The “Beauty of Inequality” and the Mythos of the Medieval

Abstract

This paper recovers the untold story of the Brazilians whose reactions to perceived modernization and secularization helped create today’s transnational Christian Right. Catholic traditionalism at and after Vatican II has gained intermittent notoriety in the years since the Council—yet this notoriety has almost always focused around North Atlantic reactionaries. I show that prominent members of Brazil’s ecclesial and lay hierarchies worked at the Council to anchor an embryonic, anti-modern Catholic conservatism, rooted in pre-conciliar corporatism and mysticism. They organized the forces of conservatism at Vatican II; generated ideological and logistical groundwork for a global Catholic traditionalist groundswell in the Council’s aftermath; and anticipated the cross-denominational linkages of religious and political issues that would come to comprise late-twentieth century neoliberalism and the New Right.