Religion, Pluralism, and Reconciling Difference by W. Cole Durham Jr. Donlu D. Thayer & D. Thayer Donlu

Author:W. Cole Durham, Jr.,Donlu D. Thayer & D. Thayer, Donlu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Part III

Perspectives

8 Religious pluralism

The Argentine experience

Norberto Padilla

Religious pluralism in a national context

When considering religious pluralism in the context of any particular country, we may start by examining the diversity of creeds and the way they coexist with each other and in the greater society. We can consider the degree of freedom each creed or belief system has for sharing ideas and cultural space, and for developing as a coherent community within the larger society. We can look at the existence of legal protections and provisions for individual and group manifestation of religious belief and practice, as well as at societal attitudes and traditions that foster harmony among a diversity of religious believers.

It is useful to consider these notions in the context of such a country as Argentina, where the historical predominance of a single religion, Roman Catholicism, has not meant a society lacking in religious harmony.

Argentina had its beginning as a nation, like most countries of South America, in colonization by Catholic Spain during the sixteenth century. Although national census data does not track religious affiliation, and estimates from other sources vary, a credible 2015 estimate is that even now, after centuries of immigration, approximately 71% of Argentina’s 44.3 million people are Roman Catholic.1

It is true that Argentine history records harsh times of political intolerance and divisions, fragile democratic institutions, and bloodshed in internal conflicts. However, state, creeds, and society have learned, in fidelity to their constitutional foundations, to live and grow in religious pluralism.

Professor Brett Scharffs has noted that Catholic-majority countries in South America, as well as Italy, Portugal, and Spain (the South American ‘mother countries’), and in fact almost all of the world’s nations where Catholic majorities exceed 70 percent of the population, show consistently low levels of both government restrictions on religion and social hostilities concerning religion. Scharffs has suggested that this phenomenon may be explained in part by the ‘dramatic recalibration’ of the attitude toward religious freedom in the Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council, as reflected in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae: On the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in December 1965.2

For Argentina in particular, it is proposed in this chapter that the nation’s own religious, social, and political history have created a society capable of great solidarity in matters of religious and social harmony.

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