Contribution to a Socio-History of the Relations Between “Nation” and “Religion”: The Case of Catholicism

Abstract

The Nation has been key to the modernization process in the social and the political spheres. Especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Nation paradoxically became itself an object of sacralization, creating a new type of enchantment. This led to the homogenization of its social diversity, which in turn produced a sense of “sameness.” Today, the reality of pluralism makes the fiction of “sameness” untenable at the global level (it has not, however, quelled all forms of resistance against this global process). In this, we see a reaffirmation of a sense of “sameness” and, at the same time, of some absolute beliefs. To explore these issues, this chapter will focus on the paradoxical relations between the Catholic Church and the Nation and how these have led to complex contemporary dispositions in the organization of the religious.