Detalle Publicación

Equidistance and positive neutrality: Spanish Jesuits on terrorism, peace, and democracy in the Basque Country from 1978 to 1988

Título de la revista: RELIGION, STATE AND SOCIETY
ISSN: 0963-7494
Volumen: 48
Número: 4
Páginas: 290 - 306
Fecha de publicación: 2020
Resumen:
This study focuses on the question of how Jesuits in Spain contributed to the deradicalisation of the ETA conflict during the 1980s. It analyses Spanish Jesuit discourses on peace and democracy in their broad historical context during the Second Cold War. The first part of this study analyses contributions on terrorism, peace, and democracy from the Spanish Jesuit journalRazon y Fe. This analysis demonstrates that Spanish Jesuits maintained significant distance from the problem of political violence in Spain long into the 1980s. Nevertheless, their efforts to present new ethical ground for peace in the context of Spain's transition were remarkable. The Jesuits' main goal has consisted in strengthening pluralism and democracy within Spanish civil society, which they understand as a precondition for any conflict mediation. The second part explores Jesuit positions on peace ethics and European security issues formulated in the context of the Jesuit instituteFe y Secularidad, which was founded in Barcelona in 1967 and has been based in Madrid since the early 1980s. Only by synthesising both parts of this analysis can we comprehensively approach the question of the type of mediative promise that the Jesuits developed regarding the ETA conflict.