Vision Between The Peruvian State And The Catholic Church

Vision between the Peruvian State and the Catholic Church

 INTRODUCTION

Peru is a mainly Catholic country, since until 2017 citizens over 12 are Catholics, compared to 14.1% that are evangelical, the 4.8% that another creed presents (which includes Adventists, witnesses ofJehovah, Mormons, Israelites, Buddhists, Muslims, among others) and 5.1% said they have no religion. It is worth mentioning that the perceptions and speeches of the Catholic population about the Church-State relationship do not necessarily tend to coincide with the official positions of the Church because it is not a space of uniform perceptions and practices and much less is treatedof a society that is faithful to the provisions of the clergy, since only 10% of all Catholics are. However, these discrepancies in the way of acting or perceiving that they exist among those who are part of the Catholic community is not a reason for division or distortion as faith and religiosity concerns. Due to the above, it is necessary to know the information on the relationship of the Catholic Church and State and the influence that this ecclesiastical institution may have in the life of the believers of the aforementioned religion. This present article will try to present in a precise and clear way the last exposed point, since we can affirm that being the mostly Catholic Peruvian population would be very helpful to analyze the results exposed in order to understand, at least in a panoramic way, theSituation in Peru, it should be said that this article does not imply a disdain for the opinions, attitudes and perceptions of believers or not of other religions.

The Catholic Church in Peru

The Catholic Church has had a leading role in the history of Peru from the sixteenth century to the present day. To maintain its validity and roots, this institution had to go through a renewal that involved entering dialogue with the modern world. Thus, in its "modernizing" path, and from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Church sat its new bases in the theology of liberation and in the various secular movements, to complement the work done by the hierarchy.

One of the biggest problems faced by legal, social and philosophical sciences is to understand the relationship between religion and politics within societies: if necessary, unnecessary, relevant, of more, see the way in which the way thepolitical system is influenced or not by religious instruments. In the first instance it is to understand that religion is a social phenomenon, where religious experience occurs through what one knows and qualifies sacred or not. In this way:

The religious structure can only be framed in the individual through discursive practices (language), and seeks to give it internal coherence through the alterity game that is based on the others. Therefore, an adequate understanding of the religious phenomenon demands a study of experience (the relationship that each individual makes with tradition), since only from it we can understand the dynamics of structures in a full and enriching sense.  

 The Catholic Church in the Republic

Exposed already in previous lines we know that the Church is an institution that is since the 16th century, so, we know that we live in a Catholic country, but that most Peruvians do not know this institution. This is how Peruvians since childhood learn from their parents prayers and devotions that taught us throughout the history of Peru.

In our country, between 1945 and 1980, great changes occur at the religious and ecclesial level. In whose terms of the "legitimacy of power", we see long periods of history in which the Catholic Church shared colonial political power, in a relationship of subordination to this regulated by the regional patronage (regime that guarantees the protection of the ChurchAnd he gives him the religious monopoly in a territory, in exchange for giving certain powers to the State as the appointment of bishops and priests), then he achieved an autonomous base of power, his own religious legitimacy, which allowed him to take distance from the State, still underThe Patronato regime.

The loss of autonomy of the Church in the Tridentine era is seen by Martin as a way of secularization, having lost the Church the source of its autonomous religious charism. This has governed in Peru since the conquest with an interruption of approximately fifty years (between 1821-24 and 1875-80) until 1979 when it changes to an agreement or concordat between the Holy See and the Peruvian State. According to him, the merger of politics and religion, the crown and the Church, of religious discipline and social control, becomes a rigid union that would tend to polarize society since every time political systems are questioned, political systems are also the religious.

But in Peru in the second half of the century, when the oligarchic domain enters into crisis, the same does not happen with the Church. This is because there is a fundamental transformation in the basis of legitimacy of ecclesial power. This acquires a religious dimension that results from a radical change in the social location of a large part of ecclesiastical staff, in a renewal of social relationship in religious terms by changes in the definition of religious objectives themselves, of the reorganization of the institutionin terms of common members and administrative cadres (laity and clergy), and ability to produce a theology that gives a new presence to the Church in civil society and in the state.

In the 1960s and 1970s the Church extended its evangelizing activity to rural, mining, industrial, urban-popular, Andean and Amazonian areas. That is why ten years ago we have been celebrating silver weddings from the presence of new foreign religious congregations in Peru, which came to settle in Puno, Pucallpa, Cajamarca, Huacho, Sicuani, Ayaviri, Iquitos, Cuzco, La Oroya, Tarma,Chiclayo, Trujillo, Chimbote, etc. And in the young villages of Lima, where the invading separated a lot for the police station and pale the church in what could someday be the Plaza de Armas. That is, the Catholic Church threw new roots in Peruvian land, and established new social relations with the Peruvian people whom he found poor, but believer, that is, with hopes and mood of struggle and following the guidelines of the Council reorganized the parishes creating instances instancesof coordination between them in the so -called Dean and Vicaries. With this, internal relationships changed, ‘democratizing them’ without proposing it, when opening participation channels to believers. Other alternatives were opened to pure religious consumerism or clientelism, to the pure duty and obedience in the membership relationship to participate and assume responsibilities. The Church has a very decentralized organization, in which each bishop is the highest authority in its territory;That is why the important change was to seek instances of coordination and centralization, what they achieved with the formation of a secretariat of the Episcopal Conference in the seventies. There are the group that arrived in the 16th century or a little later, such as the Dominicans, Mercedarians, Augustinians, the Jesuits. But the new ones form another important group, such as the Marianists and the United States Maryknoll, who arrived this century, or the Columbans of Ireland and the United Kingdom, the Oblates of Immaculate Mana, the foreign missionary parents, and the San Viator of Canada. And the congregations of religious women who arrived in parallel or founded congregations in Peru.

Thus, in the second half of the century, in Peru the Church, civil society and the State were found as new interlocutors that established new social relations, reinforcing or working their mutual dynamisms that developed autonomous sources of energy and power.

Relationship between State and the Catholic Church

Frequently we find studies on the Church and the State separately, but not a relationship between State and the Church, this relationship is due to the fact that they are separate institutions that seek power, obviously the interests are different. Since obtained this power can control various spheres of Peruvian society.

But what is the perception of the church-state relationship for Peruvians? Regarding the relationship between the Peruvian State and the Catholic Church, I have analyzed a study that throws percentages on restlessness, so 66.7% of the sample of the Catholic population that was analyzed, said that the Church should not intervene in state affairs, while 33.3% were in favor of church intervention in policy matters. Although this last percentage is significant, it is pointed out that, for the majority, it is necessary to establish a separation of powers. This data is not surprising if it is taken into account that many of the people who have been surveyed have assumed many religious values as fundamental elements of social coexistence. 

However, they clearly consider that ecclesiastical discourses cannot be dominant in political exercise, without a doubt, a strategy to safeguard a certain degree of freedom and autonomy.