Crisis and the rearrangement of religious habitus in the periphery of the Catholic space

Abstract Based on a precise empirical selection, the article discusses the idea of institutional crisis as an evidence of broader processes that have affected the Church and Catholicism in different scales from the mid-20th century on. The analysis focused on the Brazilian northern State of Maranhão, and three main aspects were explored: i) the changes in the social composition of the clergy and in its modalities of commitment; ii) the rise of religious demands connected to institutional investments towards new publics; iii) the backflow of power and the rearrangements of the religious authority. The results have brought to light a process of contentious institutional reconfiguration favored by . doctrinal reorientation led by Rome between the 1950s and 1960s. This process has nurtured the conditions for . politicized commitment of the clergy, mainly among foreign religious missionaries, which incorporated new forms of professional practice and took hold of new services, defining a new image of the institution in the symbolic space.