The Catholic Church, “Politics,” and Violence: The Colombian Case

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Abstract
The issue of politics and the Catholic Church in Latin America, relegated until recently to nineteenth-century historians, is very much alive today. On the one hand, the church as an institution is enmeshed in public controversy over human rights with repressive regimes from Paraguay to Panama, from Brazil to Chile. When it serves as a shelter for political and social dissent, it is accused by secular authorities of engaging in a “new clericalism.” On the other hand, it has been assailed by critics within for being wed to existing political powers. These radical clergy and lay people believe that the church's social presence is inevitably political, but want to change its alliances to benefit the poor and dispossessed. Furthermore, they believe that the existing order in given situations is aform of “institutionalized violence” against which the Christian response must be “counterviolence.” Such attacks from right and left occur, paradoxically, just at a time when the Latin American church has turned with unprecedented resolve to fundamental pastoral tasks. Politics has thus become a problem just as the hierarchy can claim, with considerable justification, to have eschewedthe practice of partisanship and the pursuit of power.

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