User:JS1833/Catholic Church in Argentina

The Church in the Sixties ￼
The 1960s served as a decade of significant change for the Catholic Church in Argentina. The severed relationship caused by the Peron dictatorship coincided with major political shifts in Latin America. Following the Second Vatican Council' s conclusion in 1965, the Catholic Church experienced a renewal of morals, with a greater focus on interaction in the social sphere. Increased interaction between the church and the poor living in slums/rural areas of Latin America created stronger connections between classes and political movements. Following the overthrow of Peron in 1955, many sectors of Argentinian society struggled to create and construct new projects. A widespread ban on the Peronist Party removed a majority of the population out of the political system. The ban created a power struggle amongst labor unionist groups, as well as economic and political groups. The struggle for power between groups was halted by a lack of long term legitimacy, resulting in political groups unable to enforce their ideas on others. Support for the Church and its civil power increased as a result. In the military government of the post-Peron era, young people were led towards political involvement through working with the church. The radicalization of the Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council paved the way for increasing revolutionary thought, with the pressure of injustice and an incapable infrastructure being presented to the young people of society. In direct response to the council, the Movement of Priests for the Third World was created. With a focus on supporting work force conflicts, the priests outwardly supported socialist revolutionary beliefs from 1967-1976. Within this era of revolutionary growth, there became different ways of interpreting the future of the Catholic Church in response to the concern's of state terrorism. Scholar Gustavo Morello has argued that the church fractured into 3 categories, each based on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state. National Catholics held the belief that the church and the state were to be closely aligned, and that "only a Catholic State could guarantee a Catholic society." Official Catholics understood the importance of the relationship between the state and the Church, however keeping most powers separate. Popular Catholics, which used their links of the past with the state in order to protect human lives in the present. Finally, a fourth form of Catholicism, one in which threats towards human lives were to be seen as a call for Catholics to stand in harm's way.

The Rise of Leftist Violence
The radicalization of both the Catholic Church and of Argentina's politics resulted in violence by religiously motivated leftist groups. The growing violence and revolutionary thought in the public sphere was linked to the fracturing occurring within the church. Ideas of implementing concepts discussed at the Second Vatican Council faced backlash from those committed to the conservative, national-Catholicism of the pre-Peron Argentina. The clashing that occurred through political and theological changes led to the rise of a Christian militant group, the Montoneros. Beginning with the abduction of former president Pedro Aramburu on May 29, 1970, the Montoneros incited political violence, combined with the pressure coming form labor strikes and protests resulted in a loss of trust in the left. Becoming suspicious of democracy and the role of revolutionary thought in society, the military convinced themselves that total destruction of the revolutionary left was necessary to stop political violence. Though created with Argentine people of various backgrounds, the Montoneros shared post-council Catholicism as their theological background. In the hope of destroying communism in Argentina, the state rolled out an anti-communist movement, hunting down those who were associated with the Marxist and Montoneros movement. Over the course of the Dirty War, tens of thousands of Argentinians were abducted or went missing through these operations incorporated by the state, raising further concerns over the issue of human rights in the country. The rise in state-sanctioned violence had a direct impact on the growth of human rights activism, especially in organizations created by the public. During its peak, the human rights activists in Argentina caught the attention of the United States, who's attention to activism surrounding foreign nations was significantly heightened by the Cold Wa r and concerns of communism. The result came in 1977, in the form of the senate's military aid authorization bill, which cut off all US military and commercial sales to Argentina. With a lack of foreign support, the military junta accepted a visit from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) in 1978. The Catholic Church was very split on stance within the Dirty War, as non anticommunist were seen as enemies by the state. While over 12,000 people were killed through state sanctioned violence over the course of the war, 120 Catholic leaders were killed as well. The role of the church as human rights activists was received by the state as Marxist/Communists, especially because the poor were perceived as most likely to organize. Whilst political beliefs varied, the Liberation Theology movement in Argentina built itself out of long term injustices that had been ignored by the church. In the face of scrutiny or death, the religious commitment of the Catholics was the same commitment to the cause as the poor.