Guerra española, guerra santa: apuntes a partir de una controversia conceptual en Argentina (1936-1937)

Abstract

In the following article, we explore, from a brief, but intense intellectual controversy carried out in the Argentine Catholic journal Criterio, the conflict in the Iberian Peninsula as an instance used by Catholicism to legitimize its own battle against «anti-Christian ideologies». The conceptual dispute between the French philosopher Jacques Maritain and Julio Meinvielle about the Spanish Civil War as «holy war», «crusade» and «just war» allows us to establish a long-term hypothesis for the intellectual trajectory of the Argentine priest. The war in Spain also implied a conflict of interpretations, concepts and symbols agitated as rifles. After proposing the hypothesis that guides this article, we detail the fundamental features of Argentine Catholicism towards the 1930s to understand the context over which the Spanish conflict was understood in the country of the Southern Cone. In addition, in the same section, we briefly introduce Criterio, born in the context of a so-called «Catholic renaissance». Lastly, we approach the conceptual controversy taking into account Meinvielle's intellectual trajectory, to make a proposal for future researches that consider the turbulence of Argentine Catholicism of the 20th century.