SPIRITUALITY

“Uruguayans are religious, but with great pluralism,” said Miguel Pastorino.

By In Perspective

According to the latest Latinobarómetro survey, 52% of Uruguayans say they have no religion, the highest recorded since this survey was conducted. This places Uruguay as the country with the fewest religious people in the region, followed very far by Chile, where 37% of those surveyed say they have no religion.

The doctor in philosophy, specialized in philosophy of religion, Miguel Pastorino, coordinator of La Mesa de Philosophers, considered in dialogue with In perspective that the Latinobarómetro data “does not surprise.” “It is a trend that has been going on for a long time. In fact, Catholicism has been declining sharply throughout Latin America since the 1970s. In any case, Uruguay has always had the fewest Catholics in the region,” he stated.

In any case, Pastorino made a distinction between practicing Catholicism and “cultural” Catholicism.

“In Uruguay the percentage of practicing Catholics remains the same, it is always at 4 or 5%, it has not changed in recent decades. What falls precipitously is what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘nominal’ Catholicism. That is, people who called themselves Catholic, because they went to Catholic school, to take communion, etc. It is something that had more social weight and has been declining because there is no cultural tradition of Catholicism, as there was before,” he expressed.

At this point he denied that the number of believers has decreased in Uruguay. “Sometimes it is interpreted that there is a kind of exodus of the faithful. No, what there is is a fall of those who did not go to church, but called themselves Catholic. That is disappearing, not only in Uruguay,” he said.

“In Uruguay there is always that believer who does not practice. A Colombian friend who studies these phenomena told me that in Colombia it is the other way around: they have many practitioners who do not believe. That is, people who attend worship for a kind of tradition and sometimes have a kind of practical atheism in life,” he narrated.

According to Pastorino, recent qualitative studies show that atheist people have spirituality or spiritual practices. In contrast, according to the expert, these studies “interview people who call themselves Catholic and in reality suddenly there is no daily spiritual practice.”

“It is very interesting because when you enter people’s lives the categories begin to become a little grayer,” he explained and added: “There is an increase in spiritual searches, you can see it on social networks, in what has to do with it.” “to do with personal development, but that goes through other channels that are not traditional religions.”

At this point he talked about yoga, mindfulness or self-help. “Many people who practice yoga, for example, have a very deep spiritual life. Yoga comes from Hinduism, and it is not that they practice it like someone does gymnastics. There are people who do, but for many other people yoga is part of their spiritual life, but they don’t say: ‘I am a religious person.’ However, it is,” he noted.

In that sense, he recalled that “Buddhism is a religion without god.” “There are many atheists in the West who sympathize with Buddhism in terms of their personal practices. That is, there are people who have a problem with theism, they do not believe in God, but they are not against spiritual development and Buddhism has become a kind of interesting path for many atheist people,” he developed.

“This comes from a long time ago, it is a phenomenon that French sociologists called in the nineties the ‘deinstitutionalization of religion’, only it is increasing,” he added.

“There is a real fact and that is that Uruguayans are religious, because there is a high percentage of people who have that type of beliefs or practices, but with a great pluralism that is not always thinking of it as belonging to certain institutions,” he highlighted.

According to Pastorino “there is a simplification that opposes religion with spirituality.” “The truth is that one can talk about religion as an institution, but one can also talk about the religious dimension of the person. Anthropological studies show that human beings have always asked themselves metaphysical, transcendental questions, in which they seek to ask themselves about the meaning of life, about the afterlife of death. This is what I mean by the religious dimension,” he explained.

Pastorino also spoke about what type of religiosity is the trend towards: “Today the religion or spiritual proposal that can grow the most is the one that emphasizes experience, on what can be experienced.”

“We are in the society of experience. This has to do with the fact that the spiritual proposal that can generate the most impact is one that offers an experience worth living and that is transformative,” he concluded.

Montevideo Portal

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