• The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979-1996
1 1

The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979-1996

$89.99
$89.99 $89.99
Sold out
Provides a new understanding of the relationship between Church and State in 20th-century Costa Rica. Understanding the relationship between religion and social justice in Costa Rica involves pie...
Read More
  • 18 October 2004
View Product Details

Provides a new understanding of the relationship between Church and State in 20th-century Costa Rica.
Understanding the relationship between religion and social justice in Costa Rica involves piecing together the complex interrelationships between Church and State — between priests, popes, politics, and the people. This book does just that.
Dana Sawchuk chronicles the fortunes of the country’s two competing forms of labour organizations during the 1980s and demonstrates how different factions within the Church came to support either the union movement or Costa Rica’s home-grown Solidarity movement.
Challenging the conventional understanding of Costa Rica as a wholly peaceful and prosperous nation, and traditional interpretations of Catholic Social Teaching, this book introduces readers to a Church largely unknown outside Costa Rica. Sawchuk has carefully analyzed material from a multitude of sources — interviews, newspapers, books, and articles, as well as official Church documents, editorials, and statements by Church representativesto provide a firmly rooted socio-economic history of the experiences of workers, and the Catholic Church’s responses to workers in Costa Rica.

files/i.png Icon
Price: $89.99
Pages: 288
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Imprint: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Series: Editions SR
Publication Date: 18 October 2004
Trim Size: 9.33 X 6.18 in
ISBN: 9780889204454
Format: Hardcover
REVIEWS Icon
This is a very well researched book and is especially successful in explaining the apparently contradictory actions by different organizations and leaders within the Catholic Church in Costa Rica....A fascinating portrait of the inner workings of the Church and its broader impact....The strength of the book, and the reason scholars of Church-state relations, industrial relations, and Latin Americanists in general, need to read it, is its strength in using archival resources and interviews with leading actors. The author does an excellent job of illustrating and explaining the complexities of internal Church actions and their impact on the political process.
Dana Sawchuk is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Table of Contents for The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979–1996 by Dana Sawchuk
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Introduction
Studies of the Church and Politics in Latin America
Studies of the Pre-1979 Church in Costa Rica
The Scope and Theme of This Study
Theoretical Considerations
Chapter Outline
2. Crisis in Costa Rica
Post-Civil War Economic Development
The Crisis and Government Policies
Popular Reactions to the Crisis
Conclusion
3. The Unions in the Face of the Crisis
Problems for the Costa Rican Union Movement
Promise in the Costa Rican Union Movement
Limón en Lucha
Conclusion
4. Official Catholic Social Teaching on Workers’ Issues
Strikes and Unions in Catholic Social Teaching
Contrasting Approaches to Social Justice
Persistent Conservatism in Catholic Social Teaching
Conclusion
5. Monseñor Arrieta and CECOR
The Man They Call Manzanita
The Church Hierarchy’s Political Pronouncements and Preferences
The Costa Rican Bishops and Workers’ Rights
Conclusion
6. CECODERS
The Centre’s Structure and Programming
The Controversial 1986 Folleto
CECODERS and Catholic Social Teaching
CECODERS and the Union Movement
Conclusion
7. Limón Province
Socio-Economic Conditions in Limón
The Institutional Insecurity of the Limón Church
Conclusion
8. The ESJ23
Padre Solano and the Expansion of the ESJ23
The ESJ23 and Catholic Social Teaching
Another Side to the School’s Success
Conclusion
9. The Official Church in Limón
The Limón Church under Monseñor Coto
The 1989 Carta Pastoral
A New Bishop in a New Diocese
The Limón Church and Catholic Social Teaching
Conclusion
10. Liberationist and Conservative Catholicisms in Costa Rica and Beyond
The Conservative-Liberationist Struggle within the Costa Rican Church
Final Reflections
Notes
Bibliography
Index