A Igreja e o Estado: uma análise da separação da igreja católica do estado brasileiro na constituição de 1891

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to show that the Federal Constitution of 1891 consecrated a model of lay state, or else, unattached to any religious confessions. And that this model is very important to defending the fundamental human rights and of a Democratic Law State, plural and respecting diversity. The constitutional story of Brazil shows that it was not always like this, because until the Proclamation of the Republic, in 1889, and the new Constitution of 1891, people used to live in a Monarchic and Confessional State, which adopted the Catholic religion as official one. When the State wants to adopt a religion officially, even if it is of a group in its majority dominant and hegemonic, is inevitable their compromise with beliefs, moral principles, ideologies of a certain group comparing to others, making it difficult the accomplishment of respect towards minorities, towards human rights and the consolidation of a Law Democratic State. This essay intends to foment even more the secularist model of State while studying the Brazilian religious field from a historical process, political and ideological that led to the separation of the Catholic Church from the Brazilian State in the first Republican Constitution of 1891. The first chapter is contextual of the period in which the fact occurred, religious, political, ideological and juridical context and in the following chapter, the Church State relation as a relational substrate (century power and religious power). In the third chapter, the philosophical intellectual fundament that led to the divorce between the Church and the State, which did not occur in an unexpected or abrupt way, but passed through a historical process of great discussions in Brazil. At last, it is intended to contribute theoretically to broad discussions in the relations Church-State.