A recepção do Concílio Vaticano II na Província Marista de São Paulo : a adaptação da identidade da vida religiosa e da educação católica (1967-1986)

Abstract

The Marist Institute is a religious congregation of brothers that was created in 1817 with the purpose of meeting the educational demands of the municipal schools in the interior of France. In 1897 this institute arrived in Brazil and organized itself throughout provinces the 20th century. Among the Brazilian provinces there was the Marist Province of São Paulo (1958-2002), whose religious people worked predominantly with school education in private schools. Through the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Roman Catholic Church requested the updating of religious institutes and education, which took place in a procedural way and with different rhythms among the institutions and subjects. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the reception of the Second Vatican Council in the Marist Province of São Paulo between 1967 and 1986. The analysis seeks to acess the experiences of the General Chapters with the expectations of the Marist Province of São Paulo to understand the historical experiences that conditioned the Marist Brothers at a time when they were required to renew religious life and that of their schools. The theoretical-methodological reference is based on the concepts of reception (Gilles Routhier) and modernity (Reinhart Koselleck). The contributions of Reinhart Koselleck allow an analysis of the relationship of the Marist Brothers with modernity from the categories “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation”. They are two meta-historical categories for the apprehension of historical time. The documental scope of this research is constituted by official, ecclesiastical, and private sources, organized and administered by the Marist Institute. The reception of the Second Vatican Council was under different hermeneutic bases and was characterized by its creativity and selectivity, which can be observed in the relationship between the updating proposed by the documents and the practical changes in the organization of the province. In the official nature of its documents, the Marist Province of Saint Paul followed the guidelines for the insertion of the religious among the poor, in the missions and in ecclesial ministries. Faced with the demands of renewal, there was resistance from the religious, and their leaders chose to reconcile two paths for the apostolate: to remain in the schools and to insert themselves progressively among the poor. While on the one hand there was a slow adaptation of the religious life of the brothers (recruitment, formation, community life), on the other they updated the schools in accordance with the educational laws of the country, dialogued with pedagogical tendencies, included lay teachers, implemented mixed education, and adjusted to the competition of the educational market.