Argentine Catholic Church had concentrated her institutional efforts on the diffusion of catholic values and ideas in the civil society through the intimate relation with the political powers. But with the democratization process in the 1980s, this mo ...

Argentine Catholic Church had concentrated her institutional efforts on the diffusion of catholic values and ideas in the civil society through the intimate relation with the political powers. But with the democratization process in the 1980s, this model of church came to a crisis, specially by the exposure of the crimes the church had committed during the military dictatorship. This situation has sprouted a discussion about a new identity of the church in relation to the State and the civil society. These efforts for a new identity have been more consolidated by the disclosure of political corruptions of Menem government.
With the election of Karlic as president of Conferencia Episcopal Argentina, the Catholic Church began to mold more concretely this new identity that maintain a distance from the political powers. Enjoying autonomy and independence in the relation with State, the Catholic Church have paid attention to the reality of poors, who didn't discover the other exits except the catholic network of social assistance.
In this way, the Argentine Catholic Church, on the one hand, has developed a critical discourse against the neoliberal economic model and their social consequences and, on the other hand, has intervened practically in the reality of the poors through her network of social assistance, that is, C？ritas. These attitudes and practices of Catholic Church have evoked a great echo in the civil society, contributing toward the recovering of her social legitimacy and credibility, disqualified by her crimes during the military dictatorship.
But this new relationship with State reveals certain limits. Her critical discourse still is remained in the traditional moralistic approach and her practices are concentrated in the social assistance. Therefore it is necessary to elaborate the more systemic and consistent discourse, with an effort on the distribution of her attention, concentrated on C？ritas, for other catholic pastorals or movements.