Abstract
The privileged place that the Catholic Church has held in Latin America since colonial times continues to permeate the region’s countries today. This chapter examines the complex problem of the political presence of the Catholic Church in Latin American democracies. It locates this presence in the formation of nation states in the nineteenth century and in the many processes of democratization in the twentieth century. The author then engages with modes of disestablishment in Latin American countries, and the intimate link between the constitutional rights of freedom of religion and the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. The chapter concludes by framing the church’s presence in the Latin American public square as a problem of the institutional power of the church, linked to contentious histories rather than to universal formulations of the right of freedom of religion.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Famously, Simón Bolivar wanted his 1826 Constitution for Bolivia to allow other religions but met opposition, and it only included the tenet that no other religion will be allowed to worship publicly (i.e., private worship was allowed). It did however include the rare phrase that “there is no human power over conscience.” Article 6 says: “La Religión Católica, Apostólica, Romana, es de la República, con exclusión de todo otro culto público. El Gobierno la protegerá y hará respetar, reconociendo el principio de que no hay poder humano sobre las conciencias.” No other constitution included the phrase “there is no human power over conscience.”
- 3.
John Paul II was the first modern pope to develop a theological position on women (known as the theology of the body, arguing that traditional gender roles express God’s will). See also John Paul II Mulieris Dignititatem (1986). Benedict XVI further as the leader of the former Inquisition, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led not only the crackdown on leftist liberation theology, but also awareness of homosexual desire as “a tendency to evil.” See Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe (1986).
- 4.
- 5.
Article 12 of the Constitution of Cádiz read: “La religión de la Nación española es y será perpetuamente la católica, apostólica, romana, única verdadera. La Nación la protege por leyes sabias y justas, y prohíbe el ejercicio de cualquiera otra.”
- 6.
For an authoritative account see Blancarte (1992).
- 7.
The constitutional reform modified articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130. Read in conjunction with the 1992 Law of Religious Associations [Ley de Asociaciones Religiosas y Culto Público de México], it establishes a regime of state neutrality on religious issues and enshrines in law the tolerance that existed in practice since the 1929 Cristero Rebellion.
- 8.
See Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei of 1885.
- 9.
This term is widely used by conservative legal authors who also attempt to re-name both anticlericalism and laicidad under the derogative neologism laicismo while reserving laicidad for friendly cooperation or positive laicidad. See Prieto (2009) for a typical example from an Opus Dei university.
- 10.
The most important document of Vatican II in this respect is on religious freedom: Dignitates Humanae (Second Vatican Council 1965).
- 11.
In another example, Holy Week is still a national holiday, but it is called the Week of Tourism; the Immaculate Conception was renamed Beach Day. For Lynch (2012, 198), this renaming “helps explain Catholic distrust of liberalism in Latin America.”
- 12.
Peru, Tribunal Constitucional, March 19, 2013 EXP. N° 03372-2011-PA/TC.
- 13.
A further example of internal division is the difference among bishops and priests in the importance they give to activism on sexuality and reproduction. Notable among these is the widely covered remark by Pope Francis that he did not have the authority to judge homosexuals. In 2014 the very conservative Peruvian Church did not join a march against same-sex civil unions, announcing they wanted to concentrate on opposition to the decriminalization of abortion (Atencio 2014).
- 14.
- 15.
See John Paul II Mulieris Dignititatem 1986; Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe 1986.
- 16.
See, for example, this interview with Peruvian bishop Luis Bambarén in La República (2014a).
- 17.
There is abundant legal literature on religion in US constitutionalism. For an authoritative review, see Witte and Nichols 2011.
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Lemaitre, J. (2017). The Problem of the Plaza: Religious Freedom, Disestablishment and the Catholic Church in Latin America’s Public Square. In: Vaggione, J., Morán Faúndes, J. (eds) Laicidad and Religious Diversity in Latin America. Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44745-2_2
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