For God and Fatherland

Religion and Politics in Argentina

By Michael A. Burdick

Subjects: Social And Cultural History
Series: SUNY series in Religion, Culture, and Society
Paperback : 9780791427446, 283 pages, January 1996
Hardcover : 9780791427439, 283 pages, January 1996

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

One. The Crisis Between Church And State

Two. Perón, Religion, And The Catholic Church

Three. In The Aftermath Of The Revolution: Towards the Catholic Restoration of Society

Four. The Movement Of Priests For The Third World Part I: The Formation of a Movement

Five. The Movement Of Priests For The Third World Part II: Alliances, Divisions and Dissolution

Six. The Church And The Search For Democracy

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

This analysis of the crises in church-state relations in Argentina over the last 100 years shows that the constitutionally-established Catholic Church was progressively disenfranchised by various governments and responded by struggling to maintain the institution’s historic rights and privileges and to speak as the moral conscience of Argentina

Description

This study of Argentine Catholicism offers an important perspective to the country's turbulent political history. Church-state relations show a number of crisis points whereby the constitutionally-established Catholic Church underwent progressive disenfranchisement by various governments. In response, church elites struggled to maintain the institution's historic rights and privileges and to speak as the moral conscience of the nation.

Three critical periods in church-state relations are examined: the anticlerical period of the 1880s; the rise of Perónism in the 1940s; and the series of events beginning with the upsurge of the revolutionary left in the 1960s. These events shaped the Argentine Church, while at the same time Catholicism, often imbued with a fervent nationalism, provided many groups competing for power the myths, symbols, and language necessary to articulate a vision for a new Argentina

Michael A. Burdick is Research Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

"Burdick provides (at long last) a basic study of the twentieth-century Argentine Catholic Church. It will become the standard study not simply because there is little competition, but primarily because Burdick's study covers the necessary material so competently and carefully, and places it in the larger contexts of Argentine history and twentieth-century Catholicism. While this book could remain primarily descriptive/historical, Burdick goes beyond description to discuss theoretical/analytical issues relevant to the Argentine case and to religion and politics in Latin America more generally. He stresses the distinctiveness of the Argentine Church as well as its parallels to Catholicism elsewhere in Latin America. " — Anna L. Peterson, University of Florida