Entre a exteriorização e a internalização da fé: os redentoristas e a reforma católica no Brasil (1890-1920)

Abstract

The work presented here is a study on the missionary activity of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in Brazil from the 1890s through the 1920s, in the context of the Romanization of Brazilian Catholicism. The intent is to understand how the religiosity practiced in this country was understood and appropriated by the Redemptorists, who served a particular project of the Church. It is argued that, instead of proposing the silencing and/or complete annulment of heterodox and externalized religious practices of living the faith, and its consequent replacement by a Catholicism with a strong emphasis on the sacraments and on Catholic orthodoxy, the Redemptorists created rhetorical devices that allowed them to dialogue both with orthodox Catholicism and with externalized practices of manifestation of the faith. The religious missions are understood here as extremely plural movements, in which diverse proposals of religious experience were inter-connected and cross-contaminated, resulting in a hybrid religious practice that combined elements of popular religiosity with those of Catholic orthodoxy. The Redemptorists are seen as practitioners and proponents of a version of ultramontanism that should be interpreted in a more pluralistic way, a process that leaves room for the survival of popular religious practices in Catholic orthodoxy. People have experiences and expectations, and look for ways to put them into practice. As much as the Church and the Redemptorists desired, with their discourse, a purely sacramental Catholicism, the practice left room for various appropriations of orthodoxy, for it was lived also by the people who carried it out, imprinting great part of their aspirations on it. The thesis demonstrated here is that Redemptorist activity in Brazil involved expectations of both the Church and the Congregation, both with the same degree of importance and relevance. While the missionaries supposedly served the Romanizing project of Brazilian Catholicism, they interpreted the Brazilian Mission as a means to carry out activities that were not possible for them on the European continent due to state policies that limited missionary activity in their regions of origin. Brazil was, for them, the chance to live a religiosity that could not be fully lived in the Old World.