A hegemonia católica como risco ao princípio da laicidade no ensino religioso brasileiro

Abstract

The object of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the efforts undertaken by the Catholic Church in the attempt to reaffirm the hegemony it had within the Brazilian society in the colonial and imperial periods and during the Brazilian republican periods, causing risks to the secular state principle in national public religious education. The resources of reading, review and systematization of a theoretical referential is based on authors from different areas of knowledge dealing with the subject researched were used to achieve this goal: Catholicism: Thomas Bruneau, José Carlos Souza Araújo, Riolando Azzi, José Oscar Beozzo, Oscar Lustosa, Laércio Dias de Moura, Rudolf von Sinner and Scott Mainwaring; Law: Joaquim Barbosa, Juliano Taveira Bernardes, Paulo Bonavides, José Joaquim Canotilho, Kildare Gonçalves Carvalho, Valerio de Oliveira Mazzuoli and Gilmar Ferreira Mendes; Secularism / Religious Pluralism: Roberto Blancarte, Roseli Fischmann, Emerson Giumbelli, Marco Huaco, Paula Montero, Ari Pedro Oro and César Alberto Ranquetat Júnior; Religion(s): Antônio Flávio Pierucci, Antonio Gouvea Mendonça, Ricardo Mariano, Gamaliel da Silva Carreiro, Paul Freston, Pierre Sanchis, David Gueiros Vieira and Wilhelm Wachholz; Church representatives: Pope Benedict XVI, Bishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, Dom Odilo Scherer, Walter Altmann, Pastor Josué Mello Salgado, Bishop João Carlos Lopes and Rev. Roberto Brasileiro Silva; Religious Education: Sérgio Junqueira, Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury, Michael Becker, Wolfgang Gruen, Ângela Maria Ribeiro Holanda and Remí Klein; History / Education: Thomas Skidmore, Dermerval Saviani, Luiz Fernando Sangenis, and Vicente Salvador, among many others. Beyond these sources are included the Pastoral Letters from the Brazilian Episcopate of 1890, 1900 and 1922 and the Agreement signed between Brazil and Holy See in 2008. For this, initially, an evaluation was made on the historical-legal and documental context of religious education in the Brazilian public schools, both to identify the characterization of this education along the colonial, imperial and republican periods in relation to the secular state, and to find out the intention of the leadership of the Catholic Church during the first republican period to the use education as a focus on the construction of a project for expansion. In the sequence of this study, an investigative approach was made on the construction of Brazilian religious pluralism in order to observe the action of the various religions on their arrival, establishment and conquest of their place in the public sphere against an unequal process with which this religious pluralism throughout history was formed and to evaluate the challenges of religious education in a multi-religious country like Brazil. Finally, an analysis was made on the constitutionality of the Agreement established between Brazil and the Holy See in 2008. Its formal and material aspects were taken into consideration, as well as the analyzing and evaluating, respectively, of the risks of the Agreement to the secular state principle in Brazilian public religious education. In addition, the Catholic and the non-Catholic postures, as well as the posture of the Permanent National Forum of Religious Teaching (FONAPER) and the consequences and problems that may occur due to this normative act were considered. At the end of the research, it was concluded that there are indications that the Catholic Church of Brazil undertook efforts in an attempt to reaffirm the hegemony that they had in Brazil during the colonial and imperial periods, even causing risks to the secular state principle in the national public religious education area. An example of this is the use of its prerogative of State and its close relationship with the Brazilian government to insert international agreements into the national legal system for its exclusive benefit, such as the 1989 and 2008 agreements and decrees 19,941/1931 and 50,307/1961.