The Politics of Religion and the Rise of Social Catholicism in Peru (1884-1935): Faith, Workers and Race before Liberation Theology by Ricardo Daniel Cubas Ramacciotti (review)

Ricardo Daniel Cubas Ramacciotti's well-researched study insists that the story of Catholicism in Peru cannot be understood without tracing the complex evolution of church-state relations in this ethnically diverse country. It also argues that the formation of its national identity is tied to this story.

Engagement with social issues that liberationists place at the center of faith became a pivotal concern of the Peruvian church as it struggled for autonomy at the close of the nineteenth century. This struggle was enjoined with Spanish regalism (royal supremacy over the Church), during colonization, through late-eighteenth century Enlightenment reform, and up to the declaration of Peruvian independence in 1821. Succeeding republican governments exercised power over the Church through the mechanism of the patronato, offering the church establishment status and financial support while restricting appointment of bishops to state-approved candidates and controlling papal communications with them.

Ramacciotti recounts policy moves that entrapped church and state alike in contradictions. In short, the Church's attempt to assert its independence ran up against its reliance on government financial aid while the government needed church legitimation in an overwhelmingly Catholic nation. In fact, a concordat with the Vatican definitively severed the Church from the Peruvian state only in 1980.

A focal theme in this context is Peruvian church resistance to secularization entailed in liberal politics, modernizing economics, and the sway of positivism among the nation's elite. Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and other papal social teaching, along with writings by European Catholics such as León Bloy and Jacques Maritain, emboldened Peru's Catholic intellectuals to counter the influence of modernist thought as well as socialism and radical politics. A succession of Catholic organizations—from the lay-led Unión Católica in 1886 through Acción Católica in 1935—further raised the Church's profile in the public sphere. Episcopal letters following inauguration of the National Assembly of Bishops in 1899 effectively ratified the "rise of social Catholicism" in Peru. Notably, apologetic defense of the "rights of the Church" figured prominently in this development, while advancement of Catholic social thought depended on widely distributed local Catholic newspapers.

Ramacciotti emphasizes ecclesial condemnation of slavery in mining and rubber production and defense of industrial labor rights. Animated by papal teaching and European examples, the Church sought to imbue Peru's emergent working class with Catholic values through "Circle(s) of Catholic Workers" (CCW), which sponsored night schools, mutual aid societies, and other welfare groups. Bishops and Catholic intellectuals, especially Víctor Andrés Belaunde, criticized capitalism but remained resolutely apolitical, favoring "true reformism," equidistant from "timid conservatism" and Marxism (p. 178). Thus, the Church forestalled anticlericalism but also retarded unionization and postponed formation of a Christian democratic party in Peru until 1955.

As elsewhere in Latin America, the Church represented the nation in the absence of the state in Peru, particularly among marginalized Quechua and Aymara peoples in the remote Andes and Amazon. What Ramacciotti calls "ecclesiastical indigenismo" affirmed the human dignity of indigenous Peruvians against overt racism, theoretical (Spencer, Peruvian Darwinists) and practical (enslavement, expropriation). Activist bishops promoted clerical reform and seminary classes in native languages to enhance indigenous mission while insisting on integration of native people in the "living synthesis of western and native values" advocated by Balaunde as Peruanidad (Peruvian-ness) (p. 219). Still, with most Peruvians the Church assumed the need for indigenous "regeneration" (p. 209), their tutelage in "farm schools" (p. 233), and (ironically) the government's paternalistic Patronato de la Raza Indígena (pp. 231–36).

Despite numerous repetitions, an often-confusing labyrinth of detail, and arguably flawed organization, this specialized monograph establishes the Church...