A Family Theology for Latin American People? Radicalization of the Christian Family Movement in Argentina (1968-1974)

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how the Catholic family model was disrupted by the climate of the Second Vatican Council, Liberation Theology, and sociocultural modernization. The analysis focuses on the Christian Family Movement in Argentina and allows an examination of the political and cultural radicalization of a conservative organization of the upper classes (created to strengthen the Catholic family) and the theological debates on the subject of the family that were sparked by the preferential option for the poor in Latin America. The analysis reveals that radicalization challenged the very foundations of the Catholic Church’s family doctrine, and, at the same time, the swift reaction of the Episcopate that restored order and defended the essentialist view of the family, an ideological cornerstone in the 1976 coup d’état.