Left-wing Catholics and right-wing Catholics, or Catholics neither left nor right?

Contemporary Catholicism between political duality and triangular conflict

Abstract

Some recent studies on the problem of secularization seem to take for granted an intrinsic conflict between religious beliefs and political exercise, constituting domains of meaning and action analytically distinct. However, apart from the conflictual relation, the relations between the two universes gain importance when we appreciate the heterogeneous character of both and their porosity. In this sense, with the accomplishment of the presente article we intend to retake the debate around the problematic of the observation of the political behavior of the Catholics produced in the scope of the French historiography, confronting the theses of the political dualism to those of the triangular conflict, and equating its advantages and disadvantages in observing the contemporary Christian universe.