Catholicism and Nation in Argentina

While much historiography has assumed that the period from 1890 to 1930 was liberal in Argentina, Agustina González Nuñez forcefully argues in Catholicism and Nation in Argentina that the Society of Jesus – the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church - proved a powerful force in shaping an alternate discourse of Argentinian nationhood. Advocating conservative thought, at the dawn of the twentieth century the Jesuits introduced such topics as “humanistic citizenship,” a “catholic society,” and “a new understanding of conservative thought.” The Jesuit mission was to produce national and international leaders, influence government policymaking, and promote the order within the national Catholic Church.

From 1911, the Jesuits supported the publication of a journal called Estudios (Studies) in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. Its articles shaped conservative and Catholic thought. Estudios proposed an economic and political system compatible with Catholic values. The journal shaped a discourse tailored to humanism and a conservative Catholic society. This book analyzes Jesuit thought and its influence on the Argentinian ruling class and on the county’s formative concepts of “citizenship” and “nationhood.”