Religion, women's rights, and the fundamentalist face of Catholicism in Brazil

This article presents the analyses of the author on the difficulty that Roman Catholicism has in accepting the concept of human rights, particularly with respect to women. According to Emile Poulat, the rights of man are based on three suppositions underlying the liberal theory of rights, which explains the conflict between Catholicism and liberalism. In addition, the invention of the principle of individuality, in consequence to the transformation in the legal realm, opposes both the Catholic social order and the religious order subsequently developing a conflict of rights. Moreover, Catholicism propagates a traditional conception of women and identifies their essence in maternity, which is incompatible with the affirmation of individual rights for women. Furthermore, this article presents the fundamentalist aspect of Catholicism in Brazil. It presents case examples, which illustrates the two-sided nature of the religion and allows the evaluation of the difficulty confronted by Catholic women in fighting for their rights. It concludes that the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil is one of the most powerful adversaries of the development of women's reproductive health and rights. However, it is characterized by a fundamentalism, which is opposed to the expansion of the scope of autonomy of thought and action for some women.