should do to reverse its harmful effects in different parts of the world. This essay aims to assess the actions pursued and necessary to be pursued, by the Catholic Church in the promotion of the educational community during the times of the post-pandemic. The Catholic educational institution will not be the same after the pandemic, nor will it be the one that best serves in the future. There are essential and urgent changes that we must make if we want a better world for all. The Catholic school in Latin America is committed to changing the reality that this pandemic and the economic crisis have left us. The Catholic school cannot set aside the context in which it is located, becoming an exclusively academic space, unrelated to social environment. We are called, out of love and evangelical commission, to transform reality innovatively and creatively. We cannot simpy return to the ‘old normal’, we have to construct the ‘new normal’

On the Touch-Event

This article addresses the ‘touch-event’ as a mediated affective encounter that pivots around a tension between intimacy and distance, seduction and sovereignty, investment and withdrawal. Through a rereading of the Pauline event of conversion to Christianity, it argues that an analysis of the evolving significance of touch-events for Catholic liturgy and a religious congregation shows the theopolitical as always already constituted within an economy of enfleshed virtues. Focusing on contemporary examples of touch-events from the life of Francis, the first pope from the Americas, as well as from fieldwork among a group of female Latin American Catholic migrants in Rome, I argue for a closer examination of touch-events in order to grasp some of their theopolitical, radical, emancipatory, and, in some contexts, subjugating effects.

Misión en cuestión: antropología y evangelización en la Prelatura de Ayaviri (1968-1975)

Una nueva aproximación hacia la religiosidad popular —y su valoración— marcó significativamente la actuación de la Iglesia católica latinoamericana en las décadas posconciliares y dio lugar a un creciente número de investigaciones antropológicas de las subculturas religiosas. No obstante, las reformas de las prácticas evangelizadoras en línea con dichos estudios despertaron poco interés académico. Este artículo analiza la compleja relación entre antropología y misión en la Prelatura de Ayaviri (Puno), que a partir de la Conferencia Episcopal de Medellín (1968) se apoyó en la investigación científico-social para reformular su práctica pastoral. Específicamente, este artículo aclara cómo el renovado compromiso de la prelatura con el «otro», el campesino quechua, no solo contribuyó a la producción de conocimientos sobre el panorama sociorreligioso regional, sino también causó dificultades a una Iglesia cuya naturaleza misionera fue objeto de escrutinio y cambio a principios de los años setenta.

Clarice’s Secret. On The Foreign Legion (A legião estrangeira, 1964) by Clarice Lispector

The 13 stories of the collection The Foreign Legion (A legião estrangeira, 1964), the first appearance of Clarice Lispector in Bulgarian, are a piece of hypnotic writing that is difficult to compare with any other writer’s language of that time. On the one hand, this prose has a memory of the European modernism with the experimental spirit of the Left Bank of the Seine, with elements of literary cubism and delicate traces of Judaic mysticism… On the other hand, the European refinement and suffistication are literally shaken by the local culture with its smell of jungle and its colorfully hysterical Latin American Catholicism.

Still Opting for the Poor: The Brazilian Catholic Church and the National Movement of the Street Population

AbstractHave rumors of the demise of liberation theology been greatly exaggerated? There is a prevailing belief among scholars and other observers that the Latin American Catholic Church has withdrawn from the preferential option for the poor, which had encouraged a combination of faith and activism for social justice. This article challenges that belief by means of qualitative data gathered during 8 months in Brazil that provide evidence of close connections between the Pastoral of the Street, a church program that mobilizes homeless people, and the National Movement of the Street Population (MNPR). The principal data came from 42 interviews with homeless or formerly homeless people, movement leaders, and religious sisters and lay workers in the pastoral program. Participant observation and documentary research supplemented the interviews. The findings demonstrate that the Pastoral of the Street helped to create the MNPR and continues to provide it with material and ideological support.

The Creation of a Latin American Catholic Church: Vatican Authority and Political Imagination, 1854–1899

The principal aim of this article is to analyse the rise of a Latin American Catholic identity during the mid- to late nineteenth century. It examines the institutionalisation of this collective project via the foundation of the Latin American College in Rome in 1858 and the initiatives that led to the Latin American Plenary Council in 1899. This article also explores how this collective religious identity was imagined and how its limits were drawn. In doing so a new insight into how religions contributed to the imagining and defining of geographical spaces is offered.

1968 – Year of Shame, Year of Grace

AbstractThey year 1968 was the year of the student protests; the year when the Vietnam War and the Chinese cultural revolution were at their height; the year of the Prague spring and Christian–Marxist dialogue before these movements were suppressed by the Soviet invasion; the year in which Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; the year in which Latin American Catholic bishops met in Medellín and broke new theological ground; the year in which the South African Council of Churches issued an anti‐apartheid message to the people of South Africa. Looking back at this patchwork of events 50 years later, so much has changed since then, but so much that was augured in 1968 still remains to be changed.

Authentic subjectivity and social transformation

Holiness in the Christian tradition has often been understood in a way that devalues embodiment and practical engagement with the world of one’s time. The latter understanding, for example, led to Marx’s critique and repudiation of Christianity. Both interpretations of holiness can be understood as mistaken efforts to express the dynamism for authenticity in contextualised human subjectivity. Vatican 2 opposed both views by addressing itself to all people of good will, declaring that everyone was called to holiness, and that authentic Christian identity involved solidarity with the world of one’s time, especially those who are poor. Vatican 2, therefore, provided an authoritative faith foundation for holiness expressed through social commitment and for viewing social commitment on the part of people of good will in whatever state of life as a form of holiness. This vision was also the conviction of leading spirituality writers of the period, like Thomas Merton, and inspired liberation theologians and the Latin American Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellín a few years after the Council. The argument of this article is that the emergence and development of a non-dualist Christian spirituality is grounded methodologically in the correct appropriation of the common innate dynamism for authenticity in concrete human persons and lived spiritual experiences consistent with and capable of enhancing this dynamism.

The Argentine and Latin American Background of Pope Francis

On the night of his election Pope Francis said that the cardinals had chosen someone from the “end of the world,” the southern end of the Americas, as if to draw attention to a different experience he might bring to the papacy. To understand Pope Francis then, it is helpful to consider the circumstances of the land and the church in which he spent his first seventy-six years. These observations are intended to supply some of that background, organized around four topic areas: Argentina itself, the Jesuits in Argentina, Francis’s twenty years as bishop and archbishop in Buenos Aires, and his pastoral vision. They draw on several of the available biographies, and more generally the experience of the Latin American Catholic Church since Vatican II.

Cook, Comparative Religions, and ISIS' Caliphate

Abstract Cook's Ancient Religions, Modern Politics is his most focused work yet covering basic themes in Islam, Hinduism, and Latin American Catholicism. The research is extremely thorough and provocative, leading Cook to the conclusion that fundamentalism is a natural fit for Islam, while not applicable to Hinduism, or useful as a description of Catholicism.

Cook, Comparative Religions, and ISIS' Caliphate

Abstract Cook's Ancient Religions, Modern Politics is his most focused work yet covering basic themes in Islam, Hinduism, and Latin American Catholicism. The research is extremely thorough and provocative, leading Cook to the conclusion that fundamentalism is a natural fit for Islam, while not applicable to Hinduism, or useful as a description of Catholicism.

Problematic Communication and Theories of Language in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The genetic endowment that most readily distinguishes human species is faculty of language, and in many ways use of is at centre of human experience, facilitating interpersonal relations, mediating thought, and communicating thoughts and emotions. Yet despite centrality of to essence of human experience, its nature is somewhat opaque and - judging by Plato's Cratylus, biblical Tower of Babel, and much 20th century philosophy - a source of enduring fascination. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez explores a number of theoretical aspects of language, and in so doing, develops a surprising tension between interpersonal function of as a communicative tool, and its cognitive function as a mediating tool of thought. Although thought is ever present, Garcia Marquez recognizes that there is something miraculous yet delicate in successful communication, and that problems of communication are far more common than we assume. Three recurring types of interaction problem are illustrated throughout novel: inability to communicate, lack of will to communicate, and miscommunication. These serve various purposes in novel, but all contribute to a fundamental theme of personal isolation.The most well-known of ancient tales of problematic communication is Tower of Babel myth, in which construction of great tower is abandoned when divides human in order to thwart builders' efforts. As such, it is not only a tale of problematic communication and interpersonal division, but also an early attempt to explain phenomena, in this case diversity. Allusions to Babel in One Hundred Years of Solitude are part of broader context of biblical references, but they also develop specific themes related to and relation between miscommunication and solitude. An assumption at heart of Babel myth is that there was an original from which all others are descended. Such a view has persisted through time, and various arguments, generally reflecting some ethnic or sectarian bias, have been put forward in identifying this presumably innate language. For instance, in attempting to prove his hypothesis, King James IV of Scotland (1473-1513) replicated earlier experiments of having a pair children raised together in isolation. The reported result was unequivocal: children did develop fluent Hebrew (Fromkin, Blair, & Collins, 1999, p. 49). Others which were claimed to be this original are Phrygian, German, Aramaic, and Chinese (p. 49).In Garcia Marquez' s writing, it is Latin that is presented, tongue in cheek, as original, innate language. In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Father Gonzaga greets title character, an angel, in Latin, but immediately suspects some type of hoax when angel fails to respond, evidently not understanding the of God (219). In fact, angel speaks in an dialect with a strong sailor's voice (218). The inference, quite in keeping with much Latin American Catholicism, is that poor and disenfranchised are closer to heaven than those at top of political and socio-economic hierarchy. The humour in this passage arises from combination of Father Gonzaga's conviction, and our immediate sense that although his argument is valid, he fails to recognize fundamentally unsound premise (Latin spoken in heaven) on which it is constructed. Garcia Marquez' s target here is both dogma and snobbery surrounding Latin, and acceptability of flawed logic in theological debates.In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez returns to this idea. As Jose Arcadio Buendia descends into madness, convinced that world was stuck on Monday, he is reduced to an animal state, tied to a tree in courtyard, frothing at mouth and shouting like a man possessed in some high-sounding and fluent but completely incomprehensible language (81). …

Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887 – 1934

This book is a rich regional history of Mexican Catholicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Partly as a response to the recent call by historian José Andrés-Gallego to revisit the history of Mexican Catholicism both “as a complex organization and as a way of life,” Edward Wright-Rios brings together the religious perspectives of ecclesiastical authorities, parish priests, and laypeople around the promotion of local devotions (p. 6). He argues that, in the wake of the anticlerical “reform laws” of the 1850s and 1860s, clergymen and parishioners in the Archdiocese of Oaxaca sought to spur a revival of Catholicism through “their common interest in founding, fueling and managing devotions” (p. 4). Religious revitalization in Oaxaca took place at the institutional and popular level. In this view, the Oaxacan Church witnessed two “revolutions,” one administered by Catholic pastors and the other one sustained by women and indigenous peoples.Wright-Rios opens with an examination of the reform program undertaken by Oaxaca’s Archbishop Eulogio Gillow (1887 – 1922). In line with Vatican dictates to bring about a modernization of Catholicism, the Oaxacan prelate assumed the task of transforming popular religiosity and sparking a Catholic renewal among Oaxaca’s population. In addition to destroying the secular power of the Mexican Church, the liberal anticlerical laws of the middle of the nineteenth century altered the foundations of local devotion. As the century drew to a close, male-dominated religious brotherhoods, whose activities largely resided outside the realm of archdiocesan mandates, emerged as the locus of communal religion among indigenous peoples. Gillow encouraged the formation of “canonically structured organizations” to bring these local associations under the control of the clergy, establish devotions managed by the church, and implant a sacrament-driven form of Catholicism. Women, who had played a secondary role within religious brotherhoods, flocked to the church-sanctioned lay associations, thus gaining a crucial voice in the public sphere and becoming key agents in the archbishop’s reform plan.The impact of Gillow’s project was limited at best, particularly in the countryside. The “spirit of association” that accompanied church-sponsored lay organizations found few converts among the indigenous population. Indigenous religious brotherhoods generally retained their autonomy. But neither the prelate nor the clergy under his command were willing to directly confront them. They recognized that a renewed Oaxacan church ultimately depended on preexisting religious structures for the maintenance of popular piety. Churchmen adopted a policy of compromise, “turning a blind eye to heterodox practice, or otherwise accommodating it” (p. 202). Conflict and negotiation stood at the center of Oaxacan popular religiosity.As Wright-Rios indicates, Oaxacan parishioners remained Catholics “in their own way.” The author documents the gulf between Gillow’s modernizing agenda and popular religious sensibilities by examining two apparition movements: the Lord of the Wounds and the Virgin of Ixpantepec. Through their devotion to the Lord of the Wounds, women and indigenous groups sought to reshape rural Catholicism in such a way that it escaped the patriarchal order and control of ecclesiastical authorities. Despite its “heterodox” character, most parish priests tolerated this devotion and its main promoter, Bartola Bolaños. In an illuminating chapter, Wright-Rios investigates the apparition of the Virgin of Ixpantepec in the late 1920s. Women such as Matilde Narváez, major advocate of the Virgin of Ixpantepec, interpreted this Marian apparition as a sign of an impending divine punishment for the modern error of secularism. Although Gillow’s successor, José Núñez, refused to officially recognize this devotion, Narváez and her supporters perceived themselves as central characters in the church’s revitalization campaign.Wright-Rios raises important issues about the history of Mexican Catholicism in the aftermath of the anticlerical reform. Specialists and nonspecialists will find enlightening Wright-Rios’s argument that the history of Latin American Catholicism cannot be understood without situating it in the age of modernity. This work also redirects our attention away from male-directed religious sodalities such as cofradías and mayordomías and brings to the fore the integral role that devout women played in the Catholic renewal of the turn of the twentieth century. In addition, after reading Wright-Rios’s book one wonders to what extent religious change in Oaxaca led to social or political change, especially during the years of the Mexican Revolution. Did apparition movements result in any forms of political mobilization in the face of the revolution’s anticlericalism? Wright-Rios notes that the documentation that might allow us to positively answer this question for the case of Oaxaca “is always sketchy” (p. 279). Nonetheless, this line of inquiry merits consideration if we are to understand Catholicism as part and parcel of this tumultuous modern age.The above comment, however, does not diminish the significance of this well-researched work. Wright-Rios’s ability to weave together church documents, popular accounts, and oral histories, as well as to engage contradictory sources, leaves us with a refreshing institutional and cultural portrayal of Mexican Catholicism.

Religión popular católica latinoamericana: dialéctica de interpretaciones (1960-1980)

Based on the contributions from researchers on different disciplines (sociologists, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and theologians), the author identifies three lines of interpretation: modernization line, fair social change line, and cultural line. He follows the guidelines from the methodical proposal of the Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan in order to formulate a critical, wide, and deep dialogue with the diverse interpretations and theories regarding the popular Latin American Catholic religion in the period from 1960 to 1980.

“Many Zitas”: The Young Catholic Worker and Household Workers in Cold War Chile

This article reconstructs the origins and effects of radical Catholic activism on the expansion of household workers' associations in Chile during the Cold War. Joining the efforts of local priests affiliated with the Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC) in the 1950s, a generation of live-in household workers in Santiago and other urban centers nurtured a sizable movement for empleadas domésticas that was unique in the Americas—the JOC de Empleadas—which joined housing and vocational services with a lay Catholic movement to advance empleadas' labor rights. Impacted by both the radicalization of their religious leadership and the revolutionary politics of the period, the Catholic household workers' movement of the 1960s turned increasingly to union organizing and legislative reform to advance its agenda, pressing for greater recognition and regulation of domestic service as a matter of labor rights. Through its focus on the Catholic Church as a transnational and hegemonic actor in the mobilization of household workers, and on the changing discourse of domestic service as “labor,” this article challenges the persistent stereotype of Latin American Catholicism in relation to workers' movements prior to Vatican II.

40 años de RCC

El marco histórico de referencia de la Renovación Carismática Católica (RCC) se constituye al final de la década de los 60, siendo los Estados Unidos el epítome de irradiación del Movimiento que, en menos de una década, acabaría por diseminarse alrededor del mundo. El entusiasmo de los sacerdotes jesuitas motivó que trajeran a Brasil la nueva experiencia religiosa, derramando, inmediatamente sobre la geografía eclesial, millares de grupos de oración. A esas pequeñas células fervorosas se agregan complejas estructuras organizadas, emergen nuevas expresiones de vivencia comunitaria y consagración religiosa, se consolidan iniciativas relacionadas a los Medios de Comunicación Social. La rápida ascensión de la RCC latinoamericana se da durante los tiempos de avance pentecostal protestante y bajo la mirada complaciente de algunos sectores episcopales. En ese intuito de consolidación cultural e institucional, este texto se propone retomar los mecanismos societarios que la RCC desarrolló para insertarse dentro de la sociedad y la Iglesia de Brasil; analizar los enfoques teóricos de la que ha sido objeto y, finalmente, hacer un balance del impacto que el Movimiento ha tenido de las últimas transformaciones en el campo religioso.

Latin American Catholicism in an Age of Religious and Political Pluralism: A Framework for Analysis

This article identifies and proposes a framework to explain the responses of Latin America’s Roman Catholic churches to a new strategic dilemma posed by religious and political pluralism. Because the church’s goals of defending institutional interests, evangelizing, promoting public morality, and grounding public policy in Catholic social teaching cut across existing political cleavages, Church leaders must make strategic choices about which to emphasize in their messages to the faithful, investment of pastoral resources, and alliances. I develop a typology of Episcopal responses based on the cases of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, and explain strategic choices by the church’s capacity to mobilize civil society, its degree of religious hegemony, and the ideological orientations of Catholics. The analysis draws from 620 Episcopal documents issued since 2000.