10. Latin American Catholicism and fundamentalism

2014 ◽  
pp. 431-439
2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (128) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Allan Figueroa Deck

Este ensaio estuda a relação entre a migração latino-americana em direção ao Norte e as mudanças que estão tendo lugar no catolicismo estadunidense. A parte principal do artigo concentra-se na profunda e histórica experiência religiosa que os latinos trazem à Igreja nos Estados Unidos, herança marcadamente diferente da anglo-americana. Ao pano de fundo colonial, entretanto, devem ser acrescentadas as profundas mudanças que aconteceram no catolicismo latino-americano no período posterior ao Concilio Vaticano II. Os latinos têm sido um canal para comunicar a visão dinâmica de Medellín e Aparecida à Igreja católica estadunidense mais focada na conservação que na missão. A seção final trata das contribuições específicas do catolicismo latino à vida da Igreja estadunidense contemporânea através dos métodos pastorais renovados, da opção pelos pobres e da teologia da libertação, assim como no âmbito da oração, do culto e da espiritualidade, a preocupação pela justiça social, a religiosidade popular e a pastoral juvenil – para mencionar apenas algumas poucas. A eleição do Papa Francisco, o primeiro papa latino-americano, destaca a influência emergente do catolicismo latino-americano na cena mundial e não apenas nos Estados Unidos.ABSTRACT: This essay explores the link between Latin American migration northward and changes taking place in U.S. Catholicism. A major part of the article focuses on the deep and historic religious background that Latinos bring to the Church in the United States, a heritage markedly different from that of Anglo America. To the colonial background, however, must be added the profound changes that have taken place in Latin American Catholicism in the period after the Second Vatican Council. Latinos have been a conduit for communicating the dynamic vision of Medellín and Aparecida to a U.S. Catholic Church focused more on maintenance than mission. A final section looks at specific contributions of Latino Catholicism to the U.S. Church’s contemporary life through renewed pastoral methods, the option for the poor, and Liberation Theology as well as in the area of prayer, worship and spirituality, concern for social justice, popular piety, and youth ministry—to name just a few. The election of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, highlights the emerging influence of Latin American Catholicism on the world stage and not only in the United States.


1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dodson

After decades of neglect, interest in the political significance of Latin American Catholicism increased sharply in the late 1960s when it began to appear that the Church might have unimagined potential for promoting social change, particularly in a continent plagued by social upheaval and political instability (Drekonja, 1971: 59-65). In both word and deed, the postconciliar Church manifested a changing social orientation which entailed open involvement in political issues on behalf of the poor. In fact, by August 1968 and the convening of the Council of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) in Medellín, Colombia, the Church seemed to be changing its social and political attitudes so profoundly that reports of a revolutionary Church began to accompany discussions of the political situation in Latin America. Since Medellín, an important literature has evolved from efforts to understand this change in Latin American Catholicism.


Author(s):  
Rachel Sarah O'Toole

This chapter argues that although colonial authorities and church officials in the Iberian Americas limited Afro-Latin American participation in Catholic religious practices, men and women of the African Diaspora shaped colonial Latin American Catholicism. The Iberian Crowns, as well as early modern colonial clerics, profited from the transatlantic slave trade and the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. As a major financial and political institution of the early modern world, the Catholic Church participated in and developed the idea that black people could be sold and purchased because of their racial identity. Furthermore, early modern clerics, as well as the Spanish Crown, engaged in a Foucauldian governmentality of incorporation and control that included Afro-Latin Americans, enslaved and free, as Catholic subjects. Nevertheless, men and women of the African Diaspora in colonial Latin America employed Church structures to organize their communities. Africans and their descendants placed the worship of black saints at the center of colonial municipal celebrations and called on Iberian ecclesiastical courts to defend their families against the definitions of property by slaveholders. As a result, Afro-Latin Americans played a central role in the formation and development of Latin American Catholicism.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Levine

Lately we have become accustomed to look for change in Latin American Catholicism. Indeed, expectations of innovation and change have largely replaced the norms of continuity which once governed both scholarly and popular outlooks on the Catholic Church in the region. Constant change is now commonly anticipated in the ideas and structures of the churches, in their relation to social movements, and in the form and content of the churches' projections into society and politics as a whole.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document