Secularization in Joaquim Nabuco’s speeches

a perspective on the crisis of the confessional model of 1824

Abstract

The 1824 Constitution combines elements of permanence and rupture with the Old Regime, by introducing the right to religious freedom and maintaining the confessional model characterized by placet and patronage. Throughout the 19th century, the gradual and ambiguous advance of the secularization process, understood as the reduction of religion to the private field, led to a political crisis accentuated by the Religious Question (1872). This text aims to relate Joaquim Nabuco's perceptions about secularization with the decline of the confessional model and, to this end, considers the author's ideas about the relationship between the Church and the State in the period between 1873 and 1880. Nabuco's view on the subject is in line with the perspective of the liberal radicals of the 1870s who disputed with royalists, ultramontanes, and moderate radicals about the role that religion would play in Brazilian public life. These different positions of the political spectrum are projected into discordant interpretations of the maintenance of the confessional regime and its relationship with constitutional rights and freedoms. The research found the statesman's perception of the need for autonomy in Brazilian public life in relation to religion, which implied reducing the political reach of the Church, breaking with the model adopted by the Constitution of 1824. It is concluded that the thinking of Nabuco on secularization can be framed within what the statesman called Politics with a capital p, as he realizes that the separation of Church and State was inevitable for Brazil to progress.