Individualization and religion in Catholic Europe

Abstract

A part of the catholic European countries displays signs of a relatively advanced secularization. This signs approaches them to the countries of protestant culture, while others remain much more close to the Church hierarchy. The differences are intimately related to the degrees of «cultural modernization» in each country. The internalization degree of values and sensitivities related to the individualizing social process acquires a great predictive capacity (and apparently explanatory capacity as well) of the Church religiosity decomposition level. Indeed the Church hierarchy is openly hostile to a lot of its symbolic manifestations (abortion, divorce, sexual relations, familiar models, euthanasia, etc). This disagreement takes a central role in the secularizing process of the catholic Europe.