Pastoral Criticism, Structural Collaboration: The Role of Ecclesial Power Structures in Modernization and Economic Individualization

This article analyzes the complex processes of modernization and individualization, as well as how the church has structurally fostered individualization despite its public criticism. First, the article demonstrates how modernization and individualization have gradually restructured human self-under...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Horizons
Main Author: Minch, Daniel 1986- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2021
In: Horizons
Year: 2021, Volume: 48, Issue: 2, Pages: 367-403
IxTheo Classification:CH Christianity and Society
KDB Roman Catholic Church
RB Church office; congregation
Further subjects:B Economics
B Catholic Social Teaching
B Hierarchy
B social acceleration
B Ecclesiology
B Individualism
B Theological Anthropology
B Liberalism
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Summary:This article analyzes the complex processes of modernization and individualization, as well as how the church has structurally fostered individualization despite its public criticism. First, the article demonstrates how modernization and individualization have gradually restructured human self-understanding into an economic image of humanity: the human person as homo oeconomicus. Second, this article examines the church's relation to modernity, and specifically its critiques of liberalism and economic individualism. However, the church has often generated the conditions and structures for individualization, and by extension the processes of acceleration and economization of the life-world that it criticizes. Three areas in intra-ecclesial discourse that foster individualization are examined: the interiorization of faith, ecclesial centralization and clerical bureaucracy, and the promotion of corporatism and digital immediacy. The article concludes by examining recent papal efforts at structural reform and the degree to which they address previously entrenched problems and point toward a renewed, non-economic anthropology.
ISSN:2050-8557
Contains:Enthalten in: Horizons
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/hor.2021.53