Fé, saber e poder : os intelectuais entre a restauração católica e a política no Recife (1930 - 1937)

Abstract

The years between 1930 and 1937 were marked by religious-political movements in several regions of Brazil. After the Constitution of 1891, the Catholic Church lost part of her political power, so the clergy started a movement to regain its prestige among Brazilian’s institutions. In 1916, when he assumed the archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, Dom Sebastião Leme began a religious movement that became known as the Catholic Restoration, which called on intellectuals and religious leaders to engage in a political reordering of Brazil His Pastoral letter was a platform for Church reaction, which had as its main objective to regain her political power and to form a new Christendom fortifying the objectives of ecclesiastical leaders. From analyzing the religious discourse of these intellectuals and religious leaders, we perceived that this project reflected the policies of Rome which countered the proposals that distanced the church from politics in many countries. In the beginning of the decade of 1930, the clergy put aside their defensive position and took more incisive actions. In Recife, part of the reforming and religious discourse came from conservative members of the Law Faculty which exploited the relationship between knowledge and power to legitimize their activities for public consumption. The students publicized their ideas through the press and contributed to the political sacralization in Pernambuco’s capital. Besides the journals, places like Lafayette’s coffee house, Imperador street and Nova street and some bookstores, were important to spread the ideas that permeated the movement of the Catholic Restoration among the cultured population of Recife.