RELIGION AND THE STATE

By: Scribe Valdemir Mota de Menezes
RELIGION AND THE STATE

Article 5 of the Constitution of 1824 shows that Catholicism was the official religion of Brazil. It was not just a question of choosing a state religion, was also an indirect way to curb the practice of other religions. We see that the text of article five of this charter, not only gives prestige to the prerogative of the Roman Catholic Church, but also restricts the practice of other cults.

Religious freedom at that time was limited to the particular cult, home and should only be tolerated within the family. Text explicitly forbids the worship in public, or even building temples or meeting places for the practice of another religion. Thus the exact wording of the letter that says: "All other religions are allowed" should be construed as a permission and tolerance for other religions could be practiced in Brazil.

Observing this text today, this text would be considered absurd, because represent the closure of hundreds of thousands of places of worship of evangelical churches, other Christian denominations and a host of other temples from different religions that are practiced in Brazil. However, when we look at this constitutional text being produced just a few centuries after the reform and counter-Reformation, we see a huge breakthrough in Brazil.

This openness and freedom of worship guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution guaranteed the right of anyone to practice their religion without being arrested or killed. On August 24, 1572, just two and a half centuries before some 100,000 Huguenots were massacred in France, the famous Night Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

The bodies were thrown into the rivers and for a time no one ate the fish, because the degree of contamination of water by caus putrefying bodies. So, watching the Brazilian constitution of 1824 realized an advance and a guarantee that the Protestants of Europe could take refuge in Brazil, because there were government guarantees that no one would be sentenced to death for practicing religion different from Catholicism. This constitution remained in force until the proclamation of the republic. This constitution still bore traces of monarchical absolutism of times past, but also contained traces in modern liberalism


REFERENCES:

Available in Wikipedia, accessed on 05/05/2011
Available in http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/noblat/luciahippolito/posts/2010/03/25/ access 05/05/2011
Available in http://www.brasilescola.com/historiab/primeira-constituicao.htm, accessed 05/05/2011