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Dominican Republic The Roman Catholic Church
The Dominican Republic remained over 90 percent Roman
Catholic in the late 1980s, despite major gains by
Protestant
groups, especially evangelical, charismatic, and
spiritualist
sects
(see Dominican Republic - Religion
, ch. 2). The Dominican Roman Catholic
Church
was historically conservative and traditionalist; in
general it
supported the status quo and the existing power structure.
The
Roman Catholic Church was weak institutionally, however,
with few
priests (fewer than 200 in the entire country), little
land, few
educational or social institutions, and little influence
over the
daily lives of most Dominicans.
Since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church had ceased
to
identify wholly with the status quo. Rather, it tended to
stand
for moderate change. It organized mainstream Catholic
political
parties, trade unions, student groups, peasant leagues,
and
businessmen's associations.
Liberation theology (see Glossary)
had made few inroads
in
the Dominican Republic. A few priests espoused
liberationist
ideas, but they were not considered to be in the
mainstream of
the clergy. Nor had there been calls by church officials
for an
alliance with Marxist groups, let alone calls for
guerrilla
struggles or other militant action against the system.
As the Dominican Republic modernized and secularized,
the
church lost some of its influence. The country had
legalized
divorce in 1963 and had instituted government-sponsored
family
planning in 1967, two measures the church had opposed. The
church
seldom succeeded in mobilizing voters in support of its
favored
programs. With only about 10 percent of the population
engaged as
active, practicing Catholics, and with Protestant groups
continuing to grow rapidly, political scientists estimated
that
the church had gone from being one of the top three most
influential interest groups, in past decades, to about the
sixth
or the seventh by the late 1980s.
Data as of December 1989
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