Catholic Church–state relations in Argentina

The framers of the 1853 Constitution, who were in many cases influenced by Freemasonry, found a middle way between an officially Catholic country and a secular society, by allowing religious freedom while keeping economic support for the Church, and employing the patronage system, by which the President selected triplets of bishop candidates that the Pope could approve.

The opposition of the Church led to the expulsion of the Nuncio, the removal of dissident bishops, and a breakup of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, which were re-established during Roca's second term.

The Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Federico Aneiros[permanent dead link‍], sent a document to the priests instructing them to explain church attendants that civil marriage was simply concubinage (in its modern sense, cohabitation).

The arguments presented were nationalistic and anti-liberal, identifying Argentine nationality with the deep Catholicism of the motherland, Spain, and also emphasizing religion as a means to create a personal conscience and an ordered society.

In 1954, out of political rather than ideological reasons, the government suppressed religious education in schools and attempted to legalize prostitution, to pass a divorce law and to promote a constitutional amendment to separate State and Church.

On 16 June, two days after Corpus Christi, airplanes of the Navy fleet, with the motto Cristo vence ("Christ wins") painted on them, bombed Plaza de Mayo, killing hundreds of civilians, in the first move towards the coup d'état which would ultimately depose Perón, the Revolución Libertadora.

See Dirty War#Participation of Catholic Church members In 1976, a human rights lawyer accused Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, of conspiring with the junta to kidnap two Jesuit priests.

President Carlos Menem (1989–1999) was linked to conservative Vatican organizations (such as the Opus Dei) and was a staunch supporter of the Church's position on abortion, for which he was awarded a special decoration by Pope John Paul II, even while he was heavily criticized by prominent bishops because of the poverty and unemployment caused by his economic measures.

The Argentine national government passed laws and began a program to the effect of providing assistance on sex education to all citizens, including the provision of free combined oral contraceptive pills and condoms.

At the beginning of 2005, the minister of Health, Ginés González García, made public his support for the legalization of abortion, and Kirchner's silence on the matter angered the Church.

The military vicar Antonio Baseotto expressed his disgust by paraphrasing Mark 9:42 ("And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea") and suggesting that González García should be given that treatment.

Baseotto was heavily criticized because this "punishment" echoes the infamous vuelos de la muerte ("flights of death") whereby prisoners of the last military regime were thrown into the Atlantic from planes.

The Archbishop of La Plata, Héctor Aguer, accused the state of "promoting sexual corruption" and "inciting fornication, lust and promiscuity", denouncing that 11- and 12-year-old students in a school already implementing a sex education curriculum had received condoms and contraceptive pills.

The Permanent Secretariat for the Family, an organ of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, passed a declaration asking the representatives of the people not to approve sex education law projects "already rejected by the Argentinians".

Soon afterwards, on 6 November, the Archbishop of Resistencia, Carmelo Giaquinta, entered the conflict by warning that the state would "lose its reason for existence" if it promoted such laws in the fields of health and education, and announced that he would "encourage Christians to civil disobedience" in that case.

In 2010 Argentina became the third Catholic country to legalize same-sex marriage despite heavy criticism and protests that turned violent between supporters of the traditional Church and advocates of homosexual rights.

On the following day, the Argentine Head of Cabinet, Alberto Fernández, replied that this "does not correspond with reality" and that the Church had "ignored much data provided by current statistics" which showed a decrease in poverty since the beginning of the Kirchner administration in 2003 (see Economy of Argentina).

Senator Miguel Ángel Pichetto (PJ) seconded the statement by Fernández, calling the above "a coup-calling (golpista) document that seems to have been written in the 1970s, at the time when some factions [of society] went knocking on [the doors of] military quarters".

President Kirchner himself replied on 16 November, commenting that the statements of the Church "look more like those of a political party, more like earthly affairs, than like the task they should be performing", and that the bishops were "absolutely wrong in their diagnosis of the situation of the country".

[6] Article 28º Section ñ also makes a statement, when it describes the objectives of the law: to provide religious instruction, which is part of the curriculum, and is to be taught during school time, taking into account parents' and/or tutors' beliefs, who will decide whether their children will attend such classes.