New Communities:

a Catholic tradition’s ‘charismatic’ resumption?

Abstract

This study has analyzed a reconfiguration of religious life in modern society, one of the most effective ways of producing contemporary religious identities (through the formation of collective bonds) operated within charismatic Catholicism: the so-called New Communities. Thus, this article aims to present the emergence and missionary action of New Communities within contemporary Catholicism, forms of life that emerged within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR), from the 1970s on, with a strong presence in Brazil. To do this, it begins with a sociological discussion about the notorious secularization, as an inescapable consequence of modernization processes, the review of this debate and the creation of new community identity bonds produced in response to these processes, among which we highlight such communities. Thus, the constitutive elements of secularization, their relations with modernity, the transformations made within Catholicism in the 20th century, and the latter’s responses to such transformations are discussed, with an emphasis, in our view, on the CCR and the New Communities, which serve, above all, as identity refuges for individuals increasingly immersed in modernization processes.