A construção do pensamento político conservador católico no século XIX

Abstract

The research consolidated in this thesis had as its central focus the process of construction and consolidation of conservative thought in the Catholic Church throughout the nineteenth century, erected as a form of reaction and defense of the Holy See against the real and imaginary confrontations experienced since the Protestant Reformation, but especially after the French Revolution, a turning point in history. The Church, which had accumulated tensions and questionings for almost three centuries, suffered the consequences of the revolutionary process in a dramatic way, generating fear and rancor in its bosom. The restoration of the papacy in Rome, after the fall of Napoleon, took place under the aegis of apprehension and anguish in the face of a rapidly changing world. Thus, all the enormous transformations of the 19th century appeared to the eyes of the papacy and part of the episcopate as a great plot by enemies of the Church, who sought to destroy her spiritual and secular power. Liberal institutions, science, the mastery of nature promised the attainment of human happiness through the use of reason and intelligence; on the contrary, Catholic thought presented a static world, in which man's ultimate purpose was spiritual, and in which human misfortunes and pains were intended to prepare beings for eternal life. Inspired by the reactionary ideology of the ultramontane lay authors, a conservative doctrine for the Catholic Church was built in the Holy See, consolidated by the Vatican Council in 1870