The catholic diversity seen from the new faces of God

Abstract

This article deals with the subjectification of religious belief as it isrelated to the diversification of ways of being, of representing oneself and ofbehaving corresponding to Catholics that participate as lay men and women innew eclesiastical movements. In order to select the cases included in the study, Idesigned ideal types taking into consideration the following criteria markingspecifically qualitative constrasts: a) conversion processes; b) ways in which laypeople perceive themselves and relate with church structure as part of religiousgroups; c) the manner in which lay people perceive and confront thetransformation of their social environments; and d) the current and normativeforms that their conceptions of Catholic lay people take on, as viewed from thelens of their own life history (conversion, militancy, successes and obstacles). Inthis article, I do a comparative analysis of case studies of leaders from differentlay movements: Comunidades Eclesiales de Base; Barrios Unidos en Cristo, RenovaciónCarismática and an esoterical Catholic group called Misioneros Azules. These groupswere chosen to be the ideal cases in order to represent the enormous spectrum of theological and doctrinary interpretations, the distinct degrees of commitmentand the unbalanced relationships with the institutional hierarchy, as well as,finally, the diverse pastoral visions promoted to resacralize the secular world.