From obedience to protest. Catholic laywomen before the Second Vatican Council

Abstract

After the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Catholic Church and the authorities of Franco’s dictatorship collaborated in order to establish a religion of fear based on the strict control of moral and customs and an external and superficial worship. The renewed influence of the Second Vatican Council promoted a transformation towards a more personal and thoughtful religiosity built on a God of love. The aim of this article is to analyze how a group of Catholic women who have been living in Bizkaia experienced this change. The oral history, particularly useful in the study of identities construction, will be employed in this article. Therefore, it will be verified the position placed by the Second Vatican Council in the life stories of these women and how their updated faith encouraged them to change from obedience and passivity to protest and criticism.

Keywords

• religiosidad
• género
• historia oral
• franquismo
• concilio vaticano ii