Liturgy and politics in the Brazilian Catholic milieu in the 1930s and 1940s:

The activity of dom Martinho Michler

Abstract

The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed the sharpening of tensions between the Catholic perspectives characteristic of the Pius-era and the movements for internal renewal within Catholicism, which would culminate in the Second Vatican Council. In Brazil, this context took shape through the so-called “Catholic reaction” to the secularizing tendency of the newly inaugurated republican regime. In view of this scenario, this article focuses on a significant figure of the period: the German monk Martinho Michler (1901–1988), transferred to Rio de Janeiro in 1930 and recognized as a pioneer of the liturgical movement in the country. Based on bibliographic and documentary research, this study examines Michler’s influence within Brazilian Catholic circles, which encompassed both theological and liturgical dimensions as well as political aspects. This is demonstrated through his role in redirecting the Centro Dom Vital and the journal A Ordem, institutions that, up until the 1930s, constituted bastions of Catholic reaction orchestrated by laypeople and clergy in the context of the First Republic (1889–1930). To this end, the study reconstructs central elements of Michler’s biography – still little explored in national academic research in Brazil – and then analyzes his activity in the 1930s and 1940s, marked by the intertwining of theological reflections, liturgical initiatives, and political positions. This investigation contributes to understanding the transformations of twentieth-century Catholicism from a transnational perspective, while also deepening the comprehension of the political and religious dynamics in Brazil during that period, shedding light on their contemporary resonances.