As contribuições das Irmãs do Colégio Sagrado Coração, da Congregação das Beneditinas Missionárias de Tutzing, para o projeto de consolidação educacional e de dominação simbólica católica, em Caruaru-PE (1920-1950).

Abstract

From the perspective of Area 44 of CAPES, “Sciences of Religion and Theology”, especially the sub-area of “Applied Religion Science”, the sacred, as a product of historical processes, passes through the objectification and interiorization of subjects, through the most varied mythical narratives and their discursive allegories. It presents itself both in the various elementary forms of religious life and, above all, in the game established by the various historical agents of the great monotheistic religions. Based on this assumption, the present thesis sought to understand how it was constituted in the city of Caruaru, Pernambuco, in the first half of the twentieth century, a field of symbolic Catholic domination, from the exploration of the Christocentric imaginary, when the Sagrado Coração School was founded. Given that, for a long time, the debates about the importance of Caruaru only referred to economic factors, since its fair and its consequent impact, symbol of regional development today, was presented as the only one able to articulate and determine the customs and population dynamics of Caruaruenses, this restrictive reading was questioned, demonstrating that the religious phenomenon has always been linked to the collective imagination of Caruaruenses, since the implementation of its first symbol of Catholic faith, when the territory was just a farm. A symbol that was able to attract people in its surroundings, as a result of masses or meetings, although there was not yet a field of Catholic domination, but a practice of daily faith, and this landmark was consolidated from the foundation of the first educational center of the city, founded and directed by the Congregation of the Benedictine Missionaries of Tutzing, the Sacred Heart College. For the theoretical and methodological foundation of this thesis, it was fundamental: first, to use the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, to analyze the various forms of domination generated by a habitus, its social structures and ability to impact human relations and, secondly, to conduct a mythocritical study based on Gilbert Duran, to understand the social and political function exercised by symbols, archetypes and schème of religious narratives present in the socio-organizational structure of the College, since its foundation. In conclusion, we argue that such elements, directly linked to the religious phenomenon, were able to consolidate a symbolic Catholic domination field in the city.