2024-03-28T16:10:47Zhttp://digital.csic.es/dspace-oai/requestoai:digital.csic.es:10261/895942022-02-03T08:39:17Zcom_10261_10com_10261_7col_10261_263
00925njm 22002777a 4500
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Colom González, Francisco
author
2013-12-15
This paper explores the origins of the religious/secular cleavage in Spanish modern politics. Such cleavage emerged within a broader historical process, namely the response of the Catholic Church to political secularization. ‘Political Catholicism’ appeared in this context as a reaction against modernity and as an attempt to create a new social and political environment for the Catholic worldview. Here, this term does not merely refer to the involvement of Catholics in political activities, but to the political strategies that have consistently and steadily claimed a Catholic inspiration for their a ims and values. The paper concludes that the historical status of the Catholic Church in Spain reflects the changing cleavages of Spanish society and the corresponding weight of organized religion in it. Although Catholicism is still a prevailing cultural force in the
country, it has lost much of its former clout as a political lever. Nonetheless, the organizational expertise of the Catholic Church and its mobilization vis a vis the state, combined with the inertia of its historical hegemony, have compensated for this loss of influence. This is a doubled-faced process though, since it also reveals the deep-rooted dependency of the Church on public resources and state cooperation.
Recode Working Paper Series 20: 1-14 (2013)
2242-3559
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/89594
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000782
Political Catholicism
Secularism
Political Catholicism and the Secular State: a Spanish Predicament