Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America

1 Introduction The New Landscape

1 1 Introduction The New Landscape frances hagopian As the Roman Catholic Church enters its third millennium, its claims to universalism are both broader and shallower than at any time in recent history. On the one hand, the church has extended its reach from a European center into parts of the developing world where it was once represented by only a handful of dedicated missionaries, with its most dynamic growth in adherents in Africa and Asia. On the other hand, in the heart of the Catholic world the commitment of nominal Catholics to their church has weakened. The process of secularization in western Europe has now advanced to such an extent that it is not hyperbolic to ask if these countries are still “Catholic” in a sense that actually matters. Today Latin America stands at a crossroads between the decaying core of Roman Catholicism and its vibrant pockets of growth and hope, between a Catholic past and an uncertain future framed by religious and political pluralism. For nearly five hundred years the church enjoyed a near monopoly on religious belief and practice: more than nine out of every ten Latin Americans called themselves Catholic, in many countries presidents and generals had to be Catholic, and children received religious education in private or state schools. Although half of the world’s Catholics still live in Latin America, and Latin America has not yet fallen to the tide of secularization that has swept across western and even southern Europe, today’s 2 | Frances Hagopian church faces intensifying religious competition and pluralism within these once hegemonic Catholic societies. This pluralism threatens the identity of Latin America as a Catholic region. Across Latin America the days of formal and informal concordats between church and state are over, divorce is legal, and social life is no longer effectively demarcated by religious denomi­ nation. Self-identified Protestants now comprise roughly one-fifth of the population of the region, about one in ten Latin Americans identify with no religion at all, and only about 70 percent of the population is nominally Roman Catholic. Practicing Catholics—those who regularly attend Mass, observe Holy Week, and participate in religious movements and church groups—are now a clear minority. Much of civil society—in which the church invested heavily—is now mobilized in organizations that lie beyond the boundaries of ecclesiastical authority. Religious pluralism of a sort that Latin America has never really known, moreover, has grown alongside a democratic pluralism that places limits on state authority—and hence the church’s capacity to dictate Catholic norms—over individuals’ personal and private lives. This changing landscape poses unprecedented challenges for the Roman Catholic Church. State-granted privileges are harder to maintain if and as secularization advances and harder to justify when a religious monopoly erodes. A series of direct and indirect state subsidies are endangered , ranging from the salaries of priests to subsidized Catholic education, from tax exemption on church assets to direct public support for Catholic charities and social services, as well as the right to certify marriage and teach Catholic education in the public schools. These benefits were not icing on the cake; they extended the institutional reach of the church and, in turn, helped to keep the faithful in the fold and the church to acquire the degree of influence that allowed it to speak out effectively on those public issues that most deeply concerned it: stopping modern totalitarian projects and moral decay, alleviating poverty, and defending human rights and­ justice.1 If religious pluralism jeopardizes church privileges, secular democracies threaten a moral public sphere (Neuhaus 1984). Center-left and leftist politicians responsive to new demands for social and family policy reform and reproductive rights that run counter to the church’s teachings have come to power in municipalities, provinces, and even several national gov- Introduction | 3 ernments in the region. In Chile a Socialist president signed a divorce bill into law after a protracted and bitter debate, and in Argentina a center-left Peronist president confronted the church over sex education, the distri­ bution of condoms, and other moral issues. In Uruguay only the action of the Senate prevented the legalization of abortion; the state legislature of Mexico City, which is dominated by members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), legalized abortion during the first trimester of a pregnancy . As the old battle lines of the secular versus the religious, liberal rights versus moral...