Politics, culture, and religion in modern times: the Catholic Church and the restructuring of censorship

This article analyses the restructuring of Catholic Church censorial practices in the historical context of questioning and erosion of the sacred in the Western world. We defend that the international action by the Vatican in the public sphere and its potential for shaping cultural processes at a transnational level were only possible through national ramifications/mediations. We analyse its dual offensive/reactive strategy within culture and the media, which promoted worldviews and reacted to mass culture adverse to those views, and how it was carried out by a particular structure, Catholic Action. We focus on its activity in Portugal and on the scrutiny applied to cinema and the reading materials which were allowed to circulate. For that purpose, we surveyed the most relevant catholic “reading guides” published over this period and described their modes of reception across diverse public audiences. We intend to show how one of the longest dictatorships in Europe in the 20th century shaped the modus operandi of the Vatican, contributing to a global Christian culture, to a transnational censorship system, and to the maintenance of an authoritarian regime. We therefore seek to contribute to the reflection on the articulation of censorship practices of the Church and the State.