Secularization after all. Varieties in Argentine Catholicism

Relevant scholarly literature on secularization highlights three dimensions that allows an operational definition of this process: the separation between a political and a religious system, the pluralization of the public sphere and the growing autonomy of the believer's conscience. Those dimentions are observed in the secularization process of Latin America Catholicism

In the case of Argentine Catholicism, the breaking moment was the conflict between social modernization and religious secularization in the Sixties and Seventies. While Modern Social Catholicism made ​​their arrival to the country (after Second Vatican Council), Argentine political actors could not articulate a Republican project to neutralize political violence. State terrorism solve the political conflict dessappearing people. Massive killing not only broke with former social and political system, it aslo affected religion.

As a result, Catholicism changed, leading to several modes of being Catholic. However, secularizatin transformed all religious variants, from the most reactionary to the most progressive.