Cultural Opportunities and Tactical Choice in the Argentine and Chilean Reproductive Rights Movements

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Borland

Reproductive rights movements throughout Latin America contend with the strong influence of the Catholic Church. In Argentina and Chile, two predominately Catholic countries where abortion is illegal yet common, reproductive rights activists see the church as their focal opponent. Analyzing data on the reproductive rights movement in each case, I argue that cultural opportunity is important for understanding the ways that activists address religion and the church in strategizing collective action frames. In Argentina, weak social support of the church foments more confrontational activism, despite the institutional power that the church still wields. In Chile, strong links between church and society obstruct reproductive rights challengers, leading to more cautious critiques of the church. Considering political and cultural opportunities is necessary when studying movements that make claims on both state and society, especially movements that challenge powerful cultural actors like the Catholic Church

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Jacek Wojda

Seventieth of XIX century were very hard time for Catholic Church in Polish Kingdom. Mainreason was aim for independency in Poles’ hearts. Deeply connected with polish nation, Churchsuffered because of Tsar’ political repression. Although different stages of its history are not closelyconnected with post uprising’s repressions.Report of French General Consulate in Warsaw bearing a date 1869 stress accent on samekind of the Catholic Church persecutions, which were undertaken against bishops and dioceseadministrators, and some of them were died during deportation on Siberia, north or south Russia.Hierarchy was put in a difficult position. They had to choose or to subordinate so called Rome CatholicSpiritual Council in Petersburg or stay by the Apostolic See side. Bishop Konstanty Łubieński isacknowledged as the first Victim of that repressions.Outlook upon history of persecutions, which is presented, shows not only Church but pointsout harmful consequences Russia’s politics in the Church and society of the Polish Kingdom. Citedarchival source lets us know way of looking and analysing history during 1861−1869 by Frenchdiplomats.


Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 13-15
Author(s):  
Renato Poblete

The Third General Assembly of the Latin American Episcopate took place last February in the Mexican city of Puebla. Without doubt it will make a profound impact upon the evangelizing action of the Church in Latin America. The documents produced at Puebla, like those produced in Medellin ten years earlier, will give rise to reflections that will find their way into the diverse pastoral plans of each nation.Neither Medellin nor Puebla can be considered isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, each should be seen as fruits of a maturing process in which Christian people, together with their pastors, express both the depths of their anguish and their high hopes and visions. That vision encompasses raising people from subhuman situations to a fuller experience of human life. Such experience should be expected to bring people together in brotherly love and lead naturally to a greater openness to God.


Author(s):  
John F. Schwaller

The Catholic Church was one of the most important institutions of colonial Latin America; yet, it is poorly understood by many scholars. This chapter outlines the important features of the Catholic Church both from the point of view of institutional structure and the impact of these on the society at large. While generally considered a monolithic institution, the Church consisted of many disparate and often competing units. The clergy itself was divided between those who were members of religious orders and communities and those who were directly under the administrative control of bishops and archbishops. The Church also touched the life of nearly every resident of the colonies, from baptism until death. The Church also had an important impact on the finances of the colonies. In short, this study looks at the broad scope of the actions and activities of the Catholic Church in colonial Latin America.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madelyn Evans

Since the earliest days of colonization, religion – in particular, the Roman Catholic Church – has been a driving force in the Latin American politics, economics, and society. As the region underwent frequent political instability and high levels of violence, the Church remained a steady, powerful force in society. This paper will explore the relationship between the Catholic Church and the struggle to defend human rights during the particularly oppressive era of bureaucratic-authoritarianism in Latin America throughout the 1960s–1980s. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the Church undertook the struggle to protect human rights because its modernized social mission sought to support the oppressed suffering from the political, economic, and social status quo. In challenging the legitimacy of the ruling national security ideology and illuminating the moral dimensions of violence, the Catholic Church became a crucial constructive agent in spurring social change, mitigating the effects of violence, and setting a democratic framework for the future.


1964 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-318
Author(s):  
Fredrick B. Pike

Throughout Latin America the Catholic Church has embarked upon a process of modernization. The key element in modernization has been the assumption of an active role in the quest for economic betterment of the conditions in which a majority of the population lives. Realizing that a modern nation is an integrated nation, the Church seems to have adopted as its motto: A Modem Church in a Modern Nation. Consequently, it has begun to help Latin American republics become nations through the integration of previously excluded groups into society.


Author(s):  
Amy Edmonds

The Catholic Church in Latin America has played far-reaching and diverse roles in the political sphere. In the 1970s and 1980s, Catholic leaders used the Church’s prestige and its considerable resources to defend human rights and promote democratic transitions in several countries; in the modern democratic context the Church has facilitated action on social justice issues such as land reform, inequality, and the rights of the indigenous. Yet it has also defended authoritarian regimes and thwarted laws lessening restrictions on abortion and gay rights. This chapter surveys divergent Catholic responses to the challenges of authoritarianism and modernization and synthesizes the explanations for these distinctive political paths into three categories of causal variables: ideology, organizational interests, and institutional arrangements. Interests and ideology strongly influence political agendas, but their content and meaning depend on the specific institutional relations among the Church, state, and society.


1971 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-295
Author(s):  
Philip Raine

The church in Brazil suffers many but by no means all of the ills usually ascribed to Catholicism in Spanish American countries. Concern over these problems has grown throughout the Catholic world, as well it might. One-third of the world's Roman Catholics live in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere. According to many churchmen a state of spiritual bankruptcy confronts the church in most of these countries. Basically it is a matter of the irrelevance of a system still rooted in hierarchic and paternalistic spiritual guardianship among people in transitional societies whose goals are modern, affluent egalitarianism. In simpler terms, more and more people in Latin America learn about widespread wealth among others, and fewer and fewer believe that their own disadvantages are preordained and can be changed for the better only in the next world—as the church has long taught.


1989 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryjane Osa

Christian social doctrine... is a doctrine of the most important non-religious sociological structures which are erected upon independent foundation, or, to use its own language, of its relation with the most powerful social forces of the `world.' If we admit that the State and Society, together with innumerable other forces, are still the main formative powers of civilization, then the ultimate problem may be stated thus: How can the Church harmonize with these main forces in such a way that together they will form a unity of civilization? Ernst Troeltsch (1911)


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 365-380
Author(s):  
Carlos Thiebaut

Some cases of countries and cultures in which traditional Catholicism has played a major role in defining public culture are undergoing accelerated secularization processes; the result should be relevant for the diagnoses underlying contemporary post-secular proposals. It is argued, first, that in these countries (Spain has been taken as a main example), where the Catholic Church lost its institutional power, it is also losing its ethical hegemony. While public and political debates still retain the sense of symbolically laden, communal ethical accord, they are no longer understood with religious overtones. It is suggested, second, that laïcité — a non-aggressive stance concerning religion — could adequately describe this predicament, though it retains a trait of self-defence vis-à-vis the Church that is normally attached to the term ‘laicism’. It is proposed, third, that secularization takes place at the ethical level, in which no sense of loss can be attached to the secular citizen. It is at this level, where the conflicts around meanings and values, which can be framed in religious or secularized terms, set the agenda for legal and political discussions, and where the equal standing of religious and secular interpretations should be assessed.


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