Whatever happened to what used to be the largest catholic country in the world?

Daedalus

Volumn 129, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 271-290

  Birman, Patrícia ^a   Leite, Márcia Pereira ^a  

^a STATE UNIVERSITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO   (Brazil)

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EID: 0039190474     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. As Ronald Vainfas observed, there is an "insoluble contradiction within the program for Catholic reform in Brazil: the colonization process provided the Church with the opportunity to expand abroad, at the same time in which, operating on the basis of slavery and cultural miscegenation, it negated the Christianization of the masses so successful in Europe." Ronaldo Vainfas, Trópico dos pecados: Moral, sexualidade e Inquisição no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus, 1989), 36. According to the same Brazilian historian, Jesuit reports on colonization did not spare "criticism of the first colonizers who as soon as they disembarked tried to cohabit with the female Indians of the land, and not satisfied with this already monstrous sin, many of them joined with several women at one time, ready to imitate the style of the chiefs and the principals of the heathen." Their complaints were also directed to "the secular clergy who . . . accused of similar sins and of collusion with the cohabitation of the lay people . . . said it was 'lawful to sin with the Negro women as they were slaves.'"
2. Ronaldo Vainfas, Trópico dos pecados: Moral, sexualidade e Inquisição no Brasil 1989), Ibid., 28-29.
3. The Brazilian historian Laura de Mello e Souza, for example, analyzes the Portuguese Catholic legacy, emphasizing how extensively it was related to the practices of magic and witchcraft, which were in fact intensely combated by the Inquisition. See Laura de Mello e Souza, O Diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz: Feitiçaria e religiosidade popular no Brasil colonial (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1986).
4. Which is not to say that Catholicism has not undergone reform. See, for example, the "Romanization" process of popular Catholicism once the republic was proclaimed, studied by Pedro de Oliveira, Religião e dominaçavo de classe: gênese, estrutura e função do catolicismo romanizado no Brasil (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1985);
5. and Ralph della Cava, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970).
6. Gilberto Freyre, known worldwide for The Masters and Slaves (Casa Grande e senzala) (Rio de Janeiro: Maia and Schmidt, 1933), suggested an interpretation of Brazilian society grounded in the slavery system and the manner in which Portuguese domination was established in Brazil. The power of the sugar-plantation owner and the slave master was based on a strong social, cultural, and religious miscegenation. The commerce between the casa grande of the great rural masters and senzala was intense, affectionate, and established a "syncretic" cultural order in which there was a mutual influence between slaves and masters, without the former evidently losing control over the latter. Thus, a model of domination was established on the basis of close relations such as sexual exchanges, day-to-day life, and religious practices. The Catholicism resulting from this was unconcerned by the pagan universe and committed to the practices prevalent in the popular classes. The plantations were a production unit for the manufacture of sugar, the major product exported by Brazil at the time, and formed the basis of economic and social power of the large landowners of colonial Brazil until the empire.
7. A recent analysis made by the anthropologist John Burdick in Blessed Anastacia: Women, Race and Popular Christianity in Brazil (New York and London: Routledge, 1998) explores the racial and religious meanings of certain myths surrounding a popular black saint and former slave, called "Slave Anastacia." It attempts to show how much these contemporary myths can differ from the model of racial relations based on affection and familial connections between masters and slaves, as defended by Freyre (The Masters and Slaves). For the debate on national identity and ethnicity,
8. also see Peter Fry, "Feijoada e soul-food: notas sobre a manipulação de símbolos étnicos e nacionais," in Fry, Para inglês ver: identidade e política na cultura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1983).
9. For a discussion of the impact of Pentecostalism on national identity and culture, see Pierre Sanchis, "O repto pentecostal à cultura brasileira," in Paul Freston et al., Nem anjos nem demônias: interpretações sociológicas do pentecostalismo (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1994).
10. We have summarized here the arguments developed by Carlos Alberto Steil, "A Igreja dos Pobres: da secularização à mística," Religião e Sociedade 19 (2) (1999), with regard to the role played by the Catholic Church during this period.
11. According to Carlos Steil, as of the 1950s and the advent of the theology of liberation, the Catholic Church based its work on the basis of the belief that social utopia was one and the same thing as Christian salvation. Carlos Alberto Steil, ," Religião e Sociedade Ibid., 63.
12. In the 1960s the social policy of the church in Latin America and in Brazil had as its guidelines the document of the Second Vatican Council, followed by the encyclical Populorum Progressio (1966),
13. directed toward Latin America, and finally the orientation emanating from Medellin, Colombia, at the Second Conference of Latin American Bishops, held in 1968.
14. In 1979, in Puebla, the Latin American Church "reaffirm[ed] the basic principles of a church committed to the oppressed." Ilse Scherer-Warren, "Redescobrindo a nossa dignidade: uma avaliação da utopia da libertação na América Latina," Religião e Sociedade 15 (2-3) (1990): 168.
15. Several priests were imprisoned and persecuted throughout the 1970s. See Charles Antoine Arquivo, "Igreja e Estado no Brasil, 1971-1974," Religião e Sociedade 6 (1980).
16. Cf. Pedro de Oliveira, "Ceb: unidade estruturante de Igreja," in Clodovis Boff et al., As comunidades de base em questão (São Paulo: Paulinas, 1997), 131.
17. See also Ivo Lesbaupin, "As comunidades de base e a transformação social," in Lesbaupin et al., As comunidades de base em questão (São Paulo: Paulinas, 1997).
18. Refer to Willen Assies, "Theory, Practice and 'External Actors' in the Making of New Urban Social Movements in Brazil," Bulletin of Latin American Research 18 (2) (1999), for an in-depth study of the significance of these movements and the autonomy they intended to have in contrast to traditional policy.
19. These NGOs are extremely varied in their objectives and in the roles they play, which range from actions of a political nature to campaigns, projects, and philanthropic activities. They introduced new themes into political and associative life, such as ecology, the rights of women, children, and adolescents, alternative religiosities, new ways of relating to the state, philanthropy, etc. For an analysis of this field, see Leilah Landim, "'Experiência militante': historias das assim chamadas ONGs," in Landim, org., Ações em sociedade. Militância, caridade, assistência etc. (Rio de Janeiro: NAU Editora, 1998).
20. "Supposing that the evangelicals were 15 percent of the population of the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, that 70 percent of them converted to the church, and that of these 28 percent converted in the past three years, one can estimate that between 1993 and 1994 roughly three hundred thousand became evangelicals in this region, or an average of one hundred thousand per year. The majority (65 percent) come from Catholicism, 16 percent from Umbanda or Candomblé, and 6 percent from Kardecist Spiritism. The Baptists are more successful in converting Catholics, while the Universal [Church of the Kingdom of God] is more successful in converting umbandistas." Rubem César Fernandes, "Os evangélicos em casa, na igreja e na política," Religião e Sociedade 17 (1-2) (1994): 6.
21. As of the mid-1980s, the drug traffic in the city of Rio de Janeiro changed radically, transforming itself into an economic enterprise of great scope with international connections and a circulation of arms, money, and drugs on a grand scale. For the most part, the drugs began to be distributed on a greater scale in the slums and in the periphery of the city, involving in a critical way the lives of all who lived in these areas and changing their relationship with the rest of the city. For an analysis of violence and drug trafficking in the peripheral areas of Rio de Janeiro, see Alba Zaluar, O condomínio do diabo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Revan, 1994).
22. From the identification of the drug traffic headquartered in the slums as the great evil that cursed the city, the slums progressively began to represent "pockets of marginality," where it was assumed that all favela dwellers were somehow involved with the drug traffickers because they grew up with and shared social and kinship networks with them. In addition, the traffickers developed other strategies of integration by setting up networks of reciprocity using godfather-type exchanges and offering services to the "community." These strategies do not exclude the use of violence to ward off any threat to their power. As a result, the dividing lines between contact, negotiation, and complicity are tenuous in the areas dominated by drug traffic. For this reason, the role of religious groups in favelas has grown largely in response to the demand for the positive moral identities that they provide.
23. As was stated in Patricia Birman and David Lehmann, "Religion and the Media in a Battle for Ideological Hegemony: The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and TV Globo in Brazil," Bulletin of Latin American Research 18 (2) (1999): 162, "The response of the enlightened intelligentsia, the political class, and the Catholic hierarchy has been to portray the rewards of faith advertised by the Universal Church as merely a matter of consumption, ignoring that the prosperity proclaimed by the Universal Church encompasses sex, status, money, marriage, the health of one's children, freedom from the scourges of drugs, violence, unemployment - in short a point-by-point inversion of the ills of Brazilian society. Negating the utopian dimension of its message, they accuse the Church of estelionato - of obtaining money by fraudulent means. Just as political dissent is often dismissed and cheapened by those who, fearing loss of property or status, brand it a criminal activity, so here is a religious discourse criminalized, or at least cheapened." For the history of the Universal Church,
24. see also Paul Freston, "Brother Votes for Brother: The New Politics of Pentecostalism in Brazil," in David Stoll and Virginia Garrard-Burnett, eds., Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
25. Cf. Clara C. J. Mafra, "Na posse da palavra: religião, conversão e liberdade pessoal em dois contextos nacionais," Tese de doutoramento em Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, mimeo, 1999.
26. According to the data from the survey "Lei, Justiça and Cidadania" conducted in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, it is reasonable to suppose that the black and pardo (brown) population has gradually been moving toward the Pentecostal churches. In 1996, 56 percent of the members of the Evangelical churches belonged to these categories, while 76 percent of the followers of candomblé and umbanda were black or pardo. José Murilo de Carvalho et al., Lei, justiça e cidadania. Cor, religião e acesso à informação e serviços públicos (Rio de Janeiro: CPDOC-FGV/ISER, 1998), 16.
27. On Pentecostal values and political participation, see Regina Novaes, Os escolhidos de Deus: pentecostais, trabalhadores e cidadania (Rio de Janeiro: ISER; São Paulo: Editora Marco Zero, 1985).
28. For a short history of Pentecostalism in Brazil, see Paul Freston, "Breve historia do pentecostalismo brasileiro," in Freston et al., Nem anjos nem demônios: interpretações sociológicas do pentecostalismo (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1994).
29. Cf. Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," in Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970). Several campaigns and actions endeavored to make a type of "civil religion" flourish by investing symbolically in religious, civic, and moral virtues and in the commitment of the citizens to the fate of the city.
30. We refer to the significant increase in the number of homicides of youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, of assaults and kidnapping, as well as the wars between the drug-traffic gangs, deaths by "stray bullets" as a result of them, and police confrontation with the traffickers. For the configuration of a "culture of fear" and the perceptions of evil in the city, see Márcia Pereira Leite, "Entre o individualismo e a solidariedade. Dilemas da política e da cidadania," XXII Encontro Anual da ANPOCS, GT Rituais e Violência na Política, Caxambu, mimeo, 1999;
31. Luiz Eduardo Soares et al., Violência e política no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumara/ISER, 1996).
32. This pastor constructed his religious trajectory as a representative of the camp of the "ethical Evangelicals" in opposition to the Universal Church and its greatest leader, Edir Macedo. Cf. Paul Freston, "As Igrejas Protestantes nas eleições gerais brasileiras," Religião e Sociedade 17 (1-2) (1996).
33. In the last gubernatorial election in Rio de Janeiro, the winning candidate and his running mate were both publicly known as evangelical Christians. To many electors, this gave them considerable moral credibility.
34. In October of 1999, the Catholic Church held the largest Catholic show in its recent history. It gathered a crowd of 170,000 in the Maracanã football stadium of Rio de Janeiro for a show called "In the name of the Father." A number of singing priests participated. The Cardinal of Rio de Janeiro attributed its success to the many years of collaboration with Charismatic Renewal. One of the priests attending emphasized the devotional aspect of the event: "Violence does not stop with the end of the arms. We must disarm our hearts. And only Christ can do this." Cf. O Globo, 2d ed., 13 October 1999.
35. See Patrícia Birman, "Médiation feminine et identités pentécotistes," Problèmes d'Amérique Latine 24 (1997).