RELIGIÃO E GÊNERO: ESTUDOS SOBRE A VIDA RELIGIOSA E AS LEITURAS RELIGIOSAS (1964 – 1995)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze gender relations in religious life in the twentieth century, starting from the premise that sisters and nuns cannot be ordained to the priesthood, according to the norms of the Catholic Church and, therefore, do not exercise the same functions in the institution. Starting from this bias we will develop this dissertation, tracing a panorama of the spread of Catholicism through the feminine congregations in century XIX, through analyzes of the religious mission in Buenos Aires, Chile and in Mariana (MG), to realize the religious and social contribution of the congregations, which were reached through the constructions of religious educational entities, which covered the wealthy classes and, in main, the less favored classes. We will also discuss the transformations in the Catholic Church in the twentieth century, these metamorphoses, which aimed to bring the Catholic Church closer to society. These changes were adjustments, discussed in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). In order to do so, we are based on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu for theoretical background in relation to the agents of the sacred, Maria José Rosado Nunes, who explains the Brazilian female religious context of the studied period, Joan Scott for discussion of gender, among other authors. This discussion will also be marked by concepts related to life memories, biographies, autobiographies, hagiographies considered as a ramification dedicated to the writing of religious biography and for this we will contextualize with hagiographic books, also called edifying readings, written by Afonso de Santa Cruz that will be 4 works in the second chapter: The Brazilian Teresinha, The Marias in blue, The guerrilla of God and The mystery of the closures. And to demonstrate the gender perspective in Catholicism, we will use Father Júlio Maria's Missionary Diary from the translator, Fr. Demerval Alves Botelho, in which it will be used to demonstrate the figure of the male in the Catholic Church. In addition, to make the analysis between the feminine and the masculine we will use the work Fr. Júlio Maria testimony of a new Church of the author Dom Antonio Afonso de Miranda and the work the other Madalena of the author father Afonso de Santa Cruz.